The symbol grounding problem
Luciano Floridi · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2011
How can data acquire their meaning? The answer consists in two parts, one negative, the other positive. This chapter provides the pars destruens. It shows that the main solutions proposed so far are unsatisfactory. After the introduction, section 6.2 recalls the symbol (or data) grounding problem (SGP). It then defends the zero semantic commitment condition (Z condition), as the requirement to be satisfied by a strategy in order to provide a valid solution of the SGP. Sections 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5 analyse eight main solutions of the SGP. None of them respects the Z condition, and hence they all fail to provide a valid solution of the SGP. The chapter ends with a more constructive conclusion, about the requirements that a solution of the SGP should satisfy. This is developed in chapter seven.