title: Symbol grounding: a bridge from artificial life, to artificial intelligence.
abstract: This paper develops a bridge from AL issues about the symbol-matter relation to AI issues about symbol-grounding by focusing on the concepts of formality and syntactic interpretability. Using the DNA triplet-amino acid specification relation as a paradigm, it is argued that syntactic properties can be grounded as high-level features of the non-syntactic interactions in a physical dynamical system. This argument provides the basis for a rebuttal of John Searle's recent assertion that syntax is observer-relative (1990, 1992). But the argument as developed also challenges the classic symbol-processing theory of mind against which Searle is arguing, as well as the strong AL thesis that life is realizable in a purely computational medium. Finally, it provides a new line of support for the autonomous systems approach in AL and AI (Varela & Bourgine 1992a, 1992b).
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Thompson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D019295:Computational Biology; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D010684:Philosophy; D012660:Semantics; D013561:Symbolism; D018911:Trinucleotide Repeats / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004247:DNA