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On the virtues of going all the way

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 1999

Shimon Edelman  and
Elise M. Breen
Shimon Edelman
Affiliation:
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex at Brighton, Falmer BN1 9QH, [email protected] www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/shimone
Elise M. Breen
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Cognitive Brain Mapping, Brain Research Institute, Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako, Saitama 351-01, Japan
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Abstract

Representational systems need to use symbols as internal stand-ins for distal quantities and events. Barsalou's ideas go a long way towards making the symbol system theory of representation more appealing, by delegating one critical part of the representational burden – dealing with the constituents of compound structures – to image-like entities. The target article, however, leaves the other critical component of any symbol system theory – the compositional ability to bind the constituents together – underspecified. We point out that the binding problem can be alleviated if a perceptual symbol system is made to rely on image-like entities not only for grounding the constituent symbols, but also for composing these into structures.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , August 1999 , pp. 614
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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