Greg Detre
Monday, November 04, 2002
Goldstone
& Rogosky make two important points. The first is that it does make sense
to talk of two people sharing the same concept, even when that concept is
defined slightly differently for them, or bears different relations to the
other concepts they hold. They provide a computational algorithm (ABSURDIST)
which shows how �concepts�, defined solely in terms of pairwise �distance�
measures from each other, can be matched across systems, without being based on
extrinsic information at all.
Secondly,
they show that their algorithm works even better when extrinsic information is
incorporated. By �extrinsic information�, they include any information that is
not captured purely by within-system relations. This is intended to demonstrate
that theories of meaning based on external grounding (some causal connection to
the real world, often mediated by perceptual mechanisms) need not be
incompatible with the conceptual web accounts vindicated by their algorithm.