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                Rutgers Psychology Dept. Colloquium
           
     Iconic and Symbolic Factors in Perception and Cognition

                          Stevan Harnad
                      Princeton University

                    Wednesday March 11, Noon.
           Psychology Building (Busch Campus) Room 307 
               
The symbols in natural languages such as English and in artificial
symbol systems such as mathematics and LISP programs are objects that
are manipulated according to formal rules operating only on their
shapes, which are arbitrary in relation to what they can be interpreted
as representing. Hence symbol systems do not really "contain" their
meanings; they are simply capable of bearing the weight of a systematic
interpretation that is projected onto them. The icons in human and
animal nonverbal communication and in many artforms are also objects
that can be interpreted as representing something; the relation of
their shapes to what they represent, however, is not arbitrary but
either analog or causal. This talk will be on the problem of grounding
symbols in the analog world of objects that they stand for. I will
discuss data on categorical perception in human subjects and neural
nets as well as the role of iconic and symbolic factors in perception
and cognition, closing with a consideration of the special case of the
nonrepresentional artform, music.

-- 
Stevan Harnad  Department of Psychology  Princeton University
harnad@clarity.princeton.edu / harnad@pucc.bitnet / srh@flash.bellcore.com 
harnad@learning.siemens.com / harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu / (609)-921-7771