Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

PATHFINDER is a system that solves coordination problems that require acquisition of a convention governing the intended meaning of a symbol. LEADER blazes a trail through a maze by leaving symbols in the various paths, and FOLLOWER must find LEADER by discovering the Intended meanings of these blazes. PATHFINDER is the first step In a project to design a system that can solve a variety of coordination problems of the sort implicated in language acquisition. Solving certain coordination problems is conmuni eating. Since coordination problem solution can become conventional (as David Lewis has shown), communication can become conventional, and that is language in its most general form. As conventions are acquired, more sophisitcated coordination problems can be solved, and more sophisticated conventions can be acquired. Eventually, it should be possible to acquire conventions governing identifiers and general terms, and this will enable use of a first order language via a recursive procedure adapted from Tarski by Cummins.