Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

What is the relationship between cognitive theories of symbol grounding and philosophical theories of meaning? In this paper we argue that, although often considered to be fundamentally distinct, the two are actually very similar. Both set out to explain how non-referring atomic tokens or states of a system can require status as semantic primitives within that system. In view of this close relationship, we consider what attempts to solve these problems can gain from each other. W e argue that, at least presently, work on symbol grounding is not likely to have an impact on philosophical theories of meaning. On the other hand, we suggest that the symbol grounding theorists have a lot to learn from their philosophical counterparts. In particular, the former must address the problems that have been identified in attempting to formulate philosophical theories of reference.