In continuation of this series on AI and philosophy, here I want to about the nature of meaning. As humans we easily interpret language and extract meaning out of sentences. Transferring this skill to machines has been a hot topic recently. Most attempts at doing so only act superficially. For example some focus only on grammar, some on sentiments carried in the sentences etc. To really make AI understand language we have to look at what “understanding” actually means. Fortunately there has been a long philosophical background to this already.

Both Indian and Greek philosophical traditions have a long history of speculation on the nature of language and meaning. In Indian philosophical tradition there have been two stream of thought. One stream claims that words independently carry meaning (much like in modern semantic theory). The other school is of the view that the words themselves do not carry meaning until they are placed in a sentence. That is meaning of a word is driven by overall context of the sentences and composition it is found in

There could be several theories of meaning that can be directly used in AI. For example one of the philosophical theories states that meanings are purely mental contents provoked by signs. In other words language is a way to access contents stored in the memory of brain. This is referred to as idea theory. Another theory, the pragmatist theory, says that meaning (or understanding) of a sentence is determined by the consequences of its application. In other words language is a way to invoke certain functions.

A thorough study of these philosophical theories of meaning is required to be able to leverage some of this work in AI especially in the case of NLP.

 

Follow

• 
• 
•