Simulated Knowledge - The Challenge of Semantics

Gerd Doeben-Henisch

Fachhochschule Frankfurt am Main

Nibelungenplatz 1

D-60318 Frankfurt am Main

doeben@fb2.fh-frankfurt.de

URL: http://www.fbmnd.fh-frankfurt.de/~doeben

Abstract

While working on a larger project whose aim it is to enable the simulation of everyday knowledge we are faced with the problem of signs with at least a twofold semantics: WORLD <--> FORMAL LANGUAGE <--> ABSTRACT MACHINE. The complexity of this situation is enhanced by the fact that the WORLD-LANGUAGE semantics is processed by human persons while the LANGUAGE-MACHINE semantics is processed by a machine. There arise many interesting and deep questions. Based on concrete examples I will outline a first theoretical approach to this challenge which will show how the concrete problems of computational semiotics are directly related to the big questions of semiotics and epistemology in general. It seems that the age of computers will inevitably become the age of (computational) semiotics. In reality it is so already; in science we are only slowly keeping up. I hope that the workshop is a good place to have a multidisciplinary communication about these problems.