Physical Symbol Systems

Abstract

On the occasion of a first conference on Cognitive Science, it seems appropriate to review the basis of common understanding between the various disciplines. In my estimate, the most fundamental contribution so far of artificial intelligence and computer science to the joint enterprise of cognitive science has been the notion of a physical symbol system, ie, the concept of a broad class of systems capable of having and manipulating symbols, yet realizable in the physical universe. The notion of symbol so defined is internal to this concept, so it becomes a hypothesis that this notion of symbols includes the symbols that we humans use everyday of our lives. In this paper we attempt systematically, but plainly, to layout the nature of physical symbol systems. Such a review is in ways familiar, but not thereby useless. Restatement of fundamentals in an important exercise.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1980
Accession Number
ADA224247

Entities

People

  • Allen Newell

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Automata
  • Cognition
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Digital Computers
  • Information Processing
  • Intelligent Systems
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Nervous System
  • Programming Languages
  • Psychology
  • Scientific Theories

Readers

  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
  • Systems Analysis and Design
  • Theoretical Analysis.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - DoD AI Strategy
  • AI & ML - Machine Translation