Artikel,
Physical symbol systems
Cognitive Science, (1980)
Zusammenfassung
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, i.e., 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 every day of our lives. In this paper
we attempt systematically, but plainly, to lay out the nature of
physical symbol systems. Such a review is in ways familiar, but not
thereby useless. Restatement of fundamentals is an important exercise.
