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cognition language & learning lab michael explains... the problems with reference department of psychology, stanford university

Rethinking Reference People use symbols (such as words, signs or pictures) and arrangements of symbols to communicate about the world. In seeking to understand how this is possible, we do not assume that symbolic thought is necessarily the same thing as "symbolic computation," where symbolic computation is equated with a particular algorithmic approach to computer programming. There are numerous ways in which symbolic thought might be implemented in mind, and the model adopted in the "symbolic approach" to cognitive science is only one of these. In what follows, we will briefly argue against these "good old fashioned" approaches.