TY - UNPB ID - cogprints1626 UR - http://cogprints.org/1626/ A1 - Harnad, Stevan TI - On the Virtues of Theft Over Honest Toil: Grounding Language and Thought in Sensorimotor Categories Y1 - 1996/// N2 - What language allows us to do is to steal categories through hearsay instead of having to earn them through the honest toil of learning them from direct exposure and trial and error feedback from the consequences of miscategorisation. To make us capable of theft, however, the content-bearing symbols of language must ultimately be grounded in categories that have been earned through honest toil (unless "prepared" by Darwinian theft); it cannot be linguistic theft all the way down. Category names must be grounded in the capacity to sort, label and interact with the proximal sensorimotor projections of their distal members in a way which coheres systematically with their interpretations, singly, and strung together to express propositions. AV - public KW - language evolution KW - frame problem KW - symbol grounding KW - categorical perception KW - categorization KW - perceptual learning KW - menaing ER -