Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics of the Mind?

post by Ben Amitay (unicode-70) · 2023-04-23T06:13:31.464Z · LW · GW · No comments

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One feature of natural languge that seem to be essential is the (blurry) distinction between 3 layers:

1. Semantics of basic units
2. Syntactic rules for how to combine the meanings of basic units.
3. Pragmatic considerations for modifying the literal meaning by taking into account things like context, shared priors, and cooperative game theory.

That distinction seem very natural to me, because 1+2 are needed for learnability of the language and 3 is a direct result of trying to optimize the communication in context. Hence my question: I'm interested at whether similar 3 layers emerge in other important communication context:

1. Communication between modules in the brain.
2. Memory, when viewed as communication if the present brain with the future brain.
3. inter-modul communication and memory in deep learning.

Do you have evidence for/against it in those contexts?

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