Contextual vocabulary acquisition as computational philosophy and as philosophical computation

  • Authors:

  • William J. Rapaport;Michael W. Kibby

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Philosophy, Department of Linguistics, and Center for Cognitive Science, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, U ...;Department of Learning and Instruction and Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence - Selected Papers from the 2006 North American Computers and Philosophy Conference, Guest Editor: Patrick Grim
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is the active, deliberate acquisition of a meaning for an unknown word in a text by reasoning from textual clues, prior knowledge, and hypotheses developed from prior encounters with the word, but without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. Published strategies for CVA vaguely and unhelpfully tell the reader to 'guess'. Artificial intelligence algorithms for CVA can fill in the details that replace 'guessing' by 'computing'; these details can then be converted to a curriculum that can be taught to students to improve their reading comprehension. Such algorithms also suggest a way out of the Chinese Room and show how holistic semantics can withstand certain objections.