Mind, Language, Machine: Artificial Intelligence in the Poststructuralist Age

A wide-ranging discussion of the interrelations of mental structures, natural language and formal systems. It explores how the mind builds language, how language in turn builds the mind, and how theorists and researcheres in artificial intelligence are attempting to simulate such processes. It also considers for the first time how the interests and theoretical strategies of poststructuralists such as Jacques Derrida are dovetailing in many ways with those of artificial intelligence workers. Johnson uses the catastrophe theory of Rene Thom to describe the evolution of both human and machine language. Encompassing theories and research concerned with the evolution of language, language acquisition, sign systems, information processing, machine translation and other subjects relevant to the machine modelling of human language, this book attempts to synthesize insights from many disciplines, proposes a larger cognitive science, and points toward a new natural-language paradigm.