Semantics, experience and time

17 The computational hypothesis, with its inherent representationalism, and the dynamical hypothesis, with its apparent 18 absence of representations and its commitment to continuous time, stand at an impasse. It is unclear how the dynamical 19 stance can handle representational thought, or how computationalism can deal effectively with a tightly coupled, reciprocally 20 causative agent–environment system in continuous transformation. Underlying this dilemma is the complex relation of mind 21 to time, a relation encoded in the word experience. We must ask if any hypothesis describes a ‘device’ capable of 22 experience? Yet what is an intelligence and its thought without experience? Is a computational device, whether supporting a 23 symbolic processor or connectionist net, intrinsically condemned to a zero degree of experience? What is required of a 24 dynamical device? It is argued here that ‘semantic’ intelligence and thought rests upon experience, fundamentally upon the 25 invariance laws defined over time within conscious perception. The structure of experience is intrinsically unavailable to the 26 computational device, limiting it to a ‘syntactic’ intelligence. An alternative conception of a device is offered, based on 27 Bergson conjoined with Gibson, which supports the qualitative and structural aspects of experience and the semantic. It 28 frames a dynamical model of perception and memory in which invariance laws are intrinsic, creates a deeper notion of 29 situatedness, and supports a concept of semantically based, representative thought founded upon perception.  2002 30 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.