Does Language Shape the Way We Conceptualize the World?

In this paper it is argued that the way the world is con- ceptualized for language is language dependent and the result of negotiation between language users. This is investigated in a computer experiment in which a popu- lation of artiflcial agents construct a shared language to talk about a world that can be conceptualized in multi- ple and possibly con∞icting ways. It is argued that the establishment of a successful communication system re- quires that feedback about the communicative success is propagated to the ontological level, and thus that lan- guage shapes the way we conceptualize the world for communication. Introduction and Research Question Language and communication involve many aspects of human cognition including the sensory-motor schema's needed to observe the world, the social abilities for es- tablishingjointattentionandcommunicativeintentand the mechanisms responsible for parsing and producing abstract grammatical expressions. A key issue here is how a population of distinct and onlylocallyinteractingagents(languageusers)canagree upon a global language. It is commonly accepted that at least part of the answer is self-organization: a con- sensus is reached through repeated peer-to-peer negoti- ations about how to expresssome meaning. Aprerequisiteforthis,whichisoftenneglected,isthat theagentsalreadyhavetoagreeuponthesetofexpress- ible meanings. It is implicitly assumed that all agents