Operational Attractor Binding for Meaning Formation: Integrating RGCS with Dual-Process Dynamics and Neuroscience

This paper links the previously proposed semantic framework RGCS (Reality-Grounded Common Semantics) to empirical findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, offering a unified account of meaning comprehension, meaning formation, and meaning updating. In RGCS, meaning is defined as an equivalent binding among Objects (O), Linguistic labels (L), and Value evaluations (V). We formalize this binding not as a fixed correspondence, but as a dynamic process whose strength and configuration vary with experience, learning, and context. As a minimal foundation, we adopt the formation of meaning representations that are readily reactivated, grounded in Hebbian learning and associative memory.We further provide an operational account of stabilization and transitions in meaning comprehension using attractor terminology (deep vs. shallow basins): deep basins correspond to fast, automatic comprehension (System 1), whereas shallow basins correspond to recombination and updating under introduced constraints (System 2), aligning the framework with dual-process descriptions. We also interpret findings on (i) the activation of action representations by action sounds and (ii) attractor-like deformation of working-memory representations and decisionconsistent bias as evidence that O–L–V bindings can be activated across input modalities and that judgments and evaluations can steer subsequent updating.Finally, we reframe major criticisms of embodied cognition (abstract concepts, reproducibility, the symbol-grounding problem, and domain specificity) not as a body vs. non-body dichotomy, but as adesign problem concerning constraint sources and updating rules for O–L–V binding, and we clarify how statistical convergence in LLMs can be conflated with human meaning comprehension. Overall, RGCS provides a common descriptive axis that integratively links philosophical semantics with cognitive-psychological and neuroscientific accounts.