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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,comp.ai
Subject: Re: The symbol grounding problem
Message-ID: <2236@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Jul-87 21:07:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.2236
Posted: Wed Jul  1 21:07:00 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 13:20:22 EDT
References: <764@mind.UUCP> <768@mind.UUCP> <770@mind.UUCP> <6174@diamond.BBN.COM> <8310@ut-sally.UUCP> <917@mind.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT.
Lines: 30
Xref: mnetor comp.cog-eng:175 comp.ai:606

In article <917@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:
|Finally, and perhaps most important: In bypassing the problem of
|categorization capacity itself -- i.e., the problem of how devices
|manage to categorize as correctly and successfully as they do, given
|the inputs they have encountered -- in favor of its fine tuning, this
|line of research has unhelpfully blurred the distinction between the
|following: (a) the many all-or-none categories that are the real burden
|for an explanatory theory of categorization (a penguin, after all, be it
|ever so atypical a bird, and be it ever so time-consuming for us to judge
|that it is indeed a bird, is, after all, indeed a bird, and we know
|it, and can say so, with 100% accuracy every time, irrespective of
|whether we can successfully introspect what features we are using to
|say so) and (b) true "graded" categories such as "big," "intelligent,"
|etc. Let's face the all-or-none problem before we get fancy...

I don't believe there are any truely "all-or-none" categories.  There are
always, at least potentially, ambiguous cases.  There is no "100% accuracy
every time", and trying to theorize as though there were is likely to lead
to problems.

Second, and perhaps more to the point, how do you know that "graded"
categories are less fundamental than the other kind?  Maybe it's the other
way around.  Maybe we should try to understand to understand graded
categories first, before we get fancy with the other kind.  I'm not saying
this is the case; but until we actually have an accepted theory of
categorization, we won't know what the simplest route is to get there.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108