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From: aweinste@Diamond.BBN.COM (Anders Weinstein)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Concepts and Definitions (was Re: The symbol grounding problem)
Message-ID: <6864@diamond.BBN.COM>
Date: Tue, 30-Jun-87 13:27:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: diamond.6864
Posted: Tue Jun 30 13:27:05 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jul-87 05:41:43 EDT
References: <764@mind.UUCP> <768@mind.UUCP> <770@mind.UUCP> <3971@utai.UUCP>
Reply-To: aweinste@Diamond.BBN.COM (Anders Weinstein)
Organization: BBN Laboratories, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 21

In article <3971@utai.UUCP> tjhorton@ai.UUCP (Timothy J. Horton) writes:
>> >                         Conceptual combination allows us to go
>> >from 'tomato' and 'juice' to 'tomato juice'. I assume there is no
>> >argument that this new category may be acquired, sight unseen, 
>> >by symbolic processing. ...
>>
>>Of course *some* concepts can be acquired by definition. ...
>
>The first gentleperson did not say anything about definition (or did s/he?)
>When/why/how would I ever need a "definition" in order to learn something?

The definitional view was the original issue here; it was mentioned (and
disparaged) by me in an earlier posting which you do not quote. It is quite
tempting to suppose that all complex concepts *must* have implicit
definitions in terms of some atomic ones, even if the definitions are largely
unconscious.  However, it is also fair to say that philosophy has spent two
thousand years searching for implicit definitions of concepts without any
conspicuous success. What to make of this failure is an interesting issue.

Anders Weinstein
BBN Labs