Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (vu0112)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Concepts and Semantics
Message-ID: <978@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 88 07:15:31 GMT
References: <344@thirdi.UUCP> <945@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <350@thirdi.UUCP> <968@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <357@thirdi.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 127
Keywords: reality world facts ideas phenomena words concepts

In article <357@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
>I really appreciate your comments and questions, because they help illuminate
>all the areas in which I have not been entirely clear (either in my thoughts,
>or in how these thoughts are expressed).

Thank *you* for engaging me.

>And I do appreciate and agree with your statement that an hypothesis should be
>testable.

Good.

>Let me back up a step and give you a little more of the theoretical background
>of my position.  

I certainly appreciate your thoughts, but having read forward I *still*
don't think you're answering my questions:

>>1) Why do you feel a non-representationl theory of concepts is necessary?
>>2) How would you test a "possibilitistic" theory of concepts?
>>3) If there is no answer to 2, how do you propose to proceed
scientifically?

But let's proceed.

>In other words, what are the entities that make up an individual
>world?  They are (in my view):
>
>1.  Phenomena.
>2.  Facts.
>3.  Ideas or concepts.
>
>Anything that exists for a person would fall into one of these categories.  A
>phenomenon is anything that is directly perceived, either physically or by way
>of "mental representation".  

Perhaps a key to our agreement is my assertain that even common
perception is a case of mental representation.  That is, my perception
of an object is a mental image of that object, which is a visual mental
representation (a very good, faithful one) of that object.  Of course,
if I close my eyes and evoke an image of that object, that is also a
mental representation of that object.  

>However, at any given moment, certain things exist for an individual, even
>though he is not viewing them at that time.  These entities are *known*,
>rather than being *perceived*, and I refer to them as "facts".  
>I do not *perceive* that 2 + 2 = 4;
>I simply *know* it.  

Isn't this really a case of remembering?  That is, in childhood I was
taught that 2+2=4, and I believed it then, and remember it know.  The
other day I wrote my first Prolog program, which added numbers.  I set
it up and, sure enough, 2+2=4!  Here I was re-learning it in this other
way. In fact, I taught it to myself.  This is not clear to me, nor critical.

By the way, I can still cast the above in a mental representational (MR,
already!) theory (see my questions above).  That is, I have an MR for
two, an MR for four, and an internal mechanism which relates the two
such that 2+2=4. 

>Finally, there are certain things that are neither known or perceived, but are
>simply *conceived*.  I refer to these as "ideas".  
>"A unicorn in the garden", though not a
>fact, is something about which one could wonder whether or not it
exists.

I think we've had this argument before.  My assertion is that in order
to entertain a Sargeian idea, one must represent it in some form.  To
me, your ideas are simply MRs which are created by the subject, like
closing my eyes and seeing the object, or an image of the unicorn in the
garden. 

>>Instead, what we need is
>>a term which describes all these modalities together.  I think there is
>>such a term: "mental representation".
>
>I can go with that phraseology.  I prefer the term "mental phenomenon",
>though, since perceived mental entities could appear that don't represent
>anything.

I might go for that.  In other words, if I have an hallucinaction, a
visual pathology, or see some other meaningless (to me) pattern, that is
not a *representation*, but rather a mental *presentation* (MP).  Thus
while MRs are by far the most common form of mental phenomena, virtually
swamping all other forms in normal people most of the time, other forms
of mental phenomena are possible.  That's good.  All MRs are MPs, very
few MPs are not MRs. 

>>I was presenting three views:
>>  1) a word refers to an object or class of objects (classical semantics);
>>  2) a word refers to a mental representation of an object or class of objects
>>     (cognitive, representational view);
>>  3) a word refers to an idealistic "concept" or "possibility" (Sarge's view).
>>I was asserting (2), not (1).
>
>I would
>say that a word *represents* some entity, and serves to pull a person's
>attention to that entity, whether the entity be an idea, a fact, or a
>phenomenon.  

You still hanve't answered my point that these are all MRs.  On that
interperetation, we would agree completely.

>>Mathematically, we can see that if X is "associated"
>>with (a different thing) Y, this means that there exists a "associative"
>>relation R such that (X,Y) is in R.  Thus, X and Y are similar, in that
>>they are different (different symbols, X <> Y), but also the same (they
>>are both in the relation R).
>
>The
>elements of a relation are not the individual members of each pair, but the
>pairs themselves.  

Yes, I was too lax.  What I meant was that X and Y are the same in that
they share a property, the property of being included in either the
domain or range of R. 

Similarity is essentially the concept of both a non-empty intersection
and non-identity.  In the case of a symbol and its meaning, both
conditions are guaranteed in that the symbol *refers* to the meaning. Of
course, there are many similarity relations which are not semantic.

O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Professional Cybernetician 
| Systems Science Department, SUNY Binghamton, New York, but my opinions
| vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .