Xref: utzoo comp.ai:3036 talk.philosophy.misc:1802 sci.lang:3869
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From: zhang@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Jiajie Zhang)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Categorization
Message-ID: <684@cogsci.ucsd.EDU>
Date: 10 Jan 89 01:48:22 GMT
References: <681@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <2959@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Organization: Institute for Cognitive Science, UC San Diego
Lines: 27



> It may be an accurate paraphrase -- I don't know, since I haven't
> read Lakoff's book.  If what you wrote is an accurate paraphrase,
> then my criticisms of what you said could be taken to be criticisms
> of what Lakoff said.  If it's not, then they couldn't.

Paraphrasing is always a dangerous game, especially when the
paraphrase is compared with its original by some formal system.  I am
not claiming what I wrote was an accurate paraphrase (I even couldn't
paraphrase accurately an argument made by myself, let alone those by
others:).  I am just a reader of a couple of Lakoff's books, who
happened to be excited by many arguments in the books.  When I found
what other people understood on Lakoff was different from mine, I
tried to understand why.  The result was what I wrote (or
paraphrased).  Regardless of whoever you commented on, some words
should be avoided because they could sometimes be hot enough to explode 
a CRT terminal, especially when there was no evidence except of Nothing,
Nowhere and Nothing which could never be served as fire extinguishers.

Categorization, along with symbol grounding (and maybe some others),
is fundamental in the study of human cognition.  If there is some flaw
in a theory of categorization, the adequacy of any other theory which
is based on categorization theory should be questioned, especially
when this theory is claimed to be a theory of human mind.  Though
classical theory of categorization was not killed, I think the
challenge Lakoff gave and the questions he raised is profound.