Xref: utzoo comp.ai:3185 talk.philosophy.misc:1885 sci.lang:4016 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!xanth!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw From: throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop) Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.lang Subject: Re: Categorization Message-ID: <3049@xyzzy.UUCP> Date: 24 Jan 89 19:23:44 GMT References: <681@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <2959@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <2899@xyzzy.UUCP> <9450@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Organization: Data General, RTP NC. Lines: 42 > arm@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Macalalad) > In the ongoing discussion of categorization, there seems to be two > different types of categorization: > 1. [... arbitrary, meaning situational or context sensitive ...] > 2. [... "classical", meaning context free ...] Hmmmmm.... Seems to me everybody is using a different definition of "arbitrary", including me. Which opens the possibility of superficially conflicting claims all being correct. Sigh. > I would argue that instead, the boy was applying two different rules. > The first was something like, "If there's a distant flying object that > has wings flapping up and down and a head and a body, then it's a bird." > Once the object was > closer and provided his senses with more detail, he could apply > a different rule which yielded more information about the object. I see it slightly differently. It isn't so much that two rules are applied, but that a large set of rules are applied and the appropriate categorization changes when the sense impressions relevant to "the bird" change. That is, by claiming "there is a bird" in the first statement, the observer is really saying that there exists a set of sense impressions the accounting for which a bird is a sufficent hypothesis. In the correction to "nope, it's a bat", the observer "really means" that the current sense impressions contradict the former sufficent hypothesis, and a new sufficent hypothesis is advanced. Note that a bat was also, even at first, a sufficent hypothesis, but it wasn't the *least* sufficent hypothesis (presumably because seeing a bird there/then was more likely than seeing a bat... IE, it was daytime, or outside any bat species' normal range or whatnot). In fact, I think that all statements of "fact" (about the real world) are best understood to be claims about the least sufficent hypothesis which explains our sense impressions. -- The optimist says "This is the best of all possible worlds." The pessimist answers "That's right." --- Joseph Weizenbaum -- Wayne Throop !mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw