Re: Aaron Sloman's "The Irrelevance of Turing Machines to AI" article

From: Sergio Navega (snavega_at_intelliwise.com)
Date: 08/03/04 

Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 11:41:03 -0300

"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> escreveu na mensagem
news:A4MPc.13999$Jq2.697732@news20.bellglobal.com...
> Sergio Navega wrote:
>
> > "Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> escreveu na mensagem
> > news:qHePc.2776$Jq2.187205@news20.bellglobal.com...
> >
> >>All we know is that as children develop, they become capable of
> >>discriminating smaller and smaller differences. Objects that were once
> >>"judged to be the same" are later on "judged to be different."
> >
> > Actually, the opposite also happens. Infants of less than two months
> > are able to discriminate things (in visual and auditory domains) that
> > adults aren't capable. In the auditory case it has been demonstrated
> > that japanese and western infants have the same ability to perceive
> > small phonological differences. With time, japanese children lose
> > the distinction between /L/ and /R/, while westerns don't. What we
> > can say about discrimination abilities is not that they become
> > greater or smaller, but that they *adapt* to the regularities
> > present in the environment of the infant.
> >
> > Sergio Navega.
>
> Granted, in some domains but not in others. Eg, a baby will use "mik"
> for any kind of food, then for any kind of drink, then for milk. alone.
> My point must be rephrased to: "A baby's ability to discriminate
> differences is under the control of the environment, etc."

I agree, but there's an important point to be made. The domains where
children usually refine their discrimination abilities are linked to
conceptual categories (as opposed to perceptual categories).
Successive conceptually refined categories (such as "edible stuff",
and then "food", later "liquid food" and finally "milk") are categories
that are refined mostly because of top/down processes. The perception of
stimuli in these cases may be the same for an adult and an infant,
but the former has developed these categories while the latter hasn't.
Perceptual categories (or bottom-up categories) are those which seek
for similarity and clustering based on the raw elements captured by
the senses. After some time, our brain becomes unable to discriminate
all the sort of things that an infant appears to be discriminating
(the example of the japanese children is evidence of such a thing).

Sergio Navega.

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