Re: Aaron Sloman's "The Irrelevance of Turing Machines to AI" article
From: Sergio Navega (snavega_at_intelliwise.com)
Date: 08/04/04
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Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 10:55:14 -0300
"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> escreveu na mensagem
news:haPPc.23036$Vm1.458145@news20.bellglobal.com...
> Sergio Navega wrote:
> [...]
> > 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.
>
>
> Again, granted that "categorisation" takes place. But what, exactly, is
> it? I submit it's behaviour.
And so your investigation of the subject stops. Cognitive scientists
want to develop abstract (even mathematical) models of categorization.
> There is some pre-linguistic categorisation
> going on, evidenced for example via the peekaboo game, and experiments
> that are in carefully controlled versions of that game. There seems to
> be no reason to assume that this stops with adulthood, although it would
> be harder to dtect, since adults have this habit of talking. :-)
>
> But mostly, categorisation is language use. The question is, how do I
> get you to "understand" a new use of the language? How do I arrive at
> that new use? The first question is easier to answer than the second - I
> train you to use the language the same way I do, by, for example,
> "agreeing with what you say" in repsonse to my speech. **
One can only agree with which another person says if both can share
a great deal of the perception of that object being talked. If I tell
you about the stem of an apple, you will only understand what I say
if you also perceive that stem. Language is something that can only
work *after* perception.
>
> The second question is harder. Introspection and reports on "how I feel"
> suggest there are unpleasant feelings attached to certain language uses,
> and that these feelings may change to pleasant ones when a new use is
> produced. Euphemisms seems to work this way, for example. (That is, the
> discriminator in this case is a feeling. That feelings act as
> reinforcers should be obvious.)
>
> Metaphor is a little harder, but it seems to be a case of experimenting
> with different usages until that positive feeling is evoked. The fact
> that "poetry programs" can produce interesting and striking metaphors by
> semi-random combinations of words supports this explanation: we, the
> readers of thsoe random collocations, judge them as ointersting/etc. So
> do reports by poets, who say they "search for" the right
> phrase/image/etc, ie, they try out different words and phrases until one
> "sounds right." That's a remarkably behaviorist account, allowing for
> the non-technical terminology.
>
> ** When I was first teaching, a question that vexed me from the
> beginning was, How do I know that a student has understood a tex? The
> answer is, of course, that the only evidnce we have is his or her
> language about the text. Tests and exams are designed to elciit such
> language, but the relationship between text/exam answers and
> understanding a text is obscure, to put it mildly.
And I say that only cognitive explanations can shed some light about
this subject.
Sergio Navega.
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