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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The symbol grounding problem: "Fuzzy" categories?
Message-ID: <3183@venera.isi.edu>
Date: Fri, 10-Jul-87 12:47:54 EDT
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Posted: Fri Jul 10 12:47:54 1987
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In article <3930@sunybcs.UUCP> dmark@marvin.UUCP (David M. Mark) writes:
> we conducted
>a number of experiments and found many ambiguous stimuli near the boundary
>of the concept "map".  Air photos and satellite images are an excellent
>example: they fit the dictionary definition, and some people feel very
>strongly that they *are* maps, others sharply reject that claim, etc.
>Museum floor plans, topographic cross-profiles, digital cartographic
>data files on tape, verbal driving directions for navigation, etc., are
>just some examples of the ambiguous ("fuzzy"?) boundary of the concept
>to which the English word "map" correctly applies.  I strongly suspect
>that "map" is not unique in this regard!


Indeed, it almost seems as if "What is a map?" is not really the appropriate
question.  The better question might be "What can be used as a map?" or
perhaps "How can I use a FOO as a map?"  Furthermore, I agree that "map"
is probably not unique.  There are probably any number of bindings for
BAR for which "What is a BAR?" runs into similar difficulty and for which
"How can I use a FOO as a BAR?" is the more useful question.

One candidate I might propose to discuss along these lines is the concept
of "algorithm."  There are any number of entities which might be regarded
as being used as algorithms, ranging from Julia Child's recipies to
chromosomes.  It would seem that any desire to classify such entities
as algorithms is only valuable to the extent that we are interested in
the algorithmic properties such entities possess.  For example, we might
be interested in the nature of recipes which incorporate "while loops"
because we are concerned with how such loops terminate.

In an earlier posting, Harnad gave the example of how we classify works of
art according to particular styles.  Such classifications may also be
susceptible to this intermediate level of interpretation.  Thus, you
may or may not choose to view a particular tapestry as an allegory.
You may or may not choose to view it as a pastoral.  Such decisions
influence the way you see it and "parse" it as part of your artistic
appreciation, regardless of whether or not your particular view coincides
with that of the creator!

I suspect there is a considerable amount of such relativity in the way we
detect categories.  That relativity is guided not by what the categories
are or what their features are but by how we intend to put those
categories to use.  (In other words, the issue isn't "What features
are present?" but "What features do we want to be present?")