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From: dmark@sunybcs.uucp (David M. Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: The symbol grounding problem: "Fuzzy" categories?
Message-ID: <3930@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Jul-87 12:08:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.3930
Posted: Wed Jul  8 12:08:27 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 06:35:20 EDT
References: <764@mind.UUCP> <768@mind.UUCP> <770@mind.UUCP> <6174@diamond.BBN.COM> <454@sol.ARPA> <974@mind.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@sunybcs.UUCP
Reply-To: dmark@marvin.UUCP (David M. Mark)
Followup-To: Harnad's comment on Sher's comment on...
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Geography Department
Lines: 26
Summary: dictionaries may not be a good authority on categories
Xref: mnetor comp.ai:639 comp.cog-eng:199

In article <974@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:
>
>
>In Article 185 of comp.cog-eng sher@rochester.arpa (David Sher) of U of
>Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY responded as follows to my claim that
>"Most of our object categories are indeed all-or-none, not graded. A penguin
>is not a bird as a matter of degree. It's a bird, period." --
>
>>	Personally I have trouble imagining how to test such a claim...
>
>Try sampling concrete nouns in a dictionary.

Well, a dictionary may not always be a good authority fro this sort of
thing.  Last semester I led a graduate Geography seminar on the topic:
"What is a map?"   If you check out dictionaries, the definitions seem
unambiguous, non-fuzzy, concrete.  Even the question may seem foolish, since
"map" probably is a "basic-level" object/concept.  However, 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!