Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!H.CS.CMU.EDU!Spencer.Star From: Spencer.Star@H.CS.CMU.EDU.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest Subject: Re: AIList Digest V5 #169 Message-ID: <552668421.star@h.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 11:00:00 EDT Article-I.D.: h.552668421.star Posted: Tue Jul 7 11:00:00 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 13:46:24 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 12 Approved: ailist@stripe.sri.com > ...a penguin is not a bird of degree... The point of view that a bird IS a bird, and a rose IS a rose, has limited usefulness. If the question that we are trying to answer is seen as how a person will classify a penguin after having seen one for the first time, I think the answer is clear. A large number of people would not classify a penguin as a bird. A program would likely be more successful at imitating a human response if it based its response on the features of the human answering the query as well as the features of the concept it was trying to recognize. Whether a penguin is a bird then becomes quite dependent on context as well as a simple relation between features and classes.