Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!uwvax!oddjob!hao!boulder!sunybcs!dmark 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!