Re: Cangelosi/Harnad Symbols

From: Lorincz, Andras (alorincz@matavnet.hu)
Date: Wed May 17 2000 - 20:09:12 BST


Dear Stevan:

> For toilers, the knowledge is
> grounded in having learned the features of the edible mushrooms; so the
> toilers can forage alone; for the thieves, the only "feature" of an
> edible mushroom is the vocalization of the toilers: "edible". So when
> there are no more toilers, the thieves cannot eat.

I buy this.

> The solution is always to have the bottom-level categories learned by
> toil, by everyone. The categories acquired by "theft" need to be
> higher-order categories, describable by (e.g., boolean) combinations of
> the names of the lower-order categories, as in the Cangelosi/Harnad
> paper.

I do not see this if the thieves can "associate" other features to
the vocalization of the toilers: "edible". On the other hand, if
"association" qualifies as "toil" then I see it. However, this seems
to contradict with your final conclusion:

> The solution is always to have the bottom-level categories learned by
> toil, by everyone. The categories acquired by "theft" need to be
> higher-order categories, describable by (e.g., boolean) combinations of
> the names of the lower-order categories, as in the Cangelosi/Harnad
> paper."

unless you allow (as a special case) that "lower-order categories" could
be raw sensory information and not more.

?????

Regards,

Andras



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