Online research in philosophy

Chapter Introduction This work deals with two contrasting, but mutually interrelated capabilities of the human mind: reference and categorization. ...

For over a century, the question of the relation of language to thought has been extensively discussed in the case of color categorization, where two main views prevail. The relativist view claims that color categories are relative while the universalistic view argues that color categories are universal. Relativists also argue that color categories are linguistically determined, and universalists that they are perceptually determined. Recently, the argument for the perceptual determination of color categorization has been undermined, and the relativist (...) view has regained some ground. This paper argues that although the universalistic account of color categorization has been called into question, this is not enough to establish relativism. Color categories can still be said to be universal or particular, independent of the accounts of their universality or relativity. Because of its polarization, the debate has disregarded some issues that are key in our understanding of color categorization: the question of what a color category is and how to identify it. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION My underlying concern in this work is with the sociological analysis and description of members' practical activities and their practical ...

Visual objects can be represented by their similarities to a small number of reference shapes or prototypes. This method yields low-dimensional (and therefore computationally tractable) representations, which support both the recognition of familiar shapes and the categorization of novel ones. In this note, we show how such representations can be used in a variety of tasks involving novel objects: viewpoint-invariant recognition, recovery of a canonical view, estimation of pose, and prediction of an arbitrary view. The unifying principle in all (...) these cases is the representation of the view space of the novel object as an interpolation of the view spaces of the reference shapes. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present two kinds of analogical representational change, both occurring early in the analogy-making process, and then, using these two kinds of change, to present a model unifying one sort of analogy-making and categorization. The proposed unification rests on three key claims: (1) a certain type of rapid representational abstraction is crucial to making the relevant analogies (this is the first kind of representational change; a computer model is presented that demonstrates this kind (...) of abstraction), (2) rapid abstractions are induced by retrieval across large psychological distances, and (3) both categorizations and analogies supply understandings of perceptual input via construing, which is a proposed type of categorization (this is the second kind of representational change). It is construing that finalizes the unification. (shrink)

2. Invariant Sensorimotor Features ("Affordances"). To say this is not to declare oneself a Gibsonian, whatever that means. It is merely to point out that what a sensorimotor system can do is determined by what can be extracted from its motor interactions with its sensory input. If you lack sonar sensors, then your sensorimotor system cannot do what a bat's can do, at least not without the help of instruments. Light stimulation affords color vision for those of us with the (...) right sensory apparatus, but not for those of us who are color-blind. The geometric fact that, when we move, the "shadows" cast on our retina by nearby objects move faster than the shadows of further objects means that, for those of us with normal vision, our visual input affords depth perception. From more complicated facts of projective and solid geometry it follows that a 3-dimensional shape, such as, say, a boomerang, can be recognized as being the same shape Ð and the same size Ð even though the size and shape of its shadow on our retinas changes as we move in relation to it or it moves in relation to us. Its shape is said to be invariant under these sensorimotor transformations, and our visual systems can detect and extract that invariance, and translate it into a visual constancy. So we keep seeing a boomerang of the same shape and size even though the shape and size of its retinal shadows keep changing. (shrink)

A current set of concerns in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis includes the question of how conversation analysis (CA) can deal with studies of social structure or studies of talk in institutional settings.In this paper a focus is placed on how the accomplishment of "work" and "categorization" are interrelated. Two particular instances are examined: a ski school and a package delivery service. Membership categorization is shown to be a complex, on-going, interactive accomplishment. The parties act in ways that are (...) "predicatively-bound" (i.e. predicates of action, rights, obligations, etc.) which allow inferences to be made by each of the parties about the other based on these actions; these enable each to accept/confirm/validate the other's self-categorization and to produce, via their own actions, activities that are congruent with the other's self-categorization. Activities of the parties are category-relevant and category-generative. Thus, "work" or "the work of the organization", (e.g. for Choice, a package delivery service), is being accomplished in and through the talk and interaction of the parties. (shrink)

More than a decade of experimental research confirms that external linguistic information provided in the form of word labels can induce a "mutually exclusive" bias against double naming and lead children to infer the name of novel objects and parts (Markman, 1989). Linguistic labels have also been shown to encourage more sophisticated reasoning, particularly with respect to superordinate and atypical object categorization (Gelman & Coley, 1990; Waxman & Markow, 1995). By contrast, however, the inverse possibility that the linguistic (...) labeling of basic-level objects may also developmentally support the kind of "phonological reorganization" (Werker & Tees, 1984) observed within infant speech categorization has yet to be theoretically isolated and experimentally explored. Yet the dynamic of relying on labels to inform object categorization clearly presupposes that potential word labels themselves have already been classified into language-specific phonemic categories. However, a two-staged strategy of first relying on basic-level object categories to refine speech categorization, and then exploiting such learned speech categories to fine tune object categorization would reveal a cyclically opportunistic learner. A uniform assumption of a one to one pairing between (types of) words and (types of) objects allows bootstrapping not only from language to object classification, but also from basic object categorization to phonemic speech classification. (shrink)

This paper analyzes four instances in talk of generalization about people, that is, of using statements about one or more people as the basis of stating something about a category. Generalization can be seen as a categorization practice which involves a reflexive relationship between the generalized-from person or people and the generalized-to category. One thing that is accomplished through generalization is instruction in how to understand the identity of the generalized-from person or people, so in addition to being understood (...) as a practice of categorization, generalization can also be understood as a practice of identification. Somewhat incidentally, this paper also illustrates the importance of certain methodological issues related to membership categorization analysis and contributes to the growing body of work that connects membership categorization analysis with sequential conversation analysis. (shrink)

Although speech categories are defined by multiple acoustic dimensions, some are perceptually weighted more than others and there are residual effects of native-language weightings in non-native speech perception. Recent research on nonlinguistic sound category learning suggests that the distribution characteristics of experienced sounds influence perceptual cue weights: Increasing variability across a dimension leads listeners to rely upon it less in subsequent category learning (Holt & Lotto, 2006). The present experiment investigated the implications of this among native Japanese learning English /r/-/l/ (...) categories. Training was accomplished using a videogame paradigm that emphasizes associations among sound categories, visual information, and players’ responses to videogame characters rather than overt categorization or explicit feedback. Subjects who played the game for 2.5 h across 5 days exhibited improvements in /r/-/l/ perception on par with 2–4 weeks of explicit categorization training in previous research and exhibited a shift toward more native-like perceptual cue weights. (shrink)

Two experiments examined the impact of causal relations between features on categorization in 5- to 6-year-old children and adults. Participants learned artificial categories containing instances with causally related features and noncausal features. They then selected the most likely category member from a series of novel test pairs. Classification patterns and logistic regression were used to diagnose the presence of independent effects of causal coherence, causal status, and relational centrality. Adult classification was driven primarily by coherence when causal links were (...) deterministic (Experiment 1) but showed additional influences of causal status when links were probabilistic (Experiment 2). Children’s classification was based primarily on causal coherence in both cases. There was no effect of relational centrality in either age group. These results suggest that the generative model (Rehder, 2003a) provides a good account of causal categorization in children as well as adults. (shrink)

Universal ranks in folk biological taxonomy probably apply to taxonomies of cultural artifacts. We cannot call folk biological cognition domain-specific and modular. Color categorization may manifest unique organization, which would result from known neurology and the nature of color as an attribute. But folk biology does not adduce equivalent evidence. A global process of increasing differentiation similarly affects folk taxonomy, color categorization, and other practices germane to Atran's anthropology of science; this is beclouded by claims of specificity and (...) modularity. (shrink)

The target article postulates that rule-based and similarity-based categorization are best described by a unitary process. A number of recent empirical dissociations between rule-based and similarity-based categorization severely challenge this view. Collectively, these new results provide strong evidence that these two types of category learning are mediated by separate systems.

This study investigated the relative contribution of perception/cognition and language-specific semantics in nonverbal categorization of spatial relations. English and Korean speakers completed a video-based similarity judgment task involving containment, support, tight fit, and loose fit. Both perception/cognition and language served as resources for categorization, and allocation between the two depended on the target relation and the features contrasted in the choices. Whereas perceptual/cognitive salience for containment and tight-fit features guided categorization in many contexts, language-specific semantics influenced (...) class='Hi'>categorization where the two features competed for similarity judgment and when the target relation was tight support, a domain where spatial relations are perceptually diverse. In the latter contexts, each group categorized more in line with semantics of their language, that is, containment/support for English and tight/loose fit for Korean. We conclude that language guides spatial categorization when perception/cognition alone is not sufficient. In this way, language is an integral part of our cognitive domain of space. (shrink)

Concepts and Conceptual Development: Ecological and Intellectual Factors in Categorization ULRIC NEISSER, 1987 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press x+384 pp., $39.50 Categorical Perception STEVAN HARNAD, 1987 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press x+599 pp., $59.50.

Two categorization arguments pose particular problems for localist connectionist models. The internal representations of localist networks do not reflect the variability within categories in the environment, whereas networks with distributed internal representations do reflect this essential feature of categories. We provide a real biological example of perceptual categorization in the monkey that seems to require population coding (i.e., distributed internal representations).

Philosophers and psychologists widely hold that artifact categories – just like biological categories – are individuated by their function. But recent empirical findings in psychology question this assumption. My proposal is to suggest a way of squaring these findings with the central role function should play in individuating artifact categories. But in order to do so, we need to give up on the standard account of artifact function, according to which function is fixed by design, and replace it with a (...) more context-sensitive account, according to which function attributions depend on the explanatory context and, as a result, categorization also depends on the explanatory context, just as the empirical findings from psychology suggest. I argue that the recent ‘modal theory of function’ originally proposed to explain biological function, is capable of providing such an account of artifact function. (shrink)

This study addresses the issue of artifact kinds from a psychological and cognitive perspective. The primary interest of the investigation lies in understanding how artifacts are categorized and what are the properties people rely on for their identification. According to a classical philosophical definition artifacts form an autonomous class of instances including all and only those objects that do not exist in nature, but are artificial, in the sense that they are made by an artĭfex. This definition suggests that artifacts (...) are classified primarily on the basis of the recognition of their artificial nature. Nevertheless, many psychological and cognitive studies maintain that artifacts are categorized mainly on the basis of the recognition of the function they have been made to accomplish. Since tools are also categorized primarily on the basis of their function, this would imply that artifacts and tools are represented in the same way. In the study participants categorized a set of objects (denoted by words) once as tools and once as artifacts. Results show that reaction times (RTs) are faster in the artifact categorization condition than in the tool categorization condition. This pattern indicates that artifacts and tools are not represented in the same way and that the identification of the members of each class is carried out in the basis of different criteria. (shrink)

This essay explores the universal cognitive bases of biological taxonomy and taxonomic inference using cross-cultural experimental work with urbanized Americans and forest-dwelling Maya Indians. A universal, essentialist appreciation of generic species appears as the causal foundation for the taxonomic arrangement of biodiversity, and for inference about the distribution of causally-related properties that underlie biodiversity. Universal folkbiological taxonomy is domain-specific: its structure does not spontaneously or invariably arise in other cognitive domains, like substances, artifacts or persons. It is plausibly an innately-determined (...) evolutionary adaptation to relevant and recurrent aspects of ancestral hominid environments, such as the need to recognize, locate, react to, and profit from many ambient species. Folkbiological concepts are special players in cultural evolution, whose native stability attaches to more variable and difficult-to-learn representational forms, thus enhancing the latter's prospects for regularity and recurrence in transmission within and across cultures. This includes knowledge that cumulatively enriches (folk expertise), overrides (religious belief) or otherwise transcends (science) the commonsense ontology prescribed by folkbiology. Finally, the studies summarized here indicate that results gathered from standard populations in regard to biological categorization and reasoning more often than not fail to generalize in straightforward ways to humanity at large. This suggests the need for much more serious attention to cross-cultural research on basic cognitive processes. (shrink)

We aim to show that far-related primates like humans and the capuchin monkeys show interesting correspondences in terms of artifact characterization and categorization. We investigate this issue by using a philosophically-inspired definition of physical artifact which, developed for human artifacts, turns out to be applicable for cross-species comparison. In this approach an artifact is created when an entity is intentionally selected and some capacities attributed to it (often characterizing a purpose). Behavioral studies suggest that this notion of artifact is (...) not specific to the human kind. On the basis of the results of a series of field observations and experiments on wild capuchin monkeys that routinely use stone hammers and anvils, we show that the notions of intentional selection and attributed capacity appear to be at play in capuchins as well. The study also suggests that functional criteria and contextualization play a fundamental role in terms of artifact recognition and categorization in nonhuman primates. (shrink)

The proposal regarding rules and similarity is considered in terms of ability to provide insights regarding previous work on reasoning and categorization. For reasoning, the issue is the relation between this proposal and one-process as well as two-process accounts of deduction and induction. For categorization, the issue is how the proposal would simultaneously explain both similarity-to-rule and rule-to-similarity shifts.

The origin of features from nonfeatural information is a problem that should concern all theories of object categorization and recognition, not just the flexible feature approach. In contrast to the idea that new features must originate from combinations of simpler fixed features, we argue that holistic features can be created from a direct imprinting on the visual medium. Furthermore, featural descriptions can emerge from processes that by themselves do not operate on feature detectors. Once acquired, features can be decomposed (...) into component features if required by other categorizations. We therefore argue that it is not necessary to separate holistic and componential approaches to representations, because the latter is a development of the former. The requirements for representational flexibility outstrip the performance of any existing computational models, but specific mechanisms of feature creation are discussed and evaluated. Challenges for feature creation mechanisms are discussed together with the constraints (perceptual, statistical, functional, and task) they will need to satisfy. (shrink)

This article examines the common-sense and methodical ways in which “the citizen” is produced and enrolled as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning. Using Membership Categorization Analysis, we explicate how the categorization procedures in the Foreword of a draft regional planning policy interactionally produce the identity of “the citizen” and “civic values and obligations” in relation to geographic place and institutional categories. Furthermore, we show how positioning practices establish a relationship between authors (government) and readers (citizens) where (...) both are ascribed with the same moral values and obligations toward the region. Hence, “the citizen” as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning is viewed as a practical accomplishment that is underpinned by a normative morality associated with the task of producing orderliness in “text-in-interaction.”. (shrink)

The idea that reasoning is a singular accomplishment of the human species has an ancient pedigree.Yet this idea remains as controversial as it is ancient. Those who would deny reasoning to nonhuman animals typically hold a language-based conception of inference which places it beyond the reach of languageless creatures. Others reject such an anthropocentric conception of reasoning on the basis of similar performance by humans and animals in some reasoning tasks, such as transitive inference. Here, building on the modal similarity (...) theory of Vigo [J Exp Theor Artif Intell, 2008 (in press)], we offer an account in which reasoning depends on a core suite of subsymbolic processes for similarity assessment, discrimination, and categorization. We argue that premise-based inference operates through these subsymbolic processes, even in humans. Given the robust discrimination and categorization abilities of some species of nonhuman animals, we believe that they should also be regarded as capable of simple forms of inference. Finally, we explain how this account of reasoning applies to the kinds of transitive inferences that many nonhuman animals display. (shrink)

Flexible categorization clearly requires an adaptive component, but at what level of representation? We have investigated categorization in sequence learning that requires the extraction of abstract rules, but no modification of sensory primitives. This motivates the need to make explicit the distinction between sensory-level “atomic” features as opposed to concept-level “abstract” features, and the proposal that flexible categorization probably relies on learning at the abstract feature level.

Following Sacks's model membership categorization analysis (MCA) of a suicidal person's conclusion 'I have no one to turn to,' the paper examines in MCA terms a political actor's twin conclusions that murder-suicide is a rational course of action. The case in question is the killer's reasoning in the Montreal Massacre as revealed in his reported announcement at the scene (notably 'You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists') and recovered suicide letter (for example, 'For why persevere to exist (...) if it is only to please the government'). (shrink)

The representation of similarities is a viable concept for a cognitive extension of visual psychophysics to the recognition of shapes, bringing issues such as similarity and categorization back into that field. However, as a framework it appears too general to place constraints on a particular process model for categorization. In particular, a preference for Chorus-like schemes with respect to structure-oriented approaches is unwarranted.

Recent theoretical work on the psychology of categorization emphasizes the role cognitive constructs play in perception and categorization. This approach supports Putnam's rejection of metaphysical realism. However, the experimental findings concerning basic level categories, in particular, suggest that robust stabilitites among our systems of empirical concepts persist in the face of considerable theoretical diversity and change. These stabilities undermine Putnam's strongest negative conclusions concerning the correspondence theory of truth (once it is uncoupled from metaphysical realism). The centrality of (...) a correspondence criterion of truth (in a larger theory of truth) is psychologically inescapable, rationally indispensable, and (therefore) epistemologically fundamental. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so-called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of concep- tual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that he is wrong on (...) all of these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn. (shrink)

One feature of vague predicates is that, as far as appearances go, they lack sharp application boundaries. I argue that we would not be able to locate boundaries even if vague predicates had sharp boundaries. I do so by developing an idealized cognitive model of a categorization faculty which has mobile and dynamic sortals (`classes', `concepts' or `categories') and formally prove that the degree of precision with which boundaries of such sortals can be located is inversely constrained by their (...) flexibility. Given the literature, it is plausible that we are appropriately like the model. Hence, an inability to locate sharp boundaries is not necessarily because there are none; boundaries could be sharp and it is plausible that we would nevertheless be unable to locate them. (shrink)

Why do we draw the boundaries between “blue” and “green”, where we do? One proposed answer to this question is that we categorize color the way we do because we perceive color categorically. Starting in the 1950’s, the phenomenon of “categorical perception” (CP) encouraged such a response. CP refers to the fact that adjacent color patches are more easily discriminated when they straddle a category boundary than when they belong to the same category. In this paper, I make three related (...) claims. (1) Although what seems to guide discrimination performances seems to indeed be categorical information, the evidence in favor of the fact that categorical perception influences the way we perceive color is not convincing. (2) That CP offers a useful account of categorization is not obvious. While aiming at accounting for categorization, CP itself requires an account of categories. This being said, CP remains an interesting phenomenon. Why and how is our discrimination behavior linked to our categories? It is suggested that linguistic labels determine CP through a naming strategy to which participants resort while discriminating colors. This paper’s final point is (3) that the naming strategy account is not enough. Beyond category labels, what seems to guide discrimination performance is category structure. (shrink)

Two experiments examined the typicality structure of contrasting political categories. In Experiment 1, two separate groups of participants rated the typicality of 15 individuals, including political figures and media personalities, with respect to the categories Democrat or Republican. The relation between the two sets of ratings was negative, linear, and extremely strong, r = −.9957. Essentially, one category was treated as a mirror image of the other. Experiment 2 replicated this result, showing some boundary conditions, and extending the result to (...) liberal and conservative categories. The same method was applied to two other pairs of contrasting categories, healthy and junk foods, and male and female jobs. For those categories, the relation between contrasting pairs was weaker and there was less of a direct trade-off between typicality in one category versus typicality in its opposite. The results are discussed in terms of implications for political decision making and reasoning, and conceptual representation. (shrink)

This paper provides a provisional examination of Rod Watson''s work and contributions to EM/CA/MCA, in part through a critique of misrepresentations of his arguments in secondary accounts of his work. The form of these misrepresentations includes adumbration and traducement of his arguments. Focusing on the reflexivity of category and sequence and turn-generated categories, we suggest that his analytic position within ethnomethodological fields is unique and remarkable, yet largely unacknowledged. We argue that a re-examination of the body of Watson''s (...) work makes relevant explicit and appropriate acknowledgement of his contributions through his unconventional approach and his extension of prior works in novel and stimulating directions. (shrink)

We need to reconsider and reconceive the path that will take us from innate perceptual saliencies to basic (and perhaps other) colour language. There is a space between the perceptual and the linguistic levels that needs to be filled by an account of the rules that people use to generate relatively stable reference classes in a social context.

In this paper, we develop a typology of auditors’ virtues through in-depth interviews with nine exemplars of the audit community.We compare this typology with prescribed auditors’ virtues as represented in the applicable Code of Professional Conduct. Ourcomparison shows that the Code places a primary emphasis on mandatory virtues including the virtues of “independent,” “objective,”and “principled.” While the non-mandatory virtues, which involve “going beyond the minimum” and “putting the public interest foremost,” were identified by our exemplars as essential to the auditor’s (...) role, they received little or no emphasis in the Rules of Professional Conduct. We find this particularly alarming, given that the exemplars interviewed for this study viewed these virtues are essential to the auditors’ role. If the audit profession wishes to uphold public confidence by encouraging the possession of non-mandatory auditors’ virtues, our research suggests that non-mandatory auditors’ virtues should be explicitly described and included in rules of professional conduct. (shrink)

To survive, organisms must be able to identify edible objects. However, we know relatively little about how humans and other species distinguish food items from non-food items. We tested the abilities of semi-free-ranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to learn rapidly that a novel object was edible, and to generalize their learning to other objects, in a spontaneous choice task. Adult monkeys watched as a human experimenter first pretended to eat one of two novel objects and then placed replicas of the (...) objects at widely separated locations. Monkeys selectively approached the object that the experimenter had previously eaten, exhibiting a rapidly induced preference for the apparently edible object. In further experiments in which the same objects were used as tools or were manipulated at the face but not eaten, we fail to observe an approach bias, providing evidence that the monkeys’ pattern of approach in the earlier experiments was specific to objects that were eaten. Subsequent experiments tested how monkeys generalized their preference for an edible object by first allowing them to watch a human experimenter eat one of two objects and then presenting them with new objects composed of the same substance but differing from the original, edible object in shape or color. Monkeys ignored changes in the shape of the object and generalized from one edible object to another on the basis of color in conjunction with other substance properties. Finally, we extended this work to infant rhesus monkeys and found that, like adults, they too used color to generalize to novel food objects. In contrast to adults, however, infants extended this pattern of generalization to objects that were acted on in other ways. These results suggest that infant monkeys form broader object categories than adults, and that food categories become.. (shrink)

The massive acoustic redundancy of minimally contrasting speech sounds, coupled with the auditory integration of psychoacoustically similar acoustic properties produces a highly invariant percept, which cannot be improved by top-down feedback from the lexicon. Contextual effects are also bottom-up but not all entirely auditory and may thus differ in whether they affect sensitivity or only response bias.

Artefacts are usually understood in contrast with natural kinds and conceived as a unitary kind. Here we propose that there is in fact a variety of artefacts: from the more concrete to the more abstract ones. Moreover, not every artefact is able to fulfil its function thanks to its physical properties: Some artefacts, particularly what we call “institutional” artefacts, are symbolic in nature and require a system of rules to exist and to fulfil their function. Adopting a standard method to (...) measure conceptual representation (the property generation task), we have experimentally explored how humans conceptualise these different kinds of artefacts. Results indicate that institutional artefacts are typically opposed to social objects, while being more similar to standard artefacts, be they abstract or concrete. (shrink)

By comparing mechanisms in nativism, empiricism, and culturalism, the target article by Steels & Belpaeme (S&B) emphasizes the influence of communicational constraint on sharing color categories. Our commentary suggests deeper considerations of some of their claims, and discusses some modifications that may help in the study of communicational constraints in both humans and robots.

I respond to Norris et al.'s criticism of Gaskell and Marslen- Wilson (1997). When the latter's network is tested in circumstances comparable to the Merge simulations in the target article, it produces the desired pattern of results. In another area of potential feedback in spoken word processing, aspects of lexical content influence word recognition and our network provides a simple explanation of why such effects emerge. It is unclear how such effects would be accommodated by Merge.

Our focus in this article is on some uses of categorial transformations. The discussion is divided into two main parts. In the first part, we begin by outlining our approach, namely membership categorization analysis (MCA), indicating the origins of the term and elaborating the conception of MCA as an ‘occasioned’ members’ apparatus. We then explain what we mean by the concept of categorial transformation, review some of the very few previous studies which have investigated this phenomenon and which are (...) pertinent to its further study, and indicate how categorial transformation serves to embody and illustrate the occasionality of MCA. In the second part of the article, we present an analysis of two extracts from a transcript of the naturally occurring talk-in-interaction which occurred in a particular family meal, involving two children and their parents. A variety of categorial transformation practices in this data are identified and their particular local usages described. In the concluding discussion we consider our argument and our analysis in light of previous discussions of the trajectory of Sacks’ work. (shrink)

The study addresses the cyclically temporal aspect of sequence recognition, storage and recall using the Recurrent Oscillatory Self-Organizing Map (ROSOM), first introduced by Kaipainen, Papadopoulos and Karhu (1997). The unique solution of the network is that oscillatory States are assigned to network units, corresponding to their `readiness-to-fire''. The ROSOM is a categorizer, a temporal sequence storage system and a periodicity detector designed for use in an ambiguous cyclically repetitive environment. As its external input, the model accepts a multidimensional stream of (...) environment-describing feature configurations with implicit periodicities. The output of the model is one or a few closed cycles abstracted from such a stream, mapped as trajectories on a two-dimensional sheet with an organization reminiscent of multi-dimensional scaling. The model''s capabilities are explored with a variety of workbench data. (shrink)

We investigated the understanding of causal systems categories—categories defined by common causal structure rather than by common domain content—among college students. We asked students who were either novices or experts in the physical sciences to sort descriptions of real-world phenomena that varied in their causal structure (e.g., negative feedback vs. causal chain) and in their content domain (e.g., economics vs. biology). Our hypothesis was that there would be a shift from domain-based sorting to causal sorting with increasing expertise in the (...) relevant domains. This prediction was borne out: The novice groups sorted primarily by domain and the expert group sorted by causal category. These results suggest that science training facilitates insight about causal structures. (shrink)

Converging psychophysical evidence suggests that the human visual system parses shapes into component parts for the purposes of object recognition. We examine the Schyns et al. claim of “creation” of features in light of recent work on part-based representations of visual shape, particularly the perceptual rules that human vision uses to parse shapes.

Intuitive-automatic processes are crucial for making judgements and decisions. The fascinating complexity of these processes has attracted many decision researchers, prompting them to start investigating intuition empirically and to develop numerous models. Dual-process models assume a clear distinction between intuitive and deliberate processes but provide no further differentiation within both categories. We go beyond these models and argue that intuition is not a homogeneous concept, but a label used for different cognitive mechanisms. We suggest that these mechanisms have to be (...) distinguished to allow for fruitful investigations of intuition. Specifically, we argue that researchers should concentrate on investigating the processes underlying intuition before making strong claims about its performance. We summarise current models for intuition and propose a categorisation according to the underlying cognitive processes: (a) associative intuition based on simple learning-retrieval processes, (b) matching intuition based on comparisons with prototypes/exemplars, (c) accumulative intuition based on automatic evidence accumulation, and (d) constructive intuition based on construction of mental representations. We discuss how this differentiation might help to clarify the relationship between affect and intuition and we derive a very general hypothesis as to when intuition will lead to good decisions and when it will go astray. (shrink)

Critical (necessary or sufficient) features in categorisation have a long history, but the empirical evidence makes their existence questionable. Nevertheless, there are some cases that suggest critical feature effects. The purpose of the present work is to offer some insight into why classification decisions might misleadingly appear as if they involve critical features. Utilising Tversky's (1977) contrast model of similarity, we suggest that when an object has a sparser representation, changing any of its features is more likely to lead to (...) a change in identity than it would in objects that have richer representations. Experiment 1 provides a basic test of this suggestion with artificial stimuli, whereby objects with a rich or a sparse representation were transformed by changing one of their features. As expected, we observed more identity judgements in the former case. Experiment 2 further confirms our hypothesis, with realistic stimuli, by assuming that superordinate categories have sparser representations than subordinate ones. These results offer some insight into the way feature changes may or may not lead to identity changes in classification decisions. (shrink)

Intuitive-automatic processes are crucial for making judgements and decisions. The fascinating complexity of these processes has attracted many decision researchers, prompting them to start investigating intuition empirically and to develop numerous models. Dual-process models assume a clear distinction between intuitive and deliberate processes but provide no further differentiation within both categories. We go beyond these models and argue that intuition is not a homogeneous concept, but a label used for different cognitive mechanisms. We suggest that these mechanisms have to be (...) distinguished to allow for fruitful investigations of intuition. Specifically, we argue that researchers should concentrate on investigating the processes underlying intuition before making strong claims about its performance. We summarise current models for intuition and propose a categorisation according to the underlying cognitive processes: (a) associative intuition based on simple learning-retrieval processes, (b) matching intuition based on comparisons with prototypes/exemplars, (c) accumulative intuition based on automatic evidence accumulation, and (d) constructive intuition based on construction of mental representations. We discuss how this differentiation might help to clarify the relationship between affect and intuition and we derive a very general hypothesis as to when intuition will lead to good decisions and when it will go astray. (shrink)

This paper investigated the effects, ramifications and limitations of categorising and labelling Directors and Boards when measuring or evaluating performance. According to Weiner (1982) labelling can have a profound impact on a person's life, leading to stigmas, reputation bias, prejudice or discrimination which can adversely impact Director and Board performance. Labelling Directors' behavioural traits can lead to the exaggeration of behaviours and lead fellow Directors or shareholders to have preconceived expectations about Directors. This study hypothesised that measurement of Directors and (...) Boards should be measured on a continuum and remain fluid. Fluid measurement takes into account all aspects of a Directors behaviour, circumstances and situational impacts, without categorisation or judgement. Results suggest Directors feel more confident in their ability to perform as Directors and evidence a greater state of preparedness and readiness for change. Findings are discussed in terms of the impacts for Directors, decision-making ability and Board performance. (shrink)

We amplify possible complications to the tidy division between early vision and later categorisation which arise when we consider the perception of human faces. Although a primitive face-detecting system, used for social attention, may indeed be integral to “early vision,” the relationship between this and diverse other uses made of information from faces is far from clear.

Although recent work has emphasised the importance of naı¨ve theories to categorisation, there has been little work examining the grain of analysis at which causal information normally influences categorisation. That level of analysis may often go unappreciated because of an ‘‘illusion of explanatory depth’’, in which people think they mentally represent causal explanatory relations in far more detail than they really do. Naı¨ve theories therefore might seem to be irrelevant to categorisation, or perhaps they only involve noting the presence of (...) unknown essences. I argue instead that adults and children alike effectively track high-level causal patterns, often outside awareness, and that this ability is essential to categorisation. Three examples of such pattern-tracking are described. The shallowness of our explanatory understandings may be further supported by a reliance on the division of cognitive labour that occurs in all cultures, a reliance that arises from welldeveloped abilities to cluster knowledge in the minds of others. (shrink)

Taking a detour to reach a goal is intelligent behavior based on making inferences. The main purpose of the present research is to show how such apparently complex behavior can emerge from basic mechanisms such as contextual categorisation and goal attribution when perceiving people. We presentacacia (Action by Contextually Automated Categorising Interactive Agents), a computer model implemented using StarLogo software, grounded in the principles of Artificial Life (Al), capable of simulating the behavior of a group of agents with a goal (...) (for instance, to find a treasure in a treasure hunt ) in an environment where obstacles mask the goal site. The results of the simulations show that agents reach the goal the fastest when they follow each other and take detours. We argue that these results indicate that intelligent adaptive behavior is based on the contextual categorisation of environmental constrainst (that is, obstacles and other agents). (shrink)

Faut-il abandonner l'idée de catégorisation ou lui conserver une fonction plus restreinte, diversifiée, domaniale ? On se demande ce qui peut être préservé de la conception transcendantale pour prolonger son évolution récente au-delà de Wittgenstein, Goodman et Peirce. On propose une approche interrogative, présuppositionnelle et textologique qui lui conserve assez de fonctions (sémantique, judicatoire, heuristique, interprétative), pour qu'il reste significatif de parler de catégorisation. Au lieu d'être immobiles, les catégories ont vocation à commander la recherche, qu'elle soit enquête scientifique ou (...) même quête religieuse. Un concept devient catégorial pour autant qu'il ouvre un domaine à la recherche, la guide ou lui permet de se réorganiser. A first question is raised, whether the idea of categorisation should be altogether dismissed or retained, but with more restricted, diversified and less extensive functions. The second question deals with what of the transcendantal dogma can be maintained in order to extend its recent developments beyond Wittgenstein, Goodman and Peirce. An interrogative, pre suppositional and textological approach is put forward, which could preserve enough functions (of semantic, judicatory, heuristic or interpretative types) to allow to go on speaking of categorisation with some kind of relevance. Far from being immovable, the categories indeed call for leadership in matters of research, be it scientific investigation or sacred religious quest. It appears that a concept becomes categorial in so far as it breaks fresh ground for research, provides guidance and enables it to perform self reorganisation. (shrink)

Given the fundamental role that concepts play in theories of cognition, philosophers and cognitive scientists have a common interest in concepts. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of controversy regarding what kinds of things concepts are, how they are structured, and how they are acquired. This chapter offers a detailed high-level overview and critical evaluation of the main theories of concepts and their motivations. Taking into account the various challenges that each theory faces, the chapter also presents a novel approach (...) to concepts that is organized around two ideas. The first is a pluralistic view of differing types of conceptual structure. The second is a model that treats concepts as atomic representations that are linked to various types of conceptual structures. (shrink)

The first part of the book centers around the fall of the Classical Theory of Concepts in the face of attacks by W. V. O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eleanor ...

This volume will be a fascinating resource for philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists, and the starting point for future research in the study of ...

In this paper, I present an alternative argument for Jerry Fodor's recent conclusion that there are currently no tenable theories of concepts in the cognitive sciences and in the philosophy of mind. Briefly, my approach focuses on the 'theory-theory' of concepts. I argue that the two ways in which cognitive psychologists have formulated this theory lead to serious difficulties, and that there cannot be, in principle, a third way in which it can be reformulated. Insofar as the 'theory-theory' is supposed (...) to replace, and to rectify the problems of, the earlier 'classical' and 'probabilistic' theories, its failure confirms Fodor's original observation. Since my critique does not rest on controversial philosophical assumptions and is readily available from within the cognitive sciences, it is a stronger argument than Fodor's. (shrink)

We designed a new protocol requiring French adult participants to group a large number of Munsell colour chips into three or four groups. On one, relativist, view, participants would be expected to rely on their colour lexicon in such a task. In this [ramework, the resulting groups should be more similar to French colour categories than to other languages categories. On another, universalist, view, participants would be expected to rely on universal features of perception. In this second framework, the resulting (...) groups should match colour categories of three and four basic terms languages. In this work, we first collected data to build an accurate map of French colour terms categories (Experiment 1). We went on testing how native French speakers spontaneously sorted a set of randomly presented coloured chips and, in line with the relativist prediction, we found that the resulting colour groups were more similar to French colour categories than to three and four basic terms languages (Experiment 2). However, the same results were obtained in a verbal interference condition (Experiment 3), suggesting that participants rely on language specific and nevertheless perceptual, colour categories. Collectively, these results suggest that the universalist/relativist dichotomy is a too narrow one. (shrink)

To acquire one’s native phonological system, language-specific phonological categories and relationships must be extracted from the input. The acquisition of the categories and relationships has each in its own right been the focus of intense research. However, it is remarkable that research on the acquisition of categories and the relations between them has proceeded, for the most part, independently of one another. We argue that this has led to the implicit view that phonological acquisition is a “two-stage” process: Phonetic categories (...) are first acquired and then subsequently mapped onto abstract phoneme categories. We present simulations that suggest two problems with this view: First, the learner might mistake the phoneme-level categories for phonetic-level categories and thus be unable to learn the relationships between phonetic-level categories; on the other hand, the learner might construct inaccurate phonetic-level representations that prevent it from finding regular relations among them. We suggest an alternative conception of the phonological acquisition problem that sidesteps this apparent inevitability and acquires phonemic categories in a single stage. Using acoustic data from Inuktitut, we show that this model reliably converges on a set of phoneme-level categories and phonetic-level relations among subcategories, without making use of a lexicon. (shrink)