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Article 1468 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Animal Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Nov21.172029.40616@spss.com>
Date: 21 Nov 91 17:20:29 GMT
References: <38079@shamash.cdc.com> <1991Nov20.173143.6419@spss.com> <38108@shamash.cdc.com>
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In article <38108@shamash.cdc.com> map@svl.cdc.com writes:
>It still looks like you are confusing percepts and concepts.  Perception
>gives us awareness of "things," while conception lets us identify what  
>those things are.  A child who is aware of the colorful, soft, object
>it has in its hands has reached the perceptual level, but a child who
>knows that object is a "Bart Simpson Doll" has reached the conceptual
>level.  All I'm saying is that mere awareness of objects is given to us 
>automatically by our nervous systems thru the sheer experience of having
>sensations, but conceptualizing that awareness is not.

I'm not confused, I'm disagreeing with you.  I'm saying that perception
depends on exploration and conceptual modelling.  (And concepts depend on
perception, too.  Simple concepts are built based on simple perceptions,
and the concepts are used to improve perception, in a progression that
usually, unfortunately, stops with maturity.)

Weren't you the chap who was denying that animals have a conceptual level?
Yet here you say that recognizing an object as a Bart Simpson doll belongs
at this level.  I'm not sure if you are talking about recognizing a particular
object (this doll, the child's mother), or recognizing a class of objects
(Bart dolls in general), but there's little doubt that animals can do
both, and also aquire the concept of object permanence.


