Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
References: <3gtu3i$rf3@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3h69pv$en3@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D3LuE8.3tq@spss.com> <3h6k27$l59@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D3nptv.9J9@spss.com> <3h9852$472@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
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Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 08:09:24 +0000
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There seems a terrible muddle developing in this thread. People are bringing
together the following:

1: Are there built in structures in the brain which predispose [humans] to
   chunk their percepts in certain ways?
2: Are there common mechanisms of association by which chunked perception is
   brought together into symbolic structures?
3: Is the run of human internal and experiential life suffiently common across
   time, space and circumstances for the products of 1+2 to be broadly similar
   in the structure and performance?
4: Given that 3 is more or less the case, then how strong is the influence of
   this underlying similarity upon the ways in which we think; and those areas
   which are excluded from the ways in which we think and represent knowledge?
5: How significant is the commonality of transmited knowledge - explicit and
   cultural - in amplifying 4?
6: Can we find the spore of these beasts in the way in which language is used
   and learned?
7: Does any of this tell us anything very interesting about the engineering of
   systems of knowledge representation?

I suggest that whatever the answers to 1-5, this discussion tells us that the
answer to 6 is broadly that we cannot; and to 7, that it does not.
 
_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
