From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!wupost!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Thu Apr 16 11:34:16 EDT 1992
Article 5069 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: SHRDLU's mind
Message-ID: <525@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 92 00:28:25 GMT
References: <1992Apr6.023638.518@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Apr6.182533.109@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Apr6.224129.7406@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Apr7.211232.6930@psych.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 35

In article <1992Apr7.211232.6930@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
|They go, roughly, like this: the simple fact that we have trouble
|definitively classifying some objects does not imply that they are
|not definitively classifiable. Nor does it imply that they have some
|sort of graded classification. It simply means that we have trouble
|classifying it.  ...

It *may* mean that we simply have trouble classifying it, or it may
mean that there is a graded classification, or it may mean that there
is no single best classification.

All of these are possible, and the reality must be determined seperately
in each case.  If the underlying phenomenon is strictly continuous then
any categorical classification is going to be partly arbitrary (in that
it will seperate arbitrarily similar entities into seperate classes).

Biological phenomena are often continuous, or aproximately so (that is the
actual unit increment is often infinitessimal).

Alternatively the phenomenon may be a complex one, with several partl
independent features, making classification indeterminate - that is
making any of several different classifications equivalent in explanatory
power.

Again, this is something quite common in biological phenomena.



Of course it is also possible that we do not yet know enough, or that
we have not yet tried the classification that is most useful, but I think
the differences between these cases can often be determined by careful
investigation.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


