Reading � Curious machines

Greg Detre

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Feldman (2000), �Minimisation of Boolean complexity in human concept learning�, in Letters to Nature

References

Shepard, Hovland & Jenkins, Psychol. Monogr. Gen. Appl. 75, 1-42 (1961)
Medin, Wattenmaker & Hampson, Cognitive Psychology, 19, 242-279 (1987)
Rosch, Cognitive Psychology, 4, 328-350 (1973)

Title :Cognitive psychology.

Published :v. 1- Jan. 1970-

Published :San Diego [etc.] Academic Press.

INTERNET LINK :http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:cogpsych��

Locations/Orders :Availability

Location :Countway Medicine SerialHoldingsAvailability

Location :Gutman Education Per. BF309 .C62HoldingsAvailability

Location :Networked Resource BF309 .C62 [Provides access to tables of contents and abstracts from 1993 and full text of articles from 1997.]HoldingsAvailability

Location :Psychology Research SERIALHoldingsAvailability

Location :Widener Phil 12.130 [Current Issues: Periodicals Reading Room Stacks]HoldingsAvailability

Cognitive psychology.

San Diego [etc.] Academic Press.

Location :Psychology Research SERIAL

Acquisition Data :Status: Currently received

Holdings :v.1(1970)-v.44(2002)

Osherson & Smith, Cognition, 9, 35-58 (1981)

Title :Cognition.

Published :v. 1-

Published :Lausanne [Switzerland, etc.] Elsevier Sequoia [etc.] 1972-

INTERNET LINK :http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:cognitio��

Locations/Orders :Availability

Location :Gutman Education Per. BF309 .C6HoldingsAvailability

Location :Networked Resource [Table of contents and abstracts of articles only for 1994-1998; beginning with 1999- includes also brief articles]HoldingsAvailability

Location :Psychology Research SERIALHoldingsAvailability

Location :Widener Phil 12.155 [Current Issues: Periodicals Reading Room Stacks]HoldingsAvailability

 

Location :Widener Phil 12.155 Current Issues: Periodicals Reading Room Stacks

Acquisition Data :Status: Currently received

Holdings :v.1(1972)-v.85(2002)

Current Receipts :v.86:no.1(2002:Nov.)

v.86:no.2(2002:Dec.)

v.86:no.3(2003:Jan.)

v.87:no.1(2003:Feb.)

Index :v.1/10(1972/1981) in v. 10.

v.1/20(1972/1985) in v. 20.

v.1/40(1972/1991) in July 1992.

v.1/60(1972/1996) in July 1996.

 

 

 

Fass and Feldman (c. 2002?), �Categorisation under complexity: a unified MDL account of human learning of regular and irregular categories�, unpublished???

 

Goldstone and Rogosky, �Using relations within conceptual systems to translate across conceptual systems�

 

 

Discarded

To do this, artifical systems need to be able to form concepts in the same way that curious natural systems do

 

incompressible is incomprehensible

compressible is comprehensible

compression is comprehension

minimisation and inference are deeply intertwined

maximal descriptive compactness also corresponds to maximal inferential power

 

the debate over rules vs exceptions can be subsumed

 

 

Hofstadter on the representational flexibility of NNs:

�members of a category are not all represented by identical symbolic structures; rather, individual objects will be represented in subtly different ways depending upon the context in which they are represented�

�the great adaptability of high-level perception suggestst hat no module that produced a single context-independent representation could ever model the complexity of the process�

�Generalisation outwards from a conceptual centre is an automatic, unconscious process that pervades thought - indeed, it defines thought. It�s not as if there is just one rigid propositional or logical structure that captures what we understand when we read in the newspaper about a kidnapping or hear a throwaway remark about dieting. That is as far from the proper image of what thought is as one can get! Rather, all sorts of analogous events and related images from our own lives are activated to different degrees, and commingle and blur with aspects of the event itself to form a very complex, active, fluid structure, whose rules bear very little connection to those of any kind of formalisable logic�

Minsky

�the really useful �meanings� are not the flimsy logic chains of definitions, but the much harder-to-express networks of ways to remember, compare and change things�

 

Hofstadter: �Generalisation involves the ability to internally reconfigure an idea, by:

moving internal boundaries back and forth

swapping components or shifting substructures from one level to another

merging two substructures into one or breaking one substructure into two

lengthening or shortening a given component

adding new components or new levels of structure

replacing one concept by a closely related one

trying out the effect of reversals on various conceptual levels�

 

�the familiar and stable-seeming fluidlike properties of thought emerge as a statistical consequence of a myriad tiny, invisible, independent, subcognitive acts taking place in parallel�

 

game: an actiivty that is engaging and diverting, deliberately detached from real life

minsky som index

concept

105

179

211

game

29

57

130-31

143

 

semantic nets??? semantic content??? halos??? vagueness???

too arbitrary - no useful/meaningful features to anchor

chunking???

perhaps we consciously learn concepts differently from unconsciously learning (when presented with instances)???

 

To add

References

Feldman_Miller

Harnad�s debunking of Rosch

natural kinds

johnson-laird

separated vs integral

hofstadter + minsky quotes

jorge luis borges� classification of animals

basic level categories

 

R. M. PIRSIG The motorcycle..a system of concepts worked out in steel.

 

Questions

prototypes vs exemplars???