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atucker comments on Review of Machery, 'Doing Without Concepts' - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (11)
What exactly is a prototype, exemplar, or theory? I have a vague notion of what's meant by those, but suspect that I'm missing something.
I'd recommend reading the first part of the BBS article, which is Machery's precis of his own book.
Having tried to read it, I get the idea that prototypes represent knowledge about a category of things in terms of typical properties of members of that categories (e.g. "dogs bark and pee on things"); whereas exemplars represent knowledge in terms of familiarity with individual members of the category (e.g. "dogs are like Fido and Lassie").
The description of theories seems substantially hazier:
I'm having difficulty figuring out what this means.
I think that's meant to encompass the sort of "necessary and sufficient" rules-based reasoning that was originally associated with concepts-in-general. Whereas prototypes and exemplars denote fuzzy categories, theories are usually more straightforward.
At least, that's how I read it. Certainly, I would say that some human reasoning is of that form.
Shweet, thanks!
Also, exhibit 1,381 of "AI researchers doing better philosophy than philosophers" is Chris Thornton's recent A Mathematical Theory of Conceptual Representation.
Many thanks, I've been looking for some carefully worked out ideas along this line of thought!
What exactly is a concept, after all?
(The question is only half serious, but if somebody can comprehensibly define it and explain why such a word may be useful, it would be nice. I easily get lost among philosophical generalities and abstractions.)