From sensorimotor categories and pantomime to grounded symbols and propositions
Stevan R. Harnad · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2011
The adaptive success of organisms depends on the categorization that is the ability to do the right thing with the right kind of thing. Most species can learn categories by direct experience (induction) and only human beings can acquire categories by word of mouth (instruction). Language began when purposive miming became conventionalized into arbitrary sequences of shared category names describing and defining new categories via propositions. An individual must be able to distinguish the members from the non-members in order to categorize correctly. The feature detector for some categories is inborn. Most categories, however, have to be learned through trial and error during the lifetime of the organism. The artificial-life simulations have showed that simple virtual creatures in virtual worlds, which must learn to do the right thing with the right kind of thing in order to survive and reproduce, are able to categorize through trial-and-error experience. It can be done with the help of neural nets that are able to learn to detect the features, which reliably distinguish one category from another.