From: Damien Broderick (thespike@satx.rr.com)
Date: Wed May 03 2006 - 15:55:19 MDT
At 04:59 PM 5/3/2006 -0400, Ben wrote:
>the exemplar approach to categorization may be a useful
>heuristic in many cases, but it definitely does lead to bad errors in
>many cases.
Not sure if you mean it inaccurately predicts human cognition, or it
correctly predicts logically erroneous human cognition. My point, and
I think Richard's, is that such artificial and contrived challenges,
while of course valid in their own terms, miss the complexity and
everyday utility of extrapolating from exemplars, especially when an
abundance of apparently salient information is available. "Q: Give
the foregoing information, is Esmeralda a living human, or is she on
the planet Earth, or is she a [living human] deeply politically
concerned feminist [on the planet Earth]?" "A: If not the latter, why
the hell did you just front-load me with all that misleading priming
information? Have you never heard of conversational implicature, you
twisty weasel?"
Damien Broderick
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