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Cognition is categorization

Harnad, Stevan (2005) Cognition is categorization. [Book Chapter]

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Abstract

We organisms are sensorimotor systems. The things in the world come in contact with our sensory surfaces, and we interact with them based on what that sensorimotor contact “affords”. All of our categories consist in ways we behave differently toward different kinds of things -- things we do or don’t eat, mate-with, or flee-from, or the things that we describe, through our language, as prime numbers, affordances, absolute discriminables, or truths. That is all that cognition is for, and about.

Item Type:Book Chapter
Additional Information:Paper presented at UQˆM Summer Institute in Cognitive Sciences on Categorisation 2003 http://www.unites.uqam.ca/sccog/liens/program.html
Keywords:categorization, cognition, learning, categorical perception, invariants, Borges, Watanabe, Fodor, Chomsky
Subjects:Psychology > Cognitive Psychology
Computer Science > Robotics
ID Code:3027
Deposited By:Harnad, Stevan
Deposited On:19 Jun 2003
Last Modified:19 Dec 2009 19:19

References in Article

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