eprints.soton.ac.uk/250387/2/harnad87.categorization.html

18.1.1 Philosophical Background. problem of how categories are learned and represented is not only central to contemporary cognitive science. It is also closely related to several enduring problems in the philosophy of knowledge and language. Seven of the most prominent of these problems are the following: P (1) The problem of induction is the first and most important: How does one arrive at successful (i.e., correct, predictive) generalizations from finite samples of instances? P (2) The problem of mapping words onto objects : What is the relation between our words and the things they describe? How is it established? P (3) The problem of meaning holism : Is a word's meaning isolable from the meaning of the rest of our vocabulary, or can the revision of one meaning necessitate the revision of all meanings? P (4) The problem of knowledge-by-acquaintance versus knowledge-by-description : What is the difference between what we know (or can know) from direct sensory experiences and what we

18.1.1 Philosophical Background. problem of how categories are learned and represented is not only central to contemporary cognitive science. It is also closely related to several enduring problems in the philosophy of knowledge and language. Seven of the most prominent of these problems are the following: P (1) The problem of induction is the first and most important: How does one arrive at successful (i.e., correct, predictive) generalizations from finite samples of instances? P (2) The problem of mapping words onto objects : What is the relation between our words and the things they describ