eyal@wisdom.BITNET (Eyal mozes) (10/16/86)
First of all, I'd like a preprint of the full paper.
Judging by the abstract, I have two main criticisms.
The first one is that I don't see your point at all about "categorical
perception". You say that "differences between reds and differences
between yellows look much smaller than equal-sized differences that
cross the red/yellow boundary". But if they look much smaller, this
means they're NOT "equal-sized"; the differences in wave-length may be
the same, but the differences in COLOR are much smaller.
Your whole theory is based on the assumption that perceptual qualities
are something physical in the outside world (e.g., that colors ARE
wave-lengths). But this is wrong. Perceptual qualities represent the
form in which we perceive external objects, and they're determined both
by external physical conditions and by the physical structure of our
sensory apparatus; thus, colors are determined both by wave-lengths and
by the physical structure of our visual system. So there's no apriori
reason to expect that equal-sized differences in wave-length will lead
to equal-sized differences in color, or to assume that deviations from
this rule must be caused by internal representations of categories. And
this seems to completely cut the grounds from under your theory.
My second criticism is that, even if "categorical perception" really
provided a base for a theory of categorization, it would be very
limited; it would apply only to categories of perceptual qualities. I
can't see how you'd apply your approach to a category such as "table",
let alone "justice".
Actually, there already exists a theory of categorization that is along
similar lines to your approach, but integrated with a detailed theory
of perception and not subject to the two criticisms above; that is the
Objectivist theory of concepts. It was presented by Ayn Rand in her
book "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", and by David Kelley in
his paper "A Theory of Abstraction" in Cognition and Brain Theory vol.
7 pp. 329-57 (1984); this theory was integrated with a theory of
perception, and applied to categories of perceptual qualities, and in
particular to perception of colors and of phonemes, in the second part
of David Kelley's book "The Evidence of the Senses".
Eyal Mozes
BITNET: eyal@wisdom
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Physical address: Department of Applied Math.
Weizmann Institute of Science
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