Riddles of natural categorization

doi:10.1098/rstb.1985.0015

Riddles of natural categorization

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.1985.0015 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 308 (1135) ◽

pp. 129-144 ◽

Cited By ~ 62

Keyword(s):

Visual Stimuli ◽

Human Experience ◽

Cognitive Capacities ◽

Animal Intelligence ◽

Stimulus Classes

Pigeons and other animals can categorize photographs or drawings as complex as those encountered in ordinary human experience. The fundamental riddle posed by natural categorization is how organisms devoid of language, and presumably also of the associated higher cognitive capacities, can rapidly extract abstract invariances from some (but not all) stimulus classes containing instances so variable that we cannot physically describe either the class rule or the instances, let alone account for the underlying capacity. In contrast, with other contingencies of reinforcement, pigeons will not extract abstract rules of categorization; they will instead learn to identify visual stimuli down to small details, and they will retain much of what they learned for a year and more. How animals can shift between abstraction and photographic retention, and whether or not the two modes can be unified under a single theory are questions that help define the boundaries of knowledge about animal intelligence.

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Intelligence and Intelligibility

10.1093/oso/9780198854593.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

G. E. R. Lloyd

Keyword(s):

Social Groups ◽

Human Experience ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Human Intelligence ◽

Cognitive Capacities ◽

Nature And Culture ◽

The Cross ◽

Intellectual Disciplines

This study investigates the tension between two conflicting intuitions, our twin recognitions: (1) that all humans share the same basic cognitive capacities; and yet (2) their actual manifestations in different individuals and groups differ appreciably. How can we reconcile our sense of what links us all as humans with our recognition of these deep differences? All humans use language and live in social groups, where we have to probe what is distinctive in the experience of humans as opposed to that of other animals and how the former may have evolved from the latter. Moreover, the languages we speak and the societies we form differ profoundly, though the conclusion that we are the prisoners of our own particular experience should and can be resisted. The study calls into question the cross-cultural viability both of many of the analytic tools we commonly use (such as the contrast between the literal and the metaphorical, between myth and rational account, and between nature and culture) and of our usual categories for organizing human experience and classifying intellectual disciplines, mathematics, religion, law, and aesthetics. The result is a robust defence of the possibilities of mutual intelligibility while recognizing both the diversity in the manifestations of human intelligence and the need to revise our assumptions in order to achieve that understanding.

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How is the moral stance related to the intentional stance and group thinking?

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x19002413 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

Author(s):

Hannes Rakoczy

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Intentional Stance ◽

Cognitive Capacities ◽

Shared Intentionality ◽

History Of ◽

Group Thinking ◽

Moral Stance

Abstract The natural history of our moral stance told here in this commentary reveals the close nexus of morality and basic social-cognitive capacities. Big mysteries about morality thus transform into smaller and more manageable ones. Here, I raise questions regarding the conceptual, ontogenetic, and evolutionary relations of the moral stance to the intentional and group stances and to shared intentionality.

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