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Selecting is not abstracting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 1999

Stellan Ohlsson
Stellan Ohlsson
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607 stellan@uic.edu
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Abstract

Barsalou's hypothesis that mental representations are constructed by selecting parts of percepts encounters the same difficulties as other empiricist theories: They cannot explain concepts for which instances do not share perceptible features (e.g., furniture) or for which there are no relevant percepts (e.g., the end of time). Barsalou's attempt to reduce falsity to failed pattern matching is an elementary error, and the generativity of his simulators cannot be attained without nonterminal symbols. There is not now, and there never was, any reason to be interested in empiricist theories of knowledge. Abstraction is a fundamental aspect of human cognition.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , August 1999 , pp. 630 - 631
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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