new research into semantic categories

[Jonathan Lighter]

Exactly. It's the same as saying we recognize three everyday states of
matter: liquid, solid, gas.  Those are the most basic categories, but our
thinking about matter goes far beyond that general level of identification.

JL

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: new research into semantic categories
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>
> No. Three categories, that are plausibly evolutionarily ancient, elicit
> reactions in distinct parts of the brain as seen by this fMRI study. We
> also
> "classify" people on sight by sex and age; does that statement imply that
> we
> make no other distinctions? I don't think so.
>
> The basic idea is that when a particular part of the brain is active, it
> > receives more blood, and the increased blood flow can be seen by MRI
> > machines. Researchers cannot directly tell what a person is thinking, but
> > they can tell where the thinking is happening and infer from there, since
> > certain parts of the brain are used for certain functions. In the context
> of
> > the research, it was found that objects belonging to a particular
> dimension
> > all triggered activity in a particular part of the brain.
> >
>
> m a m
>
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > At 2/8/2010 10:22 PM, James Harbeck wrote:
> > >http://thetartan.org/2010/2/8/scitech/brainnoun
> > >
> > >Some researchers at Carnegie Mellon have, with the aid of an MRI,
> > >come to the conclusion that human brains classify all non-human
> > >objects in terms of three dimensions: in plain, "Can I eat it? How do
> > >I hold it? Can it give me shelter?"
> >
> > Is this as nonsensical as it sounds to me?  The human brain can only
> > manage three properties for all non-human objects?  And two of those
> > properties are the simplest of "enumerated" data types, namely
> > "Boolean", which can take on only two values, "yes" or "no"?
> >
> > Apples are not red (usually), plums are not purple -- they are only
> > "eatable = 'yes'"!
> >
> > Any relational database system can do better than
> > that!  (Translating, "property" = column; "object" = "row".)
> >
> > Joel
> >
>
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