Infants do not possess many inborn categories, if they have any at all. They perceive the world as directly as their senses permit. But they do not remain this way for long.
If avoiding categorization and referring to properties directly offered a strong benefit, we would never had developed the categories in the first place. Instead, we do so—even when we recognize that developing a category can introduce biases into our reasoning.
We can be more intelligent in our designs than evolution has been in its own. But usually, we are not. We think we’ve found an obvious way to outsmart reality? Then we are most likely mistaken.
Simplification can be a curse. A blessing as well.
Infants do not possess many inborn categories, if they have any at all. They perceive the world as directly as their senses permit. But they do not remain this way for long.
This seems to be objectively untrue. Many ingenious experiments with very young children forcefully suggest a wide range of inborn categories, including faces,. There is even evidence that male and female children pay different attention to different categories long before they can talk.
Further, there is strong evidence that children have inborn expectations of relationships between sensory input. The physics of the eye ensures that images focussed on the retina are upside-down, and experiment shows that, for a few days, this is how the world is perceived. But babies learn to invert the image, so that it tallies with reality. This happens automatically, and within days—presumably through some hard-wired expectation of the interrelation between senses—eg proprioception and sight.
Infants do not possess many inborn categories, if they have any at all. They perceive the world as directly as their senses permit. But they do not remain this way for long.
If avoiding categorization and referring to properties directly offered a strong benefit, we would never had developed the categories in the first place. Instead, we do so—even when we recognize that developing a category can introduce biases into our reasoning.
We can be more intelligent in our designs than evolution has been in its own. But usually, we are not. We think we’ve found an obvious way to outsmart reality? Then we are most likely mistaken.
Simplification can be a curse. A blessing as well.
This seems to be objectively untrue. Many ingenious experiments with very young children forcefully suggest a wide range of inborn categories, including faces,. There is even evidence that male and female children pay different attention to different categories long before they can talk.
Further, there is strong evidence that children have inborn expectations of relationships between sensory input. The physics of the eye ensures that images focussed on the retina are upside-down, and experiment shows that, for a few days, this is how the world is perceived. But babies learn to invert the image, so that it tallies with reality. This happens automatically, and within days—presumably through some hard-wired expectation of the interrelation between senses—eg proprioception and sight.