Generalizations, from representation to transmission
- Michael Tessler, Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
- Noah Goodman, Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
- David Danks, Philosophy & Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
- Emily Foster-Hanson, Conceptual Development and Social Cognition Lab, New York University, New York, New York, United States
- Marjorie Rhodes, New York University, New York, New York, United States
- Greg Carlson, Department of Linguistics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States
AbstractGeneralizable knowledge is crucial to thrive in our open- ended, dynamic world. We organize this knowledge with concepts: Learning that an entity is a DOG affords inferences about its properties and behaviors. But not all generalizations are straightforward to acquire through direct experience: Relevant observations may be costly (e.g., learning that a plant is poisonous) or rare (e.g., understanding that lightning strikes tall objects). It thus is important that language allow us to communicate such generalizations to each other. The aim of this symposium is to gather and integrate several distinct empirical and theoretical perspectives on the study of generalization, with a particular focus on the transmission using language.