Comments on: Brain Hard-wired For Geometry? http://neurodudes.com/2006/01/21/brain-hard-wired-for-geometry/ at the intersection of neuroscience and AI. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:04:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: understanding » Innate Geometry? http://neurodudes.com/2006/01/21/brain-hard-wired-for-geometry/#comment-1199 understanding » Innate Geometry? Tue, 24 Jan 2006 03:51:46 +0000 http://neurodudes.com/?p=224#comment-1199 [...] http://neurodudes.com/2006/01/21/brain-hard-wired-for-geometry/ [...] [...] http://neurodudes.com/2006/01/21/brain-hard-wired-for-geometry/ [...]

]]> By: Chris Chatham http://neurodudes.com/2006/01/21/brain-hard-wired-for-geometry/#comment-1195 Chris Chatham Sun, 22 Jan 2006 20:23:03 +0000 http://neurodudes.com/?p=224#comment-1195 Yesterday I would have said this study only proves that common-sense is culturally universal, or that at least non-verbal/spatial reasoning is culturally universal, but I'm starting to rethink that perspective based on what I'm learning about Biederman's "recognition by components" theory of object recognition, which posits that IT uses simple geometric primitives ("geons") to recognize various objects. Who knows, maybe we are instrinsically-wired to acquire knowledge about geometry! I seriously doubt that it's a built-in, a priori form of knowledge, however. And I'm still pretty sure that this study doesn't prove what it says it proves... The authors themselves admit that the same behavior could have occured simply by applying the concept of similarity to the objects, and although they propose the 'map test' to rule out this alternative hypothesis, I think it suffers from the same problem... Yesterday I would have said this study only proves that common-sense is culturally universal, or that at least non-verbal/spatial reasoning is culturally universal, but I’m starting to rethink that perspective based on what I’m learning about Biederman’s “recognition by components” theory of object recognition, which posits that IT uses simple geometric primitives (”geons”) to recognize various objects. Who knows, maybe we are instrinsically-wired to acquire knowledge about geometry! I seriously doubt that it’s a built-in, a priori form of knowledge, however.

And I’m still pretty sure that this study doesn’t prove what it says it proves… The authors themselves admit that the same behavior could have occured simply by applying the concept of similarity to the objects, and although they propose the ‘map test’ to rule out this alternative hypothesis, I think it suffers from the same problem…

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