Re: fun with "concept development"

Posted by sorry, I meant "thanks" for the comment (nfm) on 5/30/06

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On 5/28/06, OP wrote:
> Well it's been about year since I wrote the post, but if anyone
> is still reading...:).
> First, sorry about how hard my orginal post was to read; somehow
> the formatting came out badly on the screeen. Also: yes I know I
> misspelled characteristic-- as I said it was 3 am when I wrote
> the post :).
>
> I completely disagree with this poster-- sorry. It's been a year
> since I had this class and I still remember it clearly. What
> occured was that the teacher showed us pictures of many types of
> dogs (huge white ones, tiny spotted ones, etc.) and we saw the
> common characteristics (see.. I can spell the word now :) of all
> the pictures and thus defined a "dog" as all the characteristics
> the pictures (and thus "dogs") have in common. This is
> completely absurd..I tried to explain why in a funny way at 3 am
> a year ago.. let me explain why in a more serious way now.
> A) You can't obviously indentify many of the most important
> characteristics of a dog-- like "canine DNA"-- by looking at a
> picture, and our list of essential characteristics of a dog left
> out most of the truly essential characteristics of a dog
> (interior skeleton, species canis, etc.).
> B) The external essential characteristics of a dog that we
> indentified as essential are not essential--4 legs is not an
> essential characteristic of a dog but rather a feature that most
> (but not all) dogs have.
> C) No teacher but an ESL or foreign language teacher would even
> accept "4 legs" as an answer to the question "Name an essential
> characteristic of a dog".
> 1) In a second grade a good answer might be "warm blooded"
> 2) By high school biology is should be something like "species
> canis"
> 3) In a college biology class for majors an answer might involve
> describing something essential about canine DNA.. I don't really
> know.
> 4) I can't even begin to guess what answer a professor would
> want from a 3rd year student in a veterinary program would want
> as an answer to this question :).
> D) What bothered me was the way a very complex "concept" was
> boxed into a completely false definition based on only what we
> see.. imagine looking at pictures of humans (George Bush, a
> starving child from Somalia, an Asian basketball player, a
> beautiful mixed race infant.. and so on) and defining a "human"
> as what all pictures have in common:
> 2 arms
> 2 legs
> teeth (maybe? the infant probably doesn't have any)
> 10 fingers
> (skin color, size, sex, etc. are "non essential characteristics"
> of humans)
> Does ANYONE think that's a good way to define a human?? Yet
> that's how we were taught to define "dog" for our students. AND
> we are supposed to define abstract concepts (like poetry) based
> on this model... by reading some poems and deciding that
> whatever common characteristics we can see make them all "poems"
> and thus define poetry. If you wanted to play that game, "in
> English" would have to make the list because a few students in a
> typical education class in the United States could look at a
> poem in another language and tell you if it was really a poem or
> not.
>
> I stand by my orginal ideas, but that's for the comment.
>
>
> On 1/04/06, WF wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I find your post interesting but I wonder how much it has to
>> do with 'concept development'. It rather seems to be a
>> presentation of what characteristics the concept of the DOG
>> covers and how much this content depends on the demands of
>> the situation. The development of this concept, its progress
>> from the earliest images and features acquired with it,
>> takes time and exposure to the representations in the real
>> world.
>> I hope you agree with the above and find it stimulating
>> enough to further share your insights into the world of
>> concepts.
>> WF

Posts on this thread, including this one

• fun with "concept development", 3/05/05, by long and OBNOXIOUS post.
• Re: fun with "concept development", 1/04/06, by WF.
• Re: fun with "concept development", 5/28/06, by OP.
• Re: fun with "concept development", 5/28/06, by OP.
• Re: fun with "concept development", 5/30/06, by sorry, I meant "thanks" for the comment (nfm).