[From Rupert Young 970710 1200 BST]
This forwarded message may be of interest to CSGers. The phrase
"representation of similarities" seems reminiscent of reference and
perceptual signals.
···
--
Regards,
Rupert
------- Forwarded Message
Received: from listserv.ja.net by ainur.ee.surrey.ac.uk with smtp
(Smail3.1.29.1-ident) id m0wm1Mk-000OzUC; Wed, 9 Jul 97 19:21 BST
Received: from listserv (130.246.132.24) by listserv.ja.net (LSMTP for Windows
NT v1.1a) with SMTP id <0.6040E0F0@listserv.ja.net>; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:22:01
+0100
Received: from BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LISTSERV release 1.8b)
with NJE id 1594 for COLORCAT@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU; Wed, 9 Jul 1997
14:14:07 -0400
Received: from BROWNVM (NJE origin SMTP@BROWNVM) by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LMail
V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 0643; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 14:04:02 -0400
Received: from beech.sucs.soton.ac.uk by BROWNVM.brown.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
with TCP; Wed, 09 Jul 97 14:04:00 EDT
Received: from juniper.sucs.soton.ac.uk (juniper.sucs.soton.ac.uk
[152.78.128.175]) by beech.sucs.soton.ac.uk (8.8.5/server) with ESMTP
id TAA26649; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:03:54 +0100 (BST)
Received: from mulberry.psy.soton.ac.uk (mulberry.psy.soton.ac.uk
[152.78.195.73]) by juniper.sucs.soton.ac.uk (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP
id TAA25761; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:03:49 +0100 (BST)
Received: from localhost (bbs@localhost) by mulberry.psy.soton.ac.uk
(8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id TAA20770; Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:03:48 +0100
(BST)
X-Authentication-Warning: mulberry.psy.soton.ac.uk: bbs owned process doing -bs
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.95.970709185233.20737B-100000@mulberry.psy.soton.ac.uk
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:03:45 +0100
Reply-To: BBS - Behavioral and Brain Sciences <bbs@coglit.soton.ac.uk>
From: BBS - Behavioral and Brain Sciences <bbs@COGLIT.SOTON.AC.UK>
Subject: Representation of Similarities: BBS Call for Commentators
To: Multiple recipients of list COLORCAT <COLORCAT@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on:
REPRESENTATION IS REPRESENTATION OF SIMILARITIES
by Shimon Edelman
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please send EMAIL to:
bbs@cogsci.soton.ac.uk
or write to:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators
are eligible to become BBS Associates.
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________
REPRESENTATION IS REPRESENTATION OF SIMILARITIES
Shimon Edelman
Center for Biological and Computational
Learning
Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
MIT E25-201
Cambridge MA 02142 USA
edelman@ai.mit.edu
http://www.ai.mit.edu/~edelman
KEYWORDS: representation, similarity, visual shape recognition,
categorization, perception, features, invariance, mental models,
affordance, constancy, distal/proximal stimulus, isomorphism
ABSTRACT: Advanced perceptual systems are faced with the problem of
securing a principled (ideally, veridical) relationship between the
world and its internal representation. I propose a unified approach to
visual representation, addressing the need for superordinate and
basic-level categorization and for the identification of specific
instances of familiar categories. According to the proposed theory, a
shape is represented internally by the responses of a small number of
tuned modules, each broadly selective for some reference shape, whose
similarity to the stimulus it measures. This amounts to embedding the
stimulus in a low-dimensional proximal shape space spanned by the
outputs of the active modules. This shape space supports
representations of distal shape similarities that are veridical as
Shepard's (1968) second-order isomorphisms (i.e., correspondence
between distal and proximal similarities among shapes, rather than
between distal shapes and their proximal representations).
Representation in terms of similarities to reference shapes supports
processing (e.g., discrimination) of shapes that are radically
different from the reference ones, without the need for the
computationally problematic decomposition into parts required by other
theories. Furthermore, a general expression for similarity between two
stimuli, based on comparisons to reference shapes, can be used to
derive models of perceived similarity ranging from continuous,
symmetric, and hierarchical, as in multidimensional scaling [Shepard,
1980], to discrete and non-hierarchical, as in the general contrast
models [Tversky, 1977; Shepard and Arabie, 1979].
- --------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive.
Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.
The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.edelman.html
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.edelman
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.edelman
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
yourlogin@yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
To show the available files, type:
ls
Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.edelman
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit
------- End of Forwarded Message