learning and memory

[Karen Huyser]

It seems to me people are confusing very different things in the recent
discussion of learning (one-shot, generalization, etc).  A posting from
Ross Gayler quotes Ernst Dow as saying (in the context of one-shot
learning):

> You may be able to identify the painting you saw before, but could you
> make the leap to recognizing all other abstract paintings?

To have the experience of seeing a painting and to be able to recall
the memory of the experience is one kind of learning and memory.
To be told by someone that the painting is of a type called "abstract" is
to add a category label, another kind of learning and memory.  However,
to recognize another painting as abstract or imitate the painting style
one must form a sufficiently rich concept to be able to make a category
with the label "abstract" and the original painting as one member of the
class.  For most humans, this involves questions, insightful answers,
and many more examples of paintings.  As a completely separate conceptual
skill, consider the learning and concept-formation task that goes on
while doing research.  How does it come about that one day we look at
a set of phenomena in a new way, with new concepts and categories?

There are many different skills that appear under the labels "learning"
and "memory".

Karen Huyser
huyser at mojave.stanford.edu