Where to stop going deeper and deeper into details
First objection against this assertion often is, that that inevitably would necessitate a highhanded decision, at what level of granularity to stop going to even more granularity: If a dog's features area head, a neck, a tail, a torso, and four legs, then its head's features are at least, that it haves two eyes, two ears, a mouth, a nose; the features of the mouth at least are: some teeth, a tongue, spittle etc. The teeth' features are enamel, root, ... and so on. So, where to stop going into more and more and more detail? -- But if an external mind has to make that decision where to make this stop, the approach has to be wrong, since there is no external mind enjoining human being's minds where to stop.Furthermore, if such a decision is performed, i.e. if there is a stop of going more and more into details, then the representation cannot be complete. Thus, the represented entity does not match the real example. If so, the representation has to be treated to be invalid. -- On the other hand, if there is no stop, i.e. details barrier, the representation might have has to be as sophisticated as reality/the universe itself. In other words: It is impossible to represent things following this approach, since noone has the resources to represent the universe as a whole.
True. But on the other hand, everyone knows that humans tend to be fallible and by first hand experience most people also know that there is often one thing or another that they didn't know yet. That humans are able to learn was treated to be something special for a long spell. Additionally, most people made the experience, that children which grew up with small dogs in their neighbourhood confuse a cat with the yet known dogs, when they first experience a cat: They call the cat by dogs' common nick name ("Wau-Wau" in Germany).
Therefore I assume, the representation of an item in the first place consists of only as many details as necessary to differenciate the item from another one. A dog from a human. But, since not ever experienced, not from a cat. When experienced, more features get added to also differenciate the cat from the dog. That is: I assume, that in fact there is a details barrier, but I do not assume that it is given highanded by an external mind. Instead, I assume the details barrier is constituted by the attempt of resources saving: Every represented feature might cause a cost of resources, so any unnecessarily represented feature would cause unnecessary cost of resources. Therefore only necessary features would be stored, resulting in the details barrier.
This rises another question: Is it enough to store not all the features of an item but only the necessary ones? -- I assume: Yes, it is, since reality brings a backup: It even might be enough to represent only features an item has without to store, how these features are ordered -- if you treat a dog as head, neck, tail, torso, four legs, can bark, reality ensures that there is not a dog that has its legs and tail attached to its head and the neck and torso to the tail. So, for first this unordered composition approach suffices. Deeper insight into the Model of Meaning offers ways to represent structure as well.<<
Updates: 20070624: Tagged the posting. Updated the posting style (layout) to my current style, such as using blockquotes when appropriate, more precise word picks, better grammar.
