Chapter 11

Chapter 11: The shape of space

11.1 Seeing red
11.2 Reasoning about amounts
11.3 Nearness
11.4 Innate geography
11.5 Sensing similarities
11.6 The centered self
11.7 Predestined learning
11.8 Half-brains
11.9 Dumbbell theories

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11.3 Nearness, p 111
...nerves tend to run in bundles of parallel fibers.

Other things being equal, the apparent similarity of two stimuli
will depend on the extend to which they lead to similar
activities in other agencies.

11.4 Innate geography, p 112
The nerve pathways that preserve the physical nearness relation
of our skin-sensors can make it easy for inner agencies to
discover corresponding nearness about the outer world of space.

...one can deduce the global geography of a space from nothing
more than hints about which pairs of points lie near one
another.

11.5 Sensing similarities, p 113
What we learn depends on how we classify.

[Right level of generalization]
...a child who classified each fire just by [its] color [might]
be afraid of everything of orange hue. [...] But if he
classified each flame, instead, by features that were never
twice the same, that child would often be burned.

Beyond the raw distinctiveness of every separate stimulus, all
other aspects of its character or quality [...] depend entirely
on its relationships with the other agents of your mind.

11.6 The centered self, p 114
[...] Freud and Piaget observed that children seem to
recapitulate the history of astronomy: first they imagine the
world as centered around themselves - and only later do they
start to view themselves as moving within a stationary universe.

11.7 Predestined learning, p 115
We acquire our conceptions of space by using agencies that learn
in accord with processes determined by inheritance. [...] This
kind of mixture of adaptation and predestination is quite common
in biology, not only in the brain's development but in that of
the rest of the body as well. How for example do the genes
control the shapes and sizes of our bones?

11.8 Half-brains, p 116
In fact, our brains have many pairs of agencies, arranged like
mirror-images, with huge bundles of nerves running between them.

11.9 Dumbbell theories, p 117
Whenever any simple idea appears to explain so many things, we
must suspect a trick.