| What does it mean to say that someone
knows a concept? What kinds of capabilities do we expect from
someone that knows a concept? There are a variety of ways to
answer this question. The figure below lists a set of capabilities
that one might expect to be available to a person who knows a
concept. The first is the abilitiy to correctly recognize whether
a particular example is or is not an example of the concept in
question. I have referred to this procedure as Identify.
A second is the ability to Generate positive and/or negative
examples of a concept. And, finally, there is the ability to
explicitly State the definition of the concept. |
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| This provides a characterization of what
it might mean to "know" a concept; and it also provides
a basis for deciding when two different entities...say a "teacher"
and a "learner" have the same concept. This
is indicated in the lower section of the above figure. Notice
that I have not tried to define the notion of identity between
C and C'. Rather I have been content to focus on the conditions
under which we might characterize C and C' as indistinguishable.
And, as you can see, the definition depends on seeing whether
or not the answers of the two concept holders are or are not
the same. |
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