Going to the dogs Categories (fox, box, goat, boat) enable a compressed description of diverse things which share some attributes. This enables inductive reasoning about things which have never been seen, e.g., all foxes I have seen are four legged, therefore all foxes are four legged. The same logical structures can then be carried over to reason about things which have never been seen but which nevertheless can take on some mix of attributes of things that have been experienced. New words can be coined for these new categories, and thus new abstractions of reality constructed.

(a) What makes a dog a dog? Why are poodles and huskies both described as dogs even though huskies are closer in appearance to wolves?

(b) How many attributes are essential to a creature being called a dog? (Hint:

consider how much detail is needed in a cartoon representation.) How does the information content of saying one has seen a dog compare to the information content of a photograph of a dog?