Under GOFAI and formal logic, the classical view of concepts treats abstraction as information loss.

Judge as of 2007 against the literature in the philosophy and cognitive science of concepts and in classical AI/formal logic. True: standard sources show that the 'classical view' of concepts (definitions by necessary and sufficient features, as used in GOFAI and formal logic) treats abstraction as keeping a few defining features and discarding the rest of the detail, i.e. as information loss. Mostly true: the sources show this as a widely recognised or implicit feature of the classical view, though not always stated in those words. Mixed: some standard sources describe the classical view this way and others describe it in clearly different terms. Mostly false: information loss is a feature of some abstraction accounts, but it is not what characterises the classical view, so the claim overstates the link. False: the sources show the classical view explicitly rejects or contradicts treating abstraction as information loss.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 3 IThe Classical View Smith & Medin, 'Categories and Concepts' (1981) chapter, hosted on a Stanford course page; book publisher not shown on the fetched page · 1981

   “As Rosch (1978) has emphasized, condensing a concept into a single summary greatly reduces the amount of information we need to store.”

2. E2 3 IThe Classical View Smith & Medin, 'Categories and Concepts' (1981) chapter, hosted on a Stanford course page; book publisher not shown on the fetched page · 1981

   “since the concept must contain fewer features than any of its instances.”

3. E3 Concepts Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (archive, Spring 2006) · 22 February 2006

   “In philosophy, the classical theory has been subjected to a number of criticisms but perhaps the most fundamental is that attempts to specify definitions for concepts have a poor track record.”

Smith & Medin's 1981 chapter on the classical view says that condensing a concept into a single summary greatly reduces the information that needs to be stored (E1). It also says that on this view a concept must contain fewer features than any of its instances (E2). That fits the classical view treating abstraction as keeping a few defining features and dropping the rest of the detail. But neither quote calls this "information loss" or ties it to GOFAI or formal logic, and E3 only covers criticisms of the classical theory. So the evidence shows the link is implicit rather than stated in those words.