What is Recognition?

It seems to be assumed that sensory recognition requires feature extraction- the “bends and wrinkles” theories of identification. Feature extractors have been found in the visual cortex at least. So what? What is recognition actually?

Recognition is essentially knowledge of prior experience, memory at its most basic level. ( Knowing that you have seen or heard something before without any further identification.) Recognition is deja vue at its most basic level. On top of this we may have more elaborate responses which are associated with the stimulus: naming, running away, shooting at it etc., but these are not required for recognition.

Higher level recognition processes still don’t necessarily require feature extraction, they don’t require resolution of sensory aspects or variations. What is required is a unique result in the output space, a response unique down to some semi-arbitrary level of resolution of the stimulus. Recognition requires discrimination, not feature extraction or identification. Universals require resolution, counter intuitively, otherwise everything is a particular. The essence of universals is “close enough”.

How do you generate unique outputs without feature extraction? Time could be an important parameter. Time tags on each element in the output space. But what about similarities? Knowing this is like that requires knowing how they are similar, what features they have in common, or does it? Can stimuli, different at some level of information contact or resolution, wind there way through the sensory cortex and wind up at the output side in similar locations without feature extraction?

(Imagine a future dictionary that not only gives verbal definitions but samples, i.e., sensory stimuli to explain or illustrate the word. For red you get the definition plus a flash of red light. For pineapple you get the whole works including the olfactory and taste sensations. What subset of nouns would benefit here?).