Information granulation and its centrality in human and machine intelligence

Summary form only given. In a general setting, granulation involves a partitioning of a real or mental object into granules, with a granule being a clump of points (objects) drawn together by indistinguishability, similarity, proximity or functionality. Granulation is crisp or fuzzy depending on whether the granules are crisp or fuzzy. Fuzzy information granulation (IG) is central to human reasoning and concept formation. It is this aspect of fuzzy IG that underlies its essential role in the conception and design of information/intelligent systems. What is conclusive is that there are many, many tasks which humans can perform with ease and that no machine could perform without the use of fuzzy IG. This conclusion has a thought-provoking implication for AI: without the methodology of fuzzy IG in its armamentarium, AI cannot achieve its goals.