> it seems to come up with an abstract notion of what a handwritten 9 looks like It does indeed - it comes up with features that indicate what a handwritten 9

> it seems to come up with an abstract notion of what a handwritten 9 looks like It does indeed - it comes up with features that indicate what a handwritten 9 looks like. But it doesn't develop the concept of what 9 _is_. It doesn't say "well, that's a concept I can apply to lots of places. Hey, I wonder what nine nines look like!" It's doing pattern recognition on pixels, which is cool and no doubt what we do to some extent, but it doesn't have that higher level of reasoning.