I think the paper says that while there do exist dog neurons that carve out the difference between a "Boston terrier" and a "terrier", those neurons actually only get to carve that fine line because they're part of a whole flow control system where activation has already flown through much coarser grained discriminator neurons (like a "V" neuron), including sometimes through the negative side of activations, before the terrier discriminator ever played a role.
So, if you try to draw a circle around the "dog" part of the network, do you circle the Boston terrier vs terrier neuron only? You'll be missing most of the information that represents the "dog" category and that same dog category is also involved in shunting activation away from things that are toward-being-a-dog in whatever sense is being discriminated in that moment.
So, if you try to draw a circle around the "dog" part of the network, do you circle the Boston terrier vs terrier neuron only? You'll be missing most of the information that represents the "dog" category and that same dog category is also involved in shunting activation away from things that are toward-being-a-dog in whatever sense is being discriminated in that moment.