7. Computationalism Flashcards
Q: What historical context led to the rise of computationalism?
A: Computationalism arose during the Cognitive Revolution in the 1950s, challenging the dominant behaviorist paradigm in psychology. Behaviorism, focused on observable behaviors and dismissing internal mental states, failed to explain emerging empirical findings.
Q: How did behaviorism view internal mental states?
A: Behaviorism, led by figures like B.F. Skinner, argued that internal mental states were beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, focusing strictly on observable behaviors.
Q: What was the significance of the Stroop effect in challenging behaviorism?
A: The Stroop effect demonstrated that internal cognitive processes could interfere with simple tasks, revealing cognitive interference that behaviorism could not explain.
Q: What did Edward Tolman’s study on rats reveal?
A: Tolman’s study showed that rats could learn without immediate reinforcement, suggesting the existence of cognitive maps and internal mental representations, challenging behaviorist principles.
Q: How did Shepard and Metzler’s mental rotation task challenge behaviorism?
A: The task suggested that people can manipulate mental images similarly to physical objects, indicating internal cognitive processes that behaviorism could not account for.
Q: What role did Alan Turing play in the development of computationalism?
A: Alan Turing proposed that machines could perform any cognitive task that humans could, provided they were given appropriate instructions or algorithms, laying the groundwork for the computational theory of mind.
Q: What was the key concept in Turing’s 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”?
A: Turing introduced the idea that cognitive states can be understood as symbols manipulated according to specific syntactic rules, suggesting that mental processes could be modeled computationally.
Q: What is the Turing Test and its significance in computationalism?
A: The Turing Test posits that if a machine can engage in conversation indistinguishably from a human, it could be considered intelligent. It operationalized the concept of artificial intelligence and highlighted the potential for computational models to replicate human cognition.
Q: How did early computers influence the development of computationalism?
A: Early computers demonstrated that complex operations could be performed through simple, mechanical processes given appropriate inputs and instructions, suggesting that cognitive processes might similarly be understood as computational procedures.
Q: How did the limitations of behaviorism lead to the cognitive revolution?
A: Empirical findings like the Stroop effect and Tolman’s rat studies revealed the inadequacies of behaviorism in explaining complex cognitive phenomena, leading to a paradigm shift towards computationalism.
Q: What is the core idea of computationalism (C=C)?
A: The core idea of computationalism is that the mind is literally a computing system, performing systematically interpretable symbol manipulation that is implementation-independent.
Q: How did computationalism redefine cognition?
A: Computationalism redefined cognition as a form of computation, focusing on the internal processes underlying cognitive functions rather than just observable behavior.
Q: What did David Marr contribute to computationalism?
A: David Marr proposed a multi-level framework for understanding the brain, emphasizing the need to understand the computational goals of cognitive processes before delving into their mechanisms.
Q: What are Marr’s three levels of analysis?
A: Marr’s three levels of analysis are:
- The computational level (defining the problem).
- The algorithmic level (the processes and representations).
- The implementational level (the physical realization).
Q: What did Marr argue about understanding cognition through neural components?
A: Marr argued that understanding cognition solely through neural components is insufficient, likening it to understanding flight by examining a bird’s feathers without considering aerodynamic principles.
