Chapter 2 Flashcards
What is the mind body problem ?
Where does the body end and mind begin?
What is dualism?
Mind and body are two different substances
What is monism?
One substance in the world
What is physicalism/materialism? ( monism )
Only reality Is physical reality
What is idealism ? ( monism )
Only reality is mental (think matrix)
What is neutral monism? ( monism )
One substance that’s not physical or mental. Mind and body are both in that element (supposed to be confusing)
Thought experiment from frank Jackson (1986). If someone sees no colour but knows everything about how the brain identifies colours, will they know what pink means? Give a physicalist and dualist answer.
Physicalist: yes! Nothing besides physics and chemistry
Dualist: well… no (may know physical component but not mental component)
What were platos and Descartes opinions with dualism and soul?
Plato: soul was more real then the physical world
Descartes: distinction between between mind and matter are two substances
Pragmatic materialism:
View doesn’t claim mind and body as identical only focuses on observable intelligent behaviour. (Ex. Inner consciousness won’t be physically explained)
Why is everyone not in neuroscience if the brain is all physical?
Brain is soooo complex, we don’t understand much
We cannot fully explain behaviours with just neuroscience
To understand cognition and behaviour, we need to account for:
- Brain
- Body
- Society
- World
Historical approaches to cognition: structuralism
Introspecting on one’s own conscious states to understand the mind.
(Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener)
Use introspection (which participants were trained for) to hopefully discover the basic elements of the mind
BUT! Why does introspection fail to be a valid scientific method. Why? (Two pts)
- Can only be seen by one individual so cannot be verified. Cannot be fully replicated either
- Can only access consciously available processes . Some things we know are implicit. Ex grammer and norms
What is modern structuralism?
Phenomena that can be externally measured
Ex. Think aloud protocol
Describe thought process when doing a task
Historical approaches to cognition: What is behaviourism
Observable stimuli data and behaviours are bias for experimentation
Observing how a stimulus (ex. Bad smell) effects behaviour
From these experiments we got an important idea, behaviour can be learned
What is operant conditioning?
Positive and negative reinforcement to alter behaviour
What is skinners box and operant conditioning?
Skinner box- contain and provide behavioural feedback to animals
- reinforcement learning
He suggested all of our behaviours were based on this
Challenges to behaviourism from Noah Chomsky and Edward Tolman
Noah Chomsky: says people act in ways they’re not conditioned to (ex. “I hate you mommy” even though they’ve never been encouraged to say that)
Edward Tolman: what about latent learning (learning without reward or punishment)
What is the fatal flaw of behaviourism?
Cannot account for the flexibility of the mind
How do machines use “cognition”?
Machines are able to automatically generate functions- take an input and produce and output
Also have algorithms: function for producing the correct output
What is a cognitive revolution?
Mind could be understood as a computational system. Information processing, input: stimuli output: behaviour
What is the cognitive approach?
To test theories of underlying processing of the mind.
Experiment with light bulbs and reaction time.
What is hypothesis driven vs phenomenon driven?
Research in cognitive psychology. Sometimes research is driven by a hypothesis.
Sometimes a random phenomenon is found and looked into
What is applied cognitive psychology? (Signal detection theory)
Signal detection theory: considering people’s choices when under uncertainty
How do we account for variability in behavioural measures?
Trials (clinical trials)= repeated conditions
Individuals differences= variability across people
What is cognitive neuroscience?
Measuring brain activity
What is Behavioural neuroscience?
Behavioural experiments and measures of the brain
What is ontogenetic?
Glowy action potential using opsins
What is computational neuroscience?
Building computer based models to act as an area of the brain or do a task
