Cognitive Science Flashcards
What is Learning at the Sociological Level?
Learning at this level has to do with the learning a culture does (not individuals). For example, in Fiji pregnant and lactating females do not eat certain mammals because the culture learned some women did not do well after eating mammals during and after pregnancy.
What is Learning at the Psychological Level?`
They are concerned with memory, beliefs, and how behavior reflects the two. For example, when a person eats fries before going on a roller coaster ride. They will blame the fries and stay away even though the cause was most likely due to motion sickness. (this is an example of positive punishment - unpleasant stimuli to punish behavior).
What is Learning at the Cognitive Level?
Deals with entities, not observable like psychological learning. There is a theory that thought-process and decision making come from a million different productions which tell you what to do. “If this is the case, do this…” (comes from our Basial Ganglia which is in charge of procedural knowledge). Some productions fire at times while others don’t.
What is Learning at the Biological Level?
This level has more learning to do about the brain, neurons, synapses, and ions. A lot of biological entities and dendrites are connected by synapses (which allows communication). The more you learn, the more synapses spark, and the more links get created. For example, when you eat chocolate and peanut butter together for awhile, your brain will associate the taste of chocolate with the peanut butter.
What is Learning at the Chemical Level?
Involves chemicals in the mouth and etc. For example, kids dislike bitter foods but they eventually grow to love it as they get older. Taste receptors adapt to tolerate foods which leads to synaptic changes.
What is Learning at the Physics Level?
Most things can get reduced to Physics. Some people believe quantum effects are related to consciousness (not taken srsly by most cognitive lvls)
How do we know if a level is legitimate?
If a level can make use of theories for casual predictions using the ontology of that level (vocab/language) they are legitimate. Even if two groups discuss the same content, one does not discredit the other. 2nd group just has to do it better.
Why are Scholars Dismissive of Levels above their own?
This could be due to Reductionism, which means higher levels can be explained by lower levels. However, this doesn’t mean that the lower levels can explain everything that higher levels look into. It could also be the opposite where higher levels ignore the lower ones.
Why do we Need the Sociological Level?
They focus on groups of people.
Why do we need the psychological level?
Some stuff can’t be explained looking at groups. They’re also more involved in experiments and solid data instead of deeper questions.
Why do we Need the Cog Sci Level?
They infer things to explain behavior and focus on what’s going on in the mind.
Why do we Need the Biology Level?
Mental state and processes can’t be explained through Cog Sci alone. You need biological knowledge.
Why do we Need the Chemical Level?
Can’t understand certain things without chemical knowledge. For example, the knowledge of dopamine might make the Cog Scientist very confused without knowing it’s existence, effects, and properties.
What are Proximate and Ultimate Descriptions in CogSci?
Proximate descriptions are more simplistic and direct, while ultimate descriptions try to look at the bigger picture.. Question: Why did you eat? PD = I was hungry and the food looks tasty. UD = Need nutrition to stay alive.
What is Functionalism?
It’s the mental state and processes based on what they do (and how they interact with other thoughts). For example, belief that Justin Trudeau is the PM is what it is based on how your mind processes that works in the cognitive system and NOT how the brain or neuron pattern looks like for this thought.
