Lecture 5 Fields Flashcards
Historically core fields
Psychology
Philosophy
Computer Science
Linguistics
Secondary Field
Education
Anthropology
Psychology
The study of natural minds, (takes up about 60% of the fields) study how living beings function and how they think. It does this through studies to support or disconfirm ones Theory.
Cognitive Psychology
Broad field of basic research in human internal mental processes
Computer Interaction (HCI)
How people psychologically interact with artifacts (human- designed things), such as user interfaces
Evolutionary Psychology
How our evolutionary history has
made our minds what they are
Psycholinguistics
Studying language with experiments( how do we understand and come up with language)
Comparative Psychology
Animal cognition, sometimes
comparing it to human
Psychology: critiques
Not enough model building especially with computers.
Not enough theory, there are no theoretical psychologists.
Methodologically limited ( wont embrace methods of other fields)
Psychologists tend to disregard the complexity of language.
Philosophy
Usually in to big questions, what certain concepts and words mean.
Methods involve thinking and writing( thought experiment, conceptual analysis, argumentation, theorizing from evidence from other fields and common observations.
Philosophy of Mind
- Can machines be conscious?
- Functionalism vs. identity theory
- Qualia (subjective experience)
- Which animals feel pain?
Philosophy of Science
• How should science be practiced? • How is science practiced? • Philosophy of psychology (the science) • What mental categories are scientifically legitimate?
Philosophy of Language
• How do words connect to meanings?
• How can a word refer to something
that does not exist?
Philosophy Critiques
They don’t pay enough attention to empirical study. They sometimes think that the existence of a word implies the existence of its intended referent. They are concerned with too many unimportant problems.
Computer Science
Characterized by:
• Subject Matter: How mental processes can work
on machines, and how computers can effectively
interact with humans
• Methods: building and
testing computer programs
To look at minds as a program/ software
Artificial Intelligence
Building mental processes with computer programs.
To understand and can create mental system.
(Most concerned with building functional systems not so much focusing on the Human mind.)
Artificial Intelligence: Critiques
Insufficiently concerned with natural
intelligence
• AI researchers usually don’t care if their programs
work the same way that people or animals do
• Even those doing psychological AI don’t know enough about empirical findings, or don’t try to build in the mistakes people make
Overly optimistic about the future of AI
Fail to understand the necessity to implement human mistakes in their systems
Linguistics
Characterized by:
• Subject Matter: human spoken or signed natural language
NOT computer or animal languages
NOT (for the most part) written language
• Methods: sound analysis, grammar creation, corpus
analysis
Interested in how language works, how grammar works with the brain more descriptive rather then prescriptive), especially uncovering grammar rules we don’t even think about.
Linguistic: Critiques
They build models of language and then don’t know what to do with them. They are not familiar with, nor do they try to interact with, other findings about the mind. They only concern themselves with one part of cognition.
Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience is characterized by
• Subject matter: how the brain processes information
and creates cognitive processes. The biological
functions of mental phenomena.
• Methods: neuroimaging, single -cell recording,
anatomical observation, computer modeling,
pharmaceutical effects, genetic analysis, etc.
Overlaps with biological and physiological psychology, neuropsychology, and the rest of neuroscience
Neuroscience Critiques
Underestimate the complexity of language and other thought processes.
Completely unable to shed light on many of the processes everyone else is interested in.
They tend to be dismissive of other approaches or reductionist
Lean too far toward nature on the nature/nurture
debate.
Education
Really hard to do, very well. So many factors that impact education, very hard to study.
Characterized by:
• Subject matter: how people (usually children)
learn, and how we can design education to help
them effectively do it.
• Methods: Naturalistic observation of case studies,
empirical studies
Education Critiques
Case studies are worthless or close to it.
It’s too applied and not telling us enough
about basic cognitive processes.
The controlled studies are poorly done.
(To their credit, they’re very
expensive and hard.)
They only deal with one
part of cognition.
Cognitive Anthropology
How culture and is taught and spread communally.
Characterized by:
• Subject matter: Social organization, human culture,
enculturation, cultural change and transmission,
shared knowledge, distributed cognition, situated
cognition
• Methods: Field work, ethnographic observation and interviewing. Emphasis on qualitative study.
Anthropology includes things like archeology.
Cultural anthropology includes cognitive.
Anthropology Critiques
Tend to lean too far on the nurture side of
the nature/nurture debate.
Research is too qualitative. ( not empirical study, requires skepticism)
Research is too expensive.
Research does not generalize enough to be
useful.
They are “splitters” rather than “lumpers.”
(meaning lumpers put things together making large generalizations, splitters tend to separate general knowledge.)
Cognitive Science
Subject matter: Study of minds and
thinking, especially at the information
processing level.
Methodological Definition: Applies methodologies from multiple disciplines to multiple problems from
those disciplines.
