Lecture: The History, Present and Future of Cognitive Science Flashcards
1
Q
What is the pre history of cognitive science?
A
- 400 BCE: ancient greek philosophers made theories of mind
- At this time science had not yet been invented
- Little was known about the world; these guys philosophized about a whole lot
- This is the prehistory of all disciplines
- Philosophers dominated the prehistory until about 1800
2
Q
Describe the birth of psychology (1800)
A
Psychophysics: relationships between perception and stimuli
- 1875: Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory
- Ebbinghaus did some of the first experiments in memory
- 1890s: Freud and the case-study technique, William James published “Principles of Psychology” which is still often quoted (beginning of psychology as a science)
3
Q
Who was Freud and what was the problem with his case study technique?
A
- Analogy Horse and buggy: Id (the horse is the id, wild and abandoned but controlling the show), ego (is the rider desperately trying to control the horse but failing most times) and superego (is the drivers father in the backseat telling him everything he is doing wrong, society’s standards). Freud was a theorist who collected data based on case studies.
- Falsifiable theories: good scientific theories can be -falsified, the problem with Freud is his theories are not falsifiable, we cant find any data to show that its wrong. Every time you try to disprove a theory and you cant it gives it strength.
4
Q
Describe Behaviourism
A
- Start of methodology and real science of psych. Stimulus, responses are measurable. This is real science according to behaviourists, memories and repression couldn’t be measured.
- 1908: Pavlov’s salivating dogs experiment
- 1913: John Watson’s manifesto for behaviourism published
- Held that we cannot directly study mental processes, only stimulus and behaviour
- In response to case studies and introspection (reflecting on your own thought processes)
- Tried to make psychology like physics
- Radical and methodological: Methodological behaviourism is correlating stimulus and response, not scientifically legitimate to study dreams, decisions, memories, beliefs. Radical behaviourism goes one step farther than methodological behaviourism, not only can we not study that stuff, it does not exist
- Was a like a cult of only behaviourism at this time
5
Q
What started to chip away at behaviourism?
A
- 1930: Jean Piaget (Anti behaviourist. Broke this behaviourism trend, by talking about conservation)
- Problems helping pilots who were already experts
- Pilots who are excellently trained doing something wrong, behaviourists couldn’t figure this out
- Behaviourism started trying to explain difficult things such as language
6
Q
Describe Cybernetics (1900s)
A
- Analog brain modeling (pre-computer)
- Inspired by collaboration of psychologists working with engineers and communications people in war efforts (talking about information)
- Was killed by artificial intelligence, but made a bit of a comeback with neural networks.
- Was replaced by AI (analog vs. digital, e.g., records vs. digital music on a computer. Records are physical matter and are very limited, but digital music is capable of change and bettering.)
7
Q
Describe pre-computers
A
- Charles babbage
- 1821: difference engine. Mechanical calculations
- Analytical engine (never built)
8
Q
What was early computing (1940)
A
- Turing test
- Satisficing (sacrificed optimizing/better choice for the satisfaction of getting something quicker)
- The idea that the mind is kind of like software and behaves like a computer, helped us get out of behaviourism
- 1955: Birth of AI
- Part of why AI was needed for the birth of cognitivism was because before we had computer programs it was hard to imagine how information processors could work
9
Q
What was the birth of cognitivism?
A
- 1957: noam chomsky’s review of B.F. skinner’s verbal behaviour. A book review more famous than the book it was reviewing (helped to kickstart modern linguistics and cog sci.)
- Introduced concepts: Poverty of the stimulus, Universal grammar.
- Chomsky is still alive and working- he came to speak at Carleton in 2010
10
Q
What is TOTE?
A
- Miller, Galanter, Pribram1960 book plans and the structure of behaviour
- Test, operate, test, exist (Iterative problem-solving strategy)
11
Q
Later 1950s: First Neural Network theory
A
- Multiply the input and the weight, gives the symbol a value, and then get an output. You can train the weights, e.g., if it comes out a zero its closer to english and if it’s a 1 its Spanish.
- Killed in 1969 by Perceptron’s book by Minsky and Papert
- They found out it couldn’t even do exclusive or ( e.g., is it a dog or cat). Killed neural network research
12
Q
What happened in 1975ish?
A
- Developmental and computational linguistics
- Fodor’s the language of thought
- Robot
13
Q
What happened in the 1980’s?
A
- Expert systems (make a piece of software behave like an expert, someone knowledgeable is retiring can they be replaced with software? Knowledge engineers put knowledge from experts into a computer format), case based reasoning (reasoning about new situations by looking at specific episodes of past situations)
- Brain imagining (fMRI, PET)
- Neural net revival with backpropagation (became a part of Cog sci called connectivism)
14
Q
What happened in the 1990’s?
A
- AI getting more mathematical
- Psychology’s “decade of the brain”
- Philosophy paying more attention to empirical research
- Expert systems started to decline
- Embodied and situated cognition
- When we see complex behaviour we don’t have to assume there is a complex mental process, it could be simple.
15
Q
What is cognitive science in the present?
A
- Strong Cognitive Science society.
- Conference is growing in size
- Handful of Cognitive Science departments in the world, many more interdisciplinary programs
- Carleton has the only one in Canada
- Neuroscience a big player
- Lots of subdisciplines breaking off
