md2 Flashcards
Semantic Externalism
-movement tracing back to 1960-70s
-words get meaning from casual chains connecting us to things in world
-shakespeare, caveman, scientist all mean the same thing when they say “water”
Semantic Internalism
-words get meaning from images/descriptions that speakers associate those words with in their minds
Sematic Externalism and Scepticism; Brain in a Vat (Hilary Putnam)
-Hilary Putnam 1981 argued that “I am now a brain in a vat” cannot be understood by anyone who is actually brain in a vat
-inspired immediate backlash
-someone just placed in a vat could understand this sentence
Matrix Movie
-1999 Science fiction
-Neo’s life is simulation; war against machines have been lost
-Humans now trapped in VR pods
-Red pill (leave matrix) or blue pill (remain in matrix)
David Chalmers BIV
-Brain in vat is better off
-everyday beliefs about surroundings are true; not actually being deceived
-when BIV talks about ‘small book’ actually referring to subroutines in supercomputer; BIV is still right to say they are holding a book
Defense from Skepticism
-avoid skeptics; no point in arguing
-diagnose the appeal of skepticism; good thing (suspending judgement temporarily) taken too far
Reliabilism
-popular view of justification
-a belief is justified if it’s produced by a reliable psychological process (wishful thinking vs. standard perceptual processes, good reasoning, introspection)
Implicit Bias
-automatically activated, unconscious attitude or stereotype
Implicit Association Task (IAT)
-Nosek et al. examined 700,000 subjects on race-evaluation IAT
-over 70% of white participants more easily associated black faces with negative words (e.g., bad, war) and white faces with more positive words (e.g., good, peace)
Colour memory/perception
-Memory of colour effects perception of colour
-bananas appear slightly yellow even if achromatic
Cognitive Penetration of Perceptual Experience (+example)
-Occurs when cognitive states (e.g., belief, desires) influence content of perceptual experience
-e.g., people more likely to misidentify object as gun if primed with face of black man
Moral Judgements
-arbitrary factors can alter how we make judgements without our knowledge
-e.g., how immoral/moral is sex between 1st cousins?
Plato and Theory of Recollection (Anamnesis)
-in Plato’s Meno, Socrates attempts to illustrate that uneducated boy “already knew” how to find diagonal of square by asking a series of question
-Plato’s theory of knowledge: learning is actually recollection
-nativist
Direct Priming Effect
-when required to complete fragments of recently presented words and of new words, subject succeed more often with presented words
-experience of stimulus primes brain so that further experience W stimulus is processed faster
Implicit memory/knowledge (formation and examples)
-performance on task is facilitated in absence of conscious recollection
-non-declarative memories
-form though automatic processes and bypass conscious encoding track
-procedural memory, perceptual representation system (perceptual priming), classical conditioning, nonassociative learning
Explicit memory/knowledge
-revealed when performance on task requires conscious recollection of previous experiences
Species knowledge
-information acquired/contained within entirety of species
-e.g., literature, science
-individual (but not all) portions accessible to individual at any given time
Semantic memory
-“i know that” – knowing about things learned in past
-memory for word knowledge
-timeless; does not rely on ‘mental time travel’
-does not involve conscious recollection
Episodic Memory
-“i remember that” – remembering the past
-memory for episodes distinct in time and space
-associated with ‘mental time travel’
-conscious recollection of personal past experience
-based on 1st person experience
Explicit knowledge and brain
-medial-temporal/frontal lobes
-hippocampus: spatial memory/recognition
-rhinal cortex: object recognition
-mediodorsal nucleus: Korsakoff’s symptoms
-Basal forebrain: alzheimers symptoms
Mhrb
Hippocampus size
-larger in food storing birds than non-food storing birds
-larger in taxi cab drivers; volume increases with more time on job
Basic factors of memory as knowledge
-encoding: building a representation of new knowledge, ‘learning’
-storage: maintenance of that knowledge representation
-retrieval: accessing pre-existing knowledge, ‘remembering’
H.M, 1953
-1953, 27 yr old man H.M. underwent brain surgery to alleviate epilepsy
-had around one generalized convulsion every week and a number of partial convulsions daily
-medications weren’t working
-EEGs suggested convulsions originated from both temporal lobes
-underwent bilateral medial temporal lobectomy
H.M Bilaterial Medial Temporal Lobectomy
-unilateral medical temporal lobectomy had proven to be effective in pts with epileptic focus on 1 medial temporal lobe
-both lobes removed in H.M.
-involved removal of medial portion of both temporal lobes, hippocampus, amygdala, and adjacent cortex (rhinal cortex)
-succesful in terms of epilepsy; generalized convulsions almost completely eliminated, partial seizures greatly reduced
-IQ increased from 104-118
-resulted in severe amnesia
H.M. Post-Surgical Assessment
-normal, bright, good language and social skills
-could discuss childhood, teens
-lost ability to form new memories that he could consciously recall until death at age 82
-favourite uncle died – relived grief each time he heard news
-memory for events contained little after 1953
Tests to assess H.M.’s Amnesia
-mirror drawing test
-pavlovian conditioning
Mirror-Drawing Test
-showed that HM’s anterograde amnesia was not for all types of long-term memories
-performance improved across days despite never remembering having done the task before
Pavlonian Conditioning (HM)
-tone sounded before puff of air administered to one eye; eventually tone elicits eyeblink
-learned the task – response still present 2 yrs later
Implicit Knowledge and Brain
-amygdala: memory for emotional significance of experience
-inferotemporal cortex: role in storing memories of visual/auditory patterns
-cerebellum: stores memories of sensorimotor skills
Aic
Sensory Habituation
-Reduces consistent non-informative sensory experiences
Neurological Memory
-Hebb rule: if axon of presynaptic neuron is active while post-synaptic neuron is firing, synapse will be strengthened (fire together, wire together)
-when cell persistently activates another nearby cell, the connection between the two cells becomes stronger
Brain states
-Network based activation appear correlated to cognitive states; not location dependent
-specific patterns of activation relate to specific perceptual experience and behaviours
-“Brain makes decisions before you even know it”
John Locke’s Tabula Rosa
-minds are ‘blank sheets’ when born
-all ideas acquired through experience
-empiricism
Nativism and Empiricism
theoretical frameworks for the character of the psychological systems that underlie the acquisition of psychological traits
Empiricism (mechanisms, example)
-few distinct psychological mechanisms for acquiring psychological traits
-explain psychological traits by appealing to domain-general mechanisms like statistical learning routines, memory retrieval, attentional mechanisms, associative connectivity
-traits are result of environmental conditions and individual learning histories
-e.g., behaviorist associative learning processes (classical and operant conditioning)
Empiricist Origin of Traits
-acquisition of all psychological traits depends on only a few psychological systems: empiricist acquisition base
-e.g., psychological mechanisms for learning language are same as those for learning about object permanence
Empiricist acquisition base and Nativist acquisition base
-psychological systems responsible for psychological traits
Nativist origin of traits
-many distinct types of mechanisms and processes for acquiring traits
-domain-general and domain-specific systems; nativist acquisition base
Organization of Learning (1990)
-C.R. Gallistel’s nativist book
-credits animals with specialized computational systems responsible for navigating, foraging
-systems allow animals to learn such things as way home, optimal strategy for obtaining food in given region
Nativism: Poverty of Stimulus Argument
-information in a learner’s environment is inadequate to account for an acquired psychological trait given only general-purpose learning systems
Arguments against Poverty of Stimulus
-not enough evidence to establish that environment is as impoverished as they claim
-suggest that general-purpose learning systems may be capable of accomplishing learning task
-e.g., can easily determine extensions of curry even if never seen before, but we don’t have a curry-specific learning system
-real stimulus is not impoverished; squirrels may learn behaviour from other squirrels, even if exhibiting this behaviour in isolation
Poverty of Stimulus evidence
-isolation experiments
-children language acquisition
Isolation experiments
-subjects removed from all stimuli related to acquired trait
-Irenaus Eibl-Eibestfelt: showed squirrels will exhibit burying/digging behaviour in isolation when given nuts
Children language acquisition
-children go through stage of adding extra “wh” word to sentences
-speech exhibits systematic and predictable pattern with wh word in specific location
-do not insert extra wh- phrases or use extra wh- words when extracting from infintival clauses
-german, english, and children of other languages do this
Why psychological traits appear in impoverished states
-traits may be so important that they cannot be left to less reliable means of acquisition
-may even be multiple specialized systems if important enough; e.g., chicks identifying mom
-allows rapid acquisition of trait
-less cognitive effort required
Chicks recognizing mother
-very important psychological trait
-multiple independent systems
-system of detecting large moving objects
-system that relies on shape template
Argument from Animals
-plethora of specialized learning systems in animals; some shared across species, others unique
-humans are also animals
Animal specialized learning systems
-developing mental maps of environment
-plotting sun position (date/time)
-avoidance of poisonous food
-selecting foraging locations based on rates of return
-signalling presence of predators
-locating/building new nests sites/nests
Argument from animals evidence
-animal food aversion
-dead reckoning
Animal food aversion
-rats who become ill after drinking flavoured water will avoid flavor, ignoring other auditory/visual clues
-rats punished via shock learn visual/auditory clues, but punishment must occur within seconds of ingesting water; different psychological systems
-some birds link illness with colour
-vampire bats don’t form taste aversions
Dead reckoning (and evidence)
-desert ants get back home by following straight line back to nest; environment is devoid of landmark clues
-mechanism keeps track of direction changes and distance covered
-if ant displaced, follows corresponding path in terms of distance/angle and then randomly search vincity
-if ant’s legs are made shorter or longer, ant will automatically overshoot/undershoot distance to nest
-found in variety of animals, including humans
Object Permanence
-Jean Piaget
-psychologists believed that this ability was built over time, must be learned
-newborn chicks have object permanence; do not pass through Piaget’s stages
Face perception
-faces are processed differently; thatcher effect, faces in clouds
-fMRI studies in humans show activation in fusiform gyrus (fusiform face area) in response to faces
-special neurons in macaques respond to faces
-infants have preference for faces
Prosopagnosia
-face recognition impairment
Nativist view of face perception (and evidence)
-human (and other animals) brains contain info about face structure and have biases that lead to preference for faces
-evidence includes infants, neural machinery, evolutionary considerations
Empiricist view of face perception (and evidence)
-constant exposure to faces and salience leads general learning mechanisms to develop face perception ‘expertise’
-evidence is that the fusiform face area responds similarly when people are trained to perceive “greebles”
Greebles
-structures that are shaped somewhat similarly to faces
Objection: Nativism is unproven
-Nelson Goodman (1967): Short of isolation experiment with actual infant, nativism isn’t worthy of discussion
-empiricism is default view, should be rules out before considering nativism
-empiricism is preferred for being more simple, less costly
Counterargument: Nativism is unproven
-dispute is about structures/processes that subserve acquisition of traits
-argument is based on best explanation, not on proof
-nativism is very plausible; to ignore, strong argument is required
-may be more computationally parsimonious (e.g., language acquisition)
-computational load may be lighter due to specialized systems
-more parsimonious in terms of evolutionary continuity
Objection: Nativism is unscientific
-theoretical laziness; does not explain origin of traits, just blames innate structure
-nativism is welded to field of evolutionary psychology; ‘so-so’ stories
-nativism is anti-empirical
Counterargument: nativism is unscientific
-isn’t about identifying traits, but systems which can ultimately explain what empiricism cannot
-Chomsky and Fodor were unenthusiastic about evolutionary approaches to mind
-researchers were able to predict which species would acquire taste aversions due to evolution/adaptation
Objection: nativism is overly intellectualist
-mature behavioural capacities involve simple cognitive traits or none at all
-nothing more to mind than perception and action-governing mechanisms (e.g., Rodney Brooks)
-perception directly leads to action
Counterargument: Nativism is overly intellectualist
-Empiricists have overlooked evidence
-empiricism under-intellectualizes the mind
-e.g., bee-dance system of communication, ants selecting nests
Bee dance system of communication
-bees process info about movements of other bees with other info (e.g., food quality) to determine whether to leave nest, which direction/distance, all while processing change in sun position
Ants selecting nests
-selective to number of factors, e.g., floor size, ceiling height, entrance size, darkness level, hygeine level, proximity of hostile ant groups
-exhibit stable, ranked preferences for these factors; cannot be learned given infrequency of use
Objection: Nativism is a confused doctrine
-nativists claim that psychological environment has nothing to do w/ environment
-innateness is ill-defined, can’t do meaningful work
Counterargument: nativism is a confused doctrine
-environment is not independent; question is what learning systems interact w/ environment to produce traits
-purpose of nativism: domain-specific and domain-general systems
-not about innateness, about acquisition base
-innateness need not be defined; latin pill
Psychologically primitive
-traits that are not acquired via psychological processes
-account of innateness called primitism
Latin pill
-hypothetical pill that implants knowledge of latin without any intervening psychological processes
-not innate nor learned
Radical concept nativism
-Jerry Fodor
-gave nativism about conceptual system a bad name
-virtually all concepts corresponding to individual words (even ukelele) are innate
-is not plausible
Origin of human concepts
-significant amount of concepts are part of acquisition base, not as many as Fodor suggested
-these concepts are part of systems that comprise basis for acquiring further concepts
-nativists should embrace large range of concepts acquired through learning, even empiricist learning systems
Concepts part of Nativist acquisition Base
-unlearned
-objects, casuality, space, time, numbers, goals, functions, agency, movement, direction, events, sex, predators, danger, status, dominance, morality
Nativist learning theories
-cognitive sub-systems
-domain-specific and general-purpose systems
Learning: Cognitive sub-systems
-rely on specialized acquisition systems for certain types of concepts
-acquisition system provides template for concepts of this type
-adctivated only in certain conditions, fill in template according to experiences of learner
-e.g., domain-specific aquisition of concepts of animals in humans
Theory of Humans acquiring concepts of animals
-learner is sensitive to cues that item is new animal
-new representation produced in presence of cues
-perceptual info is recorded in conncection w/ representation, controlling subsequent activation
-accompanying disposition to treat other items as animal only if they have same essential nature
-essentialist thinking about animals (knowing that perception may be untrue) is robust across cultures, occurs early in development, may emerge with little parental support
Nativist learning: Domain-specific and general-purpose systems (and example)
-uses both general-purpose and domain-specific systems
-exceeds function of individual systems
-Pascal Boyer’s account of origins of many religious concepts
Religious concepts
-Pascal Boyer
-concepts draw upon small number of specialized systems that embody core intuitive theories, such as folk psychology, biology, physics
-all part of nativist acquisition base
-deviations from theories cause new religious concepts
-deviations are unexpected and hence remembered and passed on to others
-depends on experience and socialization
Factors of language learning
-inscrutability of reference: man points to rabbit and says Gavagai! What does he mean?
-acoustic barrage: making right sounds, breaking sounds up, is gavagai one word or a string of words?
-variability in speech: hot vs. HOT!!!
-linguists have yet to map out grammar of single language, but toddlers master language in few years
Empiricist theory of Language
-behaviourist psychology (Watson, Skinner)
-argue that child learns words through imitation and reinforcement
-utterances are tied to ‘stimulus properties’/features of object/event being observed
Chomsky’s critique: Empiricist theory of language
-many stimuli we refer to don’t impinge on our senses (e.g., moscow, idea)
-what causes me to utter something is better explained by what is in my head rather than stimulus properties
Nativist theory of Language: Innate grammar
-Chomsky
-humans possess capacity for language, activated by minimal environmental stimuli
-Language Acquisition Device is encoded and contains informational constraints that enable language acquisition
-very controversial
-supported by poverty of stimulus, universal syntatic rules/principles
Nativist argument child for acquiring language
-children are not exposed to enough data to learn correct language rules if starting from scratch
-if children were empiricist learners, they would not reliably arrive at correct grammar; yet they do
-children are not empiricist learners
Children and turning statements into questions
-turning statements into questions (e.g., ecuador is in south america»_space;> is ecuador in south america?)
-auxiliary verb from main clause must be moved to front of sentence; child must have concepts for main clause and auxiliary verb
-auxiliary verb must be differentiated from lexical verb
Universal language rules
-Chomskyans have set out to discover whether there exists a feature that all languages share
-this would support idea that there are genetically endowed, innate rules guiding language acquisition
Language principles and parameters
-Chomskyans
-universal rules of grammar to all languages: Principles
-certain features that differ between languages only narrowly vary: Parameters
-principle examples: trace erasure principle, projection principle, empty category principle
-parameter examples: null subject parameter, nominal mapping parameter, ergative case parameter
Principle of structure-dependency
-Grammatical processes function on constituents (word sequences functioning as units, such as phrases and clauses) of sentences, not single words
-linear relations not used in sentence structure
-process sentences in chunks, grammatical rules require that we know how to properly chunk sentences into constituents
Perameter of head directionality
-languages differ in whether head of phrase comes first or last
-head is subject of phrase
-The bee from outside flew into the classroom last thursday
-English is is ‘head-initial’ language, head comes first
-japanese is ‘head-final’ language, subject of verb phrases comes last
