Midterm Flashcards
Cybernetics
study of loops (“control and communication”) in a system
Cyborg
Organism + artifact that operates one system.
Centrifugal / watts governor
Regulates the speed of a steam engine. Balls go high and stop steam from entering. It then slows down and balls go low allowing steam in.
Homeostasis
A state of equilibrium that is maintained in a system. Maintaining a constant internal state.
Enactivism
Theory which believes cognition is for action. Learning is based on perception and action.
White’s view on symbols and signs
A symbol can be anything while a sign is a symbol that has become transparent (single meaning). White believes humans can only understand symbols and manipulate symbols.
Transparency
Symbols with a single meaning.
Behaviorism
The mind is seen as a black box based on input/output. Classical Conditioning. Stimulus-response.
The symbol and the Cognitive Revolution
The turning point is when we see behavior caused by underlying behavior instead of input/output. The symbol became a unit of mental processing unique to humans.
Computationalism/functionalism
Believes the cognitive process is a computational process. Functionalism believes the mental state comes from the role it plays in a system.
Multiple realizability
A mental state or information process that can be implemented in many physical forms.
Cognitivism
A cognitive theory that studies cognition as a distinct set of processes from outward behavior.
Information Processing
Storing, manipulating, and retrieving information. Our fundamental function of cognition.
Newell and Simon’s General Problem Solver
A theoretical model of how humans solve problems meant to be used to implement artificial intelligence.
Mental Representations
Depends on who you ask. A cognitive symbol that represents something in reality. Our mental capacity can support them.
Representationalism
Our brain only perceives mental images. We create the perception that we experience.
Symbolic Ai
AI research focuses on symbolic manipulation based on rules. Artificial agents use this to solve problems.
Cognitive Simulation
Tried breaking down human tasks into a model and giving rules. However, it had difficulty understanding input when outside range.
Physical Symbol Systems Hypothesis
Believed feeding the computer with enough symbols (facts and rules) would allow them to solve any problem. However, they learned it’s impossible as infinite rules and facts exist.
The Symbol Grounding Problem
We don’t understand symbols as abstract ideas but through our bodily senses. What gives symbol meaning?
The Chinese Room (J Searle)
It fights the idea of functionalism and believes acting identically means it’s a recreation. The Chinese room shows you can imitate but you aren’t recreating/understanding behavior.
How Embodied cognition answers the Symbol Grounding Problem
We don’t understand symbols as abstract ideas but through our bodily senses. An example of Embodied Cognition.
Central tenet of Embodied cognition
Cognition requires a body because they evolved together.
The outfielder problem
Instead of excessive internal schema, we use the world to simplify it to a feedback loop. An example of Embedded Cognition.
The perception/action loop
A feedback loop between acting in the world and perceiving the effect of that action in the world.
The input/output picture
Sense-Think-Act. Relationship between mind and world going in a single direction: world is a stimulus that is processed, which leads to outward behavior.
Enactive Perception
The action plays a fundamental role in the perception
How does enactive differ from the input/output picture?
Action and perception are seen as nonlinear and instead bidirection. Mind and the world connection via the body.
Experiential blindness
People have working input systems, but are functionally blind as they cannot understand input.
Held & Hein 1963
Two cats are in a closed environment where one can’t move and only see. Without personal agency, normal cognition fails to develop. Example of Enactive Cognition.
Cognitive scaffolding
Using external tools to do cognitive work.
Niche construction
Changing(constructing) our environment(society) to help manage cognitive tasks for us. An example of Situated Cognition.
Principle of ecological assembly
Our brains are not only a processor but also a manager. We use external resources to help us solve it on the spot.
Thinking bottleneck
Real-life processes are too fast and the amount of info is too large for a full model. Dawson believes we leverage inherent dynamics between body and world to make faster decisions.
Affordances
Abilities and action that can be taken based on object capabilities
Inverse projection problem
A given stimulus has many possible interpretations. We reduce this with an inference technique informed by world experience.
Ecological approach
Changing our behaviors based on the environment.
Situated cognition
Cognition is based on the situation you are in.
Embedded cognition
Cognition is based on the feedback between us and the world.
