Textbook chapter 2

Question 1

is science a linear enterprise?

Answer 1

no

Question 2

The human mind is a substance really distinct from the body; nevertheless, so long as it is in the body, it is organic in all its actions. Thus, as the disposition of the body varies, so the mind has different thoughts. René Descartes, 1647,
What does this Descartes assertion reveal?

Answer 2

It epitomizes the idea that cognition can be studied largely independant of its actual physical substance

Question 3

The core ideas driving research in cognitive science are on:

Answer 3

the nature of the functions - the rules and representations that the physical device runs on

Question 4

The modern conception of the mind had many of its roots in:

Answer 4

Descartes
Plato
Many others, then and now

Question 5

We want to understand mental functions in terms of :

Answer 5

Rules and representations, and how these rules and representations might be implemented in the hardware of the brain –> important to keep these levels separate, as Descartes did, because our focus is primarily on explaining brain functions NOT its physiology

Question 6

What is one of the reasons for the methodological strategy of focusing on different levels of analysis

Answer 6

The vocabulary of our explanations and the scope of our theoretical and empirical approaches are somewhat incompatible with the vocabulary (and object) of the physical sciences

Question 7

Cognition has been an object of inquiry at least since:

Answer 7

The Greek philosophers

Question 8

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary (and unified) field, what have been the contributions from other fields?

Answer 8

Philosophy, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, computer science and neuroscience

Question 9

In 1978, when researchers representing several disciplines got together to examine the status of cognitive science, it was then conceived as a science concerned with discovering…

Answer 9

The representational and computational capacities of the mind and their structural and functional representation in the brain

Question 10

Can we now conceive of a unified cognitive science even if it was such a general theme?

Answer 10

Yes

Question 11

Does it matter or not that the science is unified ?

Answer 11

yes

Question 12

What are some of the cognitive science contributing disciplines?

Answer 12

Philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience, computer science, psychology

Question 13

George Miller:

Answer 13

One of the writers of the report of 1978 and a pioneer of the so-called “cognitive revolution” of the 1950’s and beyond

Question 14

George Miller continued to assume that:

Answer 14

There are cognitive sciences, not a unified field

Question 15

Sigmund Freud is the founder of:

Answer 15

Psycoanalysis

Question 16

Thomas Edison is the inventor of the:

Answer 16

Light bulb

Question 17

Cognitive science has two overarching domains of investigation:

Answer 17

Mental representations and mental processes

Question 18

Representations are realized as nodes or symbols carrying:

Answer 18

content or information

Question 19

Processes are operations over:

Answer 19

representations

Question 20

Cognitive scientists conceive of cognitive processing as:

Answer 20

Information processing

Question 21

Asked some of the most fundamental questions of modern cognitive science:

“How can we know more than what is afforded by our fragmentary experiences?”

“How are we able to possess a seemingly infinite knowledge - say in mathematics and geometry - given the limited knowledge we are exposed to?

Answer 21

Plato

Question 22

Plato’s problem:

Answer 22

The fact that our capacities by far outweigh our experiences suggests that what we called in chapter 1 “implicit knowledge” is to a large extent, innate

Question 23

Plato thought that knowledge had to be :

Answer 23

inherited (he thought knowledge would come from “earlier souls”)

Question 24

Exaptations:

Answer 24

characteristics originally adapted for one function are repurposed for another, contributing to human cognitive abilities over time.

Question 25

changes (cognitive or otherwise) might occur as a function of both:

Answer 25

internal mechanism’ exaptations and adaptations

Question 26

The best way to think about how knowledge has got to be hardwired in the human brain over time is to refer to the idea of :

Answer 26

implicit knowledge: by assumption certain properties of the world become part of the natural kinds to which the organism responds

Question 27

hardwired properties are part of what we call:

Answer 27

the architecture of the mind/brain

Question 28

Plato’s “earlier souls” stand today for:

Answer 28

Principles encoded genetically, innate principles underlying cognition - implicit knowledge

Question 29

A key guiding assumption for cognitive science is that several types of implicit knowledge are:

Answer 29

innate

Question 30

What is innate is:

Answer 30

hardwired

Question 31

We began our brief historical account of the object of cognitive science by appealing to:

Answer 31

Plato’s quest for the innate mind

Question 32

Descartes conceived of the mind as:

Answer 32

Possessing knowledge that could not have been acquired by experience
In his system, knowledge had to be put there by go (As we did with plato we can interpret this assertion as suggesting that some knowledge might be part of our biological endowment)

Question 33

Among my ideas, some appear to be innate, some to be adventitious [foreign to me and coming from outside], and others to have been invented by me. My understanding of what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is, seems to derive simply from my own nature. But my hearing a noise, as I do now, or seeing the sun, or feeling the fire, comes from things which are located outside me, or so I have hitherto judged. Hippogriffs and the like are my own invention. But perhaps all my ideas may be thought of as adventitious, or they may all be innate, or all made up; for as yet I have not clearly perceived their true origin.

This is a passage from:

Answer 33

Descartes

Question 34

In Descartes’ meditations is the idea that his only certainty is :

Answer 34

that of a thinking thing, for any other experiences, including that of his own body, may be objects of his delusion

Question 35

We seek to understand brain function (the mind) without

Answer 35

Reducing our explanations to the vocabulary of the physical sciences

Question 36

Descartes pointed towards the correct methodological pathway:

Answer 36

The proper level of explanation for cognition is one that focuses on brain functions; and functions are material, they are “organic” as he puts it

Question 37

Another point of contact between Descartes and current cognitive science is the idea that we can conceive of:

Answer 37

certain faculties as operating autonomously, mechanistically, regardless of our own desires, beliefs or expectations

Question 38

on descartes’ footsteps, we can think about many cognitive systems as operating like

Answer 38

a “reflex” or as Descartes put it, “without any mental volition”

Question 39

The modern way of explaining cognitive faculties in terms of its functions owes Descartes:

Answer 39

the very idea that the mind can be studies to a large extent independant of the physical device - the brain

Question 40

A full understanding of any given process cannot dispense :

Answer 40

with a detailed account of how it is physically implemented, even if we assume that the essence of our beings is in our mental functions

Question 41

The modern development of psychology, from a cognitivist standpoint, can thank philosopher __ for bringing to the fore the idea that mental events are intentional.

Answer 41

Franz Brentano

Question 42

In Brentano’s words, “intentional inexistence”

Answer 42

“intentional” is not equivalent to the common-sense idea of “purpose”, but to the idea that mental phenomena are about things

by “inexistence” Brentano does not mean “non-existence” (see Simons, 1995) but “existence-in”, internal existence

Question 43

The important contribution by Brentano was:

Answer 43

To call attention to the idea that when we deal with mental events we deal with a special class of phenomena, different from actual objects and events, but ABOUT them: that is how things in the world have internal existence

Question 44

According to Brentano, the mental __ to the physical

Answer 44

according to Brentano, the mental cannot be reduced to the physical

Question 45

According to Brentano, psychology can/cannot be studied by the natural sciences

Answer 45

CAN NOT

Question 46

Contrary to Brentano’s beliefs,

Answer 46

cognitive science (our field of psychological investigation) is materialistic and is part of the natural sciences

Question 47

The history of cognitive science is intertwined with:

Answer 47

the history of experimental psychology proper

Question 48

Psychology has its roots deep into:

Answer 48

philosophical work

Question 49

As noticed by Hatfield:

Answer 49

Psychology grew out of philosophy without major discontinuities

Question 50

In Hatfield’s view, psychology is the modern term for what began with :

Answer 50

Artistotle’s natural philosophical account of the psych or de anima (more properly translated into “soul”)

Question 51

If we think about the history of psychology as an experimental field:

Answer 51

There has been some consensus that it began to take shape towards the end of the 19 th century with experiments conducted by Wilhem Wundt

Question 52

First experimental psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany

Answer 52

Wilhem Wundt and his students

Question 53

Regardless of when and where psychology as a natural science really began the modern account of the (re-)birth of cognitive science passes by

Answer 53

the rise and fall of behaviourism

Question 54

Early on, introspectionism was:

Answer 54

The dominant methodology within the “structuralist” or early functionalist school

Question 55

Introspectionists were concerned with:

Answer 55

A science of consciousness relying on subject’s descriptions of their own internal processes during the presentation of particular stimuli

Question 56

Titchener (1912), one of the leading introspectionists regarded this method as:

Answer 56

“the most important means of psychological knowledge” (p. 433) but stressed the need for a theory of mental processes which would account for the introspectionist data

Question 57

Why did the introspectionism prove unreliable

Answer 57

Mostly due to the variability of its results

idea that mental processes could not be restricted to those related to conscious experience

introspections would have to have direct access to the representations that are manipulated by cognitive processes (Titchener, 1909). Instead, most reports were, as Titchener observed, judgments regarding what was perceived

Question 58

Titchener wanted the vocabulary of introspections to be :

Answer 58

pure, free of judgements –> free of the stimulus error

Question 59

Why is it rather difficult to avoid the “stimulus error” when the method is that of introspection?

Answer 59

It is important to stress that we do not have access to perceptual properties (no access to “sensation”) and, thus, we can’t report on them other than expressing what seems to be the products of what we are perceiving.

Question 60

Rather than improving on method introspectionism fell in disgrace, supplanted by a supposedly more “objective” way of observing behavior:

Answer 60

BEHAVIOURISM

Question 61

The idea of “naturalizing” psychology (i.e., studying it as a natural science) by modeling it after physics was an attractive one. However, behaviorism’s attempt at reducing psychological laws to physical laws was, by no means, the right approach. For one, it neglected

Answer 61

internal, mental dispositions involved in S-R pairings

Question 62

“intentional fallacy” (stimulus error)

Answer 62

to attribute to mental representations properties that one knows to be true of the world or stimulus

Question 63

“In a system of psychology completely worked out, given the response the stimuli can be predicted” (p. 167) and “This suggested elimination of states of consciousness as proper objects of investigation in themselves will remove the barrier from psychology which exists between it and the other sciences. The findings of psychology become the functional correlates of structure and lend themselves to explanation in physico-chemical terms.” (p. 177)

Answer 63

Watson’s (1913) words

Question 64

Psychology, or cognitive psychology, anyway, as observed by Fodor (1974), is a

Answer 64

“special” science, one whose principles or laws cannot be reduced (or correspond directly) to laws of physics or chemistry, not even via “bridge” sciences such as biochemistry.

Question 65

Fodor says this because:

Answer 65

most psychological predicates cannot correspond to predicates in physics or chemistry

Question 66

Physics can only tell you

Answer 66

what the properties of the object are, not how it is represented nor why it is represented that way.

Question 67

Cognitive scientists like to talk more broadly about a “cognitive revolution”, which occurred in the second half of the last century, and which was the product of theoretical and methodological shifts in diverse disciplines spanning over several decades. The two most prominent cases are:

Answer 67

linguistics and psychology

Question 68

Chomsky’s (1957) approach to linguistics in the mid-1950’s led to

Answer 68

a mentalistic perspective in understanding language knowledge and language acquisition.12 This theoretical perspective emphasized the need to understand the internal mechanisms that yield the grammatical sentences of a language (implicit knowledge)

Question 69

for Chomsky our linguistic capacities are

Answer 69

innate

Question 70

Skinner held the view that:

Answer 70

language acquisition was in essence, a matter of children imitating—and abstracting away from—the actual utterances that they heard. For Skinner, language use is contingent on the nature of the stimuli that the child gets in the course of “learning” a language

Question 71

Chomsky demonstrated a fundamental flaw in the behaviorist approach to language acquisition, particularly as proposed by figures like Skinner.

Answer 71

Chomsky pointed out that children often produce sentences they have never heard before, which cannot be explained by simple stimulus-response (S-R) mechanisms. This creative use of language suggests that language acquisition involves more than just imitation and reinforcement.

Question 72

Chomsky argued that any attempt by behaviorists to account for this by invoking a process of abstraction from individual utterances would lead to a

Answer 72

a methodological dead end

Question 73

By focusing on abstraction, behaviorists were

Answer 73

returning to the very “mentalistic” psychology they sought to avoid.

Question 74

Abstraction, in this context, refers to

Answer 74

cognitive process of identifying patterns or general principles from specific examples or experiences. When applied to language acquisition, abstraction would involve deriving grammatical rules or structures from individual utterances that a child hears.

Question 75

In psychology, the mentalistic perspective had several waves leading all the way to the “re-birth” of cognitive psychology around the time of;

Answer 75

Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s program.

Question 76

A crucial step towards a unified cognitive science was made by the work of

Answer 76

George Miller and colleagues

Question 77

the first work in psychology to focus on internal mechanisms in a more systematic way:

Answer 77

Miller et al. were interested in what they called “plans”. In their work, “plans” were the kinds of internal representations, a “set of instructions” (p. 32) one must have to guide one’s actions: It is “essentially the same as a program for a computer” (Miller et al., 1960, p. 32)

Question 78

Miller et al. took seriously the idea of combining psychological explanation with what they called:

Answer 78

“cybernetic ideas”, i.e., ideas related to how computers work, how they store and process information.

Question 79

Donders (1818-1889)

Answer 79

an ophthalmologist and physiologist, was perhaps the first to devise an instrument—and an experimental design—that could help us understand internal, non- observable events by examining response times (RTs) to stimuli.

Question 80

n order to trace the workings of mental phenomena, Donders measured

Answer 80

RTs to simple stimuli (such as responding to a spark) and subtracted these RTs from the RTs to when a more complex task was involved (such as making a decision on two sparks presented to either left or right eye). The resulting time was taken to be “the decision in a choice and an action of the will in response to that decision”

Question 81

The shift from behaviorism to cognitive psychology was, thus, fomented mainly by

Answer 81

behaviorism’s own failure to account for a fundamental intellectual concern—human mental processes, which had been under scrutiny at least since Plato and Aristotle.

Question 81

greater time to react to a stimulus suggests

Answer 81

complexity of that stimulus relative to a baseline control.

Question 82

The rise of cognitive science as an interdisciplinary field was also due to (aside from behaviourism’s failure)

Answer 82

many other advances within psychology,14 as well as in other disciplines such as mathematics and computerscience, influenced by Turing (1936, 1950),15 and supported by military grants for studying key cognitive systems such as attention, memory, and human factors (i.e., interaction between humans and machines), in laboratories developed during World War II, in particular in North America and Great Britain)