Computation Question 1 and 2 PDF

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Computation Questions 1

Jerry Fodor: The Mind-Body Problem 1. What is the mind-body problem? The mind and body problem concerns the extent to which the mind and the body are separate or the same thing. The mind is about mental processes, thought and consciousness, whereas the body is about the physical aspects of the brain and how the brain is structured. 2. What solution is offered by dualism? Behaviorism? Logical behaviorism? Central state identity theory (Type-Token and Type-Type)? Functionalism? Dualism: is a philosophy of the mind that regards the mind as a nonphysical substance. It divides everything there is in the world into two distinct categories - the mental and the physical. Behaviourism: is the philosophy of the mind that denies the existence of the mind and mental states, properties, processes, and operations. It maintains that behaviour does not have mental causes, and as a result, the behaviour of an organism is its response to stimuli. Logical behaviorism: Is a semantic theory about what mental terms mean. It maintains that attributing a mental state to an organism is the same as saying that the organism is disposed to behave in a particular way. Central state identity theory: is a philosophy of mind that equates mental events, states and processes with neurophysiological events. Property of being in a given mental state is synonymous with the property of being in a given neurophysiological state. Functionalism: it is a philosophy of the mind that is based on the distinction that computer science draws between a system’s hardware or physical composition, and its software or program. It maintains that the psychology of a system such as a human being is not dependant on the stuff the system is made of, but rather, on how the system is structured or organized. 3. What is the relevance of a Turing machine for the mind-body problem? The relevance of a Turing machine for the mind-body problem is to say that the mental processes psychology postulates must be the sort that could be carried out by a Turing Machine or we are not allowed to postulate any psychological functions that could not be carried out by a symbolprocessing mechanism. 4. What point is being illustrated with the two Coke machines? The machine analogy illustrates two concepts central to functionalism - that mental states are defined in relation to each other and that functional systems can be multiply realized. Fodor explains this by comparing a behaviorist with a functionalist Coke machine. In both machines,

there are no constraints regarding what they could be made of, that as long as it is capable of having states with the right sort of relations to inputs, outputs, and other states nothing in the machines program requires any specific hardware. In the same way, nothing in our program requires neurons.

John Searle: The Mind-Body Problem 1. What are the four calcitrant or refractory properties of mental states? The four calcitrant or refractory properties of mental states are consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity and mental causation. 2. Define each of the following: •

Consciousness: The awareness that people have about the outside world and about their perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings. Consciousness is the central fact of specifically human existence because without it, all of the other specifically human aspects of our existence would be impossible.

•

Intentionality: It is the feature by which our mental states are directed at or about or refer to objects and states of affairs in the world other than themselves. It does not just refer to intentions, but also to beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, love, hate, disgust and all of those mental states, whether conscious or unconscious, that refer to, or are about the world apart from the world.

•

Subjectivity: Subjectivity refers to a person's perspective or opinion, particular feelings, beliefs, and desires. It is often used casually to refer to unsubstantiated personal opinions, in contrast to knowledge and fact-based beliefs. It is marked by such facts as that one individual can feel their own pain and another individual can not feel the other individuals pain, or an individual can see the world from their point of view, but not from anothers.

•

mental causation: The term “mental causation” applies to causal transactions involving mental events or states, such as beliefs, desires, feelings, and perceptions. Simply waving your hand (a physical event) because you wish to greet a friend (a mental event) suffices for counting as an instance of mental causation.

3. What is the analogy that Searle draws between the relationship between the molecular structure of water and liquidity and the relationship between mind and body? The analogy Searle uses to draw between the relationship between the molecular structure of water and liquidity and the relationship between mind and body is the example he uses about the glass of water in front of him. He explains that each object is composed of micro particles, and each object has certain properties, such as the liquidity of water and the transparency of the glass,

which are surface or global features of the physical system. These surface or global properties can be explained by the behaviour of elements at the micro level. The liquidity of the water is explained by the nature of the interactions between the H2O molecules and how in the case of liquidity, there is no difficulty in supporting that surface features are caused by the behaviour of elements at the micro level. That surface features is both caused by the behaviour of micro elements and at the same time is released in the system that is made up of micro elements, concluding a cause and effect relationship.

Questions about Friedenberg, J. & Sliverman, G. 2006. Introduction. Cognitive Science. London: Sage. What are the differences between structuralism and functionalism? Structuralism studies the human mind and the basic units that can be identified through introspection, whereas Functionalism focuses on more objective forms of study and argues that it's necessary to study aspects of the mind and behavior in terms of function. What is the difference between operant and classical conditioning? Classical conditioning involves associating an involuntary response and a stimulus, while operant conditioning is about associating a voluntary behavior and a consequence. In operant conditioning, the learner is rewarded with incentives, while classical conditioning involves no such enticements. Operant conditioning is learning in which a behavior is strengthened if it is followed by reinforcement and diminished if followed by punishment. Classical conditioning works only with involuntary reflexive behaviors, such as the salivatory response, whereas Operant conditioning is pertinent to any voluntary motor act and is thus far more general. Give a hypothetical or personal example of how the id, ego, and superego might come into play in everyday life (e.g. going to school instead of partying). Id: In line at the salad bar, Nakiso was so hungry that she shoved a handful of croutons in her mouth as she waited for the line to move. Ego: In line at the salad bar, Nakiso was so hungry that she really wanted to shove a handful of croutons into her mouth. However, since her boss was there, she decided to wait another minute or two until she sat down to eat Superego: The cashier at the salad bar only charged Nakiso for one meal instead of two even though she had picked up two. Although Nakiso knew she could have gotten away with only paying for one, but she pointed out the cashier's mistake and offered to pay for both meals. She wanted to be honest and she knew that the restaurant owner and employees needed to make a living.

Computation Questions 2

V. Goel: Sketches of Thought: Chapter 2: From Mental Representations to Computation 1. What is folk psychology? What are the components and structure of folk psychology explanations? What is its importance? Folk psychology is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. It has always known that the way to predict and understand human thoughts and actions is to assign to the agent certain beliefs about the world, certain goals or desires, and some measure of rationality. To assign beliefs and desires to an organism is to attribute mental representations to that organism. The components of folk psychology are intentional and unintentional actions and the structure of folk psychology explanations include intentional vocabulary and the use of such vocabulary makes an onto logical commitment to four distinct and independent factors - persons or agents; set of attitudes or psychological states; propositional content of the psychological states; and etiological appeal to the psychological state and its propositional content. The importance of this concept transcends almost all aspects of everyday life: with empirical studies in social and developmental psychology exploring perceived intentionality's role as a mediator for aggression, relationship conflict, judgments of responsibility blame or punishment. 2. What is the Representational Theory of Mind? What is its relationship to folk psychology? The Representational Theory of Mind differs from the Intentional Theory of Mind and is the weaker version it. The Representational Theory of Mind makes a commitment to the semantic content of mental states but not to the attitudes and takes as its starting point common-sense mental states, such as thoughts, beliefs, desires, perceptions and imagings. Its relationship to folk psychology is their ability to both describe our capacity to understand and interact with other agents. One important way we make sense of other agents' behavior is by attributing various mental states to them and explaining and predicting their behavior on the basis of these attributed mental states. 3. How do we get from the representational theory of mind to the computational theory of mind? The computational theory of mind is related to the representational theory of mind in that they both require that mental states are representations. However, the representational theory of mind shifts the focus to the symbols being manipulated. 4. How does the notion of computation "cash out"/explain mental representations? 5. How do state changes in a physical symbol system preserve semantic properties?.... that is... How do syntactic engines become semantic engines? State changes in a physical symbol system preserve semantic properties symbols are formal syntactic structures, content is a function of their syntax. Since syntax is an arbitrary property of

the world that we use to individuate elements that will be assigned a semantic interpretation, it can be instantiated as some physical property. Given an interpretation of a formal system in which the axioms are true, the purely syntactic rules of inference will guarantee the truth of the theorems under the same interpretation. If the physical properties that instantiate the syntactic properties are preserved and propagated in the state changes of a system, then the semantic properties will also be preserved & propagated. 6. What does it mean to say that the cognitive system is a computational system? Computationalism is the view that intelligent behavior is causally explained by computations performed by the agent’s cognitive system (or brain)...