Introduction to Cognitive Science Lecture

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Introduction to Cognitive ScienceLecture 1
INTRODUCTION

• Joe Lau
• Philosophy
• HKU

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What is CognitiveScience?

• An interdisciplinary science of mind and
  behavior.
• It is a science
• It studies mind and behavior
• It is interdisciplinary
• Cognitive science theories and explanations often
  invoke computations and representations.

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Mental Phenomena

• From the mundane ...
• Perception, language, reasoning, action, ...
• To the abnormal and the bizarre
• Cognitive impairments ( e.g. autism,
  prosopagnosia, Cotard delusion, )
• and non-human species
• Animal cognition

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Find your child ...
Cape Cross, Namibia
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Why computation?

• Assumption 1
• Mental processes involve complex information
  processing.
• Assumption 2
• Complex information processing requires
  computations.
• Conclusion
• Computations are necessary for explaining mental
  processes.

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What is computation?

• Computation is (roughly) a rule-governed process
  which manipulates representations.
• We have strong evidence that the brain is capable
  of carrying out massively parallel computations.

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Mental representations

• MR objects or states in the brain which encode
  information.
• Dont confuse

TREE
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Mundane reminder

• Tree is a word, a representation.
• It is a representation of a tree, a living thing,
  not a representation of tree.

TREE
represents
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Role of mental representations

• Information has to be physically encoded so that
  they can be manipulated.
• Memory / knowledge storing representations
• Thinking causal sequence of representations
• Two examples

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Visual Perception
Topographical representation of visual stimulus
in area V1
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Syntactic Disambiguation

• We shall discuss violence on TV.
• Two interpretations

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Three Levels of Description

• Three (kinds of) levels in describing a
  computational system
• Task what the system is capable of doing
  (capacities)
• Algorithm (software) which computation
  procedures are used
• Implementation (hardware) how the computations
  are implemented

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Why Cogsci is Interdisciplinary

• Horizontal and vertical diversity in mental
  capacities
• The mind can carry out lots of different tasks in
  different areas.
• Each of these capacities can be studied at
  different levels.
• Cogsci and psychology

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Relevance of cogsci

• Scientific understanding
• Education
• Psychiatry
• IT, AI
• Design of computer interface
• Voice recognition, data mining
• Cybernetics

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Necessity and Sufficiency

• Computations might be a necessary part of most if
  not all explanations of mental processes.
• But computations themselves might not be
  sufficient (enough) to explain all mental
  processes.
• Maybe some special features of the mind are due
  to neuro-physiological properties.
• Sleep? Hormonal effects?

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Possibility of AI

• AI artificial intelligence
• Computations might still be sufficient for
  mentality even if some aspects of the human mind
  can only be explained neuro-physiologically.

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Three Problems

• Philosophers three major concerns
• Intentionality
• Consciousness
• Freewill

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Intentionality

• Intentionality aboutness, meaning, content
• Language, knowledge, reasoning, beliefs,
  perception
• The belief that 2gt1 is a belief about numbers.
• To be explained in terms of mental
  representations.

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Phenomenal Consciousness

• Feelings, sensations, experience
• Some mental states are both conscious and
  intentional
• e.g. conscious thinking

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Freewill

• What is freewill?
• (A) Capable of making decisions (B) ???
• Presumably (A) can be explained computationally.
• What more is required?

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Can computers do X?

• Computers cannot have emotions / creativity /
  understanding / humour
• To decide whether computers can have a mental
  state X, we need to
• Identify the conditions required for having X.
• Decide which of the conditions are easy /
  difficult to be satisfied, and how.

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Can computers be creative?

• What are the preconditions for creativity?
• Generating ideas and hypotheses
• Selecting and modifying the useful ones.
• Both cognitive / intentional processes
• No in-principle obstacles?