Information-processing view: (amodal) representations + computations
Types of representations
History
Wundt, Gestalt psychology
Behaviorism (Skinner)
Cognitive revolution: late 50Ős (Miller, Neisser; Chomsky; Simon and Newell)
Philosophical problems
The mind-body problem
Types of monism and dualism
Functionalism, MarrŐs three levels
Emergent properties
Turing Test
The Chinese room argument
The qualia problem: what is it like to be a bat? Mary, the colorblind scientist
Games
Problem space, algorithms
History
Pascal, Babbage (Analytical Engine)
Neumann (ENIAC)
Connectionism
Semantic networks
Model neuron, two-layer networks
Three-layer networks: nodes, weights of connections can change during training
Example: past tense learning (Rumelhart & McClelland)
Pros and cons of the connectionist approach
Language and mind
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic determinism and ling. relativism)
Language of spatial relations
Allocentric vs. egocentric coding
Language-dependent (Brown & Levinson)
Context-dependent (Li & Gleitman)
Theoretical issues
5 universal characteristics
Communication, dynamically changing
Finite elements -> infinite combinations (combinatorial aspect)
Arbitrary symbols combined by rules
Levels of language analysis
Surface vs. deep structure
Primate language learning studies, Kanzi and Savage-Rumbaugh
Language development
Language deprivation
Infancy: phonemic discrimination, babbling
Later: word learning, joint attention, the problem of reference