Philosophy and Cognitive Science

1
384.126Logical Foundations ofCognitive Science
Harold BoleyNRC-IIT FrederictonFaculty of
Computer ScienceUniversity of New
BrunswickCanada
Institute of Computer Technology, TU
ViennaWinter Semester 2008/09
Adapted from a course by Kelly Inglis on
Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Philosophy
Dept., University of Hong Kong, 2007-08
2
Optional Readings

• No course textbook. Some readings are available
  online.
• Readings for today
• 1) Theyre made of meat by Terry Bisson
• home.earthlink.net/paulrack/id82.html
• 2) Whats philosophy got to do with it? by Tim
  van Gelder
• www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/tgelder/papers/Whats
  Philosophy.html

3
Topics for today

• What is cognitive science?
• What is the role of philosophy and logic in
  cognitive science?
• The mind-body problem

4
What is Cognitive Science?
Cognitive science is the scientific study of the
mind. How does the mind work? How does the
brain produce intelligence?
5

• Cognitive science is an on-going project
• Started in 1950s
• The term cognitive science was coined in 1973
• Still at early stage of development

6

• Cognitive science is a science
• A central principle is that the mind can be
  understood scientifically
• A materialist approach

7

• Cognitive science is interdisciplinary
• Draws on
• psychology
• neuroscience
• computer science
• anthropology
• linguistics
• philosophy
• logic

8
The six blind men and the elephant

• We are the blind men. The mind is the elephant.

9
Contributions of different disciplines

• Psychology and Linguistics
• study human behavior, how people act, how people
  talk, what people say about their own mental
  experiences. Learn the output of the mind.
• Anthropology
• Learn how the brain evolved. Learn how thinking
  differs in different cultures. Learn what
  thinking processes remain the same in all
  cultures.

10

• Neuroscience
• study the brain directly. See how the brain is
  organized, see the brain in action (on MRI
  scans), experiment on animal brains, study
  effects of brain damage.
• Philosophy and Logic
• Putting it all together
• Formalizing theories about it
• Computer Science
• Model functions of the brain in computer
  programs. Learn how the brain might accomplish
  these functions.
• Visualize (e.g. Grailog), mechanize, and
  implement logics

11
Themes of cognitive science

• What are mental states? How do they correspond to
  brain states?
• How do mental representations acquire meaning?
• Are many of our concepts and mental abilities
  innate, or are they all acquired through
  experience?
• Is human thought conducted through a
  language-like code (possibly innate) such as can
  be modeled in a traditional computer program, or
  is thinking conducted through a connectionist
  neural-network architecture?

12
Themes of cognitive science (cont.)

• Is folk psychology an accurate reflection of
  what is going on in our heads? Or is it a
  highly-distorted simplification?
• What is consciousness? What is the function of
  consciousness?
• What is the relation between unconscious brain
  activities and conscious mental functions?
• Do we have free will? Or are all our actions
  merely results of the mechanical operation of
  physical laws?

13
The Role of Philosophy and Logic in Cognitive
Science

• Philosophy and Logic are sometimes dismissed as
  obscure, meaningless and trivial. How can such
  abstract unworldly disciplines contribute to a
  serious scientific quest to understand the mind?
• What we will do?
• Analysis
• Conceptual clarification
• Asking questions
• Model(and criticize and improve)our theories

14

• What do philosophers and logicians do for
  cognitive science?
• Analyze and evaluate the arguments of others,
  often showing up flaws in another cognitive
  scientists reasoning
• Clear up conceptual confusions, often showing
  that different researchers have different
  meanings in mind when using the same word (e.g.
  consciousness).
• Ask questions, often pointing researchers towards
  new directions
• Propose theories that are not (yet) empirically
  sound, often spurring researchers to do the
  empirical studies that can prove them right or
  wrong.

15

• In Whats philosophy got to do with it?, Tim
  van Gelder lists several roles a philosopher can
  play in regards to cognitive science
• The Pioneer
• Historically
• Science started as philosophy
• Materialism, the basis for cognitive science
• Philosophy of mind, the original cognitive
  science
• Many specific cognitive science theories invented
  first by philosophers
• thought is a form of symbolic computation
• there is a language of thought
• the mind is modular

16

• The Pioneer (cont.)
• Currently
• The nature of consciousness
• How the brain creates meaning
• Do we have free will?
• 2) The Building Inspector
• Questioning the foundations of scientific
  enquiry. Are the assumptions well-grounded? Are
  there other, as-yet-unimagined ways for things to
  be?
• E.g. theory of relativity

17

• 3) The Zen Monk
• Provides society with the assurance that someone
  is thinking about deep, important problems (such
  as the meaning of life), even though the results
  of this deep thought may have no practical
  benefits to anyone.
• 4) The Cartographer
• The philosopher is able to peruse data and
  theories from the various interconnected
  disciplines of cognitive science and help put it
  all together, drawing up a map of what we
  understand of the mind and how it relates
  together, and also placing the current state of
  knowledge in a historical context.

18

• 5) The Dilettante
• Knowing something, but necessarily not
  everything, from all of the different disciplines
  and perspectives available.
• 6) The Archivist
• Following the progress of different disciplines
  from a broad historical perspective.

19

• The Cheerleader
• Seeking out significant theories and lines of
  research and bestowing official philosophical
  approval on them, thus bolstering certain
  fledging new approaches to modeling or understand
  the mind.
• The Gadfly
• Promoting startling new theories or attacking
  established ideas in order to stir up debate and
  spur cognitive scientists on to either defend
  their own theories or consider new possibilities.

20
The Mind-Body Problem

• How can the brain think?
• Two possibilities
• Dualism
• Materialism

21
Dualism

• Two types of stuff or properties of
• stuff physical and mental
• Kinds of dualism
• Substance dualism
• Descartes I am a thinking thing
• 2 kinds of stuff physical stuff and mind/soul
  stuff
• Mind stuff immaterial, no physical properties,
  not detectable by physical means

22
Kinds of dualism (cont.)

• 2) Property dualism
• There is one kind of stuff, but some stuff has
  two kinds of properties mental properties and
  physical properties.
• Mental properties are undetectable by science and
  do not follow physical laws

23
Problems with dualism

• What is non-physical stuff?
• How does mind stuff interact with physical
  stuff?
• The physical affects the mental does the
  mental affect the physical?

24
Problems with dualism (cont.)

• The physical world is causally closed
  (conservation of energy)
• The problem of epiphenomenalism
• Ockhams razor. Why posit mind stuff?
• Mind stuff adds nothing to an explanation of
  the mind

25
Materialism

• Everything is physical. The mind is composed of
  atoms, particles and forces. We are composed of
  stardust.

The only difference is organization.
26
Kinds of materialism

• 1) Identity theory every mental state is
  identical to a particular physical state
• A problem with identity theory alien minds
• 2) Supervenience The mental depends on the
  physical but it is not identical.
• If two people are identical in their physical
  properties, they must also be identical in their
  mental properties. But not vice versa.

27
Kinds of materialism (cont.)

• 3) Functionalism
• Mental states are defined by their functional
  roles
• Functional roles relating to behavior and
  relating to other mental states
• Multiple realizability
• Example a chair, addition, pain
• Problems with functionalism
• Qualia
• Liberalism

28
The Mind-Mind Problem

• What is the relationship between the
  computational mind and the phenomenal mind?
• Computational mind intelligence
• Phenomenal mind experience

29
Grailog Graph inscribed logic

• Course employs Grailog for providing graph
  visualizations of cognitive and metacognitive
  content in logic
• Examples will introduce Grailog as we go
• One class will be devoted specifically to
  Grailog http//www.ict.tuwien.ac.at/lva/Boley_LFC
  S/LFCS-grailog.pdf

30
Optional Readings for next week

• Focus
• Searle, John. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and
  programs. In Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3),
  417-457, available at
• www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/84/bbs0000
  0484-00/bbs.searle2.html
• Hofstadter, Douglas (1981), Reflections (on
  Minds, Brains and Programs, in Hofstadter
  Dennett, The Minds I (1981), 373-382
• Extra
• Sober, Elliott, Putting the Function Back into
  Functionalism, in Mind and Cognition, pgs. 63-70
• Block, Ned, Troubles with Functionalism
  (excerpt), in Mind and Cognition, pgs. 435-440