No new reading for Tuesday.

1

• No new reading for Tuesday.
• Write about McKinseys paper (Chapter 4) for next
  Thursday.

2
Narrow Content and Cognitive Science

• Broadly speaking, cognitive science is the study
  of the mechanisms that produce intelligent
  behavior (this includes the study of perception,
  language-use, theory construction, and memory,
  among other things).
• The standard procedure is to construct models of
  the internal process that produces intelligent
  behavior.

3
What Is a Model

• -a specification of basic elements (e.g., neurons
  or atomic symbols in a code)
• -a specification of basic operations of the
  system (say, copying symbols from one location to
  another)
• -a specification of the architecture of the
  internal system (e.g., where things can be
  stored, which parts of the system can communicate
  with which other parts)
• -a specification of the rules or procedures
  (e.g., algorithms) that lead from one state of
  the internal system to other states

4
Where Does Broad Content Fit In?

• Broad content of basic elements (symbols defined
  perhaps only by bare relations of sameness and
  difference) is fixed by causal relations or some
  kind of correspondence to external properties,
  individuals, or kinds
• This allows symbol strings to have
  truth-conditions or correctness conditions in
  relation to the external world

5
Narrow Content?

• In a given individual, the narrow content of a
  symbol might be thought of as the way in which
  the symbol interacts with other symbols.
• But, whether or not this is truly content might
  be a stipulative matter. Its not clear that the
  overall causal role of the symbol is itself
  representational.

6

• Combine Sawyers distinction with the cognitive
  scientific approach two people have the same
  concept iff both have some symbol or other that
  has the same broad content.
• Even when different people share an atomic
  concept, though, that concept may well appear in
  different sets of stored symbol strings. (They
  may have different conceptions.) The differences
  among these sets cause differences in behavior.
  Theres no need to invoke narrow content to
  explain such differences.

7

• These differing roles matter in cognitive
  science they predict subjects differing
  responses, reaction times, learning curves, and
  so on.
• They might also be thought of as narrow contents
  insofar as they produce different self-reports
  about ones own states. But one could also focus
  on the different broad contents of the symbol
  strings, without invoking any narrow content at
  all.

8
Narrow narrow content

• Narrow content is whatever is shared by physical
  duplicates.
• It is a function (in the mathematical sense) from
  environments to broad contents.
• Its thought to be necessary to play the local
  causal role in the production of behavior.

9
Sawyers objections

• -Its not content (functions arent
  representations).
• -Its derivative upon broad content (what is the
  function defined over? broad contents).
• -Its not necessary for an explanatory psychology
  (mechanisms might be necessary to implement
  psychological laws, but psychological laws arent
  about local mechanisms).

10
Epistemic narrow content

• Something like the subjects first- person
  perspective or the evidence that the subject has
  direct access to. For all subjects knew in 1600,
  water could have turned out to be H2O or XYZ.
• Sawyer What form does such evidence take? Is
  there a sufficiently rich, neutral language in
  which it can be stated or conceived of?

11
Thoroughly narrow content

• On this view, all psychological content is
  narrow.
• True propositional attitude ascriptions assert a
  (sufficiently close) match between the sense of
  the expression used to attribute the attitude and
  the content of the attitude.

12
Sawyers objections

• If content is to play a role in psychological
  explanation, it must be shared by different
  subjects. On Segals view, there is too much
  variation in individual narrow content for there
  to be any viable scientific (or explanatory)
  psychology.