How frequently does the eye make a saccade? What, according to Brooks, is the best model of the world?

What is Dreyfuss Heideggerian objection to Nos enactive theory of perception?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Who drew this?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Perception and Action

COGS 200

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Goals for Today

Searles distinction between strong and weak AI. The Chinese Room Argument against strong AI. Churchlands response to Searles argument. Nos version of the enactive theory of perception. Some metaphysical tools for thinking about the mind/ brain relation: supervenience, modality, constitution, identity.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Strong AI
Articial owers Articial snow Articial fabrics Articial respiration Articial intelligence?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Turing (1950) Can a Machine Think? The Problem of Other Minds Our question: How much of our thinking can be explained as being the result of applying rules to structured representations?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

A String Game
Hofstadters MU: MU is a game with strings of symbols. The symbols are M, U and I. There are rules that enable you to add to and take from the string youve currently got. You start with MI.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Rules of MU
If the last letter of your string is I, you can add a U on the end. Suppose you have Mx (where x is any string). You may add Mxx to your collection (where xx is that string twice). If III occurs in any of the strings in your collection, you may make a new string with U in place of III. If UU occurs inside one of your strings, you can drop it.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Two MU questions

Can you get MUIU? Can you get MU?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Rules of MU
If the last letter of your string is I, you can add a U on the end. Suppose you have Mx (where x is any string). You may add Mxx to you collection (where xx is that string twice). If III occurs in any of the strings in your collection, you may make a new string with U in place of III. If UU occurs inside one of your strings, you can drop it.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Hofstadsters pq-
Again, just three symbols: - If x is any number of hyphens, you may start with: x-x- If x, y and z are strings of hyphens, then: if you have xyz you may write: xy -z-.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Two pq- problems

Can you get: -----------? Is there a general rule that determines which strings you can get?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Hofstadsters pq-
Again, just three symbols: - If x is any number of hyphens, you may start with: x-x- If x, y and z are strings of hyphens, then: if you have xyz you may write: xy -z-.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

The signicance of pq-

Interpret as + and as =. The strings in this game are true statements about addition. In fact, every true addition of two natural numbers is a derivable string in this game. BUT - noticing this was an intellectual achievement, distinct from competent application of the rules of the game.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

The Chinese Room

John Searle

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Leibniz Monadology
[I]t must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of gures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, nd only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.
Tuesday 9 November 2010

Responses

Churchlands Response: The Luminous Room The Impoverished inputs and outputs Response

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Enactive Perception
Alva No James Gibson

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Gibsons Ecological Approach to Perception

Perception is not the achievement of an internal representation. Perception is an interaction between organism and environment ... ...insofar as it involves representations, the things represented are affordances.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

The Metaphysics of the Ecological Approach

The ecological approach denies that any state of the brain is necessary or sufcient for perception. It denies that ones perceptual state supervenes on ones brain state. Is it, therefore, metaphysically suspect?

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Susan Hurley
The causal relations between nervous systems and environments are intricate and continuous. There is nothing specially oomphy about causal relations inside the skin, or inside the head, nothing specially capable of pushing and shoving. So there is nothing causally mysterious or inhospitable to materialism or naturalism or realism about relational states of persons. And there is no magical causal boundary around persons. Viewed subpersonally, they are in principle transparent to causality.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Identity
Identity is numerical identity. If x and y are identical then all properties of x are properties of y. ... ... including modal properties.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

If x could be square then y could be square.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Supervenience
Supervenience is a variety of non-causal dependence relation. Facts about x supervene on the facts about y, iff it is impossible for two entities to differ with regard to x, unless those entities also differ with regard to y.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Examples

Appearance facts supervene on chemical facts. Sibling-facts supervene on parental-parenting facts.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Varieties of Supervenience
Facts about x supervene on the facts about y, iff it is impossible for two entities to differ with regard to x, unless those entities also differ with regard to y.

Distinguish different varieties of possibility. Distinguish how many y-facts we include.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Supervenience

Supervenience suggests a way to formulate a version of metaphysically innocent non-reductivism. Minimal non-spookiness: Mental facts weakly globally supervene on physical facts

Tuesday 9 November 2010