cogsci 1 - consciousness and intelligence - lecture 2

Physical Symbol System Hypothesis

Holds that all intelligent behavior essentially involves transforming physical symbols according to rules

Searle’s Chinese room though experiment

argues that a program cannot understand language or meaning, even if it appears to respond appropriately to inputs.

Turing test

A test for determining whether a machine exhibits intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

global neuronal workspace theory of consciousness

proposes that consciousness arises from the interaction of various brain regions that share information globally, allowing for the integration of sensory inputs and cognitive processes.

integrated information theory

a theory that suggests consciousness corresponds to the level of integrated information generated by a system, quantifying how interconnected and unified the information processing is.

neural correlates of consciousness

the specific brain states and processes that correspond to conscious experience, helping to identify how neural activity relates to subjective awareness.

two types of consciousness

Access consciousness, and phenomenal consciousness

the hard problem of consciousness

Why and how is it that sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences?

IIT and the zip and zap technique

zap patients with TMS and zip files onto computer;

found that volunteers who were awake had a “perturbational complexity index” significantly higher than when deeply asleep or anesthetized;

This suggests that the more information that is shared and processed between many different components of the brain in response to a single experience, the higher the level of consciousness

monism

there is only one kind of substance in the universe

idealism

everything - including the material world - is actually mind

materialism

- Everything that exists – including mind – is physical

dualism

Belief in the existence of both mental (e.g., “soul”) and physical substances

functionalism

holds that we need to emphasize function, to understand how things produce their effects

Evidence that network of neurons that broadcast messages widely (GWT) is located in the

frontal and parietal lobes

in repression/disassociation

the prefrontal cortex (executive control) disengages processing in the hippocampus (memory)

removal of large sections of frontal cortex

does not significantly affect conscious experience, though patient may develop problems with emotional control, motor deficits, or uncontrollable repetition of specific actions or words

removal of even small regions of the posterior cortex

can lead to loss of an entire class of conscious content – patients may be unable to recognize faces or to see motion, color, or space

access consciousness

pertains to accessibility of information, i.e., conscious vs. nonconscious information processing;

Prefrontal and parietal cortical areas may play important roles in this

phenomenal consciousness

pertains to how and why we experience the world as we do;

Posterior hot zone may play critical role in this

Multiple Intelligence - Howard Gardner

• Linguistic

• Logical-mathematical

• Spatial

• Musical

• Bodily-kinesthetic

• Interpersonal

• Intrapersonal 

• Existentialist 

• Naturalist 

Freud’s wish-fulfillment theory of dreams

dreams are a safety valve that discharges otherwise unacceptable feelings/desires

Modern psychodynamic view;

Dreams reflect what is going on in our lives, our hidden impulses and desires, and underlying conflicts

Hobson & McCarley’s activation-synthesis hypothesis

Dreams serve no purpose – just side effect of random firing of neurons that serve to develop and preserve neural pathways through stimulation