Week One: Learning & Cognition

Question 1

Schema

Answer 1

Dynamic mental representations that are constantly updated as we explore more parts of ourselves in relationship to the world.

Question 2

Propositional representations

Question 3

Imagery/Analog representations

Question 4

Sensitization

Question 5

Habituation

Answer 5

An adaptive concomitant so our attention does not fixate on the things that do not pertain to our current trajectory

Question 6

The Turing Test, summarized into simple senteces

Answer 6

If machines could deceive human beings into thinking that it is human then they (the machine) can be called intelligent.

More technically, the criterion for which the machine passes the test on a supernal level, is through the “encoding of all knowledge a human being has acquired over a lifetime (that possess a procedure), matching any text INPUT with an appropriate response.

Question 7

Emotional Valence

Answer 7

Emotional valence describes the extent to which an emotion is positive or negative (whether the feelings generated from them are to us, morally, positive or negative in the colloquial description of positive and negative.

Wikipedia: “Valence, or hedonic tone, is the affective property specifying the intrinsic attractiveness/”good[ness]” (positive valence) or averseness/”bad[ness]” (negative valence) of an event, object, or situation.[1][2]”

Question 8

Cognisers

Answer 8

So what is a cogniser. We know that cognition denotes mental activity. It involves the acquisition and disposal of knowledge congruous with the situation at hand. Therefore we can describe the role of a cogniser as one who first perceives (we pay attention, and associate an encounter with a memory), then we decide (decision-making) through reasoning (inference) which leads to apposite action.

To abbreviate this into simple steps, a cogniser has the ability to generate mental representations (spatial relationships, symbolic/linguistic relationships) through perception and interactions with the world. We reconstruct experiences into memory by first encoding and storing them.

Question 9

Encoding

Question 10

Reconstruction (Representation)

Answer 10

Take the form of mental imagery as well as more abstract forms that embody relationships between concepts (spatial, symbolic/linguistic), which allow for also manipulating them in relationship to one another.

Question 11

Spatial representation

Answer 11

Representations of objects (E.g., Angular identification)

Question 12

Symbolic/Linguistic representation

Answer 12

Objects that may translate into meaning, meaning is typically understood linguistically.

Question 13

Cognition

Answer 13

Reflects the specific mental enterprise of attaining information (sensation & perception) and understanding them (establishing their utility for survival and adaptation).

Denotes the mental activities of acquisition and discharging said knowledge into decision-making and problem-solving

Question 14

A system is cognitive when

Answer 14

According to Haugeland (1991), a representation system (A cogniser) must coordinate its behaviours with environmental features that may not be accessible through the senses in the present.

The manner in which this system thereby adapts is through concretizing perceived experiences as memory and then using these memories as representations for the familiarization or habituation to the environment. Haugeland uses the phrase ‘stand in’ as the concretization of these perceptions as a reference for comportment in the future.

Haugeland (Haugeland, 1991). Haugeland depicts a system as representational just in
case: (1)It must co-ordinate its behaviors with environmental features which are not
always ‘reliably present to the system’ via some signal. (2)It copes with such cases by
having something else (other than the signal directly received from the environment)
‘stand in’ and guide behavior in its stead. (3)That ‘something else’ is part of a general
representational scheme which allows the ‘standing in’ to occur systematically and
allows for a variety of related representational states (see Haugeland, 1991, p. 62)
Haugeland, J.: 1991, ‘Representational Genera’, in W. Ramsey, S. Stich and D. Rumelhart
(eds.), Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Erlbaum, New Jersey, pp. 61-90.
Cited in Clark, A., & Toribio, J. (1994). Doing without representing?. Synthese, 101(3),
401-431