Syntax

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Syntax

• Linguistics Syntax is the study of the rules, or
  "patterned relations", that govern the way the
  words in a sentence come together (Wikipedia)
• Computer Science The set of allowed reserved
  words and their parameters and the correct word
  order in the expression is called the syntax of
  the language (Wikipedia)

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Syntax cont.

• Philosophy Semantic properties are the
  meaning-involving properties of words,
  sentences and internal representation. Syntactic
  properties are the nonsemantic properties (Clark)

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Andy Clark

• Chapters 1-3

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Propositional Attitude Psychology (PAP) Folk
Psychology (FP)

• Pairs mental attitudes (believing, hoping,
  fearing, etc.) with propositions (that it is
  raining) to explain intelligent behavior.

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Why did Cindy bring her umbrella with her when
she went out?

• Cindy believed that it was raining
• Cindy believed that an umbrella would protect her
  from the rain
• Cindy wanted to be protected from the rain

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Questions

• What are mental states?
• Are mental states explicitly represented in the
  mind?

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First Answer

• Mental states are identical to Brain States (J.
  J. C. Smart)
• Problem Leibnizs Law
• If AB, then ?x(Ax?Bx)

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Simple Objection

• P1) Mental states are accessible to
  introspection.
• P2) Brain states are not accessible to
  introspection
• C) Therefore, by Leibnizs Law, mental states ?
  brain states

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Better Objection

• Mental states are multiply realizable. For
  example, pain can be realized differently in
  humans, mollusks, and Martians.
• Dont look at the specific neurons and wetware,
  nor to the surface behavior, but to the inner
  organization of the system.

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Argument

• P1) Both mollusks and Martians can be in pain
• P2) Neither mollusks nor Martians can be in
  brain state B.
• C) Therefore, pain ? brain state B

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Types vs. Tokens

• Token A non-repeatable concrete occurrence.
• Type A kind something that is repeatable.
• 4
• 4
• 4

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Second Answer

• Mental states are functional states (specified
  by inputs and outputs to some system)
• Minds are the operation of a formal,
  computational system implemented in the meatware
  of the brain. Cognition is a program-level thing.

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Why Program Level?

• Zenon Pylyshyns Car Crash Someone witnesses a
  crash and runs to the phone to dial 911. The
  neural story doesnt tell the truth.
• Daniel Dennetts Stockbroker The physical
  story doesnt explain that the stock transaction
  could have occurred by fax or e-mail.

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Turing Machines

• Imaginary device consisting of an infinite tape,
  a simple processor (a finite state machine) and a
  read/write head.

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• Tape Data storage
• Processor (finite state automaton) Remembers
  what state the computer is in and what symbol was
  just put in.
• Read/Write Head - Read a symbol off the tape,
  move itself one square forward or one square
  backward, and write on the tape

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Stuff Concepts vs. Functional Concepts

• Stuff Concept
• Water H2O
• Gold Element with atomic number 79
• Functional Concepts
• Money Has to function as currency in an economy
• Mouse Trap Has to be designed for, or used to,
  catch mice.

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Distinctions

• Function, Role Abstract specification
• Occupier, Realizer Concrete entity or process

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4 Types of Functionalism

• Machine Functionalism
• Psycho-functionalism
• Analytic functionalism
• Homuncular functionalism

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Machine Functionalism

• There are web of links between possible inputs,
  inner computational states, and outputs (actions,
  speech). To be in such and such a mental state is
  simple to be a physical device (of whatever
  composition) that satisfies a specific formal
  description.

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Machine State Functionalism cont.

• If the machine is in state Si, and receives
  input Ij, it will go into state Sk and produce
  output Ol
• Mental States Machine Table States.

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Problems with Machine Functionalism

• Mental states are defined as functional states
  of the whole system (but mental states are more
  modular than that)
• No two systems can have same states unless they
  have all their states in common.
• If outputs are different the states are
  different.

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Psycho-functionalism

• Mental states and processes are defined by their
  role in a cognitive psychological theory (Fodor)
• Mental states are those entities with those
  properties postulated by the best scientific
  explanation of human behavior.

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General Concern about Functionalism

• Dont want to be too liberal or too chauvinistic
  in our attributions of mental states.

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Analytic Functionalism

• Goal is to provide translations or analyses of
  our ordinary mental state terms or concepts. (Do
  this a priori)

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Benefits of Functionalism

• Minds are ghostly enough to float fairly free of
  the gory neuroscientific details, but not so
  ghostly to escape the nets of more abstract
  (formal, computational) scientific investigation.

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General Problems

• No relationship to real-world timing.
• There are lots of computational stories about the
  same physical device.
• Consciousness

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Functionalism

• Being in a mental state is identical with being
  in an abstract functional state (where a
  functional state is just some pattern of inputs,
  outputs, and internal state transactions taken to
  be characteristic of the state in question).

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Summary of Problems with Functionalism

• Mental states are defined as functional states of
  the whole system (but mental states are more
  modular than that)
•  
• No two systems can have same states unless they
  have all their states in common.
•  
• If outputs are different then the states are
  different as well.
•  

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Summary of Problems with Functionalism cont.

• Hard to avoid being either too liberal or too
  chauvinistic in our attributions of mental
  states.
• No relationship to real-world timing.
• There are lots of computational stories about the
  same physical device.
• Consciousness

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Stuff or Information?

• Stuff Concept
• Water H2O
• Gold Element with atomic number 79
• Functional Concepts
• Money Has to function as currency in an economy
• Mouse Trap Has to be designed for, or used to,
  catch mice.

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Question

• Is meeting certain abstract computational
  specification enough to guarantee conscious
  awareness?
• A good simulation of a calculator is a
  calculator
• A good simulation of a pizza is not a pizza

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Pizza or Calculator

• Is the mind more like a calculator or more like
  a pizza?
• Is simulation sufficient for instantiation?
• Clark Yes if fine enough grain
  (microfunctionalism)

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Physical Symbol System

• A physical device that contains a set of
  interpretable and combinable items (symbols) and
  a set of processes that can operate on the items.

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Commitment to Symbols

• Commitment to the existence of a computational
  symbol-manipulating regime at the level of
  description most appropriate to understanding the
  device as a cognitive engine.

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Physical Symbol Hypotheses

• A physical symbol system has the necessary and
  sufficient means for intelligent action. Being a
  physical-symbol system (PSS) is sufficient and
  necessary for intelligence.

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SOAR

• v   Stores long-term knowledge symbolically
• v   Depicts intelligence as the ability to search
  a symbolic problem-space.
• v   Intelligence resides at or close to level of
  deliberative thought.
•  
• Intelligence consists in the retrieval of
  symbolically stored information and its use in
  the process of search.

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Problems with PSH

• Consciousness
• - Searles brain replacement - Searles Chinese
  room argument- Blocks population of China
  example
• Fast, fluid, everyday coping activity.

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Searles Brain Replacement

• Suppose your brain were gradually replaced with
  silicone chips. The input-output function is
  preserved. Would your conscious experience
  gradually shrink?

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Ned Blocks Pop. Of China

• Get whole population of china to implement the
  functional profile of a given mental state by
  passing around formal symbols. Such an
  instantiation of the symbol-trading properties
  will not possess the target mental properties. So
  functional identity cannot guarantee full-blown
  qualia involving mental identity.

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Obvious Criticism

• Population of China 1.3 Billion
• Neurons in the Human Brain 100 Billion

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Clarks Claim

• Discomfort stems from nagging suspicion that the
  formal structure implemented will be too shallow.
  But what about fine-grained formal description.
  Microfunctionalism fixes the fine detail of the
  internal state-transitions as, for example, a web
  of complex mathematical relations between simple
  processing units.

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Dryfuss Criticism

• Our everday skills are a kind of expert
  engagement with the practical world. They depend
  on a foundation of holistic similarity
  recognition and bodily, lived experience. No
  amount of symbolically couched knowledge or
  inference can possibly reproduce the required
  thickness of understanding, since the thickness
  flows not from our knowledge of fact or our
  inferential capacities but from a kind of
  pattern-recognition honed by extensive bodily and
  real-world experiences.

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Multiple Realization

• Multiple Hardware Realizability Mind is a
  formal system and we should focus on structure
  not stuff.
•  
• Multiple Software Realizability Different
  algorithms can sort numbers or letters. Perhaps
  different algorithms can support the mental state
  of believing it is raining.

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Mind as a Swiss Army Knife

• Abandon the idea that intelligent activity is
  mediated by the sequential, serial retrieval of
  symbol structures from some functionally
  homogeneous inner store. Instead believe that
  there are multiple representational types and
  processes, operating in parallel and
  communicating in a wide range of different ways.

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Subagencies

• Mind is an assortment of subagencies. Some of
  which deploy special-purpose routines and
  knowledge stores. (Minsky)

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Clark

• Chapter 3

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Fodors Representational Theory of the Mind

• Propositional attitudes pick out computational
  relations to internal representations
• Mental processes are causal processes that
  involve transitions between internal
  representations

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Folk Psychological Explanation

• Mary believes that it is raining
• Mary wants to stay dry
• Mary believes that using an umbrella when it
  rains helps her stay dry

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Fodors Explanation for FPs Success

• Folk Psychology (FP) is successful because it
  tracks real, causally potent inner states whose
  contents matches the contents specified by the
  that clauses (semantic transparency)
• Claim is that mental contents and inner causally
  potent states march closely in step.

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Why do folk stories need inner echos?

• To be real is to have causal powers
• Mental states are real
• Thus, mental states have causal powers
• Mental states have causal powers only if there
  are semantically transparent symbols in the
  brain.
• Therefore, there are semantically transparent
  symbols in the brain.

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Churchlands Criticism of FP(Eliminativism)

• FP works only in a limited domain.
• FPs origins and evolution give cause for
  concern.
• FP doesnt seem to fit in with the rest of our
  scientific picture of ourselves.

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Dennets Instrumentalism

• Folk Psychology doesnt need vindication.
• Suppose we discovered that some groups of people
  have different sub-personal psychology. Wouldnt
  say that they didnt have beliefs.

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Intentional Stance

• Understand, predict, or explain the behavior of
  some object by talking about it as believing x,
  desiring y, and so on. Class of systems we apply
  such a strategy is very large.

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Who has Intentional States?

• Membership is fixed by facts about inner
  cognitive organization, along with relations
  between such inner facts and worldly states.
  (Fodor and Churchland)
• Membership depends on behavior patterns, however
  caused (Dennett).

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Why Does it Work?

• The intentional stance works because things are
  well designed. If not artifacts then evolution is
  doing the designing. Intentional stance is a
  special case of the design stance

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Possible Problem with Dennett

• Being a believer looks like a agent dependent
  (stance dependent) issue. Looks like it is all
  in the eye of the beholder
• Dennett Rejects He claims that there are real,
  objective patterns in human and animal behavior.

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How do Mental Representations Get their Content?

• 1)  Either content is fixed by local properties
  of a system (e.g., intrinsic properties of the
  body and brain)
• 2)  Or, content varies depending on broader
  properties such as the history of the system
  and the relations between its inner states and
  states of the world.

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Flies vs. Schmies

• Earth frogs inner states represent flies
• Alien frogs inner states represent schmies
• Externalist view of content
• vs.
• Internalist view of content

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Scattered vs. Ungrounded Causation

• Scattered Causation Occurs when a number of
  physically distinct influences are usefully
  grouped together (e.g., an economic depression)
  and treated as a unified force for some
  explanatory purpose.

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How Real are Beliefs?

• Churchland As real as entelechies and
  phlogiston (putative concreta of misguided
  theories why protect beliefs?).
• Dennett As real as centers of gravity and
  economic depressions (abstracta in good standing
  scattered causes).