Types of Minds J. Scott Jordan Department of Psychology Illinois State University

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: Plan

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: Problem-solve

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: Explain

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: Learn

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: See

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: Hear

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: Touch

What’s the Problem? What types of things do minds do? Raise your hand if you think minds do the following: Throw

Are there any patterns to these phenomena? Cognitive science studies the patterns we call MIND. Let’s look at how it got started What’s the Problem?

What is a Mind?R r Big Real Little Real Really real trees Sort of real trees Objective trees Subjective trees Observer-independent trees Observer-dependent trees

organism environment environmental event: Stimulus output: Response Behaviorism Intention input: Sensation Perception Psychophysics Cognitive System Cognitive Psychology Attention Perception, Mind and Action: A Brief History of Psychological Science

MINDS generate little r of the environment (representations) Minds also conduct operations on those representations (thought) Science of MIND then, should address how minds represent and manipulate representations. What’s the Problem?

Is consistent with property dualism, functionalism and identity theory. We will discuss three alternative approaches to mind: The Computer Metaphor Connectionism Dynamical Systems Theory What’s the Problem?

What is a computer? a system that applies a rule to whatever it is instructed to alogrithms representations How are operations conducted on representations? The Computer Metaphor

What is a computer? a system that applies a rule to whatever it is instructed to alogrithms representations How are operations conducted on representations? The Computer Metaphor