Introduction to

Cognitive Science

Sept 2006 :: Lecture #1 :: Joe Lau :: Philosophy

HKU
 Please write this down

http://philosophy.hku.hk/courses/200607/cogn1001
Topics
 About this course
 What is cognitive science?
 The computer model of the mind
About this course
About this course
 Course coordinator
 Other teachers
 Course tutor
 Assessment
 60% 2-hour final exam.
 25% 5 problem sets; one for each topic.
 10% tutorial participation.
 5% tutorial attendance.
 What is
cognitive science?

Longuet-Higgins, H.C. (1973) Comments on the Lighthill report. Artificial

Intelligence - A Paper Symposium. London: Science Research Council.

By 1960 it was clear that something interdisciplinary was

happening. At Harvard we called it cognitive studies, at Carnegie-
Mellon they called in information-processing psychology, and at
La Jolla they called it cognitive science. – George Miller.
 What is cognitive science?
Cognitive science is
the science of mind and behavior.

How is it different
from psychology?
“Cognitive”
 Of or pertaining to cognition, or
to the action or process of
knowing (OED)
 Understanding knowledge
acquisition and use is the key
to understanding the mind.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

So what is cognitive science?
 Cognitive science is a scientific study of the
mind with special emphasis on the use and
acquisition of knowledge and information.
 Implications
 An inter-disciplinary approach – Many scientific
disciplines contribute to cognitive science.
 A computational approach – Explain information
processing in terms of neural computations.
Information processing everywhere
 Perception
 acquiring real-time information about the surrounding
environment.
 Language use
 making use of information about syntax, semantics and
phonology.
 Reasoning
 combining different sources of information, deriving new
information, testing consistency of information, etc.
 Action
 making use of information in action planning and guidance.
 Memory
 storing and retrieving information

This is one reason why cognitive science is inter-disciplinary.

Explaining information processing
 What is the best explanation of why a system is
capable of complex information processing?
 Answer: The system is a computer.
 Why there was no cognitive science
 They didn’t think that knowledge is the key.
 Perhaps it is a special substance? (Dualism)
 Perhaps it is stimulus-response? (Behaviorism)
 They didn’t know about computers.
 Small stupid steps combine to do difficult things.

A useful short history:

http://ls.berkeley.edu/ugis/cogsci/major/about.php
 VIP #1
Cognitive science
is about
how the mind
processes information.
What is special about cognitive
science?
 Focuses on knowledge and information as
the key to understanding the mind.
 Interdisciplinary
 Computational approach
 Special relevance to IT and AI
 Individualistic
 Multi-level explanations
Psychology Cognitive science

Social psychology

Educational psychology
 More on the
computer model of the mind
Quiz: What is a computer?
(a) A person
(b) A machine
 What is computation?
 Rule-based manipulation of symbols.

S = str_replace( “cat” , ”c” , ”h” )

17x11=? Philosophy  哲學

170
17
187
A program is
like a cooking
recipe

Ingredients

recipe
Computational explanation of
information processing in the mind
 Thinking that P = activating a set of
symbols in the brain which mean P.
boring
!
Is-in-love

Peter
Is-happy
 Symbols in the mind =
mental / neural representation
Topographical
representation of
visual stimulus in
visual area V1
Representations explain lots of things
 Example: Syntactic Disambiguation
 “We shall discuss violence on TV.”
 Two interpretations :
VP VP

V NP PP V NP

discuss N P NP discuss N PP

violence violence P NP
on TV
on TV
Two methodological consequences of
the computer model
 Computer models can be built to test
theories of mental processes.
 There are different levels of analysis for a
complex information processing system.
Three Levels of Description
(David Marr)
 A complete understanding of a computational
system has to involve three (kinds of) levels :
 Computational theory
 What is computed and why.
 What the system is capable of doing.
 Representation and algorithm (software)
 What program is used.
 What are the symbols and how are they processed.
 Hardware
 Where in the brain?
 What kind of neurons and how are they connected?
 Example
 Task: Multiplication.
Input numbers x and y.
Output x times y.
 Algorithm:
Given inputs x and y,
look up number z on
row x and column y.
Output z.
 Implementation:
human being and paper.
Alternative algorithm
 How to calculate x times y:
 If x =1, then answer is y.
 If x>1, add y to itself (x-1) number of times.
The result is the answer.
 Example: 3x5 = 5+5+5 = 15
 Implementation:
Two points
 The same task can be performed with
different algorithms.
 Two different systems can do the same task in
very different ways.
 The same algorithm can be implemented
with different hardware.
How to study cognitive science
A computational theory of X should
explain X at three levels.
 What is computed? Visual motion
 How? Correlate changes in luminance at

different places.
 Hardware? Comparator circuits
http://www.psypress.co.uk/mather/resources/swf/Demo11_1.swf
 Demo
http://www.psypress.co.uk/mather/resources/swf/Demo11_1.swf
 Application: linguistic understanding
 Task
 Identify syntax and meaning corresponding to speech sounds.
 Algorithm VP
 What kind of computation and NP PP
V
mental representations?
discuss N P NP
 Implementation
violence
 Which part of the brain?
on TV
INTERDISCIPLINARY approach
 Division of labour
 Psychology – cognitive psychology,
developmental psychology …
 Linguistics – syntax, semantics, phonology …
 Neuroscience – brain structures, localization …
 Computer science – AI, computer models …
 Philosophy – theoretical foundations …
How to think about cognitive science

Other
Language Vision Reasoning
areas

Task

Algorithm

Hardware
If you get lost
 Which mental process?
 Language, reasoning, emotions, …
 Which level?
 Task, algorithm, neural implementation
Summary
 Cognitive science is an inter-disciplinary
science of mind and behavior.
 The computational approach : using
computations and representations to
explain mental processes.
 Three levels of descriptions.
 Coming up next: language as an example.