Daily Archives: April 12, 2013

Rep ‘n’ learnin’

Folk Psychology

Dependency relations between phenomena can be very complex. In much of life, dependencies are conditional and probabilistic: If I put a fresh worm on the hook, and if it is early afternoon, then very probably I will catch a trout here. As we learn more about the complexities of the world, we ‘upgrade’ our representations of dependency relations;10 we learn, for example, that trout are more likely to be caught when the water is cool, that shadowy pools are more promising fish havens than sunny pools, and that talking to the worm, entreating the trout, or wearing a ‘lucky’ hat makes no difference. Part of what we call intelligence in humans and other animals is the capacity to acquire an increasingly complex understanding of dependency relations. This allows us to distinguish fortuitous correlations that are not genuinely predictive in the long run (e.g., breaking a tooth on Friday the thirteenth) from causal correlations that are (e.g., breaking a tooth and chewing hard candy). This means that we can replace superstitious hypotheses with those that pass empirical muster.

Patricia Smith Churchland (Wikipedia) How Do Neurons Know?

Presentation: Philosophy In the Age of Neuroscience

Paul Churchland

Rep&Learning

I’m agnostic in so many ways! I’m not an advocate for the proposal that states: Brain = Mind. Still, I am really pleased the Churchland’s convictions have cascaded–as it would be–into the field of ‘The Mind.’ I remain suitably impressed by the evidence which certifies if the physical system of the brain is shockingly altered, the mind is altered too.

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