Intro

Question 1

What is the central claim of cognitive science?

Answer 1

Intelligent systems, including human minds, are mechanical systems
Ex. computers

Question 2

Cartesian Theory of vision

Answer 2

The mind has an internal representation of the world

Representations are computed (manipulated) to recreate the reality of the external world.

What we see is our mind’s representation of the world

Question 3

How do we infer the computations of the mind?

Answer 3

Measure behaviors that are controlled by the mind, through reaction time

Reaction time = how long it takes to respond to the representation of a stimulus

Question 4

What was Donders’ experiment?

Answer 4

He was quantifying computations of the mind: decision-making time

He did it by measuring decision-making time by (perceiving light + decision making on which button to press + press button) - (perceive light + press the button)

The time it takes to decide is 100 milliseconds