From - Wed Aug 29 09:45:53 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: WELCOME TO CSE/LIN/PHI/PSY 575/APY 526 NEWSGROUP Date: 28 Aug 2001 12:53:03 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 38 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mg47f$n78$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: WELCOME TO CSE/LIN/PHI/PSY 575/APY 526 NEWSGROUP ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to the newsgroup for Introduction to Cognitive Science, which I will henceforth refer to as CSE 575, rather than by its much longer name as shown in the Subject line above :-) Please monitor this on a daily basis, and please feel free to post news or questions of interest to the rest of the class. >From time to time, I will feel free to repost to this newsgroup private emails that you may send to me, but only under the following conditions: 1. I perceive the email to be of general interest to the class. 2. I will remove all identifying information. If you send me an email that you do NOT want publicized in this way, please let me know. -Bill Rapaport ------------------------------------------------------------------------- William J. Rapaport Associate Professor of Computer Science & Adjunct Professor of Philosophy Member, Center for Cognitive Science Associate Director, SNePS Research Group (SNeRG) 201 Bell Hall (office: 214 Bell) | work: 716-645-3180 x 112 Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering | fax: 716-645-3464 University at Buffalo (SUNY) | home: 716-636-8625 Buffalo, NY 14260-2000 | rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CSE: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/ homepage: /~rapaport/ SNeRG: /sneps/ Buffalo Restaurant Guide: /restaurant.guide/ Center for Cognitive Science: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci/ From - Wed Aug 29 09:46:39 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: COG SCI MAILING LISTS Date: 28 Aug 2001 12:55:49 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 11 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mg4cl$n9q$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: COG SCI MAILING LISTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you want to be put on the email lists for the Center for Cognitive Science, please go to the CCS website: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci/Misc/mailing.lists.htm and sign up! This way, you will be alerted to upcoming colloquia, etc. From - Wed Aug 29 09:47:21 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: COG SCI COLLOQ -- WED AUG 28 -- Gil-White/Psychology Date: 28 Aug 2001 12:56:05 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 69 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mg4d5$na7$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: COG SCI COLLOQ -- WED AUG 28 -- Gil-White/Psychology ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, August 29, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm "COGNITIVELY SPEAKING, WHAT IS AN ETHNIC CATEGORY?" Francisco Gil-White, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of Pennsylvania Introduction by Donald Pollock, Department of Anthropology, UB If, despite the fact that ethnic essences do not exist, ethnic actors nevertheless represent ethnies as essentialized groups, we must understand why. This talk will present and defend the argument that humans process ethnic groups (and a few other related social categories) as if they were species - with the associated essentialism - because their surface similarities to species make them inputs to the living kinds mental module that initially evolved to process species - level categories. The similarities in processing between species and ethnic categories will be explored (the main responsible similarities are category-based endogamy, and descent-based membership), and an evolutionary argument for this pyschological borrowing from 'living kinds' reasoning to the social domain will be defended. In a nutshell, I will argue that thinking about ethnies as if they were species was adaptive in the ancestral environment because it solved problems of inference and coordination in the domain of interactional norms. This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology and Philosopy. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu About the presenter: The evolutionary psychology of ethnic sentiments. How do cognitive and affective mechanisms give rise to ethnicity, and why did these mechanisms evolve? Field work among nomadic pastoralists in western Mongolia. The evolutionary psychology of prestige Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Wed Aug 29 09:47:35 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: SYLLABUS UPDATE Date: 29 Aug 2001 13:15:30 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 12 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mipti$9ib$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: SYLLABUS UPDATE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have our first guest lecturer scheduled: Susan Udin, from Physiology, who will speak on the general topic of cognitive neuroscience on Oct 18. I have added this info, and relevant weblinks, to the syllabus. http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/syl.html#dates From - Wed Aug 29 09:47:46 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: SCHEDULE FOR COGSCI SPEAKER Date: 29 Aug 2001 13:41:49 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 32 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9miret$agk$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: SCHEDULE FOR COGSCI SPEAKER ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 06:35:10 -0400 From: Heike H Jones Subject: Schedule for Francisco Gil-White To: COGSCI-LOCAL-LIST@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Wednesday, 8/29/01 11am Arrival 12pm Lunch at the Tiffin Room with Len Talmy 2pm - 4 pm COLLOQUIA, 280 Park Hall 5pm Pizza Chat If you would like to join Len Talmy and Francisco Gil-White for lunch at the Tiffin Room and/or the pizza chat in the CogSci library, please send me email (hhjones@buffalo.edu) Thank you! Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Thu Aug 30 09:11:05 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: UB COG SCI RESEARCH GROUPS Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 09:09:53 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 11 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3B8E3B21.6B90C715@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:10 --------------------------- UB COG SCI RESEARCH GROUPS --------------------------- I have posted a list of UB Cog Sci Research Groups on the Directory of Documents. It can be linked to directly at: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/researchgroups.html From - Fri Aug 31 09:27:29 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: UB COG SCI MAILING LISTS Date: 30 Aug 2001 13:22:25 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 19 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mlemh$osp$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: UB COG SCI MAILING LISTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are several UB Cog Sci (CCS) mailing lists. For descriptions and information on how to get on these lists, go to: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci/Misc/mailing.lists.htm At the very least, all grad and undergrad students interested in CogSci activities at UB should be on the cogsci-students mailing list. From - Fri Aug 31 09:27:48 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: MIT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES Date: 30 Aug 2001 13:26:01 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 15 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mlet9$ov3$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:12 To access the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences: Go to: http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/login.html Where it says "Access to fulltext E-MAIL", enter: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu For Password, enter: rapaport From - Fri Aug 31 09:27:57 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CATEGORIES Date: 30 Aug 2001 16:47:52 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 11 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mlqno$21u$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:13 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: CATEGORIES ------------------------------------------------------------------------- After my brief mention of categories in today's lecture, I found an announcement of a course on categories by David Zubin (LIN) in my email (which some of you may already have seen): http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/categories.txt From - Fri Aug 31 11:11:09 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!callisto.acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubram Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Cognitive Behavior & Behaviorist Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 15:38:26 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 28 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: callisto.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:14 Suppose there is a cognitive agent X exhibiting Cognitive behavior (say) B. If I am a behaviorist, I am not going to be interested in acquiring any information about the mental states and processes that are a causal effect of the Cognitive behavior B. Then Question a] what I would be observing is just the stimuli and the response of X and so the observation cannot be and would not be about Cognitive beahvior. Is this a correct perception? Question b] Suppose a computational cognitive scientist studies about a cognitive task A. Can he identify the subtasks( which reflect upon the mental states and processes) that add up to the entire cognitive task ? Can such subtasks be studied behavioristically ? Question c] This one is about the QUALIA. Can QUALIA be observed at the signal level by which I mean to say that they are nothing but the physical responses that these QULIA generate in the cognitive agent( say Human, like the impulses that are received by the Brain when we see a Green object ). Is this perspective at signal level totally irrelevant at the Cognitive level. :) My apologies to everybody if this mail has disturbed you in anyway. Thank you very much. Niranjan Balasubramanian 45 Merrimac Street Buffalo, NY 1421 From - Fri Aug 31 11:21:16 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE Date: 31 Aug 2001 13:10:30 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 13 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9mo2c6$920$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE SCIENCE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A very interesting paper on computational cognitive science, and why lots of people don't like it, just came to my attention. I recommend it highly: Dietrich, Eric (2000), "Cognitive Science and the Mahechanistic Forces of Darkness...", Techne 5(2), online. For the weblink, see the Directory of Documents. From - Tue Sep 4 09:36:49 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: RESEARCH GROUP LIST UPDATED Date: 4 Sep 2001 13:03:21 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 8 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n2jep$i53$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:17 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: RESEARCH GROUP LIST UPDATED ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have updated the list of research groups; see: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/researchgroups.html From - Tue Sep 4 09:37:05 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: COMMENT ON BEHAVIORISM POSTING Date: 4 Sep 2001 13:06:35 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 15 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n2jkr$ia2$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:18 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: COMMENT ON BEHAVIORISM POSTING ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marla Perkins writes: > I ... wish to comment on our poster's > questions about behaviorism... > His first question seems to indicate that he > has not quite understood that classic behaviorism > would say that there simply are NO cognitive states; > if I've understood him correctly, he seems to assume > that behaviorism isn't concerned with such states. From - Tue Sep 4 09:37:19 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CogSci business meeting Wed 2PM, grant kickoff 4PM Date: 4 Sep 2001 13:17:17 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 28 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n2k8t$ile$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: CogSci business meeting Wed 2PM, grant kickoff 4PM ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Leonard Talmy Subject: CogSci business meeting Wed 2PM, grant kickoff 4PM Comments: To: Cognitive Science Members Comments: cc: Heike H Jones To: COGSCI-STUDENTS-LIST@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Hi CogSci members and students, This year's first business meeting will be held this Wednesday at 2 in 280 Park. The agenda topics will include how to allocate the money used in previous years for student support, whether to develop an M.A. in CogSci, Distinguished Speaker ideas, reports on the undergrad major, the graduate track, and the student organization. At 4PM in 653 Baldy, we will have the initial meeting to see if we can formulate a training grant roughly around the theme of spatial and temporal cognition. If you are at all interested, please come with your ideas. Thanks, --Len From - Tue Sep 4 12:34:23 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Cognitive Behavior & Behaviorist Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 11:20:41 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 61 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3B8FAB49.5F13FC53@cse.buffalo.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:16 Niranjan Balasubram wrote: > Suppose there is a cognitive agent X exhibiting Cognitive behavior (say) > B. If I am a behaviorist, I am not going to be interested in acquiring any > information about the mental states and processes that are a causal effect > of the Cognitive behavior B. Sounds right to me, because if I'm a behaviorist, I don't believe that there are any mental states/procs that B causes. > Then > > Question a] what I would be observing is just the stimuli and the > response of X and so the observation cannot be and would not be about > Cognitive beahvior. Is this a correct perception? Sounds right. Are there any behaviorists reading this exchange who care to comment? > > > Question b] Suppose a computational cognitive scientist studies about > a cognitive task A. Can he identify the subtasks( which reflect upon the > mental states and processes) that add up to the entire cognitive task ? I would hope so. > > Can such subtasks be studied behavioristically ? If they can be identified in terms of stimuli and response. > > > Question c] This one is about the QUALIA. Can QUALIA be observed at the > signal level by which I mean to say that they are nothing but the physical > responses that these QULIA generate in the cognitive agent( say Human, > like the impulses that are received by the Brain when we see a Green > object ). The "inverted spectrum" case may be relevant here. Suppose some cognitive agent has an "inverted spectrum"; i.e., when that agent perceives grass, she or he has the same qualititative experience that you and I have when we perceive a yellow post-it note, and vice versa. In other words, that agent sees yellow where we see green, and vice versa. But there's no behavioral way to identify such agents, since when they look at grass, they *say* that they are seeing the color green even though their "internal" experience is the same as *our* "internal" experience of yellow. Perhaps you can clarify your question with respect to this example. See http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/Articles/levin.html for more on qualia. See http://www.d.umn.edu/~dcole/inverted_spectrum.htm for more on inverted spectrum arguments. From - Tue Sep 4 12:34:36 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!callisto.acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubram Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: COMMENT ON BEHAVIORISM POSTING Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 10:32:36 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 38 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9n2jkr$ia2$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: callisto.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 To: "William J. Rapaport" In-Reply-To: <9n2jkr$ia2$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:21 The question was framed so because in the last Lecture in the classification of people that studied Cognitive behavior, the two base classes were cognitivists and behaviorists. Your reply has now cleared my confusion. Thank you very much. Niranjan Balasubramanian 45 Merrimac Street Buffalo, NY 1421 Home Phone 716 833 4051 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "If everybody who feared they would fail, didnt even try, WHERE WOULD WE BE?" - Message in a Bottle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On 4 Sep 2001, William J. Rapaport wrote: > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Subject: COMMENT ON BEHAVIORISM POSTING > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Marla Perkins writes: > > > I ... wish to comment on our poster's > > questions about behaviorism... > > His first question seems to indicate that he > > has not quite understood that classic behaviorism > > would say that there simply are NO cognitive states; > > if I've understood him correctly, he seems to assume > > that behaviorism isn't concerned with such states. > > > > From - Tue Sep 4 12:34:48 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.676,sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Collective Intentionality: Believing and Accepting as a Group Date: 4 Sep 2001 14:14:31 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 43 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n2nk7$kdo$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.676:23 sunyab.cse.575:20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Collective Intentionality: Believing and Accepting as a Group ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthonie W. M. Meijers Professor, Eindhoven University (The Netherlands) "Collective Intentionality: Believing and Accepting as a Group" Park Hall 141, Wednesday September 5, 4 PM UB North (Amherst) Campus ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This paper will be revised and published in the journal Protosociology. Anthonie Meijers is Professor of the Philosophy of Technology at the University of Technology at Eindhoven, the Netherlands. (Eindhoven is one of the most prestigious technical universities in Europe, comparable to MIT.) He is also co-principal investigator of a large 5-year grant from the Dutch equivalent of NSF on "The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts." He studied mechanical engineering and philosophy and wrote his PhD thesis on the foundation of the theory of speech acts in the theory of intentionality. He has recently edited and contributed to Belief, Cognition, and the Will (1999), The Empirical Turn in the Philosophy of Technology (Elsevier Science, 2000), and Explaining Beliefs: Lynne Rudder Baker and her Critics (forthcoming, Nov 2001, Stanford CSLI / Univ. of Chicago Press). His talk at UB is about collective intentionality as one of the conditions for the constitution of social reality. In "Believing and Accepting as a Group" he develops a relational account of collective agents, developing and revising ideas found in Gilbert, Tuomela and Searle. The notion of collective belief will be analyzed in more detail, by introducing a distinction between the epistemic attitude of believing a proposition and the pragmatic attitude of accepting a view. Groups may be said to accept a view for its use in practical deliberations, rather than believing a proposition in a strict sense. The notion of collective intentionality is also useful to draw a line between social and technical artifacts, thus extending the earlier analysis made in Dipert's Artifacts, Art Works and Agency (and related literature). For more information about this talk, contact rdipert@acsu.buffalo.edu. From - Wed Sep 5 09:46:04 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: SYLLABUS UPDATE Date: 4 Sep 2001 18:28:17 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 10 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n36g1$sht$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:23 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: SYLLABUS UPDATE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have updated the syllabus to show that Prof. David Smith, Psychology, will be our guest speaker in class on Tue Oct 2. For more details, see: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/syl.html#dates From - Wed Sep 5 09:46:40 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: NEW STUDENTS Date: 4 Sep 2001 17:08:24 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 26 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n31q8$psq$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:22 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: NEW STUDENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are new to CSE 575, please do the following: 1. Fill out the "name sheet" at http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/nameSheet.txt and turn it in at the next lecture 2. Be sure to read the syllabus, which will be constantly updated, at http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/syl.html 3. Be sure to monitor the newsgroup at news:sunyab.cse.575 or at least to monitor the newsgroup archive at: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/news.txt From - Thu Sep 6 12:44:16 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!xena.acsu.buffalo.edu!kochanec From: Tara R Kochanec Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: COMMENT ON BEHAVIORISM POSTING Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 10:23:42 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 24 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9n2jkr$ia2$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: xena.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: kochanec In-Reply-To: <9n2jkr$ia2$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:24 Behaviorism is the opposite of Cognitivism--It is concerned with only observable stimulus-response behaviors On 4 Sep 2001, William J. Rapaport wrote: > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Subject: COMMENT ON BEHAVIORISM POSTING > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Marla Perkins writes: > > > I ... wish to comment on our poster's > > questions about behaviorism... > > His first question seems to indicate that he > > has not quite understood that classic behaviorism > > would say that there simply are NO cognitive states; > > if I've understood him correctly, he seems to assume > > that behaviorism isn't concerned with such states. > > > > From - Thu Sep 6 12:44:35 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: MITECS Date: 5 Sep 2001 14:31:36 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 46 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n5d08$6sh$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: MITECS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting your own online subscription to MITECS is not as simple as I had hoped. As the appended correspondence with MIT Press indicates, you can subscribe in one of two ways: 1. Buy the (expensive) hardcover edition, and get online service for free. 2. Buy the (relatively inexpensive) paper edition, and pay extra for the online service. Note that you don't actually have to buy the paper edition; anyone can subscribe to the online service for a fee. Details are on the MITECS website. Note that you will still be able to access MITECS in the way I indicated in an earlier posting, at least through the end of this semester. Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2001 10:13:22 -0400 To: From: Maria Santos Subject: Re: General Information, Books If you ordered the paperback on-line access would be extra but if you ordered the original hardcover policy you will be given free access with the standard white registration card that was included within the book. If you have the card please fill it out and send to Marney Smyth at the DPL, 5 Cambridge Center, Suite 4, Cambridge, MA 02142. Her e-mail is marney@dpl.mit.edu. MariaAt 10:21 AM 9/4/2001 -0400, you wrote: >The following message from William J. Rapaport >was sent via the MIT Press website. >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > >I have ordered MITECS as >a required text for my graduate course in Cog Sci @ SUNY Buffalo (CSE >575). Can students who >buy the book get free access to the online version? Or do they have >to pay an additional amount for a 6-month or 1-year subscription? (I >recall that when I bought the book, it came with free access.) Thanks. From - Thu Sep 6 12:44:54 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: QUERY ON "INNATE IDEAS" Date: 5 Sep 2001 14:38:14 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 30 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n5dcm$735$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: QUERY ON "INNATE IDEAS" ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tara Kochanec writes: > I was wondering how empiricists would account for > innate behaviors seen in > infants? For example, experiments have been done that > show that infants > too young to have learned aversions to cliffs or > stairs (places they could > from) have a natural tendency to fear and avoid them. I don't really know how Lockean empiricists would have replied. I'm sure they would have been astonished to learn such facts. Modern empiricists seem to be pretty happy with these kinds of "innate ideas", essentially redefining "innate" to mean, not so much "born with", but more like "present at birth". I suggest you take a look at: Cummins, Chs. 28-31, especially Ch. 31 by Spelke and Companion, Chs. 45-46 for some contemporary discussions. From - Thu Sep 6 12:48:42 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!bmb From: bmb@NO.SPAM.acsu.buffalo.edu Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: QUERY ON "INNATE IDEAS" Date: 5 Sep 2001 16:49:34 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 52 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n5l2u$b3h$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> References: <9n5dcm$735$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: yeager.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: bmb X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA 970625; sun4u SunOS 5.8] Originator: bmb@yeager.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:27 > Tara Kochanec writes: > > I was wondering how empiricists would account for > > innate behaviors seen in > > infants? [snip] William J. Rapaport wrote: > I don't really know how Lockean empiricists would have replied. I'm > sure they would have been astonished to learn such facts. Modern > empiricists seem to be pretty happy with these kinds of "innate ideas", > essentially redefining "innate" to mean, not so much "born with", but > more like "present at birth". In the vein of "present at birth", but with a connectionist view on what that means is a book called _Rethinking Innateness_ by Jeffery Ellman, Elizabeth Bates and a couple other people. The basic idea, to my understanding, is that what (some) people talk about as innate behaviours (e.g. Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device, which I'm guessing we'll get to in class at some point) are emergent properties of the hardwiring of the brain. So, language is learned, not innate, but it's leanred only because we've got human brains. I'm not sure how this fits with the rationalists and empiricists. We don't have innate ideas per se, so in that sense we have tabula rasa, but we have a particular brain structure, which limits/influences what and how we learn, which is similar to the veining in marble metaphor of Leibniz. It's an interesting book and has a companion volume of exercises in connectionist modelling. But note that the authors are unapologetic connectionists, and don't necessarily believe in physical symbol systems, (depending on one's definitions of symbols and symbol manipulation). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Breton Bienvenue e-mail: bmb@acsu.buffalo.edu Psycholinguistics Lab phone: (716) 645-3650 X377 Department of Psychology fax: (716) 645-3801 SUNY at Buffalo lab webpage: http://psychling.buffalo.edu Buffalo, NY 14260 personal webpage: http://www.buffalo.edu/~bmb ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From - Thu Sep 6 12:54:56 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!bmb From: bmb@NO.SPAM.acsu.buffalo.edu Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: PSS questions Date: 5 Sep 2001 17:01:52 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 32 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n5lq0$bkk$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: yeager.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: bmb X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA 970625; sun4u SunOS 5.8] Originator: bmb@yeager.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:28 Greetings all, I was reading the Newell & Simon article about physical symbol systems and I have a couple of general questions for the computer science-oriented people in the group. First, N&S talk about chess as being an unsolved problem in that the entire set of possible chess games isn't known, so a search tree can't pick perfect games as is possible for tic-tac-toe or something with fewer possible moves. Is chess unsolved simply because it's too big, or is in necessarily unsolvable for some reason. I got the impression that it was the second from the article, but I don't see why that would be. Second, when discussing PSS in class Prof. Rapaport said that a symbol system is computationally equivalent with a connectionist model. I've heard this claim before. Basically saying that, in theory, one could desing a big enough turing machine to solve any computational problem, and likewise, one could make a sophisticated enough connectionist system to solve any computational problem. But I've never seen an actual proof that the two are functionally equivalent. Is there a proof of this, or is it just a commonly accepted assumption? Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Breton Bienvenue e-mail: bmb@acsu.buffalo.edu Psycholinguistics Lab phone: (716) 645-3650 X377 Department of Psychology fax: (716) 645-3801 SUNY at Buffalo lab webpage: http://psychling.buffalo.edu Buffalo, NY 14260 personal webpage: http://www.buffalo.edu/~bmb ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From - Thu Sep 6 12:59:37 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: INNATE IDEAS Date: 6 Sep 2001 14:18:46 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 11 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n80k6$lv6$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: INNATE IDEAS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some of you have asked for more information on innate ideas. I suggest starting with the following: Companion, Chs. 45-46 Cummins, Chs. 28-31 From - Thu Sep 6 12:59:47 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: INTENTIONALITY Date: 6 Sep 2001 14:19:31 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 8 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n80lj$m3k$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: INTENTIONALITY ------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on intentionality, take a look at: Companion, Ch. 47 From - Thu Sep 6 13:18:36 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: QUERY ON "INNATE IDEAS" Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 12:53:37 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 12 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3B97AA11.F0418A83@cse.buffalo.edu> References: <9n5dcm$735$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <9n5l2u$b3h$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:31 bmb@NO.SPAM.acsu.buffalo.edu wrote: > In the vein of "present at birth", but with a connectionist view on what > that means is a book called _Rethinking Innateness_ by Jeffery Ellman, > Elizabeth Bates and a couple other people. A review of this by a philosopher, Ken Aizawa, recently appeared in Minds & Machines Volume 9, Issue 3, August 1999; an online preprint is at: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/aizawa.combined.rev.pdf From - Thu Sep 6 13:18:48 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!bmb From: bmb@NO.SPAM.acsu.buffalo.edu Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: PSS questions Date: 5 Sep 2001 17:01:52 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 32 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9n5lq0$bkk$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: yeager.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: bmb X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA 970625; sun4u SunOS 5.8] Originator: bmb@yeager.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:28 Greetings all, I was reading the Newell & Simon article about physical symbol systems and I have a couple of general questions for the computer science-oriented people in the group. First, N&S talk about chess as being an unsolved problem in that the entire set of possible chess games isn't known, so a search tree can't pick perfect games as is possible for tic-tac-toe or something with fewer possible moves. Is chess unsolved simply because it's too big, or is in necessarily unsolvable for some reason. I got the impression that it was the second from the article, but I don't see why that would be. Second, when discussing PSS in class Prof. Rapaport said that a symbol system is computationally equivalent with a connectionist model. I've heard this claim before. Basically saying that, in theory, one could desing a big enough turing machine to solve any computational problem, and likewise, one could make a sophisticated enough connectionist system to solve any computational problem. But I've never seen an actual proof that the two are functionally equivalent. Is there a proof of this, or is it just a commonly accepted assumption? Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Breton Bienvenue e-mail: bmb@acsu.buffalo.edu Psycholinguistics Lab phone: (716) 645-3650 X377 Department of Psychology fax: (716) 645-3801 SUNY at Buffalo lab webpage: http://psychling.buffalo.edu Buffalo, NY 14260 personal webpage: http://www.buffalo.edu/~bmb ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From - Thu Sep 6 13:19:01 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: PSS questions Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 12:59:01 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 32 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3B97AB55.43CDD3F7@cse.buffalo.edu> References: <9n5lq0$bkk$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:32 bmb@NO.SPAM.acsu.buffalo.edu wrote: > > First, N&S talk about chess as being an unsolved problem in that the entire > set of possible chess games isn't known, so a search tree can't pick perfect > games as is possible for tic-tac-toe or something with fewer possible moves. > Is chess unsolved simply because it's too big, or is in necessarily > unsolvable for some reason. I got the impression that it was the second from > the article, but I don't see why that would be. It's the first: It can be solved in principle, but not in practice. For more on why, see: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/572/S01/chess.html > > > Second, when discussing PSS in class Prof. Rapaport said that a symbol system > is computationally equivalent with a connectionist model. ... But I've never > seen an actual proof that the two are > functionally equivalent. Is there a proof of this, or is it just a > commonly accepted assumption? > > Good question! I've heard of proofs, but never seen one myself. On the other hand, here's an outline of a proof: Connectionist systems are run on ordinary computers; therefore, Turing machines can model connectionist systems. From - Mon Sep 10 09:34:14 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: PSS questions Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 13:26:51 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 42 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3B97B1DB.99AE17C4@cse.buffalo.edu> References: <9n5lq0$bkk$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3B97AB55.43CDD3F7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:33 William J Rapaport wrote: > > > > > > Second, when discussing PSS in class Prof. Rapaport said that a symbol system > > is computationally equivalent with a connectionist model. ... But I've never > > seen an actual proof that the two are > > > functionally equivalent. Is there a proof of this, or is it just a > > commonly accepted assumption? > > > > > > Good question! I've heard of proofs, but never seen one myself. > On the other hand, here's an outline of a proof: Connectionist systems > are run on ordinary computers; therefore, Turing machines can model > connectionist systems. Well, I just got a book in the mail with some references to this (talk about coincidence!). The book is probably too new to be easily available, but I'll give the references here for future use: Harnish, Robert M., _Minds, Brains, Computers: An Historical Introduction to the Foundations of Cognitive Science_ (Malden, MA: Blackwell), pp. 409-410. This section cites the following articles: Hornik, K., et al. (1989), "Multlayer feedforward networks are universal approximators", Neural Networks 2: 359-366. Franklin, S., & Garzon, M. (1991), "Neural computability", in O. Omidvar (ed.), Progress on Neural Networks, Vol. 1 (Norwood, NJ: Ablex). Siegelmann, H., & Sontag, E. (1992), "On the computational power of neural nets", Proc. 5th ACM Workshop on Computational Learning Theory (NY: ACM), pp. 440-449. Kilian, J., & Siegelmann, H. (1993), "On the power of sigmoid neural networks", Proc. 6th ACM Workshop on Computational Learning Theory (NY: ACM), pp. 137-143. From - Mon Sep 10 09:34:29 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: UPDATED SYLLABUS Date: 7 Sep 2001 19:11:04 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 8 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9nb648$jpi$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:34 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: UPDATED SYLLABUS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The syllabus has been updated to reflect new information about Cog Sci Colloquium speakers and their topics. See: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/syl.html#dates From - Mon Sep 10 09:34:37 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: COG SCI COLLOQ: ZUBROW, ORIGIN OF MUSIC Date: 7 Sep 2001 19:13:58 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 47 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9nb69m$jv6$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: COG SCI COLLOQ: ZUBROW, ORIGIN OF MUSIC ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, September 12, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm "THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC" Ezra Zubrow, Ph.D. Department of Anthropology University at Buffalo Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Tue Sep 11 09:46:32 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM THIS SATURDAY Date: 11 Sep 2001 13:46:07 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 12 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9nl4iv$ftr$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM THIS SATURDAY ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, Sep. 15, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 141 Park Hall IGERT Symposium: Situated Cognition, Visual Perception, and Map Orientation Barry Smith (PHI), David Mark (GEO), Roberto Casata (PHI) Jerome Dokic, Univ. of Rouen & Institut Nicod, Paris. From - Wed Sep 12 09:26:10 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: LIST OF RESEARCH GROUPS UPDATED Date: 12 Sep 2001 13:03:24 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 8 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9nnmes$r5o$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:37 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: LIST OF RESEARCH GROUPS UPDATED ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The list of research groups has been updated; see: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/researchgroups.html From - Wed Sep 12 09:26:16 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Today!Today! CoSci Colloquia, Ezra Zubrow, Anthropology, UB Date: 12 Sep 2001 13:20:41 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 69 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:38 Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, September 12, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm "THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC" Ezra Zubrow, Ph.D. Department of Anthropology University at Buffalo This paper reports on the recent results of a joint project between the University of Buffalo and University of Cambridge. There are four results: * Bone flutes and percussion instruments have been found -the former dating 33K and the latter perhaps 50K. * One may predict and simulate the sounds of these instruments. * Cognitively, one may predict that music precedes language. * One may examine the causal role that music has in the evolutionary and cognitive relationships among Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis,and homo erectus. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Thu Sep 13 12:41:13 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: UPDATED SYLLABUS Date: 13 Sep 2001 13:40:44 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 8 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9nqd0s$hsc$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:42 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: UPDATED SYLLABUS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have completely revised the schedule; please see the new syllabus at: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/syl.html#dates From - Thu Sep 13 12:41:54 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!joxer.acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubram Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Origin of Music Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 15:56:27 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 87 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: joxer.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 In-Reply-To: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:40 Dear Dr.Rapaport, I understand Dr.Zubrow's claim that Music must have evolved prior to Language considering the Physical evidence he presented and the Generalized nature of Music. 1.Are Sign-languages considered languages in this sense? 2.Isnt the need to communicate the causative of language? 3.If there were no languages ( allowing for sign language existence ) at the time of origin of music or just after, then wouldnt it be natural to assume that music was indeed one of the causal effect of the need to communicate? ( That is I could percieve no other motive for people to play music ) If people( if you can call them that ) played music just bcecause they liked it, then the need to communicate wouldnt be the causative for the origin of music. But the absence of any languages would naturally have led to the use of music as a form of communication. 4. I also think that the music produced by the stone implements would have been preceded by the sounds that they themselves could produce. In that case there need not be physical evidence of languages or Music for that matter. Niranjan Balasubramanian 45 Merrimac Street Buffalo, NY 1421 Home Phone 716 833 4051 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "If everybody who feared they would fail, didnt even try, WHERE WOULD WE BE?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On 12 Sep 2001, William J. Rapaport wrote: > Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! > > > CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE > University at Buffalo, State University of New York > > > Wednesday, September 12, 2001 > 280 Park Hall > North Campus > 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm > > "THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC" > > > Ezra Zubrow, Ph.D. > Department of Anthropology > University at Buffalo > > This paper reports on the recent results of a joint project between > the University of Buffalo and University of Cambridge. There are > four results: > > * Bone flutes and percussion instruments have been found -the former > dating 33K and the latter perhaps 50K. > > * One may predict and simulate the sounds of these instruments. > > * Cognitively, one may predict that music precedes language. > > * One may examine the causal role that music has in the evolutionary > and cognitive relationships among Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens > neanderthalensis,and homo erectus. > > > > > > Everyone is welcome to From - Thu Sep 13 12:50:15 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575,sunyab.cse.676 Subject: DIGITAL SUMMIT Date: 13 Sep 2001 16:38:43 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 40 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9nqnej$nt8$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:43 sunyab.cse.676:32 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: DIGITAL SUMMIT ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 11:49:51 -0400 From: Kristin Herman Subject: Digital Summit Nov 2 and 3 - further information To: PROVOST-FACULTY-LIST@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU *******************HOLD THE DATE NOV 2 AND 3******************** Please disseminate to relevant lists outside of UB. A registration flyer is being printed and will be mailed shortly. The University at Buffalo will host Digital Frontier: The Buffalo Summit 2001, from November 2-3, 2001. This summit will examine the far-reaching impacts of digital technology as manifested in the arts and sciences, medicine, education, and various aspects of everyday life. Plenary speakers include Michael Paige, Director of Xerox PARC, Brenda Laurel, pioneer developer of interactive fiction, Jaron Lanier, who coined the term "virtual reality", Steve Mann, inventor of the wearable computer, and Clifford Stoll, author of Silicon Snake Oil. Symposia will explore privacy, virtual reality, telemedicine and distance learning, information overload and retrieval, the gender divide in tech careers, and person:machine interfaces. These sessions will also include demonstrations of new media, digital arts, and applications of advanced computing, as well as extrapolations about likely technological developments of the future. Sponsors include CISCO Systems, Verizon, Niagara Mohawk, Silicon Graphics, Inc., American Psychological Association and others. The website at http://digitalsummit.buffalo.edu provides further information about the plenary speakers, and also online registration. The summit will take place at the Center for the Arts on the north campus of UB. Questions can be directed to Dr. Cusker in the Office of the Vice President for Research at 645-3321 or cusker@research.buffalo.edu. Jaylan S. Turkkan, Ph.D. Vice President for Research From - Fri Sep 14 12:20:55 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!mmwahler From: Misty Wahler Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:11:38 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 48 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pollux.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: mmwahler In-Reply-To: <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> Originator: mmwahler@pollux.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:45 On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, William J Rapaport wrote: > > 3.If there were no languages ( allowing for sign language existence ) at > > the time of origin of music or just after, then wouldnt it be natural to > > assume that music was indeed one of the causal effect of the need to > > communicate? > > ( That is I could percieve no other motive for people to play > > music ) If people( if you can call them that ) played music just bcecause > > they liked it, then the need to communicate wouldnt be the causative for > > the origin of music. But the absence of any languages would naturally have > > led to the use of music as a form of communication. > > This seems reasonable, but a bit more dubious. What do other people reading > this think? I think that people had to discover the sounds they could make with the stones, and perhaps they just experimented with them for awhile before realizing that they could communicate with them. Maybe when people started making sounds with the stones they realized that they could get each others attention with them. Hitting the stones hard to produce a loud noise would probably get the other people to turn around and wonder what the noise was, and from this they might have developed a scheme in which different sounds meant different things. Music could have developed from this, even if people had no formal language. > > > 4. I also think that the music produced by the stone implements would have > > been preceded by the sounds that they themselves could produce. > > Do you mean the sounds that they, the stone implements, could produce? I think the writer means that before people made stone instruments, they were able to make noises themselves with their voices. > > > In that > > case there need not be physical evidence of languages or Music for that > > matter. > > > > I don't follow this. I don't think I do either. Misty From - Fri Sep 14 12:21:24 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubramanian Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 09:15:29 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 15 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: mekab.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 In-Reply-To: Originator: nb7@mekab.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:46 hi everybody, By sounds they themselves could produce , I meant VOCAL SOUNDS. Sorry for the confusion caused. Here it goes again. People must have started to use their own voices prior to the use of stones to either produce speicifc sounds as either music or as a signalling system. There need be no physical evidence for this. How does one prove that music preceded vocal signals( formal enough to be called language ?)?. If sign languages are languages then how does one prove that music preceded sign language? Niranjan From - Fri Sep 14 12:22:08 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubramanian Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 10:04:43 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 66 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: mekab.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 In-Reply-To: <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> Originator: nb7@mekab.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:47 Here is an attempt to give more clarity to my confusions. Assuming that no languages existed when music originated, I claim that the motive for music ( the motive for usage not the origin) must be the need to communicate. But this music ( produced from sound ) must have been preceded by vocal sounds which definitely would have been much easier to generate and use. Recursively, the motive for using vocal sounds should also be the need to communicate. My question is do these vocal sound system qualify as a language system ? Where do sign languages fit in this picture? Niranjan On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, William J Rapaport wrote: > Niranjan Balasubram wrote: > > > > > 1.Are Sign-languages considered languages in this sense? > > Yes; see MITECS, "Sign Languages" > http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/Entry/newport.html > > > > > > > > 2.Isnt the need to communicate the causative of language? > > I don't know; sounds reasonable. > > > > > > > 3.If there were no languages ( allowing for sign language existence ) at > > the time of origin of music or just after, then wouldnt it be natural to > > assume that music was indeed one of the causal effect of the need to > > communicate? > > ( That is I could percieve no other motive for people to play > > music ) If people( if you can call them that ) played music just bcecause > > they liked it, then the need to communicate wouldnt be the causative for > > the origin of music. But the absence of any languages would naturally have > > led to the use of music as a form of communication. > > This seems reasonable, but a bit more dubious. What do other people reading > this think? > > > > > > > 4. I also think that the music produced by the stone implements would have > > been preceded by the sounds that they themselves could produce. > > Do you mean the sounds that they, the stone implements, could produce? > > > In that > > case there need not be physical evidence of languages or Music for that > > matter. > > > > I don't follow this. > > > From - Mon Sep 17 09:39:25 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 12:25:35 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 34 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3BA22F7F.78B72C1F@cse.buffalo.edu> References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:48 Niranjan Balasubramanian wrote: > > Assuming that no languages existed when music originated, I claim that the > motive for music ( the motive for usage not the origin) must be the need > to communicate. To communicate propositional information, or to communicate emotions? > . My question is do these vocal sound system qualify as a > language system ? > > Where do sign languages fit in this picture? > Good question; check MITECS for articles on the origins of language, or see: Merlin Donald, _Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition_, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). and/or: TITLE: The symbolic species : the co-evolution of language and the brain / by Terrence W. Deacon. AUTHOR: Deacon, Terrence William. PUBLISHED: New York : W.W. Norton, 1997. From - Mon Sep 17 09:39:52 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!mmwahler From: Misty Wahler Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 12:28:47 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 27 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pollux.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: mmwahler In-Reply-To: Originator: mmwahler@pollux.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:49 On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Niranjan Balasubramanian wrote: > Assuming that no languages existed when music originated, I claim that the > motive for music ( the motive for usage not the origin) must be the need > to communicate. > > But this music ( produced from sound ) must have been preceded by vocal > sounds which definitely would have been much easier to generate and use. > Recursively, the motive for using vocal sounds should also be the need to > communicate. My question is do these vocal sound system qualify as a > language system ? Now I'm not a linguistics expert, but I wouldn't think that just any vocal sounds would be classified as a "language". Many animals produce vocal noises (for instance dogs bark, and they bark in different ways depending what they are feeling) but I don't think anyone considers that an actual language. I would guess that to be considered a language, there has to be some structure to the noises. > > Where do sign languages fit in this picture? There are specific signs for all kinds of things. Maybe an analogy would be vocal noises are to language what pointing is to sign language? Monkeys can point at things, and my dog will "paw" something she wants, so would that be an appropriate analogy? Someone correct me if I'm wrong... From - Mon Sep 17 09:40:09 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!hercules.acsu.buffalo.edu!kochanec From: Tara R Kochanec Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:55:57 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 13 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: hercules.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: kochanec In-Reply-To: <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:50 Regarding the question about music--it seems like music is an exaptation, in terms of evolution, in that the neural human mechanisms that produce music were not originally designed to do so. Similar things include artistic and athletic ability---In another course, I learned that these types of capabilities have not been selected for, but that they instead develop from already existing general mechanisms (language)--so, i would probably think that music developed after language (that is, the ability for humans to create music) or that music had little to do with the causal need for language. Tara Kochanec From - Mon Sep 17 09:40:20 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubramanian Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 20:19:44 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 36 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <9nnnf9$rnf$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> <3BA0E2F7.2029AEC7@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: la-fin-du-monde.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 In-Reply-To: Originator: nb7@la-fin-du-monde.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:51 There was another arguement that to my understanding says that Music is more generalized than Language and therefore msut have eveolved prior to language. Can it be refuted by saying that the generalized nature of music implies the information content would be both less and inaccurate( more general ). Do you contend that the theory that the origin of music precedes that of language can be refuted with the natural selection arguement alone? Thanx for the reply. Niranjan On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Tara R Kochanec wrote: > Regarding the question about music--it seems like music is an exaptation, > in terms of evolution, in that the neural human mechanisms that produce > music were not originally designed to do so. Similar things include > artistic and athletic ability---In another course, I learned that these > types of capabilities have not been selected for, but that they instead > develop from already existing general mechanisms (language)--so, i would > probably think that music developed after language (that is, the ability > for humans to create music) or that music had little to do with the causal > need for language. > > Tara Kochanec > > > From - Mon Sep 17 09:40:46 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Origin of Music Date: 17 Sep 2001 13:21:35 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 19 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9o4tcv$onj$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:52 Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 13:59:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Niranjan Balasubramanian To: Misty Wahler , Subject: Re: Origin of Music Thanks for the resposnes. I am glad I am able to communicate my ideas to someone with adequate clarity. As a follow up to the discussion, I am talking about sounds that have a structure that is repeated every time to communicate the same propositional information every time it is used( I am not talking about communicating emotions just as a dog might ). This I think must be the case because the need to communicate such information produced by the cognitive processes of each individual would have been satisfied by the easiest availble means of producing structured noise which is the vocal sounds. Therefore such a system of communication must have evolved prior to using stones for music. If this communication system qualifies as language then we could possibly argue against Language preceding Music. Niranjan From - Wed Sep 19 09:20:49 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CCS COLLOQ: TODAY, WED, SEP 19: TALMY ON SPATIAL LANGUAGE Date: 19 Sep 2001 13:14:50 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 69 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9oa5oa$mk1$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:53 Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, September 19, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm "THE REPRESENTATION OF SPATIAL STRUCTURE IN SPOKEN AND SIGNED LANGUAGES" Leonard Talmy, Ph.D. Department of Linguistics Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo Linguistic research to date has determined many of the factors that structure the spatial schemas found across spoken languages. It is now feasible to integrate these factors and to determine the comprehensive system they constitute for spatial structuring in spoken language. This system is characterized by several features: It has a relatively closed universally available inventory of fundamental spatial elements that are combined to form whole schemas. It has a relatively closed set of categories that these elements appear in. And it has a relatively closed small number of particular elements in each category, hence, of spatial distinctions that each category can ever mark. An examination of signed language shows that its structural representation of space systematically differs from that in spoken language in the direction of what appear to be the structural characteristics of scene parsing in visual perception. Such differences include the following: Signed language can mark finer spatial distinctions with its inventory of more structural elements, more categories, and more elements per category. It represents many more of these distinctions in any particular expression. It also represents these distinctions independently in the expression, not bundled together into "pre-packaged" schemas. And its spatial representations are largely iconic with visible spatial characteristics. The findings suggest that instead of some discrete whole-language module, spoken language and signed language are both based on some more limited core linguistic system that then connects with different further subsystems for the full functioning of the two different language modalities. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Thu Sep 20 08:45:31 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: DOES LANGUAGE INFLUENCE THOUGHT? Date: 19 Sep 2001 20:25:40 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 12 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9oav04$7f4$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:54 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: DOES LANGUAGE INFLUENCE THOUGHT? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Earlier in the semester, someone raised the question of whether the language we speak influences the way we think. A recent survey article nicely summarizes the current state of the debate on this: Bloom, Paul, & Keil Frank C. (2001), "Thinking through Language", _Mind and Language_ 16(4): 351-367. From - Thu Sep 20 08:45:39 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CogSci Colloq., 9/26/01, Tjaden, UB/CDS Date: 20 Sep 2001 12:43:38 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 60 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9oco9q$qd4$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:55 CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, September 26, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm "ACOUSTIC-PERCEPTUAL DISTINCTIVENESS AND COARTICULATORY PATTERNS IN DYSARTHRIA" Kristin Tjaden, Ph.D. Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences University at Buffalo The dysarthrias are a group of communicative disorders resulting from impairment to central and/or peripheral nervous system structures important for the motor execution of speech. From a functional viewpoint, speech intelligibility and naturalness may be impaired owing to reduced speed, strength, range, accuracy, and timing of speech movements in the respiratory-laryngeal, velopharyngeal, and oral articulatory mechanisms. Although a great deal of progress has been made in characterizing the speech production deficits associated with the various dysarthrias, vocal tract activity in dysarthria remains poorly understood. The current presentation focuses on oral articulatory impairments associated with Parkinson's disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and Multiple Sclerosis, as inferred from the acoustic speech signal. In addition to describing how these neurologic diseases affect the articulatory-acoustic working space for individuals' habitual or normal speech mode, changes in the acoustic working space associated with speech rate and vocal intensity manipulations will be discussed. The relationship between the size of the acoustic working space and auditory-perceptual impressions of speech also will be discussed as well as coarticulatory differences for individuals with dysarthria and neurologically healthy speakers. Finally, the theoretical implications of a relationship between coarticulatory patterns in dysarthria and the size of the articulatory-acoustic working space will be considered. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Thu Sep 20 13:47:50 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CLASSICS IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY Date: 20 Sep 2001 12:57:40 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 8 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9ocp44$qog$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:56 Since we will be beginning our study of the role of psychology in cognitive science soon, you might find the following website of interest (there's a broken link to it on MITECS, but I tracked it down): Classics in the History of Psychology http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/ From - Fri Sep 21 09:12:00 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: SYLLABUS UPDATE Date: 20 Sep 2001 19:10:49 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 9 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9odevp$9rc$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:57 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: SYLLABUS UPDATE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The syllabus has been updated to reflect new information on CCS colloquia and 575 guest lectures; see: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/syl.html#dates From - Mon Sep 24 09:31:22 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu!mbp From: Marla B Perkins Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: A Proposal Contra Lakoff Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 12:06:09 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 40 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: mbp Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:58 As noted in class on Thursday, George Lakoff has proposed that people speak as they do because they have the bodies that they do. His ideas mesh with his interpretation of evolutionary theory, but they have undesirable consequences: 1. They depend on evolutionary theory. 2. They assume materialism (at least to some extent--I'm not sure how far Lakoff would go with this). 3. They imply a great deal of relativism, enough that successful communication may be impossible. 4. If language is a measure of humanity and human reason, those with less-than-perfect bodies would have less-than-perfect reason and humanity; this could be used to justify all kinds of human-rights abuses, if we wanted to go that far (Lakoff probably doesn't, but one ought to be careful about the implications of one's theories). I'd like to propose a more Hobbesian solution. People talk as they do because they're obsessed with themselves. Subjectivity is likely inevitable and impossible to avoid. Under this theory, successful linguistic communication would remain possible because we all, regardless of our chances of having careers as super-models, are primarily selfish, and this wires our circuits similarly enough to make it work. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do (I wouldn't say that humans are perfect by any stretch of the imagination), the selfishness will also drive us to figure out what went wrong and make the necessary adjustments because we want everyone to share our opinions. There's a theory in communication that says that the goal of all communication is silence, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his book, _The Brothers Karamazov_ argued that militant religion is all about forcing others to share one's beliefs. Combined with the selfishness, our tendency toward being social creatures could have immense explanatory power for the type of data that Lakoff uses to support his embodiment theory. (It further occurs to me that Ayn Rand might have liked this theory.) While selfishness may not be the most desirable solution, I'll have to have a Hobbesian/Randian moment and say that it's my current favorite. From - Tue Sep 25 08:53:02 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: A Proposal Contra Lakoff Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 09:33:43 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 14 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3BAF3637.29D02CDC@cse.buffalo.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:59 Marla B Perkins wrote: > As noted in class on Thursday, George Lakoff has proposed that people > speak as they do because they have the bodies that they do. His ideas > mesh with his interpretation of evolutionary theory, but they have > undesirable consequences: You have the makings of an interesting term paper here! Be sure to read Lakoff's Women, Fire, & Dangerous Things, if you haven't yet, in order to get Lakoff's actual theory in his own words. The reference is on the directory of documents. -Bill From - Tue Sep 25 08:53:09 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CogSci Colloq., Wedn. 9/26/01, Kristin Tjaden Date: 24 Sep 2001 15:07:00 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 59 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9oni6k$ltd$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:60 CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, September 26, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm "ACOUSTIC-PERCEPTUAL DISTINCTIVENESS AND COARTICULATORY PATTERNS IN DYSARTHRIA" Kristin Tjaden, Ph.D. Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences University at Buffalo The dysarthrias are a group of communicative disorders resulting from impairment to central and/or peripheral nervous system structures important for the motor execution of speech. From a functional viewpoint, speech intelligibility and naturalness may be impaired owing to reduced speed, strength, range, accuracy, and timing of speech movements in the respiratory-laryngeal, velopharyngeal, and oral articulatory mechanisms. Although a great deal of progress has been made in characterizing the speech production deficits associated with the various dysarthrias, vocal tract activity in dysarthria remains poorly understood. The current presentation focuses on oral articulatory impairments associated with Parkinson's disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and Multiple Sclerosis, as inferred from the acoustic speech signal. In addition to describing how these neurologic diseases affect the articulatory-acoustic working space for individuals' habitual or normal speech mode, changes in the acoustic working space associated with speech rate and vocal intensity manipulations will be discussed. The relationship between the size of the acoustic working space and auditory-perceptual impressions of speech also will be discussed as well as coarticulatory differences for individuals with dysarthria and neurologically healthy speakers. Finally, the theoretical implications of a relationship between coarticulatory patterns in dysarthria and the size of the articulatory-acoustic working space will be considered. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci/html/2001_fall.htm#tjaden From - Wed Sep 26 09:20:35 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!joxer.acsu.buffalo.edu!kochanec From: Tara R Kochanec Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: pain Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 10:38:32 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 13 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: joxer.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: kochanec Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:61 We talked in class about whether or not a computer could experience pain. I find it absurd to think that this could really happen. Afterall, humans are made up of living cells and chemicals. Computers are simply machines built to mimic human behavior. Do people really beleive that computers are capable of experiencing pain in the same way humans do? If so, then these individuals must also beleive that computers can experience other higher-level things such as consciousness provided that are given the right program. If this is the case, then computers should also be able to experience greed, a desire to control, etc. If this is the case, aren't these people who believe this is possible afraid of technological advances? This all sounds very sci-fi to me. Tara Kochanec From - Wed Sep 26 09:26:34 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubramanian Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Pain Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 14:10:18 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 27 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: hadar.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 In-Reply-To: Originator: nb7@hadar.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:63 Assuming that the right programs for pain, consciousness and greed could be generated. Will it still suffice for the entity thus developed to break free of the inherent constraints(say finiteness of code which implies finiteness of functions that it could peroform) imposed on it by its designer. As long as this barrier remains then I believe we can realx and not worry too much about technology. Maybe the products of such high quality would still be predictable. On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Tara R Kochanec wrote: > We talked in class about whether or not a computer could experience pain. > I find it absurd to think that this could really happen. Afterall, humans > are made up of living cells and chemicals. Computers are simply machines > built to mimic human behavior. Do people really beleive that computers > are capable of experiencing pain in the same way humans do? If so, then > these individuals must also beleive that computers can experience other > higher-level things such as consciousness provided that are given the > right program. If this is the case, then computers should also be able to > experience greed, a desire to control, etc. If this is the case, aren't > these people who believe this is possible afraid of technological > advances? This all sounds very sci-fi to me. > Tara Kochanec > > From - Wed Sep 26 09:27:02 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!hercules.acsu.buffalo.edu!kochanec From: Tara R Kochanec Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Pain Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 15:36:38 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 45 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: hercules.acsu.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: kochanec To: Niranjan Balasubramanian In-Reply-To: Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:64 Well if there is a finiteness of code, then how can one say a computer can actually experience pain or any of these things? My point is that if cognitive scientist are willing to make claims about the potential for computers to be programmed to experience human qualities, then they must follow through with their claims. That is, if a computer can be programmed to be "conscious" based on wiring and code, then once conscious, it should become aware, and thus should be able to be escape finiteness. I agree with you that this is not plausible, which is why i think the whole idea of computers experiencing pain is not plausible either. Tara Kochanec On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Niranjan Balasubramanian wrote: > Assuming that the right programs for pain, consciousness and greed could > be generated. Will it still suffice for the entity thus developed to > break free of the inherent constraints(say finiteness of code which > implies finiteness of functions that it could peroform) imposed on it by > its designer. As long as this barrier remains then I believe we can realx and > not worry too much about technology. Maybe the products of such high > quality would still be predictable. > > > On Tue, 25 Sep > 2001, Tara R Kochanec wrote: > > > We talked in class about whether or not a computer could experience pain. > > I find it absurd to think that this could really happen. Afterall, humans > > are made up of living cells and chemicals. Computers are simply machines > > built to mimic human behavior. Do people really beleive that computers > > are capable of experiencing pain in the same way humans do? If so, then > > these individuals must also beleive that computers can experience other > > higher-level things such as consciousness provided that are given the > > right program. If this is the case, then computers should also be able to > > experience greed, a desire to control, etc. If this is the case, aren't > > these people who believe this is possible afraid of technological > > advances? This all sounds very sci-fi to me. > > Tara Kochanec > > > > > > > From - Wed Sep 26 09:35:40 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Today! CogSci Colloq., Kristin Tjade, Ph.D., Dept. of CDS, UB Date: 26 Sep 2001 13:17:45 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 62 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9oskhp$sua$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:65 TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! TODAY! CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, September 26, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm "ACOUSTIC-PERCEPTUAL DISTINCTIVENESS AND COARTICULATORY PATTERNS IN DYSARTHRIA" Kristin Tjaden, Ph.D. Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences University at Buffalo The dysarthrias are a group of communicative disorders resulting from impairment to central and/or peripheral nervous system structures important for the motor execution of speech. From a functional viewpoint, speech intelligibility and naturalness may be impaired owing to reduced speed, strength, range, accuracy, and timing of speech movements in the respiratory-laryngeal, velopharyngeal, and oral articulatory mechanisms. Although a great deal of progress has been made in characterizing the speech production deficits associated with the various dysarthrias, vocal tract activity in dysarthria remains poorly understood. The current presentation focuses on oral articulatory impairments associated with Parkinson's disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and Multiple Sclerosis, as inferred from the acoustic speech signal. In addition to describing how these neurologic diseases affect the articulatory-acoustic working space for individuals' habitual or normal speech mode, changes in the acoustic working space associated with speech rate and vocal intensity manipulations will be discussed. The relationship between the size of the acoustic working space and auditory-perceptual impressions of speech also will be discussed as well as coarticulatory differences for individuals with dysarthria and neurologically healthy speakers. Finally, the theoretical implications of a relationship between coarticulatory patterns in dysarthria and the size of the articulatory-acoustic working space will be considered. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Wed Sep 26 09:36:37 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Pain Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 09:34:07 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 37 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3BB1D94F.BC01A0A@cse.buffalo.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:68 Tara R Kochanec wrote: > Well if there is a finiteness of code, then how can one say a computer can > actually experience pain or any of these things? I'm not sure I see what finiteness of code has to do with it. Presumably, our "code" (implemented in DNA) is finite, too, and we are the clear cases of entities that can feel pain (ignoring "zombie" arguments for the moment). > My point is that if > cognitive scientist are willing to make claims about the potential > for computers to be programmed to experience human qualities, then they > must follow through with their claims. If you mean that they must try to build such entities, well, they are! For some explorations along these lines, see the work on "Cog" at MIT, and the work on emotion by Rosalind Picard @ MIT and by Aaron Sloman: On Cog: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/cog.html On Picard: http://www.media.mit.edu/affect/ On Sloman: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/cogaff.html > That is, if a computer can be > programmed to be "conscious" based on wiring and code, then once > conscious, it should become aware, and thus should be able to be escape > finiteness. I'm not sure what you mean by "escape finiteness". However, the antecedent of your claim is difficult to establish: How would we know whether a computer is "really" conscious (or feels pain)? Because it says so? Probably not. On the other hand, how do we know whether other humans are conscious or feel pain? Because they say so? -Bill From - Wed Sep 26 09:36:51 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: pain Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 09:25:07 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 45 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3BB1D733.B35F95DB@cse.buffalo.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:66 Tara R Kochanec wrote: > Afterall, humans > are made up of living cells and chemicals. Computers are simply machines What is the difference? (I'm not saying that there is no difference; I'm merely asking you to be more precise about what you think the difference is.) "Living" cells are just complex bundles of chemicals (and there's no such thing as "living" chemicals, of course). So, you need to clarify what you think the difference is between organic chemicals (i.e., carbon-based) and whatever it is that computers are made of. You would also need to explain why you think that the physical substance is important (rather than the functional organization, though that's a harder distinction to specify, since it's at the heart of the "qualia" issue). > Do people really beleive that computers > are capable of experiencing pain in the same way humans do? If so, then > these individuals must also beleive that computers can experience other > higher-level things such as consciousness provided that are given the > right program. If this is the case, then computers should also be able to > experience greed, a desire to control, etc. These implications seem correct to me. > If this is the case, aren't > these people who believe this is possible afraid of technological > advances? It doesn't follow that they would be afraid, but they do need to think these issues through before plunging ahead and building such devices. > This all sounds very sci-fi to me. Yup! Is that good or bad? -Bill From - Wed Sep 26 09:39:55 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!bmb From: bmb@NO.SPAM.acsu.buffalo.edu Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: pain Date: 26 Sep 2001 13:31:59 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 49 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9oslcf$t6f$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: yeager.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: bmb X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA 970625; sun4u SunOS 5.8] Originator: bmb@yeager.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:67 Greetings all, Tara R Kochanec wrote: >> We talked in class about whether or not a computer could experience >> pain. I find it absurd to think that this could really happen. >> Afterall, humans are made up of living cells and chemicals. Computers >> are simply machines built to mimic human behavior. I think the very reason I find it possible for computers to (in theory) feel pain it that humans _are_ made up of nothing but chemicals. The recipe for all life on earth can be reduced to a pretty small set of components - just 4 proteins organized in chains of genes. All the variety of life, including all our complex cognition, language, problem solving, qualia and consciousness (at least if you aren't a dualist of some flavor) is the result of particular ordering of those 4 proteins, along with exposure to a particular environment. Given that we share most of our DNA (over 90%?) with all life on earth, the stuff that makes us unique is in only 10% of our DNA. So consciousness, reasoning, language etc. don't even seem to require too big a recipe compared with eating, breathing, locomotion, reproduction, etc. (If any bio/neuroscience people find that my understanding of DNA is fundamentally flawed please tell me). Why couldn't a computer do something similar with it's limited instruction set? Particularly given the potential of genetic algorithms & ALife (along with lots of time) to develop adaptive programs. I do think that conscious robots fall into the realm of science-fiction at the moment, but then 100 years ago so did Jules Verne's nuclear submarine. > If this is the case, aren't these people who believe this is possible > afraid of technological advances? This all sounds very sci-fi to me. Some Very Smart People(tm) actually are afraid of being overtaken by technology. Stephen Hawking has proposed genetic engineering of humans inorder to stay one step ahead of the computer competition. See: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2094424,00.html Of course he's an astrophysicist not a geneticist, so he may be off his rocker about this. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Breton Bienvenue e-mail: bmb@acsu.buffalo.edu Psycholinguistics Lab phone: (716) 645-3650 X377 Department of Psychology fax: (716) 645-3801 SUNY at Buffalo lab webpage: http://psychling.buffalo.edu Buffalo, NY 14260 personal webpage: http://www.buffalo.edu/~bmb -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From - Fri Sep 28 09:00:04 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!nb7 From: Niranjan Balasubramanian Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Pain Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 11:35:51 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 40 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: References: <3BB1D94F.BC01A0A@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: shaula.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: nb7 In-Reply-To: <3BB1D94F.BC01A0A@cse.buffalo.edu> Originator: nb7@shaula.cse.Buffalo.EDU Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:71 On Wed, 26 Sep 2001, William J Rapaport wrote: > Tara R Kochanec wrote: > > > Well if there is a finiteness of code, then how can one say a computer can > > actually experience pain or any of these things? > > I'm not sure I see what finiteness of code has to do with it. The finiteness of our DNA code restricts our functional abilities ( like say the ability to fly ( by ourselves )...). Maybe we are limited likewise in our cognitive ablities too. This may suggest the finiteness of code or the finite capabilities of the machine that implements the cognitive capabilities will enable the implementor to have a default control over the implemented cognitive fucntions. So is the set of cognitive functions that we can ever implement in a machine is always a subset of our own set of Cognitive functions? (:-)I believe that if a functional representation of the cognitive abilties can be obtained they can be implemented in any other agent. How do I refute the above arguement of finiteness ?) > I'm not sure what you mean by "escape finiteness". However, the antecedent > of your claim is difficult to establish: How would we know whether a computer > is "really" conscious (or feels pain)? Because it says so? Probably not. On the > > other hand, how do we know whether other humans are conscious or feel pain? > Because they say so? We know other humans are conscious because we know(?) we are conscious...From what we can observe about them we can assert they are conscious. But this looks like a behaviorist approach to prove consciousness. Can somebody come up with a cognitive approach to prove others are conscious too ? Niranjan From - Fri Sep 28 09:00:45 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: Prerak P Sanghvi Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: Pain Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 13:31:42 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 50 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3BB210FE.1060704@cse.buffalo.edu> References: <3BB1D94F.BC01A0A@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pollux.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: psanghvi User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010307 Netscape6/6.01 X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:72 William J Rapaport wrote: > Tara R Kochanec wrote: > > >> Well if there is a finiteness of code, then how can one say a computer can >> actually experience pain or any of these things? > > > I'm not sure I see what finiteness of code has to do with it. Presumably, > our "code" (implemented in DNA) is finite, too, and we are the clear cases > of entities that can feel pain (ignoring "zombie" arguments for the moment). Yes, I don't think experiencing pain has anything to do with finiteness. After all, in a finite amount of time, an entity can anyway only perform finite amount of functions, which, it seems, should be capable of being represented by finite amount of code! In fact, nothing about us so-called "conscious" humans is infinite at all, as far as we know! Further, this "finite" amount of code does NOT have to be predefined by a "designer". If the program is "intelligent" enough, it can generate more code by itself (which is possible even today)- probably based on its interactions or _experiences_ with the surroundings - which you might want to call "learning", and hence contribute to its own intellectual growth. Nothing sci-fi about it so far... I think what is making the idea that computers can feel pain incomprehensible is the difficulty to imagine how we would represent a thing like "pain" inside a computer - or consciousness for that matter. If the computer is built to transmit signals from sensors just like our body, and if the computer is built to process the signals in such a way that it "behaves like it is feeling pain" in every situation where we would expect it to feel pain, then we should accept that the computer is feeling pain. Of course, the standard question here is - Is the computer exhibiting pain behavior or is it just simulating pain behavior? Another reason why it seems "unbelievable" could be the fact that all of our previous experiences have shown to us that machines (which computers are) don't feel. If a Martian comes to earth, and says that it is feeling pain, we would probably believe it, because we don't have any set notions about whether Martians feel pain or not. Please bring any obvious flaws in the above to my notice.. :-) -Prerak Sanghvi From - Fri Sep 28 09:00:57 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: pain Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 09:38:56 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 13 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3BB1DA70.D3C911D0@cse.buffalo.edu> References: <3BB1D733.B35F95DB@cse.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:69 I wrote: > Tara R Kochanec wrote: > > > This all sounds very sci-fi to me. > > Yup! Is that good or bad? In fact, it has been SF authors, especially Isaac Asimov, who have done the most to think through the social implications of constructing robots. From - Fri Sep 28 09:01:09 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!not-for-mail From: William J Rapaport Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: Re: pain Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 09:41:43 -0400 Organization: SUNY Buffalo Computer Science & Engineering Lines: 13 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <3BB1DB17.B62684E4@cse.buffalo.edu> References: <9oslcf$t6f$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:70 bmb@NO.SPAM.acsu.buffalo.edu wrote: > Why couldn't a computer do something similar with it's limited > instruction set? Particularly given the potential of genetic algorithms & > ALife (along with lots of time) to develop adaptive programs. On the moral implications of ALife, the best SF story I know is: Stanislaw Lem (1971), "Non Serviam," in S. Lem, _A Perfect Vacuum_, trans. by M. Kandel (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979). -Bill From - Fri Sep 28 09:01:26 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: ON THE PRIVACY OF PAIN Date: 26 Sep 2001 19:13:45 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 16 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9ot9d9$4vp$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:73 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: ON THE PRIVACY OF PAIN ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. For a humorous commentary on the privacy of pain, see the updated directory of documents: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F01/directory.html 2. The other day, my nearly-6-year-old son, who had badly hurt his toe a few weeks ago, told me, "I know some things that you don't. Like things about me. 'Cause you're not me. I know what my toe feels like." (And he's not even taking Intro to Cog Sci :-) From - Mon Oct 1 09:34:06 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CogSci Colloquia, Wedn. October 3, 2001, Harry Heft, Date: 28 Sep 2001 18:36:33 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 74 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9p2fvh$osi$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:74 CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, October 3, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm "From 'Thing and Medium' to Ecological Psychology: A Tale of Two Research Programs" Harry Heft, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Dension University, Ohio In the middle decades of the 20th century, two psychologists -- James Gibson working in perception, Roger Barker working in social development - separately proposed an ecological psychology that was a radical break from standard approaches in their respective areas. Although each employed the label 'ecological psychology' to describe their contributions, their proposed programs were distinctly dissimilar from each other, both with respect to their problem focus and also with regard to their level of analysis. In keeping with these notable differences, theory and research in each program proceeded independently. And yet, in spite of their notable differences, each program embraced as one of its foundational ideas Fritz Heider's (1926) highly original analysis of 'thing and medium.' This presentation will identify some of the distinctive and significant contributions of each ecological program, examine their common ties to Heider's seminal work, and offer an integrated view of an ecological psychology that functions at both the level of individual- environment interaction and collective social processes. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu ========================================================================= Schedule for Dr. Harry Heft, Ph.D., Dept. of Psychology, Denison University, Ohio Wednesday, October 3, 2001 10:00 am - 12: pm available for meetings 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch at the Tiffin Room 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm COLLOQUIUM 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm Pizza chat If you are interested in meeting with Dr. Harry Heft please send me email. If you are interested in participating at the luncheon at the Tiffin room and/or the pizza chat please also send me email. Thank you! Heike Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Wed Oct 3 09:33:31 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: QUERIES ABOUT TERM-PROJECT PROPOSALS Date: 2 Oct 2001 17:37:03 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 72 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9pctvv$lt$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:75 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: QUERIES ABOUT TERM-PROJECT PROPOSALS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A student writes: > I was wondering what our proposals should include (how > in-depth) about our topics. i am also a little > confused about what topics we can use. i don't have > any knowledge about the computer aspects of this class. And another student writes: > I'm having difficulty deciding on a term project for cse575. > I was hoping to do the programming project option. Do you > have any suggestions or materials that give some ideas for > projects. What I'll be looking for in your proposals is evidence that you have a good idea of what it is that you will be researching and writing about. The kind of advice I expect to give you is: "this is a good project", or "this project is too vague; why don't you focus on X, Y, or Z" or "this project is too large; why don't you focus on X, Y, or Z" or I will suggest some readings that you might not have thought of, etc. You should try to include a list of articles and/or books that you will read and discuss. The proposal doesn't have to be much more than a paragraph or so, plus a bibliography, but if you have more to say, that's fine, too. Don't forget the page limitations: 10 pages (not including bibliography). You can go as high as 15 pages, if necessary, but please not longer than that (write concisely! :-). If you paper is much less than 10 pages, it will not be sufficient for a good grade! As for programming projects, there are many famous CogSci computational implementations that you could try to recreate, e.g., logic theorist, GPS, EPAM, SAM, PAM, various neural-net/connectionist programs, etc. For ideas, you might check MITECS or some intro cogsci texts such as the following: Stillings, Neil A.; Weisler, Steven E.; Chase, Christopher H.; Feinstein, Mark H.; Garfield, Jay L.; & Rissland, Edwina L. (1995), Cognitive Science: An Introduction; 2nd edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). SEL BF311 .C5523 1995 Luger, George F.; with Johnson, Peder; Stern, Carl; Newman, Jean E.; & Yeo, Ronald (1994), Cognitive Science: The Science of Intelligent Systems (San Diego: Academic Press). Lockwood BF311 .L84 1994 ========================================================================= If you use either of the above books from the library, please use them in the library, or borrow them for no more than a couple of days, so that other students can use them, too. ========================================================================= Sobel, C. P. (2001), The Cognitive Sciences (Mountainview, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company). This is the text for PSY 248, Intro to Cog Sci, and may still be available in the bookstore. Re-read the syllabus for more ideas on what I'm looking for, or contact me by email or during office hours if you have more questions, or just need some leads. From - Wed Oct 3 09:33:39 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: HEFT SCHEDULE Date: 3 Oct 2001 13:18:39 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 29 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9pf37f$13j$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:76 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: HEFT SCHEDULE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, October 3, 2001 ... - 10: 00am B.Smith/D.Mark 10:15am - 11:00am Meeting with Peter Hare 11:00am - 12:00pm Meeting with David Mark 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch at the Tiffin Room (L.Talmy, H.Heft, D.Mark) 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm COLLOQUIUM 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm Pizza chat Ifyou are interested in participating at the luncheon at the Tiffin room and/or the pizza chat please send me email. Thank you! Heike Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Wed Oct 3 09:33:45 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: HEFT COLLOQUIUM TODAY (WED OCT 3) Date: 3 Oct 2001 13:21:53 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 74 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9pf3dh$19f$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:77 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: HEFT COLLOQUIUM TODAY (WED OCT 3) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! Today! CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, October 3, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm "From 'Thing and Medium' to Ecological Psychology: A Tale of Two Research Programs" Harry Heft, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Dension University, Ohio In the middle decades of the 20th century, two psychologists -- James Gibson working in perception, Roger Barker working in social development - separately proposed an ecological psychology that was a radical break from standard approaches in their respective areas. Although each employed the label 'ecological psychology' to describe their contributions, their proposed programs were distinctly dissimilar from each other, both with respect to their problem focus and also with regard to their level of analysis. In keeping with these notable differences, theory and research in each program proceeded independently. And yet, in spite of their notable differences, each program embraced as one of its foundational ideas Fritz Heider's (1926) highly original analysis of 'thing and medium.' This presentation will identify some of the distinctive and significant contributions of each ecological program, examine their common ties to Heider's seminal work, and offer an integrated view of an ecological psychology that functions at both the level of individual- environment interaction and collective social processes. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Thu Oct 4 09:23:04 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: CogSci Colloquium, 10/10/01, Robert Van Gulick Philosophy, Syracuse Date: 4 Oct 2001 13:05:36 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 67 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9phmr0$8sv$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:83 CENTER FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE University at Buffalo, State University of New York Wednesday, October 10, 2001 280 Park Hall North Campus 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Robert Van Gulick, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy Syracuse University "Maps, Gaps, and Traps: Metaphors for Understanding Consciousness" The metaphors we use to talk about the problem of consciousness can both illuminate and restrict our understanding. They can reveal otherwise hidden aspects, or blind us to things outside their perspective. The much invoked metaphor of the "explanatory gap" - first coined by Joe Levine - provides a good case study (others might include Chalmer's Hard Problem/ Easy Problem distinction, or Nagel's equation of being a conscious x with "there being something that it's like to be an x".) The gap metaphor is both powerful but ambiguous in ways that can lead us astray if we do not can take care. I will explore the metaphor and its many meanings, in hope to dispel confusion and foster greater understanding of the mind/matter basis of consciousness. Everyone is welcome to attend! Refreshments will be available. For more information please contact the Cognitive Science office at 645-3794 or by email at hhjones@buffalo.edu Heike Jones Administrative Assistant University at Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science 652 Baldy Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 P: (716) 645-3795 F: (716) 645-3825 Email: hhjones@buffalo.edu URL: http://wings.buffalo.edu/cogsci From - Tue Oct 9 09:23:08 2001 Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rapaport From: rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.cse.575 Subject: "EXTENDED ABSTRACT" Date: 8 Oct 2001 19:11:06 GMT Organization: University at Buffalo CSE Department Lines: 31 Distribution: sunyab Message-ID: <9pstoa$oc4$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: adara.cse.buffalo.edu NNTP-Posting-User: rapaport Xref: acsu.buffalo.edu sunyab.cse.575:84 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: "EXTENDED ABSTRACT" ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A student writes: > Could you give me some clear guidelines for what is meant by an > 'extended' abstract? How long is extended? I haven't gathered all the > references for my paper as of yet, so can the list of references be less > than the final paper's? In t