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cogsci-grad Swiki

Graduate Cognitive Science CS/PSYCH/ISYE CS6795

Announcements - Concerning course administration. Please check often!

Who is Who? - A listing of people in the class and a little about them

Comments about the course - A place to give suggestions, complaints or praise

Undergrad Cogsci - Feel free to pop-in to the undergrad swiki and discuss with them!

Course webpage

Consciousness survey - Eric Horvitz discusses taking a Bayesian approach to beliefs and scientific ideas. He outlines a few positions about the nature of consciousness then asks the user to assign weights to them based on personal beliefs.

Page with links to many neuropsychological QuickTime movies - These are only viewable on campus.

Certificate in Cognitive Science for graduate students - The application form can be retrieved from this page too.

Final exam question questions


hmmmmm

"I have a question regarding the consciousness question in the final exam.

The question says: Argue for or against an important function for consciousness.... I am not clear about what is meant by function - do you mean a property of consciousness like intentionality or its relation to emotions OR what consciousness is capable of doing like reasoning or language-production?"

Marty's reply:
Function means the output, so what it enables or what it allows or makes capable of doing.

"For question 1, can you narrow intelligent agents to humans? I would argue that cognition would have a different definition when applied to humans vs animals for instance. I thought that may be outside of the topic for this question and wanted to narrow agent to humans.

Also, I know we should write the final in the form of an essay. Can we still use "I think" and "I believe" or should this paper be more formal? Thanks."

Marty's reply:
Cognition doesn't refer to anything in specific. What I was going after is what your definition is for the 'highest level' of intelligence. But if you believe/or want to argue for animal cognition being equivalent to human cognition that is fine as well. If you want to exclude animals thats fine too, just make sure your properties distinguish between the two. So if your arguing that human intelligence is different than animal intelligence you should have properties of human intelligence that are not in animal intelligence. You may even want to define both and explain the difference for the first part of the question.

You can certainly use 'I think' and 'I believe' especially in the first part of that first question, as it asks specifically for your definition of cognition. On other parts of the exam your also asked for a subject opinion on parts of questions that is not necessary agreed upon across the field. Just make sure that you link in course material and theories/ideas/people we've gone over in class as well so that your demonstrating your knowledge of the course material integrated with your opinions.

By formal we don't mean the paper has to be written in third person, just that it needs to be well justified and grounded in ideas and literature of the field more so than the reaction papers had to be.


Discussion


Feel free to add a page for any topic you wish to discuss. I'll suggest a few starters

What is intelligence?

Clubbing Baby Seals (or does it hurt the seal as much as it hurts the roach?)

NYT article on Deep Blue, chess, art, & intelligence

Here's a recent Time magazine article about a development in quantum computing that is neither a von Neumann architecture or connectionist network:
The Purr of the Qubit

Prosthetic hippocampus?

Starlogo: Neat educational technology for teaching people about social and decentralized cognition: how lots of "simple" beings following a few simple rules can form complex behaviors.
The Starlogo environment developed by Mitchel Resnick at the Media Lab: Starlogo website
A book by Dr. Resnick about the topic: Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams

TokyoDV has a few videos from the Robodex 2003 event in Japan. Just follow the 'News' link. There are videos of the Sony Dream Robot and Honda's Asimo, both humanoid robots.


I propose that our existence is only in the language we use, that there is nothing real unless we had the language to describe it. What do you think of the possibility that we are basically the conversations that we have, the language that enables us to have the conversations. all comments welcome.....Semmere


Diagnostic Criteria for major depression from the DSM-IV
At least one of the following three abnormal moods which significantly interfered with the person's life:
Abnormal depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks.
Abnormal loss of all interest and pleasure most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks.
If 18 or younger, abnormal irritable mood most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks.


At least five of the following symptoms have been present during the same 2 week depressed period.
Abnormal depressed mood (or irritable mood if a child or adolescent) [as defined in criterion A].
Abnormal loss of all interest and pleasure [as defined in criterion A2].
Appetite or weight disturbance, either:
Abnormal weight loss (when not dieting) or decrease in appetite.
Abnormal weight gain or increase in appetite.
Sleep disturbance, either abnormal insomnia or abnormal hypersomnia.
Activity disturbance, either abnormal agitation or abnormal slowing (observable by others).
Abnormal fatigue or loss of energy.
Abnormal self-reproach or inappropriate guilt.
Abnormal poor concentration or indecisiveness.
Abnormal morbid thoughts of death (not just fear of dying) or suicide.
ZMG

Interesting article in Scientific American on the brain, its functions, and research on blended senses and what they reveal about our brain - try this link:
(copy and paste into your browser address window)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0003014B-9D06-1E8F-8EA5809EC5880000

Ted Karoglou