Stupid Quiz Thing 2

LOT theory says we think in an inner mental language called Mentalese; thoughts are made of smaller building blocks (complexity), their meaning depends on the meaning and arrangement of parts (compositionality), and this inner code (Mentalese) uses symbols and rules like grammar.

Thought is productive because we can create infinite new thoughts from limited ideas; LOT explains this by showing how Mentalese grammar allows endless recombination of mental “words.”

Systematicity means our thoughts come in structured pairs (e.g., “John loves Mary” → “Mary loves John”); LOT explains this through shared rules and symbols that allow related structures to form automatically.

Inferential coherence means reasoning applies consistently across examples; LOT explains this because Mentalese uses formal syntactic rules, so once a rule (like modus ponens) is learned, it applies universally.

The idea that some basic concepts are innate, not learned; Fodor claimed we’re born with a built-in “mental vocabulary.”

Objection: we clearly learn new concepts (e.g., photon); LOT reply: only simple concepts are innate—complex ones are built from those primitives.

Fodor’s idea that the mind has specialized modules (like for vision or language) that work automatically and feed into a general central cognition system.

It means a module’s internal processing doesn’t access outside information; e.g., we still see optical illusions even when we know they’re false.

Two equal-length lines look different due to arrow tips; supports modularity since knowing they’re equal doesn’t change the perception—vision works independently.

Critic: illusion varies by culture, showing learning affects perception; Proponent: learning tunes modules but doesn’t remove their automatic, encapsulated nature.

Carruthers’ view that the entire mind—perception, reasoning, emotions—is made of specialized modules evolved for specific functions.

Modest modularity limits modules to input systems like perception; massive modularity extends them to all cognition, allows more interaction, and emphasizes evolution.

Evolution builds complex systems from small, specialized parts; since the mind evolved, it too must be modular.

Because modularity allows evolution to modify parts independently, making complex systems more adaptable—seen across biology.

Both use interconnected units and adjust connection strengths; but neurons are complex biological cells, while ANN nodes are simple mathematical models trained with backpropagation.

Classicism sees the mind as symbolic and rule-based; connectionism models cognition as patterns of activation in neural-like networks that learn associations.

Because connectionist networks lack symbolic structure, so they can’t guarantee recombination of parts (e.g., knowing “John loves Mary” doesn’t ensure “Mary loves John”).

Generalization—networks can learn from examples and recognize new patterns, handling variation and error gracefully.

The “what it feels like” aspect of experience—like the sensation of seeing red or feeling pain.

It shows that consciousness is subjective; we can’t know what it’s like to be a bat, highlighting the limits of physical explanation.

The gap between physical processes and subjective experience—knowing “pain = C-fiber firing” doesn’t explain why it feels painful.

Easy problems explain cognitive functions; the hard problem asks why brain activity feels like something—why consciousness exists at all.

If we can imagine a physically identical being without consciousness, then consciousness must be more than physical, challenging physicalism.

Zombies aren’t truly possible—we only think so because we don’t yet fully understand the brain’s physical basis.

The view that colors are real physical properties of objects, like surface reflectance.

The idea that colors aren’t real features of the world but mental illusions created by our perception.

Because physics describes only wavelengths, not “redness,” suggesting color exists only in perception.

The theory that experiences represent properties in the world by causally tracking them—e.g., we see red because our brains track specific light-reflectance properties.

Color is the physical property our vision tracks, typically surface reflectance or productance.

Metamers are surfaces reflecting different wavelengths but appearing the same color; this challenges the idea that color corresponds to a single physical property.

Objection: animals see color differently, so color can’t be objective; Reply: each species tracks different reflectances correctly for its own perceptual system—color is species-relative but objective within that system.