Cognitive Science 108/ Linguistics 108

Readings

Reading for Thursday, August 26, 1999: Read Chapters 1 -5, through p. 73.

Reading for Tuesday, August 31, 1999: Read Chapter 10.

Homework 1

Due at the Beginning of Class Tuesday, August 31, 1999.

Ground Rules: Discuss the homework with the members of your group. No group notes are to be taken. Write up your homeworks individually. They should be in 12 point type, either 1 & 1/2 spaced or double spaced, with at least 1 inch margins.

This homework is on the course website:

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~bbergen/cs108.

We suggest the following: Go to the website and download a copy of the homework. Copy the questions into a new file, and fill in your answers after eacu question, using a different font (e.g., put the questions in italics and the answers in roman). This way it will be clearer to the grader what answer goes with which question, and you will have an overview of all your answers to questions, one by one, at the end of the course.

 

The purpose of this homework is to make sure that you understand the significance of what is discussed in the first 5 chapters of the text.

Answer these questions as briefly as possible. A sentence or two per question is preferable. Do not give very long answers!

If you believe that that the reasoning given in the text is incorrect, say why.

Chapter 1:

  1. What does cognitive science have to do with the concept of what a human being is?

  2. How do assumptions about the nature of the mind, reason, meaning, and language enter into philosophical theories?

Chapter 2:

  1. Why does the issue of whether most thought is unconscious matter for philosophy?

  2. What is the relationship between the cognitive unconscious and conscious thought?

Chapter 3:

  1. Here are three very different notions of the "embodiment" of concepts:

  1. Instantiating Embodiment: The brain is close enough to a general purpose computer so that the concepts that characterize the objective rational structure of the world can be instantiated in the brain (either innately or via experience).

  2. Statistical Embodiment: The brain is a general purpose statistical engine that takes perceptual input and creates conceptual categories via statistical correlations. Our conceptual systems are thus the results of such statistical computations performed by our brain given perceptual input.

  3. Creative Embodiment: The brain has a structure that is highly specialized to run a body that must function in the world, both physically and socially. Our conceptual systems and forms of reason are shaped and highly constrained by the structure of our brains and by the way we actually function in the world.

Does it matter for classical realist philosophy (pp. 21-2) which one of these is correct?

  1. How does the phenomenon of conceptual metaphor and metaphorical thought fit with each of these notions of embodiment? (Look ahead to chapter 4.)

  2. Why are results from cognitive science about the following kinds of concepts important to the theory of classical realism in philosophy?

  1. Color concepts (and their relation to the neurophysiology of color vision).

  2. Basic-level concepts.

  3. Spatial relations concepts. ( Also cf. Appendix, 573-5.)

  4. Aspectual (event structure) concepts. (cf. Appendix, 581-3.)

  1. Suppose a philosopher were to claim that reason and concepts were localized in an isolated brain module, and that perception and motor functioning had nothing whatever to do with concepts or reason. How would the results concerning (a) - (d) above affect such a claim?

  2. Suppose a philosopher were to claim that concepts and the reasoning based on them were purely historically and culturally contingent, that is, that there was nothing outside of history and culture that determined what a human conceptual system could be.

  1. Which of the concepts of embodiment in Question 1 would be consistent with this claim and why?

  2. How would the results (a) - (d) of Question 3 bear on such a claim?

Chapter 4:

  1. On p. 46 ff, a four-part theory of metaphorical concepts is given: Conflation, Primary Metaphor, The Neural Theory; and Conceptual Blending.

    1. How do these four parts fit together into a coherent theory?

    2. What is the job that each of the four parts accomplishes in the overall theory?

    3. Why, according to this theory, is thought without metaphor impossible?

  1. Which view of embodiment in Question 1 on Chapter 3 fits this theory?

  2. A list of examples is given on pages 50-54. Give three more examples.

Chapter 5:

  1. What is the difference between a conceptual metaphor and an instance of a conceptual metaphor in language? Give an example of each.

  2. What is meant by the "literal skeleton" of a concept? (p. 72) How does one find out what the "literal skeleton" for a concept is?

  3. How is the theory of primary metaphor used to characterize "grounding" for a complex conceptual metaphor?