Week 7 Tuesday Study Questions on Churchland and Searle

 

Each  member of the small groups should  briefly indicate what they found most striking in the reading; the group as a whole should ultimately formulate a question for full seminar.

 

Q1. Churchland presents a brief summary of the history of 20th century philosophy (at least as practiced in England and North America). What events does she highlight? What is logical empiricism or analytical philosophy? Why does Churchland think the term “logical empiricism” is something of a misnomer?

 

Q2. Churchland stresses the importance of Quine’s criticism of the analytic/synthetic knowledge distinction?  What is Quine’s position.  How does it support Churchland’s vision of naturalized epistemology?

 

Q3. In chapter 7, Churchland contrasts her “brain-friendly approach” to representation with the “autonomy of psychology approach” associated with functionalism, especially computer functionalism. How is psychology autonomous or not autonomous from other disciplines in these two approaches? How does she see her approach as differing from functionalism? How does she justify her approach? 

 

Q4.  Churchland presents Garrison Cottrell’s face recognition artificial neural network (ANN) at some length.  Without getting bogged down in the details of her explanation, discuss the “conceptual point” she sees  illustrated by this ANN (p. 300).  How might such an ANN help us understand representation of categorical knowledge in “real neural networks”?  Would such an approach (if more fully developed) provide an answer to the question of how we represent categorical difference or the more general epistemological question of what  categorical knowledge is?

 

Q5. Churchland concludes (p. 327) that “we do know enough to know that the nature versus nurture debate has been substantially misconceived”? What considerations does she find relevant to this conclusion?  Has she convinced you?

 

Q6. In chapter 8, Churchland describes research that goes beyond  the work of Kandel  and Joseph LeDoux to   present a neuroscientific account of declarative memory.  Do you think that this holds promise in explaining how brains learn?  What, if anything,  might a more computational neurscience that incorporates something likes Sejnowski’s ICA learning algorithm (p 364) add to our understanding of learning in real brains?

 

Q7. Churchland concludes her discussion of epistemology by contrasting the “naturalized epistemology” she has been sketching with the position of the “idealist”? (p. 366 ff). She goes on to suggest that there is an element of truth in the idealist’s approach (p. 368), but that no idealist’s conclusions follow from accept it?  Do you buy her argument? What, if anything, is wrong with it?

 

Q8. (Based on the Searle’s book and the video this morning.) According the Searle video what position does the “Chinese Room” thought experiment challenge? What is Searle’s argument against it?  What responses does he consider?  Does he successfully challenge them? What are the implications, as Searle sees them, for artificial intelligence broadly conceived? What position do you take with respect to this issue in light of his comments?