http://notebook.kulchenko.com/ By seeking, you will discover... en Copyright 2008 Mon, 15 May 2006 15:53:29 GMT Mon, 15 May 2006 15:53:29 GMT http://www.blooki.org/ 60 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <p>Questions to ponder after reading of <a href="references/books/cognition-and-reality"><span class="caps">COGNITION</span>-AND-REALITY</a>, <a href="references/books/the-quest-for-consciousness"><span class="caps">THE</span>-QUEST-FOR-CONSCIOUSNESS</a>, and <a href="references/books/the-feeling-of-what-happens"><span class="caps">THE</span>-FEELING-OF-WHAT-HAPPENS</a>.</p> <ul> <li>How does it happen that different people notice different aspects of the same situation?</li> <li>Why are some potions of the retinal input treated as belonging to the same object, others as independent? <ul> <li>May it have something to do with results of co-occurence analysis?</li> </ul> </li> <li>Why do we often seem to perceive the meanings of events rather than their detectable surface features?</li> <li>How are successive glances at the same scene "integrated"?</li> <li>Why is perceiving almost always accurate, given inadequacies of the retinal image?</li> <li>If percepts are constructed, why are they usually accurate?</li> <li>What kind of cognitive structure does perception require?</li> <li>What happens when we choose what to see and how do we learn to see better?</li> <li>How are illusions and errors possible if perception is simply the pickup of information that is already available and specific?</li> <li>How do we pickup unanticipated information?</li> <li>What happens when a new object enters the field of view for the first time?</li> <li>How is it decided whether to use an existing schema or to develop a new one (exploitation vs. exploration)?</li> <li>How can anything at all be seen in a brief flash if perception is a temporally extended activity?</li> <li>How is schema modified by new information? What elements of it are being modified? Anticipation? Motor program?</li> <li>Is development of the schema from the general to the specific, from undifferentiated to precise or in the opposite direction?</li> <li>Why do introspective reports suggest that the meaning is available first, and the stimulus details only later or not at all? <ul> <li>This is probably because introspection starts from the highest level schema of all active schemata</li> </ul> </li> <li>How does schema come to exist? <ul> <li>Some may be innate, but for those that are not, what's the mechanism? Co-occurrence?</li> <li>The perceptual cycle must occur before it can develop</li> </ul> </li> <li>Can we perceive something not having an appropriate schema? <ul> <li>Maybe only at the lowest possible level, which will allow for bootstraping based on some mechanism, like co-occurrence.</li> </ul> </li> <li>Which schema develops earlier: the more complex "high-level" one, or the more simple "low-level" schema? (for example, shape vs. smile)</li> <li>How do schemata get co-activated? When they are related? Include one another? Not related?</li> <li>Does a schema for a concept (for example, "number") get easier and faster activated than a schema for an object that is part of that category (for example, number "five")? How do they influence each other?</li> <li>Is it possible to deploy more than one schema at a time? <ul> <li>Yes, multiple schemata can be active, even though they have different level of activation (and influence of other schemata); based on that level of activation they compete with other schemata for resources (gaze, effectors, and so on)</li> </ul> </li> <li>What does presence of expected/unexpected information in the environment does to the schema? In terms of activation? In terms of its modification?</li> <li>Why is it difficult to pick up information from two different messages/streams at the same time?</li> <li>Is it possible to attend to two things at once?</li> <li>What are the limits of automatic mental activity?</li> <li>Why/how does perception depend on a skill? What skill is that? <ul> <li>Motor program that supports co-activation of other programs...</li> </ul> </li> <li>Are schemata being influenced (activated/modified) by unattended information?</li> <li>Is there a single mechanism responsible for our cognitive limitations? What are the limitations? (<a href="references/articles/the-magical-number-seven"><span class="caps">THE</span>-MAGICAL-NUMBER-SEVEN</a>)</li> <li>What types of conflicts may arise from activation of two schemata? How do those conflicts get resolved/arbitrated?</li> <li>Is there some impediment to the parallel development of independent, but similar schemata? Does existing schema "canalize" incoming information and experience effectively preventing the second (similar) schema to be formed?</li> <li>Is consciousness an aspect of activity or an independently definable mechanism?</li> <li>Is it possible to think without being conscious? </li> <li>How does the subject know whether the present content of his consciousness originated with an external stimulus?</li> <li>Does imagery appear when pickup of information is delayed or interrupted?</li> <li>If images are anticipations rather than pictures, what's going on when we describe them?</li> <li>How can we imagine things we don't expect, for example, things we know cannot happen? <ul> <li>Anticipations concern things that only might come to pass rather than those things whose existence is already established</li> </ul> </li> <li>How does detachment of images from the immediate context come about? <ul> <li>This detachment occurs inevitably in at least one situation with which we are all familiar: locomotion</li> <li>Any delay between the anticipation and the pickup creates a state of unfulfilled perceptual readiness, and the inner aspect of that active shema is a mental image</li> </ul> </li> <li>How are cognitive maps (and other types of schemata) acquired?</li> <li>What sorts of information do they incorporate at various stages in their development?</li> <li>How are they altered by experience?</li> <li>Under what conditions are they forgotten?</li> <li>Where many schemata exist, what distinguishes the right one?</li> <li>How schemata stored in memory? What represents long-term memory? <ul> <li>Repeated representation of the same material constitute a regularity to be detected</li> <li>Use of schemata accounts for remembering</li> <li>Forgetting occurs whenever the present inputis not specific enough to select a schema unequivocally</li> </ul> </li> <li>What's the difference between perception and imagery? <ul> <li>Perception is a cyclic activity that includes an anticipatory phase; imagery is anticipation occuring alone</li> </ul> </li> <li>What schemata are we born with? Schemata sensitive to expressions of emotion? Intentions?</li> <li>How words come to refer to objects? <ul> <li>Is it required to be "engaged in two perceptual cycles at once"? (<a href="references/books/cognition-and-reality"><span class="caps">COGNITION</span>-AND-REALITY</a>, p.164)</li> <li>Are those words embedded in the schema or related to/associated with it?</li> </ul> </li> <li>What is the principal function of grammatical structure of a sentence? <ul> <li>Is it to help the listener to develop proper anticipations that may span many seconds? (Ibid, p.167)</li> </ul> </li> <li>How does one describe what one sees?</li> <li>Why do we feel that we know what we're going to say, but only in some general way?</li> <li>How does anticipations get detached from the stimulus information that generated them to become things we imagine?</li> <li>Who has more freedom in their actions: adult or infant?</li> <li>How do we perceive emotion of feeling in others? <ul> <li>Perceiver needs to have schemata to pick this information up</li> <li>How much do these schemata depend on social experience?</li> </ul> </li> <li>Why do we (sometimes) hear multiple voices arguing?</li> <li>How is anticipated image formed? What specifically is being anticipated (out of many possibilities)?</li> <li>How is movie-in-the-brain generated? How does the brain generate the sense of an owner and observer for that movie?</li> <li>What's the relationship between consciousness and emotion? (<a href="references/papers/emotion-and-consciousness"><span class="caps">EMOTION</span>-AND-CONSCIOUSNESS</a>)</li> <li>Are there any non-conscious feelings? Are we conscious of all our emotions and feelings?</li> <li>What distinguishes emotion from feeling? <ul> <li>Emotions are external indication of feelings</li> <li>Emotions are experienced as feelings</li> <li>Emotions play signalling role; feelings facilitate learning and motivate behavior (on a larger scale) or produce a specific behavior (on a smaller scale) like freezing <ul> <li>"[Pleasure] is related to the clever anticipation of what can be done not to have a problem." "[Nature] seduces us into good behavior." (<a href="references/books/the-feeling-of-what-happens"><span class="caps">THE</span>-FEELING-OF-WHAT-HAPPENS</a>, p.78)</li> </ul> </li> <li>Expression of emotion drives feeling, which in turn supports expression of emotion; chicken and egg</li> </ul> </li> <li>Can we control/supporess emotions/feelings?</li> <li>Why do we need to be conscious to have feelings or express emotions?</li> <li>What's the difference between sensing pain and knowning you have pain?</li> <li>What distinguishes zombies from normal (non-zombie) organisms? Automatism? Lack of intentions? Lack of continuity of purpose? Always-on learning (zombie learning)?</li> <li>What are the properties of consciousness? <ul> <li>William James (cf. <a href="references/books/the-feeling-of-what-happens"><span class="caps">THE</span>-FEELING-OF-WHAT-HAPPENS</a>, p.126): it's personal, selective, continuous, and pertains to objects rather than itself</li> </ul> </li> <li>Why is there significant delay (up to 500ms; Libet's experiments) between registering of a sensation and conscious experience of it?</li> <li>How does always changing mind preserve its identity? What is is that provides mind with this core that is always the same? Is "self" a concept as any other concept and is built based on interactions with other individuals (culture and meme links)?</li> </ul> http://notebook.kulchenko.com/modeling/questions-to-ponder modeling/ Mon, 15 May 2006 15:53:29 GMT