Chapter 10 – The Mind Speaks (Adrion)
During this week, we will review chapter 10. Please answer the following questions:
1.
What’s the default hypothesis about how we understand language? Can you think of different perspectives on this?
2.
What is the ‘language of thought’? How convincing do you find Fodor’s arguments about it?
3.
Supporters of neural network models of language learning believe we can learn a lot from them. Do you agree? Why or why not?
4.
What are the main ideas behind Bayesian approaches to language acquisition? Do they match up with how you think language learning works?
Chapter 11 – The Infant Mind
This week we review Chapter 11. Please, answer the following questions:
1.
What’s the dishabituation paradigm? Do you think it’s a good way to figure out what infants know?
2.
How does Spelke interpret her dishabituation experiments? Does her explanation make sense to you?
3.
Munakata has a model for understanding object permanence. Can you explain how it works and what it might teach us about this concept?
4.
Fodor and Pylyshyn posed a dilemma for neural network models. What do you think about the problem they raise?
Chapter 12 – Deep Learning and the Mind
Hello all; for this week, we will review Chapter 12. Please, answer the following questions:
1.
What’s machine learning, and how would you explain it to someone who’s not familiar with it?
2.
Lecun, Bengio, and Hinton talk a lot about deep learning. How do they define it? Can you relate to it?
3.
What makes convolutional neural networks stand out? Can you think of examples where they might be used?
4.
How is reinforcement learning different from the other types of learning we’ve been discussing? What’s an example of reinforcement learning in action?
