3b. Harnad, S. (2001) What's Wrong and Right About Searle's Chinese RoomArgument?

Harnad, S. (2001) What's Wrong and Right About Searle's Chinese RoomArgument? In: M. Bishop & J. Preston (eds.) Essays on Searle's Chinese Room Argument. Oxford University Press.

Vidéo langue anglaise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7fsQkmcuSI

Searle's Chinese Room Argument showed a fatal flaw in computationalism (the idea that mental states are just computational states) and helped usher in the era of situated robotics and symbol grounding (although Searle himself thought neuroscience was the only correct way to understand the mind).

4a. Rizzolatti G & Craighero L (2004) The Mirror-Neuron System

Rizzolatti G & Craighero L (2004) The Mirror-Neuron System. Annual Review of Neuroscience 27L 169-92

RIZZOLATTI, G. (2006). Les systèmes de neurones miroirs. Académie des sciences. Inst de France

JACOB, Pierre. Neurones miroir, résonance et cognition sociale. Psychologie française, 2007, vol. 52, no 3, p. 299-314.

A category of stimuli of great importance for primates, humans in particular, is that formed by actions done by other individuals. If we want to survive, we must understand the actions of others. Furthermore, without action understanding, social organization is impossible. In the case of humans, there is another faculty that depends on the observation of others’ actions: imitation learning. Unlike most species, we are able to learn by imitation, and this faculty is at the basis of human culture. In this review we present data on a neurophysiological mechanism—the mirror-neuron mechanism—that appears to play a fundamental role in both action understanding and imitation. We describe first the functional properties of mirror neurons in monkeys. We review next the characteristics of the mirror-neuron system in humans. We stress, in particular, those properties specific to the human mirror-neuron system that might explain the human capacity to learn by imitation. We conclude by discussing the relationship between the mirror-neuron system and language.

PPT 2019:

SEMAINE 4 (première partie) 2018

SEMAINE 4 (deuxième partie) 2018

résumé langue anglaise:

07 février 2017

Cours ISC1000 2016 1:


Cours ISC1000 2016 2:

4b. Fodor, J. (1999) "Why, why, does everyone go on so about thebrain?"

Fodor, J. (1999) "Why, why, does everyone go on so about thebrain?" London Review of Books21(19) 68-69. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FOyoJ_XBRo

I once gave a (perfectly awful) cognitive science lecture at a major centre for brain imaging research. The main project there, as best I could tell, was to provide subjects with some or other experimental tasks to do and take pictures of their brains while they did them. The lecture was followed by the usual mildly boozy dinner, over which professional inhibitions relaxed a bit. I kept asking, as politely as I could manage, how the neuroscientists decided which experimental tasks it would be interesting to make brain maps for. I kept getting the impression that they didn’t much care. Their idea was apparently that experimental data are, ipso facto, a good thing; and that experimental data about when and where the brain lights up are, ipso facto, a better thing than most. I guess I must have been unsubtle in pressing my question because, at a pause in the conversation, one of my hosts rounded on me. ‘You think we’re wasting our time, don’t you?’ he asked. I admit, I didn’t know quite what to say. I’ve been wondering about it ever since.

5. Harnad, S. (1990) The Symbol Grounding Problem

Problèmes de l'IA symbolique

Harnad, S. (1993). L'ancrage des symboles dans le monde analogique à l'aide de réseaux neuronaux: un modèle hybride. Lekton, 4(2), 12-18.

ou 

Harnad, S. (2003) The Symbol Grounding Problem. Encylopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group. Macmillan.   

ou

Harnad, S. (1990). The symbol grounding problem. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 42(1), 335-346.

ou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding

The Symbol Grounding Problem is related to the problem of how words get their meanings, and of what meanings are. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are meaningful.

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PPT 2019:

SEMAINE 5 (première partie) 2018

SEMAINE 5 (deuxième partie) 2018

résumé langue anglaise:

Cours ISC1000 2017:

Cours ISC1000 2016 1:


Cours ISC1000 2016 2:



2015 Cours 1-ière partie (audio seule)


2015 Cours 2ième partie (vidéo)

6a. Harnad, S. (2005) To Cognize is to Categorize: Cognition is Categorization

Harnad, S. (2005) To Cognize is to Categorize: Cognition is Categorization, in Lefebvre, C. and Cohen, H., Eds. Handbook of Categorization. Elsevier.  

Le Martien, les champignons et les réseaux de neurones

S Harnad, A Cangelosi, M Coulmance - 2003

We organisms are sensorimotor systems. The things in the world come in contact with our sensory surfaces, and we interact with them based on what that sensorimotor contact “affords”. All of our categories consist in ways we behave differently toward different kinds of things -- things we do or don’t eat, mate-with, or flee-from, or the things that we describe, through our language, as prime numbers, affordances, absolute discriminables, or truths. That is all that cognition is for, and about.

Borges: Funes le mémorieux

PPT 2019:

SEMAINE 5 2018

Catégorisation I.



Catégorisation II.

résumé langue anglaise:

Cours ISC1000 2017

Cours ISC1000 2016 1:


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6b. Harnad, S. (2003b) Categorical Perception.

Harnad, S. (2003b) Categorical Perception. Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group. Macmillan.

L’hypothèse Sapir-Whorf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn5KOeG6QCM

Differences can be perceived as gradual and quantitative, as with different shades of gray, or they can be perceived as more abrupt and qualitative, as with different colors. The first is called continuous perception and the second categorical perception. Categorical perception (CP) can be inborn or can be induced by learning. Formerly thought to be peculiar to speech and color perception, CP turns out to be far more general, and may be related to how the neural networks in our brains detect the features that allow us to sort the things in the world into their proper categories, "warping" perceived similarities and differences so as to compress some things into the same category and separate others into different categories.

7a. Confer et al (2010) Evolutionary Psychology Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations

Confer, Jaime C., Judith A. Easton, Diana S. Fleischman, Cari D. Goetz, David M. G. Lewis, Carin Perilloux, and David M. Buss (2010) Evolutionary Psychology Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations https://www.academia.edu/2867507/Evolutionary_psychology_Controversies_questions_prospects_and_limitations. American Psychologist 65 (2): 110–126 DOI: 10.1037/a0018413

Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from hypotheses that go against traditional psychological theories; some from empirical findings that may have disturbing implications; some from misunderstandings about the logic of evolutionary psychology; and some from reasonable scientific concerns about its underlying framework.  This article identifies some of the most common concerns and attempts to elucidate evolutionary psychology’s stance pertaining to them. These include issues of testability and falsifiability; the domain specificity versus domain generality of psychological mechanisms; the role of novel environments as they interact with evolved psychological circuits; the role of genes in the conceptual structure of evolutionary psychology; the roles of learning, socialization, and culture in evolutionary psychology; and the practical value of applied evolutionary psychology. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current evolutionary psychology.

FAUCHER, Luc et POIRIER, Pierre. Psychologie évolutionniste et théories interdomaines. Dialogue, 2001, vol. 40, no 03, p. 453-486.

POIRIER, Pierre, FAUCHER, Luc, et LACHAPELLE, Jean. Un Défi Pour La Psychologie Évolutionniste. Philosophia Scientiae, 2005, vol. 2, p. 1-35.

FAUCHER, Luc. Inférence à la meilleure explication, théorie de l’esprit, psychologie normative et rôle de la culture: Autour du livre Human Evolution and the Origins of Hierarchies Benoît Dubreuil, Human Evolution and the Origins of HierarchiesBenoît Dubreuil, Human Evolution and the Origins of Hierarchies. Philosophiques, 2012, vol. 39, no 1, p. 271-283.

PPT 2019:

SEMAINE 7 2018

Vidéo cours mardi 7 mars 2017 

Cours 01:



Cours 02: