Psychology 3228 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Mental Substance, Hermann Ebbinghaus, Daniel Schacter
3 Dec 2016
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Chapter 9 evolutionary psychology: evolution, thought and cognition. Materialism rejects dualism and suggests everything is a result of matter and material processes. Fundamental assumption of materialism: whatever is in the mind is also in the brain. What is the brain for: an organ of decision making, involved in perception, memory, etc. Brain increased in size so the minds of our ancestors must have evolved particular computational mechanisms that enabled them to deal effectively with the demand of the environment. Computation is the cornerstone of cognitive science which sees the brain as a computer (which originally meant the people whose jobs it was to crunch numbers) So long as something engages in computation it is a computer irrespective of what it is made from or how it is constructed. Computational theory of mind: the belief that the mind can be described as a type of computation produced by the brain.
