01:830:305 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Visual Search, Transitional Fossil, Parietal Lobe
3 Nov 2016
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Where is the mind: aristotle (about 350 bce): the mind is in the heart, galen (about 130 ad): the mind is in the brain, by 1860: recognized that the cortex is the seat of the mind. Dualism: the idea that the mind and body are fundamentally different substances or processes. Vs. monism or materialism: the universe is made up of only one kind of physical material (atoms) In descartes" time, the ventricles (empty spaces) were thought to hold higher thought processes. De la mettrie (1748): l home machine. Darwin said that all biological structures are devices that are adapted to serve the survival of the organism. We reduce things we don"t understand to combinations of things we do understand. A homunculus is an imaginary man inside the head . If your theory of cognition relies on a homunculus then it is cheating. In cognitive psychology, we seek to banish the homunculus!
