misc. notes

from tonight's e-mail to Sandy:
"quick update on my progress: I've found the secret cache of papers that talk about exactly what I'm looking for. I haven't grabbed them all from the library yet, but have been reading the ones available on-line. So it looks like a few people have already done exactly the sort of critique of modularity using developmental evidence that I was thinking of doing. On the one hand, it's slightly annoying to have been scooped once again. On the other hand, it must be a good idea if other people are doing it. On the third hand, maybe they didn't do a good job of it, and I'll be able to find some ways of saying something new. It seems like it's a fairly small set of papers that are on this topic, so it's likely that there is more to be said."

the Elman paper mentioned below seems to be the main thing I need to find. The Samuels paper that led me there was an assigned reading for Edouard's class. The bibliography wasn't included in what we got, but I've asked him to bring the book in tomorrow, so that I can follow up on the references. then I'll head to the library and see of I can find them. I already looked around on-line for a bunch of them, but without the paper names, it was rough going, although i found some different papers that might be useful. Stupidly, I didn't grab their bibliographic info from JStor, so I'll have to type it all up later.

I've got some notes written up from the Samuels paper in my notebook that i'll transfer here later. now some notes on the papers i've been looking through...

P.S. Churchland & T.J. Sejnowski paper (the wrong one):
Neural Representation and Neural Computation
Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 4, Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind (1990), 343-382
about the metaphor of mind-brain as computer, comparing symbolist and connectionist models.
thought as a language-like or logic-like procedures = beliefs and desires as propositions = folk psychology
for many well-known reasons (to anyone versed in cog sci), this view has major problems
the paper is about mental representation, so isn't really relevant. i think they have another one that's more about modules.


S.R. Quartz paper:
Toward a Developmental...
the main point: why evolutionary psychology should pay attention to development.
- human cognitive architecture as a hierarchically organized control structure, where this hierarchical organization is evident both evolutionarily and developmentally
Hirschfeld & Gelman, 1994 -> another modularist target
developmental cognitive neuroscience (Elman et al., 1996; Johnson, 1997; Quartz, 1999)
- human development is both more protracted and more sensitive to environmental signals than nativist
cognitive psychology supposed
- discovery of homeobox genes and their striking conservation (reviewed in Hirth & Reichert, 1999; Reichert
& Simeone, 1999). Given the enormous differences in neuroanatomy between vertebrates and
invertebrates, their brains were long thought to be unrelated with little obvious homology. However, at a
deeper, molecular level they are remarkably similar in that homologous regulatory genes have been
identified that control regionalization, patterning, and identity in embryonic brain development.
Raff 2000 for review of evo-devo
- although cortex size (relative and absolute) varies widely across mammals, its organization into 6 horizontal levels is the same across species. differences in behaviour and cognition relate to underlying differences in the interconnectedness between layers.
- for structural brain modules to develop, neurogenesis must be dissociable between different structures -> prediction that different species might have brain structures of different relative sizes. results say that over 131 species studied, brain structure sized are highly correlated, with the exception of the olfactory bulb. -> highly conserved homeotic starting point for all mammal brains. the order of neurogenesis is also highly conserved across species.
...
more later