Download LING 1010 Exam 3: Epistemology, Confirmation, and Brain Function and more Exams Linguistics in PDF only on Docsity!
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LING 1010 EXAM 3 UCONN 46 Correct
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Episemology - ANSWER the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
What are the two driving questions behind epistemology? - ANSWER 1) what is knowledge? what does it mean to "know" something?
- how is knowledge acquired? what is the process by which humans come to "know" something?
What is knowledge of language? - ANSWER to know a language is to know the mental representations of your language.
- knowing the representations means you know the UNITS (phonemes, morphemes, syntactic categories) and the GRAMMATICAL RULES (phonological rules, morphological rules, phase structure rules, transformation)
a priori knowledge - ANSWER knowledge that comes before experience
- "analytic truths": truths that are true by definition of the words in them
ex: "a bachelor is a man" is true by the definition of "man" and "bachelor"
a posteriori knowledge - ANSWER knowledge that comes from experience
- "synthetic truths": truths established by observation
Infinite set - ANSWER infinite collection of objects
- easiest to see with numbers
- set of sentences in a given language is an infinite set
- many scientific theories can be formulated as infinite sets
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The Problem of Confirmation - ANSWER positive evidence will not guarantee that we learn from the correct infinite set from a finite set. this is because any finite subset is compatible with multiple infinite sets.
Confirmation - ANSWER we use confirmation to describe the process of finding evidence that supports a theory (positive evidence)
Falsification/Falsies - ANSWER the process of attempting to prove a theory wrong (negative evidence)
Popper theory of falsification - ANSWER a theory is only scientific if it can be falsified
- scientific theories have to take risks
- completely denies the existence of confirmation
Probabilities and Bayes Theorem - ANSWER - probabilities might allow for confirmation
- the problem of confirmation teaches us that positive evidence is compatible with an infinite number of
- doesn't mean evidence if equally compatible with each theory
The probability of a theory - ANSWER also positive evidence is compatible with an infinite number of theories, positive evidence can suggest that some theories are more likely than others
Bayes Theorem - ANSWER - a precise way to conclude how likely a theory is given a piece of positive evidence
P(theory-given-evidence)= p(evidence given theory) x p (theory)
all divided by p(evidence)
- will tell us how likely a theory is
Definition of Probability - ANSWER a mathematical statement about how likely an event is to occur. takes a value between 0 and 1, 0 means the vent will never occur. 1 means the even is certain to occur.
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The Lobes - ANSWER Front, Temporal, Parietal, Occipital.
Top = Superior, Bottom = inferior
Left = anterior, Right = Posterior
Frontal Lobe - ANSWER decision making, planning, emotions/personality
Parietal Lobe - ANSWER integration of sensory information, spatial relationships, touch, reading
Temporal Lobe - ANSWER memory, hearing, emotion
Occiptal Lobe - ANSWER Vision
Gyrus - ANSWER a ridge in the cerebral cortex. Plural: gyri. Also called a convolution
Sulcus - ANSWER a furrow (valley) of the cerebral cortex. Plural: sulci. Also called a fissure, especially for the major sulci
Lateral or Sylvian Fissure - ANSWER separates the temporal love from frontal and parietal lobes
Central Sulcus - ANSWER separates the frontal and parietal lobes
Cytoarchitectonics - ANSWER refers to the arrangement of neuron in layers
- turns out that the different areas of the brain display different cytoarchitectonics
Brodmann - ANSWER - experiments where he sliced and sustained different areas of human/monkey brains
- Brodmann areas: refer to areas of the brain identified based on cyoarchitectonics
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HYPOTHESIS: areas with different forms preform different functions
Hearing and the Auditory Cortex - ANSWER - located in superior temporal lobe
- comprised of the transverse temporal gyri
- buried inside the lateral fissure
- called transverse because they run toward the inside of the brain
Vision and the Visual Cortex - ANSWER - primary visual cortex is located in the occipital lobe
- temporal and parietal lobes are involved in visual processing, identifying objects, and locating objects
The Motor (primary) Cortex - ANSWER primary motor cortex is an area that is directly responsible for body movement
- most posterior portion of the frontal lobe, located along the central sulcus
Motor Cortex Details - ANSWER - doesn't control specific muscles, but organizes complex movements that involve body parts, that consist of large groups of muscles
- motor cortex is organized around a map of the human body
- cortical area devoted to a body area is proportional to the specificity of the movement
Somatosensory Cortex - ANSWER primary receptive area for tactile sensation in the body
- lies in the somatosensory cortex
- arranged somatotopically
Homunculus - ANSWER - latin for "little man"
- the way of representing the proportion of cortex devoted to body parts according to the somatotopic maps
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fMRIs - ANSWER - special technique that allows us to look for deoxygenated hemoglobin instead of hydrogen
- we look for them because it shows what parts of the brain are active
- brain areas that are active require more oxygen, and there will be more blood in that area.
