Evo Devo Cog - Quotes

Cognition, Language, and Culture; Phylogenesis, Ontogenesis, and Interaction
Mar 7 '12
“… the main difference between the various modelling frameworks is not whether they make prior assumptions; it is the extent to which these assumptions are made explicit.”
— Perfors, A., and Navarro, D.J. What Bayesian modelling can tell us about statistical learning: What it requires and why it works. In P. Rebuschat and J. Williams, eds. Statistical learning and language acquisition. Mouton de Gruyter. (via compcogling)

1 note (via compcogling)

Feb 11 '12
“Napoleon complained that “Newton spoke of God in his book. I have perused yours but failed to find His name even once. Why?”
“Sire,” Laplace replied magisterially, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”
— The Theory That Would Not Die, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

1 note

Jan 31 '12
“(linguistic) Ambiguity is only good for us [as humans] because we have these really sophisticated cognitive mechanisms for disambiguating..”
— Steven T. Piantadosi, for more

Jan 12 '12
“… an important principle about brain function, namely, that all our perceptions—indeed, maybe all aspects of our minds—are governed by comparisons and not by absolute values.”
— Phantoms in the Brain, V.S.Ramachandran

Oct 15 '11
“Learning is physical. Learning means the modification, growth, and pruning of our neurons, connections-called synapses- and neuronal networks, through experience…we are cultivating our own neuronal networks.”
— Dr. James Zull, Biochem professor and author of  The Art of Changing the Brain – Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning. (via houseofmind)

450 notes (via houseofmind)

Oct 13 '11
“There is no human-independent “true” language, to which learners aspire. Rather, today’s language is the product of yesterday’s learners; and hence language acquisition requires coordinating with those learners. What is crucial is not which phonological, syntactic, or semantic regularities children prefer, when confronted with linguistic data; it is that they prefer the same linguistic regularities—-each generation of learners needs only to follow in the footsteps of the last.”
— Chater, N., & Christiansen, M. H. (2010). Language acquisition meets language evolution. Cognitive Science, 34(7), 1131-1157. 

Sep 22 '11
“Thus, induction increases information, in the sense that an induction rules out possible models. However, there is a price: an inductive conclusion cannot be guaranteed to be true.
…while deduction is truth-preserving, it does not increase information: no models are ruled out by the conclusion than were ruled out by the premise. A deduction at best makes explicit what was already there. Deduction is one way of testing inductive hypotheses.”
— K. I. Manktelow, Reasoning and thinking

Sep 16 '11
“Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.”
— Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason

Aug 4 '11
“A word is a microcosm of human consciousness.”
— Vygotsky, L.S. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jul 27 '11
“The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao.（道可道，非常道。）
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.（名可名，非常名。）
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth.（無名，天地之始。）
While naming is the origin of the myriad things.（有名，萬物之母。）”
— Laozi（老子）,Tao Te Ching（道德經）, 6th century BCE