I liked Clark's idea that the environment can become part of the way we think. We already use things outside of our brains to make thinking easier, like writing something down instead of trying to remember it or using our fingers to count.We already rely on our environment to support cognition without thinking about it and ff we are constantly using the world around us to help us think; it seems difficult to say that cognition happens entirely inside the brain.

I found Esther Thelen's approach interesting because she seems to challenge the idea that development is simply something that happens according to a program already built into the brain. Instead, movement develops through the interaction between the brain, the body, and the environment. This was also obvious because a baby's abilities are constantly changing as their body changes and they learn how to interact with the world; something we learned in developmental psychology and alongside Piaget and his concept of object permanence as they're brain develops.

The idea that our bodies can influence cognition seems pretty obvious when I think about how differently people experience the same environment. Someone who is taller, shorter, stronger, faster, or has different physical abilities is going to interact with the world differently.

I found myself agreeing more with Gibson’s argument that perception depends heavily on the environment. It seems difficult to imagine the brain figuring out what things mean without actually having information from the world around us. Our brains can process information, but the environment is what gives us something meaningful to process in the first place. This makes me wonder whether cognition can ever really be separated from our experiences.

One thing I found interesting was the idea that perception and action might be more connected than I usually think about. I normally imagine perception as something that happens first in the brain and action as what happens afterward, but that seems too simple. A lot of the time, what we perceive depends on what we are trying to do. It makes me wonder if thinking and acting are actually two separate processes, or if they are happening together more than we realize.

In my other psychology class, we have been debating whether language is more innate or shaped by experience, and this chapter made me think of that debate again. The same question seems to come up here: does cognition happen mostly inside the brain, or does our body and interaction with the environment play a major role? I think the two debates are similar because both question how much of our behavior comes from what is already inside us versus what we experience.

Initially the “brain in a vat” idea seemed impossible to me, the idea of separating cognition from the real world was a foreign concept until I understood the computer analogy. Artificial electrical signals could definitely produce a real cognitive process, which made me wonder how much of our cognition depends on interacting with the real world. Our syllabus describes sight as the most informative sense we have but none of that would be possible without the brain and its use of symbols.

Terms like algorithms, and the idea of thinking about the mind like a computer made cognition feel a lot more concrete to me; whereas before it was a lot more difficult to visualize the same way you can for other concepts. I think this is also why the Hoffman argument from lecture helped understand these ideas better, some of the more abstract arguments started to make more sense to me.

I was very interested by the GPS because it reminds me of what we’re seeing with AI today. Newell and Simon were working on a completely different problem and obviously the AI today has nothing to do with what they were even able to fathom back then, but it Is interesting that they were already trying to get a computer to imitate human problem solving and act like one. It was also refreshing to see an early example of trying to connect computers with human cognition that doesn’t feel so “end of the world”

I think that critical thinking skills are something that gets overlooked when talking about the benefits of college. people are very quick to point out that "college" doesn't explicitly show you how to invest, pay a mortgage, raise family, etc. However the critical thinking skills that are developed while in college can be applied to any of the previously mentioned skills.

I have never got into that much depth when trying to define philosophy since it seems like such a loose abstract idea that defining it would be useless. However this approach of understanding what philosophy is looks at things a little different. What is philosophy for? It is to aim at a remedy for something, but it also must be constructive meaning you must work with an open mind.