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October 26, 2005

Whorfian hypothesis

It's easy to be a moderate where grey areas exist, but here I'm going to ask you to choose a side and have a more lively debate. In our current culture: does language serve at the mercy of thought (i.e., language is functional)? Or, does our language directly affect our thoughts and the way we think? It would be cool if you included examples too.

October 25, 2005

How many memory systems are there?

We've now talked about at least 3 memory systems: sensory, working, long-term. This is just the start of how psychologists like to partition the workings of the brain. We can also then divide long-term memory into 2 or 3 more systems. And, one of these could be further subdivided. These subdivisions result from psychologists observing different memory patterns under different conditions (e.g., Clive Wearing's STM impairment, but sparing of LTM).

My question is: does the brain really have all of these working subsystems or is there just one system -- like one big neural net? An argument could be made that implicit and explicit memory are the same beast but one is slightly more complex than the other. So, are we just creating these subsystems because this is the only way WE can understand the brain given our current state of knowledge about the brain?