LPS 143, LPS 243, Phil 143, Phil 243
TTh, 9:30 – 10:50, SSL 105
Fall, 2004
Check us out! Click the brain above!
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LPS 143, LPS 243, Phil 143, Phil 243 TTh, 9:30 – 10:50, SSL 105 Fall, 2004
Check us out! Click the brain above! |
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Course Password: _________________________________________
Basic Information
Course Website:
http://www.lps.uci.edu/~johnsonk/philpsych/mindsyl.html
Instructor: Kent Johnson
Email: johnsonk@uci.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday, 11:00—12:00.
Office Location: SST 755
Test Dates:
Midterm:Thursday,
Oct. 28 Midterm
Final: Final paper due in my
office (or in my email account) no later than noon on Thurs.,
Dec. 9.
Undergraduate Requirements. Students enrolled as undergraduates will be expected to complete a midterm exam and a final paper. We will discuss the details of these later in the term. The midterm will be worth 350 points, and the final paper will be worth 550 points. Class participation is worth 100 points; it will be largely assessed based on your leading class discussions when assigned.(How to lead a discussion) There may be quizzes. If there are, the quiz point-values will be added to 1000 points for the midterm and final paper, and the sum will be normalized to a 1000 point scale, which will determine your grade as follows:
900 = A
850 = B+
800 = B
750 = C+
700 = C
650 = D+
600 = D
below 600 = F
Requirements for Graduate Students. See me.
Extra credit. Extra credit may be earned by writing reports on any of the readings which we do not cover in class (cf. below). The reports may be handed in at any time before the last day of class (Dec. 5). The amount of extra credit given to a report will be determined on a case by case basis. The reports needn’t be long, but they must include (i) a clear and precise characterization of the main point(s) of the article, (ii) a clear and precise characterization of the arguments/evidence used to support these main points, and (if appropriate) (iii) a clear and precise explanation of how these main points are relevant to the study of the mind.
Student responsibilities. In this class, you are responsible for everything that you might be reasonably held responsible for, and I determine what counts as reasonable in this context. This includes, but is not limited to, announcements made in class, notices on this website, emails to you individually or as part of a class-wide distribution, and material present in assigned readings but not discussed in class.
Make-up policy. Alert!There are no make-up opportunities available for this course, either before, during, or after the regularly scheduled due dates. Please ensure that you are able to take the tests or submit your work by/on the required times.
Course description. This course surveys some of the major
contemporary
philosophical views about the foundations of cognitive psychology. We
will
consider such questions as:
· What is the best way to represent the general structure
of cognitive activities like entertaining beliefs and reasoning?
· Do we think in a language, or is cognition based on
the simultaneous processing of many tiny bits of information (or is
neither
of these the right way to think about the mind)?
· What sort of things are the concepts that we use to
form our thoughts?
· What does it mean to say that we are simply born already
possessing certain kinds of information or “knowledge”?
· How is this different from acquiring the information
by learning it?
· How can we best understand the methodology and goals
of constructing a theory of human cognition?
Topics and Readings. Our class discussion will focus on the reading list given below. We will not get to all the articles in this list, and we may cover some papers that are not yet on the web. It is your responsibility to keep up with the readings for each class. For some useful overviews of our topics, you may wish to consult the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There are many useful entries for the topics we will focus on, as well as several important ancillary ones. Can't get enough? Want more? A good place to start is with David Chalmer's Bibliography of Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. A good resource to use when writing an essay is James Pryor's guide to writing philosophy papers.
Tentative Outline:
The Past:
Week1: T:
Introduction; Th: Churchland 1990.
Week 2: T: Churchland 1990; Th:
Elman
1990.
Week 3: T: Fodor/Pylyshyn 1988; Th: Fodor/Pylyshyn 1988.
Week 4:
T: Fodor 1975; Th: Fodor 1987.
Week 5: Fodor 1987; Th: Midterm
due, Sternberg 1998 (Part I).
Week 6: T:
Searle; Th: [Go over midterms; further discussion of structure];
Week
7: T: Dennett; Th: Veteran's Day, no
class.
Week 8:
T: Millikan; Th: Stich.
Week 9: T: Tversky and
Kahneman; Th: Thanksgiving, no class.
The Future:
Week 10: T: Nathan W. Presents... "The
extended mind" "Wide
computationalism", "Knowledge
in action", A useful
overview (by Ned Block) ;
Th: Laurence and Margolis [sec. 1 - 3].
PART I: COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE - WHAT "FORM" SHOULD A PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY HAVE?
Connectionism (overview of connectionism)
Intentionality
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Jennifer
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Teresa
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Suhail
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Jeff
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Gaelan
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Anjuli
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Jennifer
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Eric
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Nathan
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Emily
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Jenny
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Brian
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Navid
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Jen
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David
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Faisal
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Luis
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Joey
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How did we do on our midterms? Midterm
aggregate data
Frequently Asked Questions
This doesn't look like my course on Plato (or Heidegger, or
political
theory, etc.) Is it really a philosophy course?
Yes, in fact it focuses on some central issues in contemporary
philosophy
of mind, one of the most active areas of current philosophical
research.
However, you should note that philosophy is unusual in that it
addresses
a very broad range of topics and employs a broad range of methods.
There
are many interesting philosophical questions which we will not address
in this course (cf. below for comments on what we will address).
Similarly,
we will not use every method in the philosopher's toolkit. Philosophy
is
inherently interdisciplinary, and the best way to investigate many
philosophical
questions about the mind is to think about them like a cognitive
psychologist
would. We will do just that for much of this course. However, since the
issues we cover are very general and foundational ones, our methods and
discussions will often have a different feel from, say, a focused
technical
arcticle in experimental psychology.
So what is this course about, exactly?
Generally speaking, we will investigate the nature of the human mind.
What sort of thing is it? What is it to think? What are thoughts? What
is it to have a concept (e.g., what's the difference between someone
who
knows what a photocopier is and someone who doesn't)? What is it to
acquire
new concepts and thoughts? Are we just born with some ideas and
concepts
already built into our minds? How is the mind related to the brain?
I've read the required readings, and yet I don't feel like I
understand
them. Why?
Because you don't. By anybody's account, the material is difficult.
You should plan on reading each paper multiple times - once before it
is
discussed in class, and at least one more time afterward. You should
also
study your notes, as opposed to merely writing them down in class. You
should also make sure to read the papers 'interactively', taking notes,
underlining important points, definitions, etc., and marking the parts
you don't understand. (In general, this is a good strategy for studying
anything, but it's especially important with conceptually intricate
material.)
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