Download Cognitive Science Page of 3 Cognitive Science Professor Peter

Cognitive Science
Philosophy 453
Spring 2014
CRN 33483, 4 units
Class meetings: M, W 2:00-3:50
Location: Bldg. 5, Rm. 124
Professor Peter Ross
Office: Bldg. 1, Rm. 325
Phone: (909) 869-3036
e-mail: [email protected]
Office hours: M noon-1; F noon-1
and by appointment
Cognitive science offers an interdisciplinary empirical approach to the study of the mind.
The disciplines involved include: cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer
science, and philosophy. What draws the work of these various disciplines together under the
heading of cognitive science is an understanding of the mind as a physically implemented
information processor.
The course will be divided into two parts. The first part will focus on philosophical
background for a physicalist view of the mind and a general understanding of the information
processing approach to the mind. A main topic of this part of the course will be a
characterization of perception and belief as physically implemented informational states, and
reasoning as a physically implemented process involving these informational states.
The second part of the course will briefly take up a subject with which you are quite
familiar, at least in a non-theoretical sense: learning.
Required Readings:
Most of the readings for the course will be available in class; in some cases, readings will be
available on the web.
Course Goals:
1. Students will become familiar with recent interdisciplinary research on various aspects of
mentality.
2. Students will become able to identify philosophical issues which scientists face when
studying the mind.
3. Students will learn how scientific findings inform and constrain philosophical theory about the
mind.
Requirements and Grading:
4-5 short response papers:
"Tell me what you know" quizzes
Term paper:
OR
Final exam
Attendance and participation:
40%
20%
30% due by Wed. 6/11, abstract due by Wed. 5/21
30% in class Mon. 6/9, 1:40-3:40
10%
Short response papers: during the quarter you will be assigned 4-5 reading response papers.
These papers are 1-2 pages long, will be focused to answer specific questions about particular
readings, and will be due one or two classes following their assignment. They will be graded on
the basis of clarity of reasoning and demonstrated effort. The primary goal of these papers is
to keep you engaged with particular readings so that you can get the raw materials for writing a
term paper.
Term paper: this paper is 2000 words (about 7-8 pages double spaced with 1" margins) with a
150 word abstract. A draft of the abstract, which must include a thesis statement, is due about
Cognitive Science
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three weeks prior to the due date of the paper; you should talk to me about your thesis prior to
turning in your abstract. The goal of the term paper is for you to work out a sustained argument
for a thesis, allowing you to synthesize aspects of various particular readings.
Final exam: the final exam will be comprehensive, and will have essay questions.
Policy on late short response papers: late papers will be marked down according to the
following guideline: for every class the paper is late, it is automatically marked down one whole
grade (that is, if a paper due on Monday is turned in on the following Wednesday, it will be
marked down one grade, for example, from an A to and B). Exceptions to this policy will be
made only in the case of documented illnesses.
"Tell me what you know" quizzes: these will be explained in class.
Tentative schedule for reading assignments:
Weeks 1-2/April 2-11: Introduction, Views of the mind
Subtopics: (a) Dualism as common sense
(b) Two varieties of materialism about mind
Bloom, "Natural-Born Dualists” from Edge
(http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom04/bloom04_index.html)
Sober, “Dualism and the Mind/Body Problem,” from Core Questions
Sober, "Mind-Brain Identity Theory" and "Functionalism" from Core Questions
Weeks 3-4/April 14-25: Topic 1, The mind as information processor
Subtopics: (a) Syntax and semantics of representational states
(b) Serial computing AI
Clark, Chapter 1 from Mindware
J. Kim, "Turing Machines" from Philosophy of Mind (1st Edition)
Johnson-Laird, "Symbols and Mental Processes" from The Computer and the Mind
Clark, Section 2.1 of Mindware
Searle, "Can Computers Think?”
Clark, Section 2.2A of Mindware
P.M. Churchland and P.S. Churchland, ”Could a Machine Think?”
Weeks 5-6/April 28-May 9: Topic 2, Mobile robots and the interdependence of perceiving,
thinking, and action
Subtopics: (a) Hierarchical and reactive paradigms
(b) Explanation of teleology by emergence
Murphy, Overview and excerpt from Ch. 1 of Introduction to AI Robotics
Murphy, excerpts from Chs. 2, 4 of Introduction to AI Robotics
Mataric, excerpt from Ch. 15 of The Robotics Primer
Clark, Ch. 5 from Mindware
Clark, Ch. 6 from Mindware
Fogel, excerpt from Evolutionary Computation: Toward a New Philosophy of
Machine Intelligence
Mayr, excerpt from Ch. 1 from This is Biology
Rue, “Emergence: Nature’s Mode of Creativity”
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Week 7-8/May 12-23: Topic 3, The biology of mind
Subtopics: (a) The evolution of mind
(b) Parallel computing AI/artificial neural networks
Dawkins, excerpt from The Blind Watchmaker
P.M. Churchland, Ch.7, sections 1-4 from Mind and Consciousness
P.M. Churchland, Ch. 7, section 5 from Mind and Consciousness
Zull, Ch. 6 and excerpt from Ch. 7 from The Art of Changing the Brain
Week 9-10/May 28-June 6: Topic 4, The cognitive science of learning
Subtopics: (a) Metacognition
(b) Results from cognitive science that tell us how to improve learning
Flavell, “Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring: A New Area of Cognitive-Developmental
Inquiry”
Bransford, et al., Ch. 2 from How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and
School
Bransford and Stein, “Learning with Understanding” from The Ideal Problem Solver
Esch, “A Cognitive Approach to Teaching Philosophy”
Resources: Particularly helpful are: A Companion to Cognitive Science, edited by William
Bechtel and George Graham, a one-volume encyclopedia with entries for topics in cognitive
science which is available as an ebook through the library catalogue; and Mind Design II, edited
by John Haugeland, an excellent collection of papers. A very helpful resource that Clark
doesn't mention is: The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, edited by Robert A.
Wilson and Frank C. Keil, a one-volume encyclopedia with short entries on many more topics
that Bechtel and Graham's encyclopedia.
Paul Thagard's Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science is a helpful text; Thagard's entry
on cognitive science for the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a synopsis of the
book, with links to other resources: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/.
An excellent introduction to cognitive science for those who have a background in
computer science is The Computer and the Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Science by P. N.
Johnson-Laird.
A new and accessible introduction to robotics is The Robotics Primer by Maja Mataric.
A useful resource on artificial life provided by the Association for the Advancement of
Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is available at
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AITopics/ArtificialLife . Also The Philosophy of
Artificial Life edited by Margaret A. Boden, is a helpful collection of essays.
A good resource on connectionism is James Garson’s Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy entry “Connectionism”. Also helpful is the AAAI’s entry “Neural Networks and
Connectionist Systems” and Connectionism and the Mind: An Introduction to Parallel
Processing in Networks, a text by William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen.
(All of the books mentioned in this resource section are available at the library.)