Laboratories and Exams: Click Here

Brief Course Description:

An exploration of the study of the human mind through philosophy, and recent attempts to model human cognition and reasoning within the cognitive sciences (cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and computer modeling). Four questions provide keys to our study: What is a person? Am I just a brain? Does evolution provide an answer? Could a machine think? For this course, you will be asked to participate in four labs, concerning (i) Electroencephalogram recording of waking brain activity, (ii) Practical artificial intelligence, (iii) Dreams and memory, (iv) Language acquisition.

Eric Palmer, Carnegie Hall 215, Tel. 332-3312.
Home number is 333-2538: Please call only during the hours of 9AM-8PM.

And Associates: Professors David Anderson and Evelyn Buday, and laboratory assistants Tiffany Weaver  and Jessica Young, will be present in class from time to time.

Office Hours: Carnegie Hall 215
M: 10-10:50, 2:30-3:20
Tu: 2:30-4:15
W: 2:30-3:20

F: 10-10:50
And whenever I am in and available (which is often). I am also open for appointments: just let me know.

Course Description:

An exploration of the study of the human mind through philosophy, and recent attempts to model human cognition and reasoning within the cognitive sciences (cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and computer modeling). Five questions provide keys to our study:

What is a person? We begin by considering what we can say we know about our minds, and what each of us refers to as "I, myself ". Am I a soul? Am I nothing other than a piece of matter? Might I survive the death of my body, and might I be reincarnated? We will consider these questions and the answers that have been suggested for our consideration in writings by a number of recent and historical figures in Western philosophy. I will attempt to consider some parallel approaches within other philosophical traditions as we go along, but as I am not an expert in other traditions, and I think the lack of understanding of this topic is not all that different in different cultures, I'll focus especially on the Western tradition. I hope to be able to convince you that you don't know much about being a soul, if you are one.

Am I just a brain? Many people, including many philosophers and scientists at present, believe that minds are just meat machines that are products of natural evolution. Plenty of the attraction of cognitive psychology and neuroscience is based on this assumption. Though we will consider alternatives, such as the possibility of the existence of a soul, we will focus especially on the hypothesis that you are your brain in this course. I hope to be able to convince you that you don't know that you are, for a good number of reasons.

Does evolution provide an answer? It will be assumed for most of the course that our bodies, at any rate, are products of evolution. Can evolution provide a similar account of the nature of ourselves, as planning, emotional, language-producing entities? The efforts in this direction are especially intriguing, and we will look at a book-length treatment of this topic by Daniel Dennett. We will see that one of the stickiest problems for such an account -- perhaps one that it cannot overcome -- is explaining how having a conscious mind comes to pass in an evolved animal body.

Could a machine think? We will consider recent work on modeling human thought within cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and computing. We will also consider arguments by John Searle concerning whether or not human thought could be appropriately considered to be the product of a computational system. These discussions may also be seen to be of relevance because they suggest answers to the questions, "Can computers think?” and, “Are all thinkers computers?" I hope to be able to convince you that you don't know that they aren't, but you haven't good reason for believing they are.

So if we don't know these things, why are we studying them? Many people believe they know a good deal about these subjects; others think they don't know, but have some good reasons for believing something about them. I hope to be able to convince you that they are wrong, and the most important questions concerning the nature of the human mind are far from being adequately answered. Becoming clear about how little you (and others) know is one of the main purposes of philosophy. This is not to suggest that work in the cognitive sciences is of minor importance for understanding the mind; just that in certain areas that we'd most like answers for, they don't appear to be forthcoming. But recent efforts in neuroscience provide many, detailed partial answers that we will also come to discuss some of the things we can know as we proceed along. I'd bet that neuroscience will eventually become the most useful way of attacking the big questions in service of an explanation of how minds come to be. But I hope to be able to convince you that I don't have very good reasons for believing it!

Welcome to the skeptical work of philosophy! This course has been improved upon in its latest offering by a gracious grant from the Keck Foundation, which funds Allegheny’s interdisciplinary program on Neuroscience and the Humanities.

Required Texts and Materials:

Dennett, Daniel. Kinds of Minds. Basic Books, 1996.
Searle, John. Minds, Brains and Science. MIT Press, 1984.
Photocopy packet: Part I should be available in the 2nd week of classes; Part II will be available in the sixth week.
Laboratory Notebook: Ruled, softcover version (about $3.50: on the rolling cart by Biology books in the Allegheny Bookstore).

Attendance Policy:

Attendance at labs is mandatory. Regular class attendance is very strongly recommended for success in this course. Material must be gathered from many different texts, and the connections among the texts are likely to be unclear unless you make those connections in the classroom. The course also has a grade that hinges significantly upon participation, because your engagement in discussion will play a role in making the class worthwhile for all. Mere presence in the classroom without active participation will not provide you with a strong participation grade: active (but not overactive) tongues will be taken as indicative of active minds.

Laboratory Component:
Laboratories and Exams: Click Here
The class schedule requires that you be free for laboratory time from 11:50 to 1:20 on Wednesdays. Your presence in the lab will be required only on five or at most six of those Wednesdays as scheduled in the syllabus, and labs will usually run from 10:00 to 1:20, usurping the day’s class time. Due to the difficulty involved in reproducing laboratory conditions there will be no make-up sessions, and so, attendance at all labs is mandatory. Only the most compelling of excuses can be allowed.
Locations of labs are to be announced; default location is the regular classroom. Please purchase a standard laboratory notebook for writing notes in during labs. You will be asked to hand in a lab assignment and your notebook on the Wednesday one week after lab (one day earlier, on Thanksgiving week).

Grading:

15% Classroom and laboratory participation: Regular class attendance is very strongly recommended for success in this course. The course has a grade that hinges significantly upon participation because your engagement in discussion will play a role in making the class worthwhile for all. I will rarely take attendance and note participation with a pencil, but I will do so constantly with my mind: there are few enough of you in the class that that should not be difficult, and the quality of your participation is likely to depend upon your having completed homework in a timely fashion. If you miss a few classes, I will provide you with a copy of my lecture notes for those classes upon request; if you miss many classes, I will be less accommodating, unless appropriate reasons are provided.

• 5% Brief Paper 1 (4 pages), due 24 September.
• 30% Laboratory assignments (5 of them)
• 20% In-class examinations: There will be two in-class tests, each of equal value. Requests to make up missed exams could present difficulties, so please attend. These tests will occur about 26 October, 28 November
• 15% Final examination: This exam will be cumulative, but focused primarily on work done after the second in-class examination. 2 hours, no notes.
• 15% Philosophical research paper: (10 pages) You will be asked to write a philosophical paper on one area of work in the philosophy of mind. Topic proposals, on which I will comment, are due 30 November; your paper will be due at the final exam. You may mix philosophical and popular research sources, but should include at least some significant research based in at least two philosophical sources. You should write approximately 10 pages, critically connecting your reflection upon the philosophical topic to the claims of your research sources.

Grading policies:

1. Plagiarism of intellectual property, which is the unacknowledged use of the ideas or words of another, will not be tolerated, and will result in a referral to the Honor Committee or College Judicial Board (see under "Academic Principles" in the College catalog).  I will present a more detailed explanation of footnoting requirements in class. Collaboration in any stage of writing will not be allowed.  You will be expected to refrain from discussing with others your strategies for answering questions, though discussing the meaning of the works of authors or of my lectures will be considered fair play, even during the time you are writing your answers for exams or papers.

2. Late work:  Papers may be handed in in class, and are due in my mailbox in the philosophy department before the office closes for the evening.  Work that is late, except due to a documented illness or what I consider to be a serious impediment or crisis will be penalized.

Course and Reading Schedule:

Please read the material for the day before class, and bring the day's textbook(s) to class. I will expect you to have read the material for the class, and have questions at hand concerning the text. It may do you well to read the material shortly before class, and again shortly after: philosophy usually requires at least two readings to be understood.
Note: Topic numbers are meant to reflect days in class. We may, however, spend more than one day on a topic, so note that the syllabus may fall behind the date schedule. Unless you are otherwise instructed, however, consider the dates for labs, in-class exams and papers to be firm calendar dates.

Please also schedule in a campus lecture by Michael Brannigan, 4:30 October 10, on Health care in Japan (Think: why is this relevant?).

Introduction: conceptual and experimental approaches

1. Opening day in-class reading: Descartes. Half-minds and half-brains: the unity of the mind (Descartes on dividing mind, preview of Descartes on Cartesian dualism).

I. What are you? A soul?

2. Are we souls? --Judging a mind by its cover.

• 0s Shear, "The Hard Problem: Introduction,” from Shear, ed. Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem. MIT Press, 1998.
• 1 Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality pp. 1-12.
• Searle, Minds, Brains and Science, Introduction, pp. 7-11

3. What could I know about my soul/souls anyway?

• 6 Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality pp. 12-36.
• 19a Churchland, "The Mind-Body Problem," in Churchland, Matter and Consciousness. MIT Press 1988. pp. 7-21

• 31 Descartes: theory of mind excerpts from the Meditations.
• 47 Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, in Beakley & Ludlow, eds. The Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, 1992. pp. 109-114
• 53 Malebranche, "The union of soul and body," in Beakley & Ludlow, eds. The Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, 1992. pp. 115-118
• 57 Ryle, "Descartes' Myth," in Beakley & Ludlow, eds. The Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, 1992. pp. 23-31

• Searle, Minds, Brains and Science, Ch.6.
• 66 Dennett, Elbow Room, MIT Press, 1986, pp. 1-15, 50-6182 Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, in Beakley & Ludlow, eds. The Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, 1992. pp. 15-17
• 85 Hume, "The self," from Feinberg, ed. Reason and Responsibility, 7/ed. pp. 312-14
• 0q Chomsky, Language and Problems of Knowledge, in Beakley & Ludlow, eds. The Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, 1992. pp. 47-9

• What do we know about experiences?
• 30a Cytowic, The Man Who Tasted Shapes. MIT Press, 1998.
• 88 James, "The Stream of Consciousness," in Block et. al. eds. The Nature of Consciousness, MIT Press 1997. p. 71

• 20 Parfit, "Personal Identity," from Glover, ed. The Philosophy of Mind. Oxford, 1976. pp. 142-62.
• 118 Nagel, "What is it like to be a bat?" in Block et. al. eds. The Nature of Consciousness, MIT Press 1997. pp. 519-27

8. Phenomenology I: The stream of consciousness

• 89 Flanagan, "The robust phenomenology of the Stream of consciousness," in Block et. al. eds. The Nature of Consciousness, MIT Press 1997. pp. 89-93
• 0a Chalmers, David. “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience,” in Damasio, ed. Scientific American Book of the Brain. Lyons Press, 2001.

•    Dennett, "Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness."
• 126a Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, 93-104
• 131 Crick & Koch, "Why Neuroscience may be able to explain consciousness"

• 162 Fodor, "The Mind Body Problem," from Feinberg, ed. Reason and Responsibility. 7th ed. 287-97
• 174 Churchland, "Functionalism," in Matter and Consciousness, MIT Press, 1988. pp. 36-42
• Searle, Minds, Brains and Science, Ch.1, pp. 11-27

• 134 Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," in The Mind's I, Bantam, 1981. pp. 69-95
• 156 "A conversation with Racter." http://www.hok.no/marius/c-g.writing

13. Computing minds reconsidered

• 162 Hofstadter, "The Turing test -- A coffee house conversation," in The Mind's I, Bantam, 1981. pp. 69-95
• Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind, pp. 10-26

• Searle, Minds, Brains and Science, Ch.1, pp. 11-27
• Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind, 43-5, 52-7
• Dennett, “The Practical Requirements for making a robot,” in Brainchildren, MIT 1998.

• Rey, “A question about consciousness.”
• Searle, Minds, Brains and Science, Ch. 2, pp. 28-41

16.  Reader 75-85: Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, Ch. 9. pp. 313-332

17. Lab 3: Tachystiscopic perception

• Searle on "formal processes" in machines
• Searle, Minds, Brains and Science, Ch. 3, 42-56
• 37-9: Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind, pp. 222-6
• Dennett, “The Practical Requirements for Making a Robot.” In Branchildren. MIT Press, 1998, 153-70.

• 86 Dennett, “Instead of Qualia,” in Brainchildren. MIT Press, 1998, 141-152.
• 98 Gleitman, Basic Psychology, Norton, 1986, pp. 15-27
• 111 Farah, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision. Blackwell, 2000. 1-151.
• 152 Damasio, “Notes on Mind and Brain,” from The Feeling of What Happens. Harcourt, 1999.

19. Neuroscience and cognitive pathologies: what do these tell us about mind?

• Zuboff, "The story of a brain," in The Mind's I, Bantam, 1981. pp. 202-213
• Coltheart and Davies, Pathologies of Belief. Blackwell, 2000.

• Guzeldere, et. al. “The Nature and Function of Consciousness.” In Gazzaniga et. al, ed. The New Cognitive Neurosciences. MIT, 2000.
• Cytowic, “Too many points on the chicken,” handout.
• Lab 3 writeup due

21. Fixing psychological language: Eliminative materialism

• Churchland, "Eliminative materialism," "Folk Psychology," in Churchland, Matter and Consciousness. MIT Press 1988. pp. 43-9, 56-61.
• Singer, “Consciousness from a Neurobiological Perspective.” In Rose, ed. From Brains to Consciousness? Princeton U Press, 1998.
• (Reader II pages 3-11) Searle, Rediscovery of Mind, 46-62.

• 235 Dawkins: "The Selfish Gene," in Hofstadter & Dennett, eds. The Mind's I, Bantam Press, 1981.
• 247 Bailey, Genetics and Evolution, Oxford, 1995, pp. 50-3, 56-61
• 341 Dennett: "The Monkey's Uncle Meets the Meme," in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, 1995. pp. 341-52

29 October-2 November

24. Thinking about sleep

• Flanagan, Dreaming Souls. Oxford, 2000. Ch. 1-2

• Flanagan, Dreaming Souls. Oxford, 2000. Ch. 3&6

• KOM pp. 1-25

27. KOM II

• KOM 26-55
• 268 Wilson, “Animal Communication,” in Language, development and communication. Scientific American books.

• KOM  57-80
• 336 Gleitman, Basic Psychology, Norton, 1986, pp. 70-76.

• KOM 81-118

30. Language learning and understanding other minds

• Premack & Premack, “Teaching Language to an Ape,” In Language, development and communication. Scientific American books.
• Flavell et. al. “Children’s Understanding of the Stream of Consciousness,” in Child Development, 1993, 64. 387-98.

31. Lab 5 day, Nov. 14. Language

• Leslie, “Pretense and Representation: The origins of ‘theory of mind’” in Psychological Review,1987 v. 94 n. 4 412-26.

• KOM 119-34

33. KOM VI

• KOM 134-53

34. KOM Last

• KOM 154-72
• Lab 5 writeup due

• 370 Leslie, “’Theory of mind’ as a Mechanism of Selective Attention,” in Gazzaniga et. al, ed. The New Cognitive Neurosciences. MIT, 2000.
• 384 Halligan & Oakley, “The Greatest Myth of All,” New Scientist 81 Nov. 2000.

• RESEARCH PAPER PROPOSAL DUE

• 37. More cog theories of consciousness, and pathologies
• Stephens & Graham, When Self-consciousness Breaks: Alien voices and inserted thoughts. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.
• Hirst, “Cognitive Aspects of Consciousness,” in Gazzaniga et. al, ed. The New Cognitive Neurosciences. MIT, 2000.

• Greenfield, “How might the brain generate consciousness?” in Stephen Rose, ed. From Brain to Consciousness? Princeton, 1998.

• 447 Kinsbourne, “Models of Consciousness: Serial or Parallel in the brain?” in Gazzaniga, ed. 1995.
• 456 Dennett, “Real Consciousness,” in Brainchildren. MIT Press, 1998, 153-70.

December 10-12

40. And yet again

• 465 Crick & Koch, “The unconscious homunculus,” ion Neural Correlates of Consciousness. Metzinger, ed. MIT, 2000.
• 473 Koch & Crick, “Some thoughts on consciousness and neuroscience,” in Gazzaniga et. al, ed. The New Cognitive Neurosciences. MIT, 2000.

• 514 Rose, “Brains, minds and the world,” in Stephen Rose, ed. From Brain to Consciousness? Princeton, 1998.

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