Psy 430/530: Cognitive Science

Schedule and Readings

Week 1: What is Cognitive Science?

January 9 and 11

¨       History, disciplines, questions, challenges

Gardner, H. (1987). Excerpt from The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. Basic Books.

Bruner, J. S. (1990). Excerpt from Acts of Meaning. Harvard University Press.

Holden, C. (1986). The rational optimist; will computers ever think like people? This expert on artificial intelligence and cognitive science asks, why not? Psychology Today, 20, 54-60.

Further reading:

The Pre-History of Cognitive Science Website: http://www.rc.umd.edu/cstahmer/cogsci/ Includes resources on philosophers Berkeley, Hobbes, and Locke as the “ancestors” to modern cognitive science questions.

Crowther-Heyck, H. (1999). George A. Miller, language, and the computer metaphor and mind. History of Psychology, 2, 37-64.

Week 2: How Do We Think?

January 18

¨       Representation

Greco, A. (1995) The concept of representation in psychology. Cognitive Systems, 4, 247-256. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000652/00/COGSY95B.HTM

¨       Analogy

Holyoak, K. J., Gentner, D., & Kokinov, B. N. (2001).  Introduction: The Place of Analogy in Cognition [abridged].  In D. Gentner, K. J. Holyoak, and B. N. Kokinov (Eds.), The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science (pp. 1-19). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

¨       Imagery

Pylyshyn, Z. (2003). Return of the mental image: Are there really pictures in the brain?  Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 113-118.

¨       Rationality

Gardner, H. (1987). How rational a being?  In H. Gardner, The mind’s new science: A history of the cognitive revolution (ch. 11).  New York: Basic Books.

¨       How do emotion and cognition differ?

Bechara, A., Damasio, H.,  Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy.  Science, 275, 1293-1295.

Evans, J. St. B. T.. (2003). In two minds: dual-process accounts of reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 454-459.

 

Further Reading:

Thomas, N. J. T. (2000, April). A Non-Symbolic Theory of Conscious Content: Imagery and Activity. Paper presented at the Conference Toward a Science of Consciousness, Tucson AZ. http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/nthomas/nonsym.htm
See also: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/nthomas/pyl-com.htm

Samuels, R., Stich, S., & Trmoulet, P. D. (1999).  Rethinking rationality. From bleak implications to Darwininan modules. [Abridged version].  Full-length original available at: http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/Rethink/rethink.html

Medin, D. L., Lynch, E. B., & Solomon, K. O. (2000). Are there kinds of concepts? Annual Review of Psychology,51, 121-147.

Hofstadter, D. R. (2001) Analogy as the Core of Cognition. In D. Gentner, K. J. Holyoak, and B. N. Kokinov (Eds.), The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science (pp. 499-538). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Quantum mechanics of concepts http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002139/

 

Epstein, S. (1994). Integration of the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious. American Psychologist, 49, 709-724.

Thagard, P. (in preparation). Emotions. In P. Thagard, Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [For references, see http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Bibliographies/cogsci.bib.html]

Eich, E., & Schooler, J. W. (2000). Cognition/emotion interactions.  In E. Eich, J. F. Kihlstrom, G. H. Bower, J. P. Forgas, & P. M. Niedenthal, Cognition and Emotion (pp. 3-29). Oxford University Press.

Adolphs, R., & Damasio, A. R. (2001). The interaction of affect and cognition: A neurobiological perspective. In J. P. Forgas (Ed), Handbook of affect and social cognition. (pp. 27-49). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum

Emotion Home Page of the UCSD Salk Institute: http://emotion.salk.edu/emotion.html

Week 3: Consciousness

January 23 and 25

¨       What is consciousness?

P. Thagard (in preparation). Consciousness. In P. Thagard, Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  [For references, see http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Bibliographies/cogsci.bib.html]

Chalmers, D. J. (2004). How can we construct a science of consciousness? In M. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences III. MIT Press. http://consc.net/papers/scicon.html

Carruthers, P. (2000). The evolution of consciousness. In P.Carruthers and A.Chamberlain (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind (pp. 254-275). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Further Reading:

Baars, B. J. (2002).  The conscious access hypothesis.  Trends in Cognitive Science, 6, 47-52.

McGinn on consciousness (introduction): http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/McGinn_99.html

McGinn on consciousness and space (and transcending intuitions):
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness97/papers/ConsciousnessSpace.html

Carruthers, P. (2000). Précis of Carruthers, P. (2000). Phenomenal Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/mind/forums/forum2.htm

W. Lycan, Representational theories of concsiousness:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-representational/

Losing Consciousness (from Conversations with Neil’s Brain” The Neural Nature of Thought & Language, by William H. Calvin and George A. Ojemann). http://williamcalvin.com/bk7/bk7ch2.htm

Dretske on mind’s self-awareness: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness97/papers/dretske.html

Block on neural correlates of consciousness:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/NeuralCorrelate.html

Patricia Churchland on non-neural theories of conscious experience: http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/EPL/nonneural.html 

 

Week 4: Other Minds

January 30 and February 1

¨       Elements of social cognition

Malle, B. F. (2005). What is Social Cognition? Chapter in preparation for B. F. Malle, Social cognition: Social, developmental, and evolutionary perspectives. Monograph in preparation for Guilford Press.

¨       Theory of mind

Malle, B. F. (2004).  Foundation: The folk theory of mind.  In B. F. Malle, How the mind explains behavior (chapter 2).  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Meltzoff, A. N., & Brooks, R. (2001). “Like me” as a building block for understanding other minds: Bodily acts, attention, and intention. In B. F. Malle, L. J. Moses, & D. A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 171-191). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

¨       How flawed is social cognition?

Barr, D. J., & Keysar, B. (2005). Mindreading in an exotic case: The normal adult human.  In B. F. Malle and S. D. Hodges, Other Minds.  New York: Guilford.

 

Further Readings

Resource Page from NEH Seminar on Mental Simulation http://www.umsl.edu/~philo/Mind_Seminar/New%20Pages/papers.html.

Goldman, A. I. (1993). The psychology of folk psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 15-28. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/goldman.psyc.html.

Preston, S. D., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2001). Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, [also in BBS public domain http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Preston/Referees/

 

Week 5: Perception, Action, Will

February 6 and 8

First Exam: Monday, February 6

¨       Perception and Action

Gallese, V., Keysers, C., & Rizzolatti, G. (2004). A unifying view of the basis of social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 396-403.

Blakemore, S. J. (2003).  Deluding the motor system. Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 647–655.

 

Further Readings

Johnson, S.  H. (2000). Thinking ahead: The case for motor imagery in prospective judgements of prehension. Cognition, 74, 33-70.

Bargh, J. A. (2005). Bypassing the will: Towards demystifying behavioral priming effects. In R. Hassin, J. S. Uleman, and J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The new unconscious (pp. 37-58). New York: Oxford University Press.

Blakemore, S.-J., Wolpert, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Why can't you tickle yourself? Neuroreport. 11(11), R11-R16.

Video clip from PBS Nova about mirror neurons: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/3204/i01.html

 

¨       Is there freedom of the will?

Wegner, D. M., & Wheatley, T. P. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will. American Psychologist, 54, 480–492.

Malle, B. F. (forthcoming). Of windmills and strawmen: Skepticism about folk assumptions of mind and action.  In  S. Pockett, W. P. Banks, & S. Gallagher (Eds.), Does consciousness cause behavior? An investigation of the nature of volition.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

Further Readings

Mele, A. R. (in press). Decisions, intentions, urges, and free will: Why Libet has not shown what he says he has. In J. Campbell, M. O'Rourke, and D. Shier (Eds.),  Explanation and causation: Topics in contemporary philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lloyd, P. B.  Glitches Reloaded. Published on KurzweilAI.net June 1, 2003. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0581.html  [A critical analysis of questions raised by Matrix Reloaded, with the free will question being one of them.]

Pelham, B. W., Mirenberg, M. C., Jones, J. T. (2002). Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit egotism and major life decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 469–87.

 

Week 6: Language and Mind

February 13 and 15

Last Chance for First Reaction Paper: Monday, February 13

¨       Language I:  Phonetics, syntax, and comprehension

Bloom, P. (2000). Language and thought: Does grammar makes us smart? Current Biology, 10, R516-R517.

Richardson, D. C., Spivey, M. J., Barsalou, L. W., & McRae, K. (2003). Spatial representations activated during real-time comprehension of verbs. Cognitive Science, 27, 767-780.

 

¨       Language II: Acquisition, evolution, and discourse

Bloom, P. (2002).  Mindreading, communication and the learning of names for things.  Mind and Language, 17, 37-54.

Iverson, J. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2001). The resilience of gesture in talk: Gesture in blind speakers and listeners. Developmental Science, 4, 416-422.

Pinker, S. (2003) Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche. In M. Christiansen & S. Kirby (Eds.),  Language evolution: States of the art. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Further Readings

Baldwin, D. A. (1993). Early referential understanding: Infants' ability to recognize referential acts for what they are. Developmental Psychology, 29, 832-843.

Morgan, J. L. (1978). Toward a rational model of discourse comprehension. Proceedings of the theoretical issues in natural language processing 2 (pp. 109-114).  Urbana-Campaign, Illinois, United States.

Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Mayberry, Rachel I. (2001). How do profoundly deaf children learn to read? Learning Disabilities Research & Practice. Vol 16, 222-229.

Malle, B. F. (2002a). The relation between language and theory of mind in development and evolution. In T. Givón & B. F. Malle (Eds.), The evolution of language out of pre-language (pp. 265-284). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Week 7: Evolution of Cognition and Artificial Intelligence

February 20 and 22

¨       Evolution of cognition (Is all cognition originally social?)

Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N. (2002).  Social intelligence, innovation, and enhanced brain size in primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 4436-4441. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/7/4436

 

Further Readings

Humphrey, N. (1976). The social function of intellect. In P. P. G. Bateson and R. A. Hinde, Growing Points in Ethology (pp. 303- 317). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001737/

Cruse, H. (2003). The evolution of cognition—a hypothesis. Cognitive Science, 27, 135–155.

Calvin, W. H. (2001). Pumping up intelligence: Abrupt climate jumps and the evolution of higher intellectual functions during the ice ages.  In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The Evolution of Intelligence (pp.  97-115). Erlbaum.  http://cogprints.org/3219/01/1999intelligence-chapter.htm

Thomas R. Insel and Russell D. Fernald. (2004). How the Brain Processes Social Information: Searching for the Social Brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 697-722.

Krachun, C. (2002).  Are apes conscious? an overview of inconclusive evidence. Carleton University Cognitive Science Technical Report 2002-10. http://www.carleton.ca/iis/TechReports/2002.html.

 

¨       Artificial intelligence, minds in machines?

McCarthy, J. (2000). What is AI? http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0088.html

Moravec, H. (2000).  Robots, re-evolving mind.  http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0145.html

Adams, B., Breazeal, C., Brooks, R. A., & Scassellati, B. (2000). Humanoid robots: A new kind of tool. IEEE Intelligent Systems and Their Applications: Special Issue on Humanoid Robotics, 15, 25-31.

Searle, J. R. (2002). I married a computer. In J. W. Richards (Ed.), Are we spiritual machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the critics of Strong A.I. Discovery Institute. or  http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0499.html [Note: The paper that Searle responds to is in the Further Readings as Kurzweil (2002).]

 

Further Readings

Can computers think? http://www.macrovu.com/CCTGeneralInfo.html

Bringsjord, S. Précis of Bringsjord, S. (1992), What robots can and can't be. Boston: Kluwer.

Dennett, D. (1997). Consciousness in human and robot minds. In M. Ito, Y. Miyashita, & E. T. Rolls (Eds.), Cognition, Computation, and Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kurzweil, R. (2002). The evolution of mind in the twenty-first century.  In J. W. Richards (Ed.), Are we spiritual machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the critics of Strong A.I. Discovery Institute. or http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0500.html

Website on KISMET, the sociable robot: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/kismet/kismet.html See especially: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/sociable/videos.html

 

Week 8: All Just Brain States?

February 27 and March 1

¨       The mind-body problem

Introduction to the philosophical mind-body problem.  Excerpted and abridged from:
Duniho, F. (1991).  The Mind/Body problem and its solution.  Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Taylor, E. (1992). Biological consciousness and the experience of the  transcendent: William James and American functional  psychology.  In R. H. Wozniak, Mind and Body: Rene Déscartes to William James. Bethesda, MD & Washington, DC by the National Library of Medicine and the American Psychological Association. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/James.html

McGinn, C. (1989). Can we solve the Mind-Body problem.  Mind, 98, 349-366.

Humphrey, N. (2000). How to solve the mind-body problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, 5-20. http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papersonline/2000MindBodyProblem.

Further Readings

Excerpt from:
Chalmers, D. J. (2000). What is a neural correlate of consciousness? In T. Metzinger (Ed.), Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  

Velmans, M. (2002). How could conscious experiences affect brains? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9, 3-29.

 

¨       Cognitive and brain science

Blakemore, S., Winston, J., & Frith, U. (2004). Social cognitive neuroscience: Where are we heading? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 216-222.

Harpaz, Y. (2002). Misunderstanding in cognitive brain imaging.  Unpublished manuscript, available at http://human-brain.org/imaging.html

¨       Folk psychology

Brief overview of Churchland’s attack on folk psychology: http://www.hku.hk/philodep/courses/rm/phil2230/phil2230l13.html

Excerpts from:
Nichols, S. (2002). Folk psychology.  Originally appeared in Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.  London:  Nature Publishing Group. 
       Entire original available at http://www.cofc.edu/~nichols/FolkPsychologyFinal.htm  

Week 9: Expanding Cognitive Science

March 6 and 8

Last Chance for Second Lit Reaction: Wednesday, March 8

¨       Cognitive science of music and art

De Sousa, R. (2004). Is art an adaptation? Prospects for an evolutionary perspective on beauty. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62, 109-118.

Lopes, D. M. M. (1999). Pictorial color: aesthetics and cognitive science. Philosophical Psychology,  12, 415-428,

Levitin, D. J. (2000).  In search of the musical mind.  Cerebrum, 2, 1 - 24.

Trainor, L. J., Tsang, C. D., & Cheung, V. H. W. (2002). Preference for sensory consonance in 2- and 4-month-old infants. Music Perception, 20, 187-194.

Further Reading

Brown, S., Merker, B., & Wallin, N. L. (2000). An Introduction to Evolutionary Musicology. In N. L. Wallin, B. Merker, and S. Brown (Eds.), The origins of music.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Carroll, N. (2004). Art and human nature. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62, 95-107.

Cross, I. (1999). Is music the most important thing we ever did? Music, development and evolution.  In Suk Won Yi (Ed.), Music, Mind and Science.  Seoul: Seoul National University Press. http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/~ic108/MMS/

Humphrey, N. (1998). Cave art, autism, and the evolution of the human mind.  Cambridge Archaeological Journal,  8, 165-191.

Steele, K. M. (2003). Do rats show a Mozart effect? Music Perception, 21, 251–265.

Further resources:
http://www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/freeland.html,
http://www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/freeland2.html,
http://www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/freeland3.html,
Journal Music Perception
http://caliber.ucpress.net/loi/mp

 

¨       Cognitive Science of morality

Stich, S. (1993). Moral philosophy and mental representation. In M. Hechter, L. Nadel, & R. E. Michod (Eds.), The origin of values (pp215-228). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/MPMR/MPAMR.html

Greene, J. D. (2003). From neural ‘is’ to moral ‘ought’: What are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?  Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4, 847-850.

fMRI paper

Rethorst, J. (1997). Art and imagination: Implications of cognitive science for moral education. Philosophy of Education. http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/97_docs/rethorst.html

 

Further Readings

Sheppard, S. (1997). Education and the cognitive revolution: Something to "think" about, Philosophy of Education. http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/97_docs/sheppard.html

Flack J. C., & de Waal F. B. M. (2000). ‘Any animal whatever'. Darwinian building blocks of morality in monkeys and apes.  Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, 1-29. 

Newberg A. B., & d'Aquili E. G. (2000). The neuropsychology of religious and spiritual experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, 251-266.

Week 10: Exam, Project Feedback and Implementation

March 13 and 15

Second Exam: Monday, March 13

 

Finals Week: Project due