COGS Q240 Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science

Fall 2008 Schedule and Syllabus

Instructors

(Prof.) Colin Allen <colallen@indiana.edu> Goodbody Hall 113, 855-8916
Office hours: Wednesdays immediately after class, or by appointment.

(A.I.) Carlos Zednik <czednik@indiana.edu> Sycamore 021
Office hours: Mondays 1:30-2:30

Subject Matter

Cognitive Science emerged almost 50 years ago from developments in philosophy, computer science, psychology, and linguistics. Central to this emergence were new ideas about how minds could be understood in computational terms: the computational theory of mind. The belief that intelligence could be understood in terms of physical processing of symbolic representations served to unite artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology under a common philosophical framework, and it was believed that computers with human-level capacities would be rapidly achieved. Progress in artificial intelligence, however, has been much slower than anticipated, and developments in neuroscience, in artificial neural networks, and in dynamical and evolutionary approaches to cognition and robotics, have caused some to question whether cognitive science should remain committed to the computational theory of mind. In this course, students will learn about the original promise of the computational theory, and how it provided an alternative to earlier philosophical and scientific views about the relationship between mind and body. We will go on to consider the debate about whether evolutionary, embodied, and dynamical systems approaches to cognitive science amount to an overthrow of its traditional symbolic-representationalist core as well as providing a philosophical challenge to our deep-seated conception of ourselves as human agents with rational beliefs.

Assignments and Grading

This course is designated Intensive Writing(IW).From the faculty handbook: “For a course to qualify for IW credit, students must be required to write at least 5,000 words (roughly 20 typed pages), not counting revisions (and excluding essay examinations and informal writing, e.g., journals or brief response statements). Students must receive periodic evaluations of their writing, and they must be required to redraft one or more papers in light of the instructor’s criticism. Ordinarily students will write a series of papers over the course of a semester, not one long term paper.” There are no scheduled examinations, but there are weekly forum posting assignments and six formal pieces of writing required.

• Forum posting: If it is your week to be designated as a "forum starter" (see schedule below) then by Friday midnight of the preceding week you must start a thread in the appropriate forum. Everyone else must post at least one followup to the required threads for that week before Monday's class (you may also start other threads if you wish).
• IW assignments are due by midnight on the dates specified in the table below. All must be submitted via OnCourse. Acceptable formats are pdf, rtf, .doc, and .docx. All submissions should be double-spaced, 1-inch margins, and font size 10-12 points. Include a word count with your document. All sources must be cited in an acceptable format (APA preferred). Also, if you are unsure about what counts as plagiarism, take this tutorial and self-test.

Late submissions are unacceptable and will incur a grade penalty of 1 point per 24 hrs because several of the Friday discussion sessions will involve discussion of drafts of submitted work. The writing assignments are tightly integrated with the main lecture content, so attendance at all three meetings each week is important. Occasional pop quizzes on readings may be used to determine attendance and participation.

70 points for the IW assignments, distributed as follows:

IW-1, due 09/10, 5 points

IW-2, due 10/01, 10 points

IW-3, due 10/13, 10 points

IW-4, due 11/12, 15 points

IW-5, due 12/05, 10 points

IW-6, due 12/15, 20 points

20 points for forum postings (1 point off for each thread missed; 5 points off for missed starter assignment

10 points for participation in discussions during class lecture and discussion periods, and additional contributions to forums

—

100 total

Letter grades will be converted to and from points according to the following 10 point scale:

Texts

There is no required textbook for the course but there are roughly two required readings per week. The schedule below has links to the required readings. Some of these items require a password for access, and some (e.g. jstor) may be inaccessible if you are outside the campus network. Note: local pdfs of jstor articles are provided for convenience of IU students who have fair use rights to them through the university license.

For those interested in a text book that covers some of this material, Andy Clark's Mindware 2nd Edition, Oxford Univ. Press, may be a helpful companion.

Statement for Students with Disabilities

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. Among other things, this legislation requires that all students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodation of their disabilities. If you believe you have a disability requiring an accommodation, please contact IU Disability Services for Students.

Statement about Academic Misconduct

University rules concerning academic misconduct will be rigorously enforced in this class. See IU Code of Ethics, Part II for details.