Cognitive Science, Phil212, Term 2, Semester 1, 2009

John Collier, MTB 316 (280 on new system), Phone 031 260 3248

Email: collierj@ukzn.ac.za

General Outline
We will return to the topics from last term later, but first we will look at more philosophical issues, especially Language and Representation, Conciousness and Culture, as well as an introduction to the range of  views on cognitive science in the last 60 years, and how evolutionary psychology fits in. I will post lecture notes here as we go along, typically the day after the lecture. The main readings will be placed on moodle.

Objectives
Students will develop a familiarity with the main trends in cognitive science and their relations to each other, and learn to write on central issues in a clear, concise and balanced way.

There will be one assignment. The due date is Friday, May 15, 2009. You should discuss your paper with me before you get very far along with it. The assignment is available from Yolanda, and also here.


April 14-15
Behaviorism as a theory of mind.
General overview of cognitive science (some notes are here). Adriano has covered this.
Chomksy, Review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior.

April 20-21
Computational theory of mind (1 week)
Readings (on moodle):
Required: 
Harnad, Computation and Cognition (full title: Harnad, S. (1994) Computation Is Just Interpretable Symbol Manipulation: Cognition Isn't.)
Harnad - 2001 - On Turing.html
Supplemental:
Pinker - Could a Computer Ever be Conscious.htm
Minsky - 1991 - Logical vs Analogical.htm
Turing - 1950 - Computing machinery intelligence.pdf
Some notes on computationalism

May 4-May 13
Language and cognition (1 week, perhaps more) 
Required reading :
Andy Clark\Clark - 1998 - Magic Words.htm,
Daniel DennettDennett - 1994 - Role of language in intelligence.htm
Optional reading:
Daniel DennettDennett - 1993 - Learning and labelling.htm,
Language Millikan - 2001 - Lang and thought.pdf
Some notes on using words to help us think
Some notes on the function of language
Some notes on language and intelligence

Offsite: Chimpanzee signs

May 13 - May 20
Distributed Cognition, Representation and Thought
Here are a couple of links to distributed cognition definitions on the web: Wikipedia,  Culture as distributed cognition (conference abstracts).
There are many other useful web sources:
What is distributed cognition?
A brief introduction to distributed cognition, Yvonne Rogers.
DCog.
Distributed Cognition, Edwin Hutchins (2000)
Harnad, Stevan (2007) Distributed Processes, Distributed Cognizers and Collaborative Cognition. Against distributed cognition:
Abstract
Cognition is thinking; it feels like something to think, and only those who can feel can think. There are also things that thinkers can do. We know neither how thinkers can think nor how they are able do what they can do. We are waiting for cognitive science to discover how. Cognitive science does this by testing hypotheses about what processes can generate what doing (“know-how”) This is called the Turing Test. It cannot test whether a process can generate feeling, hence thinking -- only whether it can generate doing. The processes that generate thinking and know-how are “distributed” within the heads of thinkers, but not across thinkers’ heads. Hence there is no such thing as distributed cognition, only collaborative cognition. Email and the Web have spawned a new form of collaborative cognition that draws upon individual brains’ real-time interactive potential in ways that were not possible in oral, written or print interactions.

Required reading:
– Wheeler, Two Threats to Representation; Kirsh, Adapting the Environment Instead of Oneself
Supplementary:
-- Wheeler and Clark, Genic Representation: Reconciling Content and Causal Complexity, section 2 and Conclusion
-- Murphy, 'Situated learning', 'Distributed cognition', Do academics really need to know?
-- Artman and Garbis, Situation awareness as distributed cognition

I have some notes on Cognition,  Development and Evolution that might prove useful. The notes include some discussion of a good test; see also notes on theories and hypothesis resting below.
My notes on Kirsh here.
My notes on Wheeler are here.
   

Here are some notes on theories and hypothesis testing that you might find useful.

Evaluation
One Final Assignment for the term (due May15). I will give you a choice of topics. Once you choose a topic, talk to me about possible supplemental reading, etc. One of the biggest problems with a term paper is attempting to tackle too much. DPs will be given to those who complete the papers.