125. Philosophy of Cognitive Science
This topic covers some of the key questions about the nature of the mind dealt with by a variety of cognitive scientific disciplines: experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics and computational modelling of the mind.
You do not need to be studying a scientific subject to take this topic, as long as you enjoy reading about scientific discoveries about the mind and brain. For those studying psychology, neuroscience, linguistics or computation, the topic is a crucial bridge to philosophy. The topic will be of great interest to philosophers without a scientific background who want to understand the benefits and limitations of bringing scientific data to bear on deep issues in the philosophy of mind. Studying this topic will provide insight into the ways that contemporary scientific advances have improved our understanding of aspects of the mind that have long been the focus of philosophical reflection. It will also introduce you to a range of theoretical issues generated by current research in the behavioural and brain sciences.
The core topics are:
Levels of description and explanation (e.g. personal vs. subpersonal, functional vs. mechanistic, mind vs. brain);
Cognitive architecture, modularity, homuncular functionalism;
Conceptual foundations of information processing: rules and algorithms, tacit knowledge (e.g. of grammar), competence vs. performance;
The nature and format of representations: representationalism vs. behaviourism, the computational theory of mind and language of thought, connectionist alternatives;
The scientific study of consciousness, including the role of subjects' reports, non-verbal and direct measures; neural and computational correlates of consciousness; and the problem of distinguishing phenomenal and access consciousness empirically.
The lectures will also cover philosophical issues raised by some areas of cutting-edge research, such as: agency and its phenomenology; attention and neglect; cognitive neuropsychology; concepts; delusions; dual-process theories; dynamical systems, embodied and embedded cognition; evolutionary psychology and massive modularity; forward models and predictive coding; imagery; implicit processing (e.g. blindsight, prosopagnosia); innateness (e.g. concept nativism); language processing and knowledge of language; perception and action (e.g. dorsal vs. ventral visual systems); spatial representation; theory of mind / mindreading; unity of consciousness.