Introduction to Cognitive Science

Sign-up sheet (for short assignments)

LING/PHIL/PSYC 569

Spring 2008

S SCI 311

MWF 11:00-11:50

Instructor: Shaun Nichols

Office: Social Sciences 318c

Phone: 626-0616

Office Hours: Wed, 1-2; Friday 2-3, and by appointment

Course website: http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~snichols/courses/PHIL569

Readings: All readings will be available on the web, either linked through this syllabus or on ereserve: http://eres.library.arizona.edu/eres/courseindex.aspx?page=search

Course description:

Cognitive scientists investigate mental processes by recruiting methods and results from a wide range of disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, and computer science. The mission of the course is to expose students to several topics that have been studied from a broad range of perspectives in cognitive science. The topics we will cover include moral intuitions, free will, the self, object cognition, the evolution of language, and the relationship between anger and cooperation.

Guest lectures:

Since work in cognitive science is robustly interdisciplinary, there will be several guest lectures from experts in different areas of cognitive science.

Course evaluation:

Class participation (10%):

Students are expected to contribute to class discussions.

Short assignments (25%):

Each student will write 4 short commentaries, each on one of the required readings. The commentary should be emailed to me the evening before the class in which that reading will be discussed. Commentaries should be short (1-2 pages), and they will be used to guide discussion. Late papers will not be accepted.

Research project (65%):

65% of the grade will be determined by the final research project. The final research project can either be a theoretical paper or an empirical project. All students must meet with me to discuss the nature and topic of their research projects.

University boilerplate:

You need a good excuse, in advance, to miss an exam or to hand in a paper late. All holidays or special events observed by organized religions will be honored for those students who show affiliation with that particular religion. Absences pre-approved by the UA Dean of Students (or Dean's designee) will be honored.

I expect acceptable classroom behavior at all times. Disruptive or threatening behavior may result in disciplinary procedures leading to severe penalties. See the UA Policy on Threatening Behavior by Students, and documents referenced therein.

Students with Disabilities
Students with physical, psychological, or learning disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations in this course are encouraged to register with the S.A.L.T. Center or the Disability Resource Center. Students with special needs who are registered with the S.A.L.T. Center or the Disability Resource Center are reminded that they must submit appropriate documentation as soon as possible if they are requesting special accommodations.

Very Tentative schedule

January 16: Introduction

January 18: No class

Jan 21: No class (MLK)

Modularity of Mind

Jan. 23: Fodor precis to Modularity of Mind (Eres)

Jan. 25: Prinz (2006), Is the mind really modular In Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science, ed. by Rob Stainton (Eres)

Linguistics, nativism, and evolution

Philosophical background:

Jan 28: Noam Chomsky (1967). Recent contributions to the theory of innate ideas (ERES)

Hilary Putnam (1967). The 'innateness hypothesis' and the explanatory models in linguistics (ERES)

Jan 30: Guest lecture: LouAnn Gerken

Laurence & Margolis (2001). The Poverty of the Stimulus Argument. British Journal Phil. Sci. Sections 5.2- 7.3.

Schulz & Pullum (2006). Irrational Nativist Exuberance. In Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science, ed. by Rob Stainton, pp. 59-80 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). (ERES)

Feb. 1: Mark Baker (2003). Linguistic differences and language design. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(8):349-353. (ERES)

Feb. 4 & 6: Evolutionary accounts

Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 707-27. (ERES)

Marc Hauser, Noam Chomsky, & William Fitch (2002). The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298, 1569-1579. (ERES)

Steven Pinker & Ray Jackendoff (2004). The faculty of language: what's special about it? Cognition 97, 211-225 (ERES)

Feb. 8: Guest lecture: Jesse Prinz

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Moral intuitions

Feb. 11: Philosophical background:

John Fischer & Mark Ravizza (1992). Ethics: Problems and Principles, excerpts

Feb 13 & 15: Neuroimagining and psychopathologies

Joshua Greene, Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L., Darley, J., & Cohen, J. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293, 2105 - 2108.

Koenigs et al. 2007

Moll vs. Greene in TICS

Feb 18: Guest lecture: Terry Connolly

Feb 20: Higher moral cognition

Fiery Cushman, Liane Young & Marc Hauser (2006). The Role of Reasoning and Intuition in Moral Judgments: Testing three principles of harm. Psychological Science 17(12)

Feb 22: The linguistic analogy

Hauser et al. forthcoming. Reviving Rawls' Linguistic Analogy.

Feb 25: Philosophical implications

Greene, Secret Joke: pp. 40-41 & 59-72 (esp. 66-72)

Anger and Cooperation

Feb 27: Philosophical background:

J. L. Mackie 1982. Morality and the Retributive Emotions.

Feb 29: Evolution of anger:

Robert Frank (1998): Passions within Reason, ch. 3, p. 83 (Norton)

March 3: Psychological characteristics of anger:

Jonathan Haidt (2003). The Moral Emotions. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer, & H. H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dan Fessler (2006). The Male Flash of Anger. In J. Barkow (ed.) Missing the Revolution Darwinism for Social Scientists (OUP)

March 5: Punishment and cooperation:

Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher (2004).Social norms and human cooperation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Ernst Fehr & Simon Gachter (2002). Altruistic Punishment in Humans. Nature

March 7: Neuroeconomics and ultimatums

Alan Sanfey et al. (2006). Neuroeconomics. TICS.

Free will

March 10: Philosophical background:

O'Connor, T. Free Will in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

March 12&14: Social psychology and free will:

John Bargh and Melissa Ferguson, 2000. Beyond Behaviorism: On the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological Bulletin, v. 126, 925-45.

Wegner, D. 2001. On the Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press, chapter 3.

[Maybe, Self is Magic]

Vohs & Schooler 2007 The Value of Free Will Psych Science

March 24: No class

March 26: Neuropsychology:

Libet, Mind Time, chapter 4

March 28: No class

March 31: More on Libet

Mele, Free Will and Luck, ch. 2

April 2: Game theory and free will

Glimcher 2002, Decisions, decisions, decisions Neuron 36, 323-332

Glimcher 2003, Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain, 340-342

April 4: no class

April 7: Neuroscience and determinism

Glimcher 2005, Indeterminacy in Brain and Behavior Annual Review of Psychology, 56: 25-56.

The self

April 9&11: Philosophical background:

Parfit, Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons, in Blakemore and Greenfield Mindwaves (1987): 19-28. (ereserve)

Rey, from textbook

Gallagher, S. (2000). Philosophical conceptions of the self. TICS 4, 14-21.

April 14: Guest lecture: Toni Schmader

April 16: Social Psychology:

Klein et al 2004. A theory of autobiographical memory. Social Cognition.

April 18: Cognitive neuroscience:

Klein, S. B. et al. (2002). A social-cognitive neuroscience analysis of the self. Social Cognition 20: 105-35.

April 21: Self-control

Baumeister, R. F. (1998). The self. In Gilbert et al, eds., Handbook of Social Psych, 4th ed., pp. 680-740.

[optional: Baumeister et al. (forthcoming). Self-regulation and the executive function. Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles.

Objects and cognition

April 23: Philosophical background:

Fei Xu (1997). From Lot's wife to a pillar of salt. Mind & Language, 12, 365-92.

April 25: Development and a bit of vision:

Karen Wynn (1992). Addition and subtraction by human infants. Nature, 358, 749-750.

Zsuzsa Kaldy & Alan Leslie (2005). A memory span of one? Cognition, 97, 153-177.

Brian Scholl (2001). Objects and attention: The state of the art. Cognition, 80(1/2), 1 - 46.

April 28: No class

April 30: Vision continued

Brian Scholl (2001). Objects and attention: The state of the art. Cognition, 80(1/2), 1 - 46.

Jon Flombaum, Shannon Kundey, Laurie Santos, & Brian Scholl (2004). Dynamic object individuation in rhesus macaques: A study of the tunnel effect. Psychological Science, 15, 795 - 800.

May 2: High-level cognition:

Lance Rips, Sergey Blok & George Newman (2006). Tracing the identity of objects. Psychological Review.

[Optional: Blok, Newman & Rips (2005). Individuals and their concepts. In Ahn et al. (eds.) Categorization inside and outside the lab.]

May 5: High-level cognition still:

M Rhemtulla & F. Xu (forthcoming). Sortal concepts and causal continuity. Psychological Review.

Xu. 2007. Sortal concepts, object individuation, and language. TICS.

May 7: Philosophy and psychology

Scholl, Object persistence in philosophy and psychology, forthcoming Mind & Language