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Schedule of Lectures

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Required Reading is in Bold Print & Articles for Possible Presentations are in Italics

WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

• Introduction

• Dualism, Behaviorism, and Physicalism

- Clark, pp. 162-170

• Central Nervous System, Cortex, Synapses and Neurotransmitters


WEEK 2-3: COGNITIVE SCIENCE

• Philosophy of Cognitive Science: Applications, Implications, and Criticism

- Clark, pp. 1-27

- Smart, “Sensations and Brain Processes” (E-Reserve)

• Methods and Theories: Formal Logic, Connectionism, and Theoretical Neuroscience

- Clark, pp. 28-60

- Jeffrey, “Formal Logic: Its Scope and Limits” (E-Reserve) (for logic background)

• Representation and Computation

- Clark, pp. 62-102


Read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, roughly up to page 140-- for Friday of Week 3, the rest of the book for Friday of Week 4. We will have discussion Friday of week 4 with some video material.


    • Additionally, in week 3 we will construct a Turing Machine that multiplies two numbers entered in unary. If you find this too hard, just construct a Turing Machine that can tell whether a number is odd or even.

 

WEEK 4-5: ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE

• Functionalism, Formal Systems, and Computationalism

- Clark, pp. 103-119

• Universal Machines: Church-Turing Thesis and Gödel Coding

- Clark, pp. 120-138

- Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (E-Reserve)

- Church, “An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory” (E-Reserve)

• Computers with Minds

- Clark, 140-158

- Dennett, “The Practical Requirements for Making a Conscious Robot” (E-Reserve)

 

WEEK 6: CONSCIOUSNESS

• Problems of Consciousness: Zombies, the Explanatory Gap, and the ‘Hard Problem’

- Nagel, “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” (E-Reserve)

•Pathologies: Stroke, Agnosia, Depression, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Phantom Limbs

• The Unity of Consciousness and the Self

- Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 19 (E-Reserve)

- Bealer, “Self-Consciousness” (E-Reserve)

 

WEEK 7-10: PERSONAL IDENTITY

• Introduction: the Problems of Persistence and Personal Identity

- Perry, “The Problem of Personal Identity” in Perry, pp. 3-30

• The Psychological Approach

- Nagel, “Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness” (E-Reserve)

- Unger, “The Survival of the Sentient” (E-Reserve)

• The Somatic Approach

- Mackie, “Personal Identity and Dead People” (E-Reserve)

• Memory Theory

- Locke, “Of Identity and Diversity” (Perry, pp. 33-52)

- Quinton, “The Soul” (Perry, pp. 53-72)

- Grice, “Personal Identity” (Perry, pp. 73-95)

• Criticisms of Memory Theory

- Reid, “Of Identity” and “Of Mr. Locke’s Account of Our Personal Identity” (Perry, pp. 107-118)

- Shoemaker, “Personal Identity and Memory” (Perry, pp. 119-134)

- Butler, “Of Personal Identity” (Perry, pp. 99-105)

- Perry, “Personal Identity, Memory, and the Problem of Circularity” (Perry, pp. 135- 154)

• David Hume and the Abandonment of Personal Identity

- Hume, “Our Idea of Identity”, “Of Personal Identity” and “Second Thoughts (Perry, pp. 159-176)

• Personal Identity and Survival

- Williams, “The Self and the Future” (Perry, pp. 179-198)

- Shoemaker, “Persons and their Past” (E-Reserve)

- Parfit, “Personal Identity” (Perry, pp. 199-220)

- Johnston, “Human Beings” (E-Reserve)

- Chisholm, “The Persistence of Persons” (E-Reserve)

• Four-Dimensionalism

- Heller, “Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects” (E-Reserve)

• Buddhism and Personal Identity (Guest Lecture)

 

WEEK 11-15: PAIN

• Introduction: the Philosophy of Pain vs. the Common-Sense Notion of Pain

- Aydede, “Introduction: A Critical and Quasi-Historical Essay on Theories of Pain” (Aydede, pp. 1-44)

• The Epistemology of Pain

- Dretske, “The Epistemology of Pain” (Aydede, pp. 59-72)

• Pathologies: Dissociation Problem, Pain Asymbolia, and Painfulness without Pain

• Sense-Datum Theories and Its Problems

- Perkins, “An Indirectly Realistic, Representational Account of Pain(ed) Perception” (Aydede, pp. 199-217)

• Physiologies: the Visual, Auditory and Somatosensory Systems

• Perceptual Theories

- Hill, “Ow! The Paradox of Pain” (Aydede, pp. 75-96)

- Pitcher, “Pain Perception” (E-Reserve)

• Representational Theory of Pain: Challenges and Defense

- Tye, “Another Look at Representationalism” (Aydede, pp. 99-118)

- Aydede, “The Main Difficulty with Pain” (Aydede, pp. 123-133)

- Tye, “In Defense of Representationalism: Reply to Commentaries” (Aydede, pp. 163-174)

- Block, “Bodily Sensations as on Obstacle for Representationalism” (Aydede, pp. 137-142)

- Maund, “Michael Tye on Pain and Representational Content” (Aydede, pp. 143-148)

• Introspection and Pain

- Price and Aydede, “The Experimental Use of Introspection in the Scientific Study of Pain and Its Integration with Third-Person Methodologies: The Experimental-Phenomenological” (Aydede, pp. 243-267)

• Animal Pain

 

WEEK 16: FINALS WEEK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

OLD SCHEDULE

 

Week One and two: Introduction to Course Themes

 

Humans and machines, who (what?) are we really?

 

Read: ch 1

 

Turing machine due on monday of week 2.

 

Info on Turing:

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=g7_WzNzHwJY

 

http://www.turing.org.uk/

 

More detail on Turing machines

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/

 

SYNTAX vs SEMANTICS

 

Week Three: Symbol systems

 

Read: ch 2

 

ON SOAR: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/soar/sitemaker/docs/misc/GentleIntroduction-2006.pdf

 

Week Four: Patterns, contents, and causes

 

Read: ch 3

 

Reflection 1 due

 

Week Five and Six: Dennet's visit

 

Extra reading to conclude Chapter 4:

 

http://southerncrossreview.org/9/kleist.htm

 

Extra reading in prep for D. Dennett's arrival:

 

For Friday, September 21:

 

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/freewillforBaerfinal.pdf

 

For Monday, September 24:

 

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/atheism.pdf

 

A crit of Dennett's view on religion:

 

http://phil415.pbwiki.com/f/WIESELTIER%20ON%20DENNETT.pdf

 

 

Week Seven: Connectionism (now for real)

 

Read: ch 4

 

Extra reading:

 

Philosophical issues:

 

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

 

More technical issues (for CS/math lovers):

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

 

A longer intro:

 

http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/rojas/neural/index.html

 

 

Week Eight: Perception, action, brain

 

Read: ch 5

 

 

Week Nine: Robots and AI

 

Read: Read 6

 

Week Ten: Dynamics

 

Read: ch 7

 

Reflection 3 due

 

Week Eleven: More dynamics

 

Read Chapters 6, and 7.

 

Extra materials (light read for a grey afternoon):

 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html

 

Visit CS 640 class on wednesday.

 

Wednesday, October 31, Room 310, South wing,

University Services Building.

 

 

read John Koza's tuorial on Genetic Prgramming:

 

http://phil415.pbwiki.com/f/JKTutorial.pdf

 

Week 12: Cog Tech: beyond brain

 

Read: ch 8

 

Reflection 4 due

 

Extra reading, human cyborgs: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/clark/clark_index.html

 

A very accessible introduction to dynamical systems: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~mspieg/Complexity/Problems.pdf

 

Week 13: Consciousness

 

Read Chalmers: http://consc.net/papers/puzzle.pdf

 

McGurk Illusion: http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html

 

Read: Appendix II

 

Week 14: More consciousness

 

Read: http://consc.net/papers/scicon.pdf

 

On representation: http://consc.net/papers/representation.pdf

 

Reflection 5 due**

 

Week 15: Ethics

 

Peter Singer Heavy Petting. Nerve, 2001: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/2001----.htm

 

On thought experiments: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-06/st_best

 

Read: TBD

 

Week 16: TBD

 

 

Week 17: Final paper due on Monday, December 10

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