Courses

This Argument and Inquiry seminar will focus on the cognitive changes experienced by children in the preschool and elementary school years, in such realms as perception, attention, memory, thinking, decision-making, knowledge representation, and the acquisition of academic skills. Weekly observation at local day care centers or elementary schools will be a required course component.

An interdisciplinary study of the history and current practice of the cognitive sciences. The course will draw on relevant work from diverse fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, philosophy, biology, and neuroscience. Topics to be discussed include: scientific revolutions, the mind-body problem, embodied cognition, perception, representation, and the extended mind.

An interdisciplinary examination of issues concerning the mind and mental phenomena involved in the uniquely human activity of making and understanding music. The course will draw on psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, biology, and philosophy. Topics to be discussed include: the embodied cognition of rhythm, linguistic syntax and musical structure, mental representations of musical sound and action, musical learning and development, tone and beat deafness, and perfect pitch and neural plasticity.

An interdisciplinary examination of issues concerning the mind and mental phenomena. The course will draw on work from diverse fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience. Topics to be discussed include: the mind-body problem, embodied cognition, perception, representation, reasoning, and learning.

Cross-listed with PSYC 232. An introduction to the study of mental activity. Topics include attention, pattern recognition and perception, memory, concept formation, categorization, and cognitive development. Some attention to gender and individual differences in cognition, as well as cultural settings for cognitive activities. A grade of C- or better must be earned in both Psychology/Cognitive Science 232 and 233 to satisfy the LS requirement.

Cross-listed with PSYC 233. Students will participate in the replication and planning of empirical studies, collecting and analyzing data relevant to major cognitive phenomena. A grade of C- or better must be earned in both Psychology/Cognitive Science 232 and 233 to satisfy the LS requirement.

An examination of the way people think and reason, both when given formal laboratory tasks and when facing problems and decisions in everyday life. Students consider their own reasoning and decision making through course exercises. Topics include models of formal reasoning, decision making, heuristics and biases in thinking and problem-solving, moral reasoning, improving skills of higher order cognition.

A study of the central theories, methodological and philosophical issues and major competing paradigms regarding the nature of human cognition. Topics to be treated include: the history of cognitive science as a science, and the context through which we think about mental representations, intentionality, consciousness, the use and importance of language, nativism and externalism in the cognitive sciences, embodied cognition and the constitutive roles of culture and evolution in shaping cognitive processes.

This seminar will consider recent work in philosophy, cognitive science and linguistics critical of views of human cognition as “disembodied” and Cartesian. Philosophical sources of the early critiques of symbolic AI and “cartesianism” will be considered (Merleau-Ponty, Dewey), as will the enactive (Cuffari, Di Paolo, and De Jaegher) and ecological (Chemero, Cowley, Steffensen) critiques of language, and current work on embodied cognition by Eleanor Rosch, Hubert Dreyfus, John Haugeland, Andy Clark and Evan Thompson. The seminar will include materials relevant to students in philosophy, linguistics, psychology and cognitive science.

In this seminar course we will examine how children, adolescents, and adults confront moral dilemmas, reason about ethical issues, and decide on a course of action when challenged by confounding questions. Topics include the development of moral reasoning, gender difference in moral reasoning, socio-cultural influences on moral reasoning, and how moral issues intersect with other realms of decision making. We will examine work by Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, Eliot Turiel, and Jonathan Haidt. As a seminar, the emphasis will be on discussion. Course requirements include regular attendance and participation, preparing and leading class discussions, short reaction/reflection papers, and a final paper. 

This course will provide an in-depth study of phenomenology, covering both its history and contemporary debates, and phenomenology-inspired research in cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience. Roughly half the course will be devoted to the history of phenomenology, setting the main views within their historical context and explaining how these views respond to the difficulties of their predecessors. The other half will discuss contemporary philosophical debates and scientific research involving phenomenological approaches.

This seminar will focus on the cognitive changes experienced by children in the preschool, elementary, and middle school years, in such realms as perception, attention, memory, thinking, decision-making, knowledge representation, and the acquisition of academic skills. Weekly observation at local day care centers or schools will be a required course component. The seminar will be discussion-based and participants will take turns making presentations and leading discussions. 

Senior majors in cognitive studies will work with the instructor to develop a thesis proposal for their comps project.