SUBJECT

Title

Introduction to Cognitive Science

Code

CCNM17-101

Type of instruction

lecture

Level

Master

Faculty

Faculty of Education and Psychology

Part of degree program

Cognitive Science MSc

Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience MSc

Credits

Recommended in

Semester 1

Typically offered in

Autumn semester

Course description

Historical and conceptual introduction to cognitive science from a combined philosophical, psychological, biological and computational point of view. We start with the prehistory of the cognitive paradigm and discuss how cognitivism endeavours to solve its problems. We characterize classic cogsci from the point of view of language, formal systems, and computations and discuss its basic philosophical underpinnings as well as the arising problems. Then we turn to connectionism and the soft computing, brain theory inspired metaphors of the mind, to conclude with the modern picture (and its criticism) in embodiment, the “dynamic hypothesis” as well as the new philosophy of mind.

I. The Nature of Cognitive Science

From Behaviorism to Cognitivism
Intentionality, Folk Psychology and the Animals
Functionalism and the Mind/Body Problem

II: The Representational Theory of the Mind

Mind and Language. The Classical Symbolic Picture
Origins of the Computer Methaphor
Can Machines Think? The Turing Test and Understanding

III. The Subsymbolic Paradigm and Related Matters

Connectionism
Elimination, Supervenience and Identity Theories
Individualism versus the Social Theory of Mind

IV- Mind and Body

Consciousness and Qualia
The Dynamic Hypothesis
Embodiment

Learning outcome, competences knowledge:

knows the introductory theories of cognitive sciences
knows the most important expressions and phenomena of cognitive sciences

attitude:

comprehensive theoretical interest

Evaluation of outcomes
Learning requirements, mode of evaluation, criteria of evaluation:
requirements

mode of evaluation: oral or written exam

criteria of evaluation:

Knowledge on basic concepts
The skill of utilizing the modells and methods of cognitive sciences

Readings

A Reader in Cognitive Science (n.d.). Retrieved from http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/books/cogreader.html

I/1. From Behaviorism to Cognitive Science

Sellars, W. (1963). Science, Perception and Reality. London : Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Skinner, B: (1938). The Behavior of Organisms. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Tolman, E. C. (1932). Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men. New York: Century.

I/2. Intentionality, Folk Psychology, and Animal Intelligence

Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goldman, A. I. (1993). The psychology of folk psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, 15-28.

Stich, S. (1983). From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

I/3. The Mind-Body Problem. Functionalism

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little Brown.

Putnam, H. (1960). Minds and machines. In: S. Hook (Ed.), Dimensions of Mind (pp. 362-385). New York: New York University Press.

Block, N. (1995). The mind as the software of the brain. In E. E. Smith & D. N. Osherson (Eds.), Thinking: An invitation to the cognitive science (pp. 377-425). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

II/1. Mind and Language. The Representational Conception

Millikan, R.G. (1984). Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Chandler, D. (1999). Semiotics for Beginners. Retrieved from http://www.argyroneta.com/s4b/semiotic.html

Chomsky, N. (1963). Language and mind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Fodor, J. A. (1981). Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive

Science. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

II/2. The Computational Metaphor

Floridi, L. (2000). Philosophy and Computing: A Webliography. Retrieved from http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/webliography.htm

Lee, J. A. N. (2000). History of Computing. Retrieved from http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/IEEE Computer Society: The History of Computing, http://www.computer.org/history/

II/3. Can Machines Think?

Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind LIX(236), 433-460. Retrieved from http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/books/cog/turing.htm

Weizenbaum, J. (1965). ELIZA - A computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 9(1), 36-45. ELIZA (n.d.). Retreived from http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/Eliza/index.html

Loebner-prize (n.d.). Retrieved from http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/Loebner/TT.html

III/1. Symbolic and Subsysmbolic Processing

Newell, A. (1980). Physical symbol systems. Cognitive Science 4, 135-183.

Newell, A., & Simon, H. (1976). Computer science as empirical enquiry: Symbols and search. Communications of ACM 19, 113 -126.

McCulloch, W. S., & Pitts, W. S. (1943). A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 7,115 - 133.

McCulloch, W. S. (1965). Emodiments of Mind. Boston, Mass: MIT Press.

IV/2. Dynamical Models of the Mind

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Fodor, J. A. (1981). Representations. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Fodor, J. A., & Pylyshyn, Z. (1988). Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis, Cognition 28, 3-71.