Joe Lau

PHIL2230 Philosophy and Cognitive Science

2005-06 Semester 1; Monday 3-5pm Main Building Room 121

Recent announcements

  • WHEN YOU HAND IN YOUR PAPER YOU SHOULD ALSO SUBMIT AN ELECTRONIC COPY TO http://www.turnitin.com.
  • Please see the bottom of this page to see when you should submit your post to the course blog. You are of course strongly encouraged to comment on the other posts.
  • I have already sent out invitations to all students to sign up as guest editors for the blog. Please contact me if you have not received your invitation.

Points to note

  1. Course objective: Provides an introduction to cognitive science and the basic philosophical issues related to the area.
  2. Please read - some general information.
  3. There is no course text. See the course material for what you should read. You definitely should read those marked as "required". The rest are useful sources that are not required. But you are strongly encouraged to read them to get a better understanding.
  4. Some of the readings are available through http://www.netlibrary.com. You can access the electronic version through the HKU intranet (through HKUPPP, the campus network, or HKUVPN). Please do not check out the ebooks since other students would not be able to read them. You can browse the publications without having to check them out.

Course schedule (by week)

  1. What is Cognitive Science?, Levels of Description, Philosophy and Cognitive Science
  2. The Chinese Room Argument
  3. The Language of Thought Hypothesis
  4. Semantics of Mental Representations
  5. LOT and Natural Language
  6. Introduction to Connectionism
  7. Connectionism and LOT
  8. Concepts of Consciousness - you should prepare for class discussion. See notes.
  9. Neural Correlates of Consciousness
  10. The Knowledge Argument about Consciousness
  11. Cognitive Science of Religious Experiences (12 Dec KK Leung building LG 102)

Assessment

  • 70% final paper. 30% blog contribution (as guest editor). To be adjusted up to ±15% depending on the quantity and quality of class and blog (comment) participation.
  • There is a course blog for you to post questions and comments. For each lecture, a few students will become the guest editor for the blog and have to post to the blog and lead a discussion on the lecture.
  • 10-15 page double spacing, font size 11 or 12. No cover page. Paper topics will be announced later.
  • Due date : two options - (a) 4:30pm, 20 Dec 2005, (b) 4:30pm, 3 Jan 2006. If you choose option (b), you will receive just a grade without comments. No late submission will be accepted.
  • Hand in a PRINTED COPY to Loletta Li. Include your name, email address and phone number.
  • Whichever option you choose, you MUST also email the file of your paper in word document format to Joe Lau on or before the due date. The printed and electronic versions should of course be exactly the same.
  • If you want some comments on your draft paper you should EMAIL a draft of your full paper to me on or before 14 Dec 2005.
  • You will be sent to the HKU Disciplinary Committee if you copy from books or web pages without proper citation.
  • Read these assignment guidelines?, and information about writing essays.

Essay topics

The number of "*" indicates the level of difficulty of the essay topic. If you write on an easier topic, the grading criteria will be tougher.

  1. Examine at least two other responses to the Chinese Room Argument that have not been discussed in the lecture. *
  2. Read Brooks, R.A. (1991). Intelligence without representation Artificial Intelligence 47, 139–159. What are the main conclusions of the paper about the role of representation? Do you agree with those conclusions? Why, or why not? **
  3. Is there a language of thought? *
  4. Is LF part of the language of thought? **
  5. Is it possible to explain emotions purely computationally? (See stanford:emotion) **
  6. According to Fodor, J. and Pylyshyn, Z. (1988), there is no significant difference between localist and distributed representations as far as the LOT debate is concerned. Is the reply in Chalmers (1990) convincing? ***
  7. Discuss the debate between connectionism and LOT. Which side is winning, and why? **
  8. What is the best theory of the neural correlate of visual awareness? ***
  9. Which is the best reply to Jackson's knowledge argument, and why? *
  10. Do we have a good definition of physicalism? If so, how does this help us deal with Jackson's argument? If not, is Jackson's argument pointless? **

With regard to question 5, here are some relevant readings and links:

  1. Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The Feeling of what Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co.
  2. DeLancey, Craig. 2001. Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal About Mind and Artificial Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  3. Robert C. Solomon. Thinking About Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
  4. Griffiths, Paul. 1997. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  5. LeDoux, Joseph. 1998. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  6. Rosalind W. Picard . 2000. Affective Computing. MIT Press.
  7. http://affect.media.mit.edu