INSTRUCTOR: Larry Hauser
E-mail: lshauser@aol.com
HomePage: http://www.wutsamada.com/aol/lshauser
Office: SAC 350 Phone: 7028
Hours: TuTh 4:00-5:00
MATERIALS: Required Text: Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind;
Course Packet.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Minds are something we all have and think
we discern in others. But which others? (Who does "we" here include?) Not
only is it a slippery slope from professor to paramecium to paperweight,
but there are other candidates -- from collectives (e.g., nations and corporations)
to the cosmos itself -- besides. Besides and beyond: thought
has seemed, to one or another thinker, to be lodged in things as disparate
as disembodied spirits and silicon circuitry. The question of where
we discern it, leads, unavoidably to the question of just what it
is we discern -- or think we discern -- when we speak "mind", or "thought",
or "intelligence". Unfortunately, the concept of mind has proved as scientifically
intractable as it seems humanly (morally, legally, socially, and practically)
ineliminable and important. After seeing how the general theoretical
or metaphysical issue of the nature of thought (or mind)
arises in the context of contemporary disputes over the existence and possibility
of artificial intelligence, we pursue this question -- along with related
semantic
questions about the
meaning of "mind" and "thinking" -- through
a close (and hopefully contentious) reading of Gilbert Ryle's classic
The
Concept of Mind. This work, though importantly precursory to cognitive
science, is still, in some ways, profoundly at odds with the mainstream
of contemporary cognitive scientific thinking.
GRADES, ETC.: After some initial lecture and discussion (weeks
1-3) the class will be run as a seminar. At each class session one or more
student papers will be presented by their authors, with other students
offering prepared commentaries on the principal work(s) presented, followed
by class discussion. Grades will be based on these papers, commentaries,
and presentations; other short written assignments (abstracts and synopses);
and contribution to class discussion.
COURSE OUTLINE
week 1 (1/8-1/12): Minds, Other Minds, and Machines (Course Packet: Hauser 1994)
week 2 (1/15-1/19): The Turing Test, AI, & Behaviorism (Course Packet: Turing 1950)
week 3 (1/22-1-26): Zombies, Qualia, and Cognition (Course Packet: Hauser 1995)
week 4 (1/29-2/2): Descartes' Myth (Ryle, Chapt. 1)
week 5 (2/5-2/9): Knowing How and Knowing That (Ryle, Chapt. 2)
week 6: (2/12-2/16): The Will (Ryle, Chapt. 3)
SPRING BREAK (2/24-3/3)
week 7: (2/19-2/23): Emotion (Ryle, Chapt. 4)
week 8: (3/4-3/8): Dispositions and Occurrences (Ryle, Chapt. 5)
week 9: (3/11-3/15): Self-Knowledge (Ryle, Chapt. 6)
week 10 (3/18-3/22): Sensation and Observation (Ryle, Chapt. 7)
week 11 (3/25-3/29): Imagination (Ryle, Chapt. 8)
week 12 (4/1-4/5): The Intellect (Ryle, Chapt. 9)
week 13 (4/8-4/12): Psychology (Ryle, Chapt. 10)
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