stuff on learning from Armstrong’s talk

• driving on the 405, literacy: clearly roles of learning/social interactions, we don’t want to say there was a “gene” (but in a sense there was)

—New Horizons in the Study of Mind—

Overview

This class will be on the foundations of cognitive science. The course will revolve around the following main themes: (i) What are the empirical and philosophical advantages and disadvantages of the major ways of modeling the "mind as a computer", i.e., as an information processing system? (ii) How should we characterize the computational processes and representations of the mind? Is there a language of thought, i.e., a representational system that enables ‘thinking’ and if so, what are its basic architectural properties? Does the language of thought differ across cognitive domains such as linguistic vs spatial cognition? (iii) What can we learn about the computational architecture of the mind, and the properties of the language(s) of thought, from recent debates between Rationalist vs. Empiricist accounts of human learning both in general and across specific domains such as acquisition of natural languages, numerical knowledge, and intuitive' physics, and from recent developments of LLMs?

<aside> 💡 Many of these debates have a rich tradition in the philosophy of cognitive science, and have been shaped by ‘classics’ that, for good reason, are canonically read and taught on this topic. At the same time, recent years have seen an uptick of exciting work on foundational questions in the philosophy of cognitive science by junior philosophers and cognitive scientists. The aim of this class is, on the one hand, to give students a profound understanding of many of the classical debates and issues in the philosophy of cognitive science, especially since philosophy of cognitive science classes aren’t taught too often in pre-PhD curricula. On the other hand, a focus of the class is on highlighting new work and developments on these foundational questions and evaluate the extent to which these new developments have shed new light on these classical debates.

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Assessments

Discussion Notes

For each seminar, draft a one page (500 words maximum) reflection piece that (i) develops at least one important criticism of a paper; (ii) isolates a point or idea in the paper as important, astute, worth developing; and (iii) presents a question you want greater clarity on or that has been bypassed within the dialectic. Send it to us before midnight the night before the seminar. These pieces will not be formally graded, but will be distributed to others taking the course. You may skip two submissions for any reason. But you must turn in one prior to each of the other seminars to receive a grade in the course.

Presentations

Students will give two presentations:

• Main presentation: The presentation goals are (i) exposition of the main ideas/arguments of the assigned article, and (ii) raising 2 issues/questions for class discussion. The presentation should be around 45 mins, so that we have time for discussion for the rest of the session.
• Speed-presentation-day: We will have speed-presentation-day(s) in which students will give a brief (~5-10 min) presentation of a paper’s main point and argument.

Term paper

The term paper should be between 4,000 to 6,000 words. You can choose any topic in the course, including the topic that you did your presentation on. The paper should include both exposition of a theory, but also critical engagement. This can be either presenting novel considerations/evidence to support a theory, or theoretical modification or reconstruction of parts of a theory.

Other Policies

Academic Integrity: Each student in this course is expected to abide by The University of Massachusetts Amherst Academic Honesty Policy.