Overview
Columbia University, Fall 2022 – John Morrison & Christopher Baldassano
Course description
The goal of cognitive science — and of this course — is to understand how the mind works. Trying to understand our own minds is perhaps the most ambitious and exciting (and difficult) project in all of science, and this project requires tools drawn from fields including experimental psychology, computer science and artificial intelligence, linguistics, vision science, philosophy, anthropology, behavioral economics, and several varieties of neuroscience (among others). This course will introduce you to the major tools and theories from these areas, as they relate to the study of the mind. We will employ these perspectives while exploring the nature of mental processes such as perception, reasoning, memory, attention, imagery, language, intelligence, decision-making, morality— and even attraction and love. In sum, this course will expose you to cognitive science, the assumptions on which it rests, and many of the most important and fascinating results obtained so far.
Readings
| Date | Topic | Year published | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-09-11 | The cognitive approach | 1995 | Stillings et al. | @1995stillings |
| 2022-09-14 | Levels of explanation | 1999 | Pylyshyn | “What is in your mind?” |
| 2022-09-14 | Levels of explanation | 1982 | Marr | @1982marr |
| 09-19-2022 | Kinds of computation | 2014 | Jones | “The Learning Machines” |
| 2022-10-12 | Brain scanning | 2013 | Coltheart | “How can functional neuroimaging inform cognitive theories?” |
| 2022-11-02 | Consciousness | 1982 | Jackson | @1982jackson |
| 2022-11-14 | Robotics and embodied cognition | 1999 | Clark | @1999clark |
| 2022-12-03 | Problem solving | 2019 | Botvinick et al. | @2019botvinick |