Fundamental Debates in the Cognitive Sciences
Overview
- Credit value: 15 credits at Level 7
- Convenor: Professor Richard Cooper
- Assessment: a 2000-2500-word written essay (100%)
Module description
The module will introduce you to foundational debates in cognitive science.
Indicative module content
- Philosophy of science relevant to cognitive science
- History of cognitive science
- The relation between language and cognition
- Compositionality of representations
- Problems of learnability
- Learning versus development
- What are concepts and can they be learned?
- Can machines think? (including Searle and the Chinese Room argument)
- The problem of reference (including symbol grounding and the Frame problem)
- Embodied cognition
- Consciousness (machines or otherwise)
- Can machines have emotions?
Learning objectives
By the end of this module, you will:
- have a basic understanding of the issues which have shaped the development of cognitive science
- be able to describe the theoretical alternatives relating to mental representation, cognitive computation and human learning (amongst others)
- be able to provide arguments for and against each theoretical position.