Office hours: Monday 1:00-2:30 p.m. in ECOT 736
Email: duck@cs.colorado.edu
CSCI 3702-001 (#72443)/LING 3005/PHIL 3310/PSYC 3005
This course is an introduction to the study of thinking and intelligent behavior, with a primary (but not exclusive) focus on human cognition. Our style of work will be interdisciplinary, drawing upon ideas from psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and linguistics. Among the topics that we will explore will be problem-solving, judgment and decision-making, mental imagery, cognitive neuroscience, animal intelligence, evolutionary psychology, and language acquisition. The guiding theme throughout the coming weeks will be the "computational metaphor of mind" -- the idea that the mind can be modelled as a computational system.
At least two of the following (or equivalent, with permission): CSCI 1300, PSYC 2145, LING 2000, PHIL 2440.
Course readings will be assigned periodically during the semester. There will be five problem sets in the course, and one final paper. The problem sets will mostly be short-essay questions dealing with the readings and lecture topics. The final paper should be an essay dealing with any of the topics that we have covered during the semester. (This should be your opportunity to do some additional reading about your favorite ideas in the course.) The final paper should be approximately 4000 words in length.
Problem Set 1: Due Monday, Sept. 29
The grading will be calculated as follows:
The final paper will be worth 30 percent of the grade. The five problem sets will be worth 70 percent of the grade (the four best problem sets will count for 15 percent each, and the weakest problem set will count for 10 percent).
Click here to go to the readings download area. Password required.