Fall 2008 Syllabus
Cognitive Science
CSCI 3702  |  LING 3005  |  PHIL 3310   |  PSYC 3005

Professor Robert Rupert (rupertr@colorado.edu)
Department of Philosophy
Hellems 188
(303) 735-0988
Office Hours:  Tu, Th 9:30-10:30, W 12:00-13:00, and by appointment

Professor Michael Mozer (mozer@cs.colorado.edu)
Department of Computer Science
Engineering Center Office Tower 7-41
(303) 492-4103
Office Hours:  Tu 12:30-13:30, W 13:00-14:00, and by appointment

Ben Pageler (ben.pageler@colorado.edu):  Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy
Brian Mingus (brian.mingus@colorado.edu): BS Psychology; Professional Research Asst, University of Colorado
Luka Ruzik (luka.ruzik@colorado.edu): BS Philosophy and Psychology; Professional Research Asst., University of Colorado

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, which is concerned with understanding the nature of cognition in humans, animals, and machines.  Cognition refers to the mental processes that compose our mind:  thought, reasoning, decision making, language, learning, and perception.  The style of work in cognitive science is interdisciplinary, drawing upon ideas from psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and education.  A guiding theme of work in cognitive science is the the idea that the mind can be understood as a computational system, sometimes referred to as the computational metaphor of the mind.

Rather than conducting a survey of basic works in the field, we have decided to organize the course around two specific topics, and attack each topic from multiple cognitive science perspectives, in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the topic than one would acquire by adopting a single perspective.  The topics we've chosen for 2008 are consciousness and situated cognition. We've chosen these topics because they are addressed by the traditional disciplines forming cognitive science, and because the topics cut across aspects of cognition, including:  perception, attention, memory, thought, language, and cognitive control.

Consciousness studies

Only recently has consciousness research become accepted within the academic community. As John Searle puts it, raising the subject of consciousness in cognitive science discussions is no longer considered to be "bad taste," causing graduate students to "roll their eyes at the ceiling and assume expressions of mild disgust." Indeed, consciousness research has been extremely active the past few years, and has led to significant results in experimental psychology, neuroscience, and computational modeling, and significant debates within the philosophy and linguistics communities.

Most people are interested in consciousness not just because of the academic and interdisciplinary challenges, but because it is at the core of their personal experience. However, to make progress in studying consciousness, precise and rigorous analysis is required.

Topics covered may include:

• major philosophical and theoretical perspectives
• criteria for the ascription of consciousness
• neuropsychological syndromes, including: amnesia, blindsight, hemispatial neglect, phantom-limb phenomena, prosopagnosia, anosognosia, and alien-hand syndrome
  
• hypnosis and sleep states
• subliminal perception
• implicit memory and learning
• neurophysiological correlates of awareness
• brain imaging measures (fMRI, PET, EEG, ERP) and awareness
• the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to dynamically deactivate cortical areas
• animal consciousness
• language
  
• computational modeling

Situated cognition

The most influential approaches in the history of cognitive science characterize thought as the manipulation of symbols in a quasi-mathematical system: think in terms of formal logic or the analysis of chess games. Critics of this orthodoxy claim that cognitive science is bogged down and can move forward only by attending to the physical context in which cognitive processing takes place. What role does the environment play in cognition? What role does the body (beyond the brain) play? In recent years, many cognitive scientists and philosophers have argued that, because human cognition relies so heavily on the use of external resources, cognition literally extends into the environment beyond the boundary of the human organism. Less radically, it is often claimed that human cognition is essentially embedded in the environment or that cognition draws essentially on bodily resources. In this half of the course, we examine some of the fascinating research behind these claims.

The official prerequisite is at least two of the following courses, or their equivalents:  CSCI 1300, PSYC 2145, LING 2000, PHIL 2440. However, space permitting, we will admit students who have not fulfilled the prerequisites.  If the course is oversubscribed, priority will be given to students enrolled in the Cognitive Science Certificate program.

Readings are available on the web.  Readings are listed by author names and year of publication.  Full citations to the papers, as well as other potentially interesting papers, can be found here.

The readings are divided into required and optional. Among the optional readings are chapters from Paul Thagard's text, Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science.  The text is meant to provide background information on cognitive science to supplement the lectures and to make the required readings more accessible.  

NOTE: ACCESS TO PAPERS IS RESTRICTED. PASSWORD AND USER NAME ARE THE FOUR DIGIT CSCI COURSE NUMBER.

Reading assignments are available from the course web page. Students are expected to have done the readings in advance of the class session in which they will be discussed.  If you find that you are having trouble understanding the required readings, some of the optional readings -- particularly the chapters from Thagard -- provide background information that will help with the required readings.  If you find a topic particularly interesting, some of the optional readings provide more information.

For fifteen of the class sessions, you are to hand in a commentary page.  The commentary consists of a half to full page (single spaced) of comments, questions, or critiques of the assigned reading(s) for that class. This page will be due in class.  You can choose the sessions for which you write the commentaries based on your interest.  If you hand in more than fifteen commentaries, we will drop the lowest scores. 

The commentary should include a summary of the key and most interesting ideas in the reading(s).  You must explain clearly and relatively accurately some of the important material from the reading(s).  For example, you could explain the paper's main argument, one or more of the studies used to support the argument (more technically, to support one or more of the argument's premises).  You needn't provide an exhaustive summary.  Use your judgement to determine the most important points and ideas.

Beyond the summary, you can include other thoughts, including:

• comments on how the assigned reading relates to other course readings, or, if you feel ambitious and want to track down some related work in the field, how the assigned reading compares to this other work.
• a critique of the work. What are the flaws in the ideas presented? What are the limitations? Do the authors place their work in the appropriate theoretical perspective? Do the authors overstate their results? In what direction might the work be extended?  By cirtique, we are looking for relatively insightful, clever, or original comments (e.g., "the author misinterprets the results of experiment 1, because P," where P shows some genuine insight into a potential problem with the author's interpretation of the experiment).

Ideally, we want to read about your analysis of the paper, not simply whether or not you liked or understood the reading. These commentaries are intended to promote careful thought about a paper before the session in which it is discussed. Your commentary should be limited to one page. One point of the exercise is the concise expression of your thoughts and reactions.

Late commentaries will not be accepted. You are to bring the commentaries to class yourself, and not ask a friend to hand them in for you.  Hard copies of the commentaries must be submitted in class; we will not accept electronic submission.

To ensure you are engaging with and understanding the readings, we will give a number of quizzes over the course of the semester, roughly one every other class.  The quizzes will take place during the final 10 minutes of class, and will ask you one or two questions concerning the reading.  The questions may be factual or ask for your interpretation of the paper.  Even if you have a legitimate reason for missing class on the day of a quiz, we will not allow you to retake it.  However, we will drop the lowest 20% of your quiz scores, which effectively means that you can miss 20% of classes without suffering a grade penalty.

We expect and hope you will attend all class sessions.  The course will build on assigned readings, and the shared understanding that comes about from discussion of the readings in class sessions.   Attendance and participation in class is a significant portion of your work for the course.  Simply doing the readings and handing in the commentaries is not sufficient.  We realize that many of you will have good reasons for not coming to class, but the fact remains, if you are not in class, you have not benefited from the discussion.  If you are not finding the class sessions useful, you should speak to the professors about what can be done to improve classes. We will not take attendance, but your attendance will indirectly influence your grade via the quizzes, commentaries, and class participation. 

Term Paper

Students may optionally give presentations during the semester for extra credit. You could volunteer to present a summary of one of the supplementary readings that you find interesting (see the professors for suggestions).  During the final exam period, you could volunteer to present a summary of your research paper findings.  Talk to one of the professors if you're interested in this form of extra credit.

Commentaries will be graded on a four point scale:  0, check-minus, check, and check-plus.  The baseline requirement for a check is that your summary addresses the main points in the paper, and provides enough detail that someone could read your summary and get the gist of the article. A satisfactory summary not only includes the main points, but excludes irrelevant detail, so don't simply fill up a page with whatever trivia you remember about the paper.  A check-minus will be assigned if it appears that you've missed some of the key ideas of the article.  A check-plus will be given if your summary satisfies the criteria for a check, and you show some additional insight via your critique of the work (see the last bullet point above concerning the critiques). 

Semester grades will be based 30% on the commentaries (and the initial homework), 20% on quizzes, 10% on your term paper overview/draft, 30% on the final term paper, and 10% on class participation.

• NYT article:  Can Robots Become Conscious?
• NYT article:  Consciousness Studies:  From Stream to Flood
• NIMH Symposium on Consciousness
• David Chalmers' consciousness pages (mostly philosophical topics)
• sleep, dreaming, altered states of consciousness

• American Association for Artificial Intelligence

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

• Blindsight Demonstration
• Inattentional blindness demos
• visual illusion demos 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (thanks Ashley!) 8 (thanks Amorita charter school!) 9 (thanks Leila and her gang!) 10 (thanks to Courtney and her gang)
• Visual Search
• psychology and neuroscience links
• phi phenomenon 1 2 3
• motion at isoluminance
• rotating cylinder
• stereograms (thank you, Mrs. Ward's class!)

• Brain Atlas and Terminology
• Whole Brain Atlas
• split brain
• Information on functional magnetic resonance imaging
• psychology and neuroscience links
• Halle Barry neurons
• Ramachandran lectures
• Ramachandran video lecture
• US News article about consciousness and neuroscience

• Cognitive modeling with neural networks (From shortest to most extensive reference: 1  2  3  4 )
• constraint satisfaction search
• mathematical techniques in cognitive science

• supplementary material from Reiss and Marino
• Nature miniseries -- "Inside the animal mind"
• Crow tool use
• Animal communication
• Spontaneous pointing by dolphins
• Parrot cognition
• Parrot cognition II

If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit a letter from Disability Services in a timely manner so that your needs may be addressed.  Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities.  Contact: 303-492-8671, Willard 322, and http://www.Colorado.EDU/disabilityservices.

Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that faculty make every effort to reasonably and fairly deal with all students who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments or required attendance.  Please see me if you have concerns with our syllabus.  See full details of campus policy at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/fac_relig.html.

Students and faculty each have responsibility for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Students who fail to adhere to such behavioral standards may be subject to discipline. Faculty have the professional responsibility to treat all students with understanding, dignity and respect, to guide classroom discussion and to set reasonable limits on the manner in which they and their students express opinions.  Professional courtesy and sensitivity are especially important with respect to individuals and topics dealing with differences of race, culture, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender variance, and nationalities.  Class rosters are provided to the instructor with the student's legal name. I will gladly honor your request to address you by an alternate name or gender pronoun. Please advise me of this preference early in the semester so that I may make appropriate changes to my records.  See polices at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/classbehavior.html and at http://www.colorado.edu/studentaffairs/judicialaffairs/code.html#student_code.

All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution.  Violations of this policy may include: cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior.  All incidents of academic misconduct shall be reported to the Honor Code Council (honor@colorado.edu; 303-725-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions from the faculty member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university probation, suspension, or expulsion). Other information on the Honor Code can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/honor.html  and at http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/.

The University of Colorado at Boulder policy on Discrimination and Harassment (http://www.colorado.edu/policies/discrimination.html), the University of Colorado policy on Sexual Harassment and the University of Colorado policy on Amorous Relationships applies to all students, staff and faculty.  Any student, staff or faculty member who believes s/he has been the subject of discrimination or harassment based upon race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status should contact the Office of Discrimination and Harassment (ODH) at 303-492-2127 or the Office of Judicial Affairs at 303-492-5550.  Information about the ODH and the campus resources available to assist individuals regarding discrimination or harassment can be obtained at  http://www.colorado.edu/odh.