PHIL
879 C : The Architecture of the Mind
Fall
Term 2005, Thursdays 3.30-6.00 in Skinner 1116.
Instructor:
Peter Carruthers, pcarruth@umd.edu
The topic of this seminar is the overall architecture of human cognition. It will focus especially on debates between evolutionary psychologists and their opponents. The basic question to be explored is: to what extent is it possible (and reasonable) to see the mind as constructed out of a great many modular components? Evolutionary psychologists have defended a thesis of massive modularity; and there is a good deal of evidence from developmental, experimental, and comparative psychology, as well as from cognitive neuroscience, in support of more limited versions of this claim, at least. Philosophical opponents of evolutionary psychology have claimed that enough is already known about human cognition from the possibility of science, and from creative thinking more generally for us to conclude that our central cognitive processes are radically a-modular, or holistic, in character. The central challenge for evolutionary psychology, then, is to show how one can get non-domain-specific creative thinking out of the interactions of a set of modular components.
Course arrangements
The primary reading for the course will be a draft monograph written by the instructor, entitled The Architecture of the Mind: massive modularity and the flexibility of thought. (More reading will need to be done when preparing for the final term-paper.) Copies will be emailed to all those attending the course following the first session, in a zip folder containing nine pdf files (contents/preface, seven chapters, references). Chunks of this book will then need to be studied prior to each weeks meeting; and those attending the course will need to come to class prepared to engage in discussion of the relevant material.
(The advantage to you: you get to read a cutting-edge piece of research, while learning a bunch of cognitive science along the way. The advantage to me: I get smart critical feedback and discussion. Further advantage to you: for your help you may get to see your name in print.)
Classes will have the following format: in the second half of each session the instructor will introduce the material to be read for the week following; and the first half of each session will be devoted to student-led discussion of the reading material for that week. (We will try this initially without a formally designated introducer / discussant. It will be best if everyone cooperates to make this work.)
A schedule of topics / readings will be circulated once it becomes clear how many students are committed to taking the seminar for credit. The final sessions of the seminar will be reserved for presentation and discussion of student term-papers (two or more per session).
Assessment
Assessment for the course will be driven entirely by the final term paper (see below for topics). This will need to be drafted in time for oral presentation to the class in the final few sessions of term. (I will make time to observe and give feedback on a run-through a day or two before the session in question.) A written draft will then be presented to me for written and oral feedback. And the final copy will then need to be submitted for grading before the start of the Spring semester.
Grading for the course will be 20% for the oral presentation and subsequent handling of class discussion (judged both for content and for presentational skills), 80% for the final term paper.
Paper topics
I am aware that the format of the course doesnt easily lend itself to the selection of a paper topic. Certainly you arent required to write about my book / my ideas. And much of the course might involve too heavy a cognitive science component for your taste, in any case. Essentially, you can set your own question for the term paper, provided that it is drawn from amongst the topics covered by the seminar. Below I have listed some topics that you might like to consider selected both for their philosophical interest, and for the existence of a significant secondary philosophical literature.
(Authors who are philosophers are marked with a *.)
(Books placed on 24 hour reserve in McKeldin Library are marked with a ***.)
(Note that all journal articles are available online through the library research port.)
1 Evolutionary psychology & massive
modularity for and against
John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, OUP, 19-136. ***
L. Cosmides, J. Tooby and J. Barkow (1992). Introduction: Evolutionary psychology and conceptual integration. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, OUP, 3-19. ***
Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works. Penguin Press.
Donald Symons (1992). On the use and misuse of Darwinism in the study of human behavior. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, OUP, 137-162. ***
Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining Culture: a naturalistic approach. Blackwell.
Sperber, D. (2002). In defense
of massive modularity. In
Sperber, D. (2005). Massive modularity and the first principle of relevance. In P. Carruthers, S. Stich, and S. Laurence (eds.) The Innate Mind: structure and Contents. OUP.
(Also available at: http://www.dan.sperber.com/)
Louise Barrett, Robin Dunbar and
John Lycett (2002). Human Evolutionary Psychology.
David Buss (1999). Evolutionary Psychology: the new science of mind. Allyn and Bacon.
*Samuels, R. (1998). Evolutionary psychology and the massive modularity hypothesis. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49, 575-602.
*Jerry Fodor (2000). The Mind doesnt work that way. MIT Press. ***
*Woodward, J. and Cowie, F. (2004). The mind is not (just) a system of modules shaped (just) by natural selection. In C. Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. (Early version available electronically from Carruthers on request.)
*Buller, D. (2005). Adapting Minds: evolutionary psychology and
the persistent quest for human nature.
*John Dupre (2001). Human Nature and the Limits of Science. OUP.
*Anthony OHear (1999). Beyond Evolution. OUP.
Hilary and Steven Rose, eds.
(2000). Alas poor
*Peter Carruthers (forthcoming) The Architecture of the Mind. Chapter 1.
2 Thought and reason in non-human
animals
Gallistel, R. (2000). The replacement of general-purpose learning models with adaptively specialized learning modules. In M.Gazzaniga (ed.), The New Cognitive Neurosciences (second edition). MIT Press.
Gallistel, R. (1990). The Organization of Learning. MIT Press.
*Bermúdez, J. (2003). Thinking without Words. OUP. ***
*Davidson, D. (1982). Rational Animals. Dialectia 36: 317-328.
*Hurley, S. (2003). Animal Action in the Space of Reasons. Mind and Language 18: 231-256.
Anthony Dickinson (2000). Causal cognition and goal-directed action. In C. Heyes and L. Huber (eds.), The Evolution of Cognition, MIT Press.
James and Carol Gould (1994). The Animal Mind. Scientific American Library.
James and Carol Gould (1988). The Honey Bee. Scientific American Library.
Richard Byrne (1995). The Thinking Ape. OUP.
Byrne, R. and Whiten, A. eds. (1988). Machiavellian Intelligence. OUP.
Byrne, R. and Whiten, A. eds. (1998). Machiavellian Intelligence II. CUP.
Gallistel, R. and Gibson, J. (2001). Time, rate and conditioning. Psychological Review, 108. Available on-line at: http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/faculty/GnG/gallistel.html
*Peter Carruthers (forthcoming) The Architecture of the Mind. Chapter 2.
3 Mind-reading and mental architecture
*Nichols, S. and Stich, S. (2003). Mindreading: an integrated account of pretence, self-awareness, and understanding other minds. OUP. (If you have trouble getting hold of this book, I can make an early version of one of the relevant chapters available electronically on request.) ***
*Currie, G. and Ravenscroft,
*Currie, G. and Sterelny, K. (2000). How to think about the modularity of mind-reading. Philosophical Quarterly, 50, 145-60.
Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff (1998). Words, Thoughts and Theories. MIT Press. ***
*George Botterill and Peter Carruthers (1999). The Philosophy of Psychology. CUP. Chapter 4.
Alison Gopnik (2000). Theory of mind. MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/Entry/gopnik.html
Scholl, B. and Leslie, A. (1999). Modularity, development and theory of mind. Mind & Language, 14, 131153. (Available on-line at: http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/~aleslie/publicat.html)
Alan Leslie (1994). ToMM, ToBy,
and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity. In L. Hirschfeld and
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness. MIT Press.
Carruthers, P. and Smith, P., eds. (1996). Theories of Theories of Mind. CUP.
Davies, M. and Stone, T., eds. (1995). Folk Psychology: the theory of mind debate. Blackwell.
Gazzaniga, M. (1998). The Minds Past.
Wilson, T. (2002). Strangers to Ourselves. Harvard UP.
*Carruthers, P. (forthcoming) The Architecture of the Mind. Chapters 3.2, 3.3, and 7.6.
4 The role of natural language in
thought
*Carruthers, P. (2002). The cognitive functions of language. & Open Peer Commentary. & Authors response: Modularity, language and the flexibility of thought. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 657-719.
*Clark, A. (1998). Magic words: how language augments human computation. In P. Carruthers and J. Boucher, eds. Language and Thought. CUP. (Also available at: http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/clark.html)
*Bermúdez, J. (2003). Thinking without Words. OUP. ***
Bickerton, D. (1995). Language
and Human Behavior.
*Carruthers, P. (1996). Language, Thought, and Consciousness. CUP.
*Davidson, D. (1975). Thought and talk. In S. Guttenplan (ed.), Mind and Language, OUP.
*Davies, M. (1998). Language, thought, and the language of thought (Auntys own argument revisited). In P. Carruthers and J. Boucher, eds. Language and Thought. CUP. ***
Hermer, L. and Spelke, E. (1994). A geometric process for spatial reorientation in young children. Nature, 370, 57-59.
Hermer, L. and Spelke, E. (1996). Modularity and development: the case of spatial reorientation. Cognition, 61, 195-232.
Hermer-Vazquez, L., Spelke, E., and Katsnelson, A. (1999). Sources of flexibility in human cognition: dual-task studies of space and language. Cognitive Psychology, 39, 3-36.
Li, P. and Gleitman, L. (2002). Turning the tables: language and spatial reasoning. Cognition, 83, 265-294.
Papafragou, A., Massey, C., and Gleitman, L. (2002). Shake, rattle, n roll: the representation of motion in language and cognition. Cognition, 84, 189-219.
Slobin, D. (2003). Language and thought online: cognitive consequences of linguistic relativity. In D. Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadow (eds.), Language in Mind, MIT Press.
Levinson, S. (2003). Space in Language and Cognition: explorations in cognitive diversity. CUP
*Carruthers, P. (forthcoming) The Architecture of the Mind. Chapter 4.
5 Pretence and imagination
*Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich (2001). A cognitive theory of pretense. Cognition 74, 115-147.
Longer version also available online at:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/pubs.html
(Their most up-to-date views are contained in: Nichols, S. and Stich, S. (2003). Mindreading: an integrated account of pretence, self-awareness, and understanding other minds. OUP.) ***
*Currie, G. and Ravenscroft,
Paul Harris (2000). The Work of the Imagination. Blackwell.
*Peter Carruthers (2002). Human creativity: its evolution, its cognitive basis, and its connections with childhood pretence. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53, 1-25.
Also available at: http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
Chris Jarrold, Peter Carruthers, Jill Boucher, and Peter K Smith (1994). Pretend play: is it meta-representational? Mind and Language 9, 445-468.
Also available online at: http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
Alan Leslie (1987). Pretence and representation: The origins of theory of mind. Psychological Review, 94, 412-426.
Also available (as well as a number of other papers on pretense) online at:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/~aleslie/publicat.html
Robert Sternberg ed., (1999). The Handbook of Creativity. CUP.
*Peter Carruthers (forthcoming) The Architecture of the Mind. Chapter 5.
6 Scientific reasoning in infancy,
childhood, and adults
*Jerry Fodor (2000). The Mind doesnt work that way. MIT Press. Chapter 3. ***
Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff (1998). Words, Thoughts and Theories. MIT Press. ***
*Luc Faucher et al., (2002). The Baby in the Lab-Coat: Why Child Development Is Not an Adequate Model for Understanding the Development of Science. In P.Carruthers, S.Stich and M.Siegal (eds.), The Cognitive Basis of Science. CUP, 335-362. *** Available on-line at:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/pubs.html
Alison Gopnik (1996). The scientist as child. Philosophy of Science, 63.
*Jerry Fodor (1983). The Modularity of Mind. MIT Press. Final two chapters.
P. Carruthers, S. Stich and M. Siegal, eds. (2002). The Cognitive Basis of Science. CUP. ***
*Peter Carruthers (forthcoming) The Architecture of the Mind. Chapter 6.