PHIL879
/ NACS728 : The Architecture of the Mind
Spring
Term 2003, Thursdays 5.00-7.30 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 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.
The following two books will be used quite a bit, and should be purchased:
§ Barkow, J. Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. eds. (1992). The Adapted Mind. Oxford UP;
§ Fodor, J. (2000). The Mind doesnt work that Way. MIT Press.
For those new to the area, any or all of the following would make good introductory reading:
§ Boyd, R. and Silk, J. (1997). How Humans Evolved. Norton.
§ Buss, D. (1999). Evolutionary Psychology. Allyn and Bacon.
§ Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works. Norton.
This seminar will operate by a mixture of lecturing and open discussion. Unless anyone presses me strongly to do otherwise, I dont envisage student presentations. There is a lot of material to be covered, and these are topics where a fair amount of background knowledge is needed.
Grading for the course will be based entirely on a long term paper, draft copies of which will need to be submitted in advance for critical comment.
You can set your own question for the term paper, provided it is drawn from amongst the topics covered by the seminar. You could either choose a question which is covered in one or two sessions, or a question which links together different elements of the course, or runs as a theme throughout it.
The schedule of topics is laid out below. The minimum reading necessary to keep up is marked with ***. In each case the materials in question have been made available in the course folder in the lounge, in cases where they arent drawn from the two course texts (above), and arent available on-line. Further readings are listed (very roughly in order of importance) for those wishing to pursue the topic in a bit more detail, or wishing to write a term paper on the topic.
I have used as many on-line materials as I could find. This syllabus will be emailed out to those taking the course in the body of an email message, so that you just have to save it and click on the desired links.
*** George Botterill and Peter Carruthers (1999). The Philosophy of Psychology. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 2 and 8 (1-2).
Fodor, J. 1978. Propositional attitudes. The Monist, 61. Reprinted in Fodors RePresentations Harvester, 1980.
Gary Marcus (2001). The Algebraic Mind. MIT Press.
Martin Davies (1991). Concepts, connectionism, and the language of thought. In W. Ramsey, S. Stich, and D. Rumelhart, eds., Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, Erlbaum.
Horgan T. and Tienson, J. (1996). Connectionism and Philosophy of Psychology. MIT Press.
Macdonald, C. and Macdonald, G. eds. (1995). Connexionism. Blackwell.
Fodor, J. 1975. The Language of Thought. Harvester.
*** 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.
James and Carol Gould (1994). The Animal Mind. Scientific American Library.
James and Carol Gould (1988). The Honey Bee. Scientific American Library.
Anthony Dickinson (2000). Causal cognition and goal-directed action. In C. Heyes and L. Huber (eds.), The Evolution of Cognition, MIT Press.
Richard Byrne (1995). The Thinking Ape. Oxford University Press.
Byrne, R. and Whiten, A. eds. (1988). Machiavellian Intelligence. Oxford University Press.
Byrne, R. and Whiten, A. eds. (1998). Machiavellian Intelligence II. Cambridge University Press.
Donald Griffin (1992). Animal Thinking. Harvard.
Gallistel, R. and Gibson, J. (2001). Time, rate and conditioning. Psychological Review, 108.
*** Peter Carruthers (2000). Phenomenal Consciousness. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 5, 6 (1-2), and 11.
Andy Clark (2002). Visual experience and motor action: are the bonds too tight? Philosophical Review, 110, 495-520.
David Milner and Melvyn Goodale (1995). The Visual Brain in Action. Oxford University Press.
Michael Tye (1995). Ten Problems of Consciousness. MIT Press. Chapters 4 & 5.
Daniel Dennett (1991). Consciousness Explained. Penguin Press. Chapters 5 & 11.
Scholl, B. J., Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T. (in press). 'Change blindness' blindness: An implicit measure of a metacognitive error. In D. T. Levin (Ed.), Visual metacognition: Thinking about seeing. Greenwood.
Available online on Brian Scholls web-page at:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~bs265/bjs-pubs.html
Most, S. B., Simons, D. J., Scholl, B. J., & Chabris, C. F. (2000). Sustained inattentional blindness: The role of location in the detection of unexpected dynamic events. Psyche, 6(14).
Available online on Brian Scholls web-page at:
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~bs265/bjs-pubs.html
Also available on the Psyche website at:
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v6/psyche-6-14-most.html
Kevin ORegan and Alva Noe (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 939-1031.
Main text (without commentaries or reply) is available online in the BBS archive at:
http://www.bbsonline.org/bbsprints.html
*** John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, 19-136.
*** Jerry Fodor (2000). The Mind doesnt work that way. MIT Press. Chapter 5.
Leda Cosmides, John Tooby and Jerome Barkow (1992). Introduction: Evolutionary psychology and conceptual integration. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, 3-19.
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, Oxford University Press, 137-162.
Jerry Fodor (1998). In Critical Condition. MIT Press. Chapters 14 17.
Gaulin, S. and Robbins, C. (1991). Trivers-Willard effect in contemporary North American society. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 85: 61-69.
Louise Barrett, Robin Dunbar and John Lycett (2002). Human Evolutionary Psychology. Princeton.
David Buss (1999). Evolutionary Psychology: the new science of mind. Allyn and Bacon.
John Dupre (2001). Human Nature and the Limits of Science. Oxford University Press.
Anthony OHear (1999). Beyond Evolution. Oxford University Press.
Hilary and Steven Rose, eds. (2000). Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology. Harmony.
*** Leda Cosmides and John Tooby (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, 163-228.
Fiddick, L., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. (2000). No interpretation without representation: the role of domain-specific representations and inferences in the Wason selection task. Cognition, 77:1-79. (Issue 1, October.)
Available on-line at:
http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/15/63/66/25/show/toc.htt
George Botterill and Peter Carruthers (1999). The Philosophy of Psychology. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 5.
Sperber, D., Cara, F. and Girotto, V. (1995). Relevance theory explains the selection task. Cognition, 57. (Issue 1, October.)
Available on-line at:
http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/15/63/51/21/show/toc.htt
Gigerenzer, G. and Hug, K. (1992). Domain-specific reasoning: social contracts, cheating and perspective change. Cognition, 43:127-171.
Stone, V., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Kroll, N. and Wright, R. (2002). Selective impairment of reasoning about social exchange in a patient with bilateral limbic system damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 99.
Available on-line at:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/
Cummins, D. (1996). Evidence for the innateness of deontic reasoning. Mind and Language, 11.
*** John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, 19-136.
Margo Wilson and Martin Daly (1992). The man who mistook his wife for a chattel. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, 289-322.
Jerome Barkow (1992). Beneath new culture is old psychology. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, 627-638.
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. Cambridge University Press, 335-362.
Available on-line at:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/pubs.html
Geoffrey Miller (2000). The Mating Mind. Heinemann.
Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (forthcoming) The Nature of Cultures.
Available on-line in draft at:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/boyd/
Login: guest. Password: BRbook.
Robin Dunbar, Chris Knight and Camilla Power, eds., (1999). The Evolution of Culture. Edinburgh.
Louise Barrett, Robin Dunbar and John Lycett (2002). Human Evolutionary Psychology. Princeton. Chapters 8 & 9.
*** John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J.Barkow, L.Cosmides and J.Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind, Oxford University Press, 19-136.
*** Jerry Fodor (2000). The Mind doesnt work that way. MIT Press.
Peter Carruthers (2003a). The mind is a system of modules shaped by natural selection. In C. Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science. Blackwell.
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
Joanna Bryson (2000). Cross-Paradigm Analysis of Autonomous Agent Architecture. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence.
Available on-line at:
http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/web/publications.html
George Botterill and Peter Carruthers (1999). The Philosophy of Psychology. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3.
Peter Carruthers (2003b). Moderately massive modularity. In A.OHear (ed.), Mind and Persons. Cambridge University Press.
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
Joanna Bryson and Lynn Stein (2000). Modularity and Specialized Learning in the Organization of Behavior.
Available on-line at:
http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/web/publications.html
Mithen, S. (1996). The Prehistory of the Mind. Thames and Hudson.
*** 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.
Peter Carruthers (2002). The roots of scientific reasoning: infancy, modularity, and the art of tracking. In P.Carruthers, S.Stich and M.Siegal (eds.), The Cognitive Basis of Science. Cambridge University Press, 73-95.
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
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. Cambridge University Press, 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.
Available on-line through J-Store at:
http://www.jstor.org/journals/00318248.html
Jerry Fodor (1983). The Modularity of Mind. MIT Press. Final chapter.
Peter Carruthers (2003b). Moderately massive modularity. In A.OHear (ed.), Mind and Persons. Cambridge University Press.
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
*** George Botterill and Peter Carruthers (1999). The Philosophy of Psychology. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 4.
Alison Gopnik (2000). Theory of mind. MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/Entry/gopnik.html
Scholl, B.J., & Leslie, A.M. (1999). Modularity, development and theory of mind. Mind & Language, 14, 131153.
Available on-line at:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/~aleslie/publicat.html
Stephen Stich and Shaun Nichols (forthcoming). Pieces of Mind: A Cognitive Theory of Mindreading. (A chapter from their book Mind-Reading, forthcoming with Oxford.) Copies available by email attachment on request from Carruthers.
Alan Leslie (1994). ToMM, ToBy, and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity. In L. Hirschfeld and S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture, (pp. 119148). Cambridge University Press.
Available on-line at:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/~aleslie/publicat.html
Peter Carruthers (1996a). Autism as mind-blindness: an elaboration and partial defence. In P.Carruthers and P.K.Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind. Cambridge University Press, 257-73.
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
Peter Carruthers (1996b). Simulation and self-knowledge: a defence of theory-theory. In P.Carruthers and P.K.Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind. Cambridge University Press, 22-38.
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
Simon Baron-Cohen (1995). Mind-Blindness. MIT Press.
Currie, G. and Sterelny, K. (2000). How to think about the modularity of mind-reading. Philosophical Quarterly, 50, no.199.
Available on-line through the library electronic journals at:
http://www.lib.umd.edu/ETC/EJNLS/subject.php3?subject=Philosophy
*** Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich (2001). A cognitive theory of pretense. Cognition 74, issue 2, 115-147.
Available online through the University servers at:
http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/15/63/61/27/show/toc.htt
Longer version also available online at:
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/ArchiveFolder/Research%20Group/Publications/pubs.html#Pretense
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 online 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. Cambridge University Press.
*** Peter Carruthers, On Fodors Problem. (Submitted.)
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
*** Peter Carruthers, Practical reasoning in a modular mind. (In draft.)
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
*** Peter Carruthers, The cognitive functions of language. (Plus my Authors response to commentaries.) Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25:6 (2002). (Not yet published.)
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm
Peter Carruthers, Distinctively human thinking: modular precursors and components. In P.Carruthers, S.Laurence and S.Stich (eds.), The Structure of the Innate Mind. For delivery in 2003; publication in 2004. (In draft.)
Available on-line at:
http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/pcarruthers/Articles-a.htm