PHIL/PSYC 2120 - Introduction to Cognitive Science

Course Overview

This course is an introduction to the new and quickly growing field of Cognitive Science which studies the various aspects of cognition, including reasoning, learning, memory, and perception and action. Cognitive Science is a highly interdisciplinary field of study at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology, and the course hosts a number of guest lectures given by experts in these respective fields. Students can expect to write a series of short response papers and to complete a final research paper or hands-on project.

This course is supposed to be a branching point to various other courses, covering the various corners of the field in much more detail. These courses include PHIL Metaphysics & Consciousness, PHIL-4260 Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, PHIL/PSYC-4961 AI for Cog Sci, PSYC-2410 Introduction to Cognitive Engineering, PSYC-4370 Cognitive Psychology, PSYC-4320 Behavioral Neuroscience, PSYC-4410 Sensation and Perception, and PSYC-4510 Cognitive Modeling. There are no official prerequisites, though it certainly helps to have taken IHSS-1964/PHIL-1120 Minds & Machines. Other courses providing helpful background would be PHIL-2140 Introduction to Logic, and any basic programming course, particularly CSCI-2300 Data Structures and Algorithms.