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Syllabus
The syllabus is subject to revision. Please check back every week.
Unit 1: Mind in Nature
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0 Soul, Mind, and Brain
Thursday Sept. 26 |
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1.1 Mind vs Body
Tuesday Oct. 1 |
Reading Guide
The short passage from Ibn Sina poses the question: if you came into existence without any perception or contact with the outside world, or without your body, what could you know? His answer, roughly, is that you could still know that you had a "self" or "soul" (for our purposes, a "mind"). From this he concludes that the soul must be distinct from the body. Even though the text is old, the argument Ibn Sina makes here still has force today. Read it very carefully, and understand the argument. The longer reading from Descartes is one of the most famous passages in Western Philosophy. This text is very difficult. Even though it is only 6 pages, leave several hours to read this, and read it completely at least twice. You'll want to make sure you understand what Descartes is saying at every stage. Descartes sets himself the task of trying to doubt everything that he thinks he knows. The only beliefs left will be the absolutely certain truths. His first move is to imagine that his entire waking life is actually an illusion creating by a deceiving demon (think of the Truman Show or the Matrix). After doubting the existence of the external world, he turns his attention to his own mind. Can you doubt the existence of your own mind? After pondering this question he points out that at least he can be certain of this: the mind and the body are not the same thing. He offers several different arguments for this conclusion, and we'll discuss these in class. (Note: Descartes uses the terms "soul” and "mind” pretty much interchangeably.) As you read, try to answer the following questions:
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1.2 Interactionist Dualism
Thursday Oct. 3 |
Required: First Survey on Philosophical Views
Read: "The Passions of the Soul" Descartes (1649) --- sections 1-6, 16-20, 23-25, 27-37, 41 (as highlighted) Reading Guide
In this selection, Descartes is explaining his overall view about how the soul, body, and brain interact. Terminology: for Descartes, a "passion" is merely a perception (like seeing, hearing, or tasting)--- nothing romantic. And "animal spirits" were Descartes' best guess about what we now call the nervous system. They were supposed to be a very thin liquid, traveling in the bloodstream, which communicate signals between the brain and the rest of the body--- they are entirely physical, nothing to do with "spirits" or spirituality. As you read, focus on understanding this big picture, and don't worry about the fussy details. For example, don't bother trying to figure out exactly how the heart, blood, or muscles work, according to Descartes. On the other hand, do pay attention to Descartes' views about...
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2.1 Mental Causation
Tuesday Oct. 8 |
Read: "Princess Elisabeth against Descartes", Kim (2011) --- pages 46-50.
Read: Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth and Descartes (1643) --- pages 1-5. Reading Guide
In these letters, Princess Elisabeth and Descartes debate the claims, made by Descartes, that (a) the soul is immaterial; (b) the soul and body causally interact. Elisabeth is skeptical and Descartes tries to answer her skepticism. (The first reading is a short overview of the debate; the second reading is the actual correspondence.) As you read the correspondence, consider...
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2.2 Free Will
Thursday Oct. 10 |
Read: "Free will and determinism", Sider (2005)
Reading Guide
This article discusses the problem of free will: can people have free will even if some form of determinism is true? The central theme of the article is three basic approaches to free will. According to libertarianism, free will is incompatible with determinism, and can only be explained through interactionist dualism. According to compatibilism, free will is compatible with both dualism and physicalism. And according to hard determinism, there simply is no such thing as free will.
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Writing Assignment 1: Princess Elisabeth vs Descartes
Due: Sunday Oct. 13, 11:59 PM Link here for TURNITIN SUBMISSIONS |
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3.1 Causal Closure of Physics
Tuesday Oct. 15 |
Read: "Arguments Against Dualism", Papineau and Selina (2000) — pages 64-83.
Read: "An Argument from Mental Causation", Kim (2011)— pages 110-114. Optional: "Difficulties for the Dualist", Smith and Jones (1986)— pages 57-61. Reading Guide
These two readings describe an argument for physicalism (aka "materialism") based on the idea of the causal completeness of physics. (Kim calls this "the causal closure of the physicalism".) The argument claims that causal completeness, when combined with downward causation, implies physicalism. The Papineau and Selina reading gives an overview of the argument, then describes an alternative response: a non-interactionist form dualism known as "epiphenomenalism." (Focus on the core argument; don't worry about the historical asides or the stuff on quantum mechanics.) The Kim reading zooms in on the argument itself; after you've read it, go back and look at the two key premises on p. 111 and p.112, and see if you can reconstruct how they lead to the conclusion on p. 113.
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3.2 NO CLASS (Prof G @ conference)
Thursday Oct. 17
Thursday Oct. 17
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4.1 Mind-Brain Connections
Tuesday Oct. 22 Because the "Mind & Brain" reading was posted lated, the quiz question on the reading will be about the BBC documentary. |
Read: "Mind & Brain: A Graphic Guide", Gellatly and Zarate (2018) — pages 21-46.
Listen: Interview with Patricia Churchland Watch: "Brain Story: All in the Mind", BBC Documentary (2000):
Reading Guide
The interview with Churchland (a prominent contemporary philosopher of mind) explores physicalism and its implications. Topics of discussion include: causal objections to dualism, the significance of mind-brain correlation, meaning and morality, and the role of the environment. (Churchland is sometimes dismissive of dualism. What are her reasons? How might a dualist reasonably respond?) The BBC documentary pursues the idea that that the brain in various ways "maps" the mind. It shows how a range of specific psychological problems arise from disruptions in specific parts of the brain. Examples include open brain surgery, phantom limb syndrome, amusia, degeneration of the substantia nigra, frontal lobe damage, and epilepsy.
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Unit 2: The Mechanical Mind
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4.2 The Cognitive Mind
Thursday Oct. 24 |
Read: "Standard Equipment" (from How the Mind Works), Pinker (1997) -- pages 3-12, 18-31 (as marked)
Read: "Desert Ants Are Better Than Most High School Students at Trigonometry", Goldman (2012) Reading Guide
Note! The Pinker chapter has some hand-written notes and cross-outs from whoever scanned it first. You can ignore these. Together, these two readings will introduce you to the idea of cognition as a kind of problem solving, and to the computational theory of mind, which is the topic of Unit 2. The first half of the Pinker chapter walks you through the challenges involved in designing a thinking robot. This will give you a concrete sense of the kind of problems which cognitive scientists think the human brain solves. The second half of the chapter is more difficult: it describes the key commitments of the computational theory of mind, and begins to talk about how it is related to the brain. The second short article provides a window into the minds of insects, in particular, the navigational abilities of ants. This is another vivid example of cognition as problem solving.
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Writing Assignment 2: Causal Closure and Interactionist Dualism
Due: Sunday Oct. 27, 11:59 PM Link here for TURNITIN SUBMISSIONS |
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5.1 The Mind as Machine
Tuesday Oct. 29 |
Read: "Meat Machines" Clark (2001) --- pages 1-16 [including text boxes]
Read: "Computational Theory of Mind" Ravenscroft (2005) --- pages 81-89 Reading Guide
These readings introduce the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), the idea that the brain is a kind of biological computer which gives rise to the mind. CTM is contemporary form of physicalism, and it is the motivating idea behind contemporary cognitive science. The first article, by Clark, describes the idea in intuitively vivid terms and gives you a sense of its historical context. The second article, by Ravenscroft, provides more of a cut-and-dry statement of CTM, including a formal definition of computation. (Both articles discuss Turing Machines. We'll talk about these in class. The general idea is important for us, but don't worry about the fussy details.)
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5.2 The Problem of Meaning
Thursday Oct. 31 |
Read: "Can computers think?" Searle (1983)
Reading Guide
In the article for today, Searle presents what has become a famous objection to computationalism. He argues that computationalism fails, but not because computers lack any specific trait like creativity or emotion. Instead, he uses a thought experiment, called "The Chinese Room" to argue that simply manipulating symbols could never give those symbols meaning. He concludes that a purely computational theory of mind will never explain how our thoughts mean anything or how we understand language. (As you'll see, Searle is a physicalist, even though he is anti-computationalist. But dualists might want to use the same argument to support dualism.) Terminology: "syntax" refers to the shape of a symbol or a sentence, "semantics" refers to its meaning. Consider the sentence (A): cats are not green. Facts about syntax of (A) include: it has four words, each word contains 3-5 letters, there are 2 "a"s and 3 "e"s, and so on. Facts about the semantics of (A) include: it's a sentence about a kind of animal, it implies that cats are not dark green or light green, it leaves open the question of whether cats are red, and so on.
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6.1 Emergence (Systems Reply)
Tuesday Nov. 5 |
Read: Compiled Readings on Systems Reply
Reading Guide
This set of readings deals with issues relevant to the "Systems Reply" to the Chinese Room Argument. The first reading (Braisby and Gellatly) reviews the key commitments of CTM, and elaborates on the idea of mental meaning (what the authors call "aboutness" or "content"). The second reading (Quinland and Dyson) describes a classic view in cognitive science about the relationship between different kinds of science. According to Marr's theory of levels, a complex information processing system, must be described at three distinct levels of abstraction, starting from low-level biology and leading up to high-level cognitive descriptions. The third reading (Bermudez) returns us to the scene of the Chinese Room, and discusses two objections to it; in class we will focus on the Systems Reply. This is the idea that, even if the person inside doesn't understand Chinese, the whole room (including the file cards and the person inside) does.
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6.2 Externalism (Robot Reply)
Thursday Nov. 7 |
Read: "Searle and the Robot Reply", Anderson (2006)
Read: "Information-theoretic semantics", Dretske (2009) ---- read through 22.2 (skip 22.3) Reading Guide
Text.
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7.1 Unconscious Cognition
Tuesday Nov. 12 |
Read: "Uncanny Sight in the Blind", de Gelder (2010)
Read: "Into the Blindspot", Banaji and Greenwald (2013)-- up to page 22 Reading Guide
These two readings illustrate the basic idea that there can be cognitive mental states which are not consciousness. The first reading, by de Gelder, has to do with a form of unconscious cognition known as "blindsight" in which patients seem to be able to see (in a limited way) even though they are not aware of seeing!
The second, by Banaji and Greenwald, is excerpted from a book about implicit bias, authored by two of the leading researchers on the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The chapter introduces the IAT and discusses the results of Race-based IAT's. This reading is designed to give a general introduction to some scientific results. You should read for the general point and the key results.
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Unit 3: Consciousness
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7.2 What is Consciousness?
Thursday Nov. 14 |
Read: "Introducing Consciousness", Papineau and Selina (2001) -- pages 3-22
Read: "Facing up to the problem of consciousness", Chalmers (2010) -- Sections 1-3 Reading Guide
These two readings introduce the problem of consciousness, the subject of our last unit. "Consciousness" is sometimes called "conscious experience" or "phenomenal consciousness." ("Phenomenal" means "having to do with appearances.") It is distinguished from mere "awareness" which has to do with processing information from the environment. The first article by Papineau and Selina introduces the key concepts. The second article by Chalmers refines this description and distinguishes the easy problem of consciousness from the hard problem.
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Writing Assignment 3: The Problem of Meaning
Due: Sunday Nov. 17, 11:59 PM Link here for TURNITIN SUBMISSIONS |
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8.1 The Explanatory Gap
Tuesday Nov. 19 NO QUIZ TUESDAY |
Read: "What is it like to be a bat?", Nagel (1974) --- skip the last section, as marked
Reading Guide
This article is profound and historically important, but also quite difficult. There is a lot going on. For our purposes, there are three main points to watch for: (1) The idea that consciousness is "what it's like" to be something. (2) The idea that, in some sense, we cannot imagine what it is like to be a bat. And (3), the idea that consciousness is inherently subjective, while scientific explanations are inherently objective.
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8.2 The Knowledge Argument
Thursday Nov. 21 |
Read: "Epiphenomenal qualia", Jackson (1982) -- one page excerpt.
Read: "The Knowledge Argument" and "Subjectivity", Fesser (2005) Optional: "Knowledge Argument", Alter (2014) Reading Guide
The short excerpt from a paper by Jackson introduces the "Knowledge Argument", which is one of the best known arguments for Dualism. The two sections from Fesser discuss the argument in more detail. The Knowledge Argument relies on the claim that there is an explanatory gap, and uses this claim in the context of a thought experiment to argue for Dualism. As you read, focus on the Knowledge Argument itself, and its relation to Nagel's ideas about subjectivity and objectivity. Fesser also describes a number of somewhat technical objections to the argument. Try to understand these as best you can; most importantly, keep track of what is part of the argument itself, and what is merely a response to the argument.
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9.1 Naturalistic Dualism
Tuesday Nov. 26 |
Reading Guide
These two articles introduce and discuss a new form dualism, which we'll call "naturalistic dualism" in class. The first article, by Chalmers describes the key commitments of naturalistic dualism from positive perspective. Naturalistic dualism is (more or less) a form of "epiphephenomenalism," the view that the (conscious) mind has no causal effect on behavior. The second article by Ravonsuo describes epiphenomenalism from a critical perspective.
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9.2 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving)
Thursday Nov. 28
Thursday Nov. 28
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10.1 Science and Subjectivity
Thursday Dec. 3 |
Read: "Type-A Materialism" and "Type-B Materialism", Chalmers (2003) -- focus on Type-B
Read: "Critique of the Knowledge Argument", Horgan (1984) (from "Jackson... ") Reading Guide
These readings explore the ideas of reductive and non-reductive physicalism, and their application to the know Knowledge Argument (KA). You can tie them back to the course material this way:
Both of these readings are difficult. You can skim the material on Type-A Materialism, but the rest should be read carefully. Don't worry about the technical passage at the end of the Chalmers reading-- on Kripke and possible worlds. Focus on the ideas that connect to concepts familiar from the course. The material on Type-B Materialism and the Horgan objection will be our focus in class. Terminology:
Questions:
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10.2 The Self
Thursday Dec. 5 |
Optional: "Of personal identity", Hume (1739)
Required: Quiz [based on Tuesdays lecture only] Required: Survey on Mind-Body Relations Required: Phil 7 Online Evaluation Required: UCLA course evaluation for lecture and section [+1% on final grade; access through MyUCLA] Reading Guide
No reading. |
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Writing Assignment 4: The Problem of Consciousness
Due: Thursday Dec. 12, 11:59 PM |