Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science

Catalog description

This course surveys the rise of cognitive science as an interdisciplinary study of mind, examining conceptual foundations across philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, computer science, and AI. The first half traces the historical developments that converged into the computational view of mind and established cognitive science as a field. The second half explores central debates: how much of cognition is innate versus learned; whether behavioral or neural data offer better starting points for investigating cognitive processes; whether the human mind is more like a classical computer or an artificial neural network; and how rational human thought is. Additional topics include philosophical questions raised by large language models, the Turing Test, embodied cognition, animal minds, and consciousness. Students will engage with foundational texts and current research while developing their own philosophical analyses. No prerequisites.