Puzzles of the Mind: Humans, Animals, Robots: Seminar (spring term)
Date and Time
Location
Guven Guzeldere / gguzeld@fas.harvard.edu
*Psychology 1357, Tuesdays 3-5 p.m., William James Hall 105
An interdisciplinary comparative study of human, animal, and robot minds. Particular emphasis on philosophical questions that frame the problems, and recent work in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience that attempt to tackle them empirically. Relation between consciousness and cognition, language and thought, conscious versus unconscious information processing, Manifestations of mental capacities in different underlying substrates: the human brain, nervous systems of non-human animals, and silicon-based computational systems. Additional readings from cognitive ethology and artificial intelligence. Prerequisite: Science of Living Systems 20 or its predecessors and one from Psychology 13, 15, 16, or 18, or Molecular and Cellular Biology 80, or coursework in philosophy. Enrollment: Limited to 25. (catalog # 87888)