Philosophy of Cognitive Science

Cognitive science tries to explain the mind by stitching together psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, AI, and philosophy, and this course asks the harder question underneath that project: what counts as a good explanation of cognition in the first place, and where do the seams between disciplines actually hold? You'll read foundational texts on memory, modularity, innateness, consciousness, and animal minds, then argue your position in a midterm essay, a final essay, a term paper, and weekly discussion. As a graduate philosophy seminar, it presumes you can already handle dense argument and trains the conceptual scrutiny that work in philosophy of mind, AI ethics, or cognitive theory will demand later.