KOGS5305 Classical Discourses in Cognitive Science (5 cr)

Classical Discourses in Cognitive Sciences is a course which deals with the main directions of Cognitive Science starting with the early 20th century behaviourism and ending with the cognitivism vs. connectionism problem of the 1980s. The reading material of the course includes original articles and interviews. Due to the fact that this is a history course, the use of original articles as a framework is integral. During the course, students become familiarised with the following problems in cognitive science (references to original articles can be found below): 1) The Turing Machine, 2) Philosophy of artificial intelligence, 3) Behaviourism, 4 & 5) Skinner’s behaviourism, 6-8) Chomsky (vs. Skinner) and syntactic structures, 9) the physical symbol system, 10) connectionism, 11 & 12) the language of thought, 13) the frame problem, 14) the Chinese room, 15) modularity, 16) cognitivism vs. connectionism. The student should write concise summaries of the articles' main contents and arguments.

After the course, the student has an overview of the historically significant discourses in cognitive science and an ability to evaluate topical discussions against this background.

1. A. M. Turing (1936). On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, Vol.42, 230-265.
2. A. M. Turing (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460.
3. J. B. Watson (1913). Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177.
4. B. F. Skinner (1953). Behaviorism. Teoksessa B. F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior. New York: The Free Press.
5. Interview with B. F. Skinner, teoksessa Baars, B. The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology, s. 87-92.
6. N. Chomsky (1957). Syntactic Structures, luvut 1-4.
7. N. Chomsky (1959). A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior in Language, 35, 26-58.
8. Interview with Noam Chomsky, teoksessa Baars, B. The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology, s. 341-351.
9. H. Simon , A. Newell (1975). Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search. Communications of the ACM, 19.
10. Medler, D. A. (1998). A Brief history of connectionism. Neural Computing Surveys, 1, 18-72.
11. J. Fodor (1975). The Language of Thought, luvut "Introduction" ja "First Approximations" (s. 1-54)
12. Interview with Jerrold A. Fodor, teoksessa Baars, B. The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology, s. 351-362.
13. J. McCarthy , P. J. Hayes (1979). Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence.
14. J. Searle (1980). Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417-457.
15. J. Fodor (1986). Precis of the Modularity of Mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8.
16. J. Fodor, Z. Pylyshyn (1988). Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis. Cognition, 28.

Ask for copies from the course instructor.