Philosophy 374: Minds and
Brains 1999
WF 1:15-2:30
Wednesdays: LSC 131
Fridays: LSC 133
[LAB: Monday 6:45-9:15, MCEC 246]
WELCOME
...when from a
long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are
dead, after the things are broken and scattered, ... the
smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like
souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their
moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear
unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of
their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
--Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
Of what are minds made? The contemporary answer is brains. But how are minds made of brains? As the 20th century expires, most scientists and philosophers agree that many aspects of mind can be understood as manifestions of brain function. Cognition, perception, and "mental" representation are now targets for scientists to explain, and few doubt that they will ultimately succeed. One core aspect of mind, however, has not been so easy to handle, and that is the topic of our course. We will consider one of the most challenging questions of neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. Indeed, our topic is one of a handful of ultimate issues faced by the human intellect. It is the question of...
CONSCIOUSNESS
Philosophers have studied consciousness for thousands of years,
and for most of that time consciousness and the mind have been
virtually synonymous. In the last century, the explicit study of
conscious experience has been called phenomenology.
Meanwhile, neuroscience has made stunning progress
in understanding the brain as a biological organism. Most
cognitive scientists presume that consciousness is an aspect of
brain function, but how does conscious experience arise in the
biological brain? This is the main question of the course. We
will move freely between discussions of consciousness and
discussions of the brain, taking slow steps deeper into both,
always looking for links between them. The course is probably
unique in its combination of careful phenomenology with thorough
neuroscience. You might think of yourself and fellow travelers in
the course as pioneers in a new discipline, which we might
call...
NEUROPHENOMENOLOGY
The central goal of the course is to learn to think like a
neurophenomenologist, that is, like a good cognitive
neuroscientist and a good philosopher. That includes being
able to coordinate primary source material in neuroscience,
psychology, and philosophy. Relevant skills to be developed
include extracting evidence, weighing its import, developing
hypotheses, developing new experiments, developing explanatory
models, constructing arguments, hanging out with classmates, and
having enormous intellectual fun. In short, the course
anticipates the science of the next century.
WHAT THIS CLASS WILL BE LIKE
Fusion. Think tank. Group mind. Through discussion, we will work
together toward a communal understanding of mind and brain. These
are issues at the frontier of knowledge. There are no right
answers, no final authorities. But there are data of many kinds.
These data are complex: Everyone in the class will be responsible
for understanding them, and should be prepared to explain the
readings at all times. We will explore the conclusions that
follow from the data: here you should be prepared to explain your
reasoning, and understand that of others.
YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE COURSE
Class attendance and thoughtful participation are essential to
keep the course coherent and to fulfill your role as teacher and
colleague. A necessary condition for full participation is a
thorough engagement with the reading. A weekly quiz will
cover the basic comprehension of the text and mastery of key
concepts. Quiz questions will generally be circulated in advance,
so that you can thoroughly prepare. As we progress, the weekly
quiz will evolve into more creative variants.
In addition, once a week you'll
develop a "phenomenological
experiment," a short paper
which will help you and the rest of the class explore the many
flavors of consciousness. (A handout on these is attached to this
syllabus.)
About half way through the term, you'll begin work on a course
project, a poster presentation for the undergraduate science
symposium in early May. Your poster will be viewed by fellow
students in all courses, by science faculty, and by anyone else
who happens to come to the symposium. In the poster, you'll
develop and defend original research on the links between
consciousness, psychology, and the brain. Examples of poster
projects from this course can be found in the McCook 3rd floor
hallway.
Last but not least, this course includes a laboratory,
which meets Monday nights. In this lab, you will explore the
foundations of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience
through a variety of thought-provoking workshops and computer
simulations. The lab section is mandatory for this course,
but receives a separate grade.
The course grade will be a three-way split between quizzes, phenomenological experiments, and your course project. Absences will hurt your grade.
READINGS
For the best overview of the course, flip through the course
texts, available in the bookstore:
Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (Vintage,
1986)
Don Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology (SUNY Press,
1986)
Michael Posner and Marcus Raichle, Images of Mind (Freeman, 1994)
In addition, we will be reading selections from
Paul Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul
(MIT Press, 1995)
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Little Brown, 1992)
Jeffrey Elman, "Finding Structure in Time" (xerox)
Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness (xeroxed selections)
Dan Lloyd, "Connectionism, Consciousness, and Cognitive Neuroscience: A Meeting of the Minds" and "The Secret of that Fire" (xeroxes)
and Thomas Mann, James Joyce, and others....
Contacting Dan:
Office: 325 McCook
Email: dan.lloyd@trincoll.edu
Phone: 2528.
The first assignment:
For Friday January 22: A visit to the phenomenological garden
Reading: Dennett, "A Visit to the
Phenomenological Garden." From Consciousness Explained
(Little Brown, 1991). (Handout)
Baker, The Mezzanine, pp. 1-47.
Overview.
Rather than a study guide, for this first assignment you'll pursue a more generic and social alternative.
What to do.
1) During the first class, you met your
fellow neurophenomenologists. Between now and Friday's class, a)
Read the Dennett and Baker selections, and then b)
Whenever you see another student from Minds and Brains, introduce
yourself and enter into a discussion of the readings:
What do you think is true in what he says?
What do you think is false in what he says?
What do you wish you could know a lot more about?
2) Write one paragraph or maybe two in which you describe your experience of something. Discover and describe an unexpected or previously hidden aspect of the thing or your experience of it. (Baker does this all the time -- read him for examples.)