Thursdays from 4-7pm, in CSIC 3118

Instructor: D. Perlis
Office hours: Mondays 1-2pm, Tuesdays 2-4pm, 3259 AVWilliams

Format: readings, discussions, lectures, (near-weekly) quizzes, exams

READINGS:
Consciousness, S. Blakemore (Oxford)
The Brain, M. O'Shea (Oxford)
The Mystery of Consciousness, J. Searle, (NYReview)

And various articles to be announced...

The list of 'isms' -- together with more detailed instructions -- IS NOW VIEWABLE on the class wiki

SCHEDULE

Dec 7: EXAM II

Nov 30: summing up and looking ahead -- AI and mind

Nov 23: THANKSGIVING BREAK

Nov 16: dealing with the world: groups, reasoning, flexibility
[Assignment for Nov 30: read Elman paper and Newton paper]

Nov 9: Memory, learning, and metacognition
[Assignment for Nov 16: read Miller-1 and Miller-2]

Nov 2: Neural nets -- the basics
[Assignment for Nov 9: read chapters 5-8 of Blackmore]

Oct 26: EXAM I
[Assignment for Nov 2: read shapters 1-4 of Blackmore (Consciousness)]

Oct 19: odds and ends and Exam Review

Assignment for Oct 12:
1. Another ism
2. Read Anderson article

Assignment for Oct 5:
1. Another ism
2. Read The Brain (O'Shea)

Assignment for Sept 28:
1. Another ism
2. 2nd half of Mystery

Assignment for Sept 21:
1. Another ism
2. Read 1st half of Mystery (Searle)

Assignment for Sept 14:
1. Put your ism material from assignment 1 on a new page in the wiki; instructions are given on the main wiki page.
2. Do another ism: choose it by editing the ism page on the wiki, to put your name by your choice. Then once your material for that item is ready, put it in a new wiki page too.
3. READ these three articles:
Turing
Nagel
Jackson
There will be a quiz on these readings!

Assignment to be done before Sept 7:
1. READ Minds, Brains, Programs, by John Searle: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.searle2.html (There will be a QUIZ on Sept 7!)
2. Find out about an 'ism' and submit by email; a good source is
http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/dictindex.html
Give a succinct definition, and if possible some examples and some links for further info. All this will go into an online dictionary of our own, to refer to as the semester proceeds.