NEUROPHILOSOPHY
Philosophy 435 and 805
Philosophy Without the Net!
NEWS!! THERE IS A NOW A SEPARATE PAGE FOR PROJECT RELATED MATERIAL HERE.
Contact Information
Prof. Kathleen Akins
Email: Kathleen's Email
Office: 4614 WMX
Office Hours: Monday & Friday @ 12:30 or by appointment
Telephone: 778-782-3328 or Main Office: 778 782-3343
Course Syllabus and Readings
For the course syllabus and readings, click HERE.
The Syllabus will be up-dated on a weekly basis such that (electronic) readings for the next week will be available 1-2 weeks in advance (hopefully two weeks).
Course Description
Neurophilosophy is an interdisciplinary subject that has been in existence for about 25 years. Although people differ on what they take it to be, I think of it as a two-way flow of information, from neuroscience to philosophy and from philosophy to neuroscience. In one direction, this means taking a new look at traditional philosophical problems given the input of recent neuroscience: once we have in hand something like the facts about neurological processing, does this change either our philosophical questions or the kinds of answers we think should be given? In the other direction, after a few millennia of thought about problems of mind, epistemology and ontology and other metaphysical questions, philosophers have a fairly good idea about, if not where the answers lie, where we know they don’t —i.e. the great dead ends of philosophical thought! The kind of problem-solving sophistication that philosophy brings to the table can sometimes make it easier to see which scientific projects are genuinely new and interesting—and hence might yield conceptually novel answers. These are the sorts of insights that can change the course of scientific inquiry. (That said, I’ve yet to meet a great scientist who wouldn’t make a great philosopher and vice versa.)
This course is called Neurophilosphy: Philosophy Without A Net! This is because, first, there is not a long established tradition of how to do neurophilosophy and so, by necessity we will be doing something very new. Second, I want to try something quite different for this class. It will be a class which teaches both what neurophilosophy is and how it is done—and the topics will be decided by the class as a whole. At the first lecture I will be outlining how the course will go, so that you have a good idea of what you are getting into (or out of as the case may be!). I'll be starting the term by presenting some articles in neurophilosophy on the nature of representation. We'll then do some 'exercises' in how to research and focus a topic, plus (hopefully) have some guest lectures on methods in neuroscience. And then it's on to YOUR research topics.
Course Requirements
It is the nature of a philosophy seminar that student interest makes or breaks the experience. This does not mean that every person must be ‘chatty’ (god forbid), but that every person attends regularly and keeps up with the material.
1. The central work of the course will be a course project, which begins with a section on methodology—choosing a philosophical topic and research materials from neuroscience. My hope is that once we have some topics on the board before us, two or more students will choose to work on a single topic. The idea is to combine our talents—for those who know more neuroscience to work with those who know more philosophy.
a. An hour meeting with professor, scheduled two weeks in advance of presentation. Students will come with a list of seminal philosophy papers in the area and a list of potential neuroscience resources. We will work on focusing the project and making it a manageable size. All materials MUST be sent to me 24 hours prior to our meeting or we will have to postpone the meeting and marks will be deducted. (10%)
b. Presentation of topic. This will be one full class(2 hours) and will be given with my help. You will need three parts to your presentation: an overview of the topic area; the focus of your investigation (selected articles), and your suggestions for where to find the relevant empirical literature (reference list and abstracts). (25%)
c. Final presentation. The final project is presented in class in the form of a "talk" using powerpoint. Even though this is the 'final' presentation, this does not mean that you must have some sort of set line of argument, a firm answer to the question. Rather, you need to have made substantial progress towards a question. (15%)
d. Write-up. Each student must individually write up his or her section of the paper presentation. (If you are incredibly smart, you will write this up before your talk so that it contains a paragraph for each of your slides. That way you will know what to say during your talk and you will only have to polish your notes for the final Due, for undergrads, one week after classes end. (20%)
2. Reading ‘abstracts’, references and questions. During the weeks that your fellow students are doing their first presentations, you will be required to submit, within one day of their presentation (midnight the day after), one of the following: an abstract of one philosophy paper presented (450 words), a list of 10 references (with abstracts), or two detailed questions about the project (500 words). You must do 6 assignments, 2 of each kind, and you can pick and choose which ones those will be. (Your own project cannot be one of your choices!) 6 x 5% = 30%
No late assignments will be accepted (barring grave disasters).
*Note: Graduate students and undergraduates will be evaluated according to appropriately different standards.
Course Syllabus and Readings
For the course syllabus and readings, click HERE.
The Syllabus will be up-dated on a weekly basis such that (electronic) readings for the next week will be available 1-2 weeks in advance (hopefully two weeks).