7AAN2066 Philosophy of Psychology I
Credit value: 20
Module tutor: Dr Nick Shea
Assessment:
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Formative assessment: one x 2,000–3,000-word essay, due by end of semester or as otherwise instructed
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Summative assessment: one x 4,000-word essay
Teaching pattern: one weekly one-hour lecture and one weekly one-hour seminar
2012-13 details
Information-processing explanations are at the heart of experimental psychology, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. These sciences have been enormously successful in predicting behaviour; they also seem to offer explanations as to why people and artificial systems behave as they do. Yet one of the central explanatory resources of this ‘cognitive revolution’ – the nature of the information being processed – is poorly understood. On the one hand information as characterised by the quantities of mathematical informational theory is found in all physical systems and seems to have little to do with the mind. On the other it is connected to the representations that figure in everyday explanations of behaviour, for example beliefs, which can be true or false. The sciences of the mind depend heavily on the existence of representations which play both of these roles; our everyday explanations of behaviour may do too.
Philosophical issues about the nature of representational content have become pressing in recent years with the rise of cognitive neuroscience, which appears to go further and locates representations in concrete processes in the brain. This course will explain the foundational principles underlying these psychological sciences and examine the central philosophical questions they raise about what representations are and how information-processing explanations work.
Learning outcomes
Students completing this module should be able:
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to think critically about some of the conceptual issues raised by the study of the mind
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to read closely and gain an understanding of relevant texts;
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to summarize arguments and positions
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to support and challenge views and positions by constructing arguments and citing relevant considerations
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to relate the issues and ideas under discussion to the work of philosophers and theories studied in other modules
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to form philosophical views of their own which they are prepared to defend or amend in the light of criticism
Additional information
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The initial lecture hour, 11:00–12:00, will be shared with students taking 6AANA024 Philosophy of Philosophy, but they will otherwise be subject to different requirements
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This module is (normally) compulsory for students in the MA Philosophy of Psychology programme
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It is also available as an option for students in the other MA programmes, who might wish to take it in conjunction with 7AAN2067 Philosophy of Psychology II in the second semester, but need not do so.