ClassInfo - Spring 2020 Philosophy Classes

Spring 2020 | PHIL 4615 Section 001: Minds, Bodies, and Machines (65727)

Instructor(s): Joseph Owens
Class Component:: Lecture
Credits:: 3 Credits
Grading Basis:: Student Option
Instructor Consent:: No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:: In Person Term Based
Meets With:: PHIL 5615 Section 001
Times and Locations:: Regular Academic Session

01/21/2020 - 05/04/2020

Tue, Thu 09:45AM - 11:00AM

UMTC, West Bank

Blegen Hall 115
Enrollment Status:: Open (26 of 30 seats filled)

Course Catalog Description:: Mind-body problem. Philosophical relevance of cybernetics, artificial intelligence, computer simulation. Mental phenomena present the philosopher with a number of deep but inescapable puzzles and challenges. We tend to suppose that we know what it is to have a mind, to have beliefs, desires, etc., and we think that we know how to explain our own behavior and that of others -- and all of this without any formal training in the relevant science. All of this is surely amazing; indeed it verges on the outrageous. We admit to not knowing the makeup of the simplest structures, to not knowing how to explain the behavior of the simplest organisms -- we, OF COURSE, leave such issues to scientific investigation. Yet, at the same time, we think we know how to explain the behavior of this most complex of systems; we know how to do it, and we know what we are talking about when we explain behavior by citing the relevant beliefs, desires, etc. And, to repeat, we know all of this with no formal training. Strange indeed. Not only is this initial confidence puzzling, but attempts to articulate the mental story and to integrate it into the larger scientific picture have all proven problematical. We start our investigation with a very brief glance at a mid-century proposal that initiated a very different way of thinking about mind: the proposal by Turing -- one of the great minds of the 20th Century--that machines of a certain kind could exhibit intelligence. A story told in part in the recent movie, The Imitation Game. We then turn to some more traditional approaches to mind: Cartesianism, Behaviorism and Materialism. prereq: one course in philosophy or instr consent
Class Description:: Our concern is with the nature of mind with alleged differences between mind and body, and with a number of recent attempts to integrate mind into the natural order. This course has three parts. In part A, we discuss some traditional conceptions of mind and body and how these have come under attack from materialists and behaviorists. In part B, we examine the view of mind that is dominant in contemporary cognitive theory. This view has two components: first, it incorporates the notion that representation is central, that having a mind is primarily having a representational system--being able to represent one's environment and being able to operate on such representations to infer, to plan actin, etc. Second, certain well known systems exhibit this kind of representational capacity--computers--and so they provide us with a new model of what it is to have a mind. To have a mind is to satisfy a certain kind of very powerful program. In a sense, we are no more than sophisticated automata, and if on e wants to understand the working of such an automaton one studies its program. To gain some real understanding of such phenomena as vision, linguistic understanding, try to design a program for a system so that it, too, can be said to see and understand. our final part consists of an examination of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, the most most radical challenge to all traditional and contemporary theories of mind.
Grading:: 100% Reports/Papers
Class Format:: 75% Lecture
25% Discussion
Workload:: 2-3 Exam(s)
Textbooks:: https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/65727/1203
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:: 4 September 2007

ClassInfo Links - Spring 2020 Philosophy Classes

To link directly to this ClassInfo page from your website or to save it as a bookmark, use:: http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PHIL&catalog_nbr=4615&term=1203
To see a URL-only list for use in the Faculty Center URL fields, use:: http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PHIL&catalog_nbr=4615&term=1203&url=1
To see this page output as XML, use:: http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PHIL&catalog_nbr=4615&term=1203&xml=1
To see this page output as JSON, use:: http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PHIL&catalog_nbr=4615&term=1203&json=1
To see this page output as CSV, use:: http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=PHIL&catalog_nbr=4615&term=1203&csv=1

ClassInfo created and maintained by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

If you have questions about specific courses, we strongly encourage you to contact the department where the course resides.