Fall, 1997
Center for Semiotic Research
Instructor: Rick Grush
Time: Alternate thursdays, 10:00 - 12:00, 221 CFK
Description:
A central feature of human experience and thought is the divide between subject and object. We experience the world as something independent of us, with an objective existence, something that does not disappear if we close our eyes, or even if we die. And we conceive of ourselves as subjects that experience this world from a particular point of view. In this seminar we will explore this feature of human thought and experience with the following considerations and issues in mind:
1) What does the subject/object divide amount to? In this regard we will look at the work of the philosophers Peter Strawson and Gareth Evans. We will find reason to believe that the subject/object divide is not an unanalyzable feature of human experience, as many believe, but is rather the result of the interplay of more primitive cognitive abilities, including the ability to represent spatial relations, to construct cognitive maps, to engage in imagination, and to effect coordinations between different experiential structures.
2) Given such a philosophical analysis of the subject/object divide and the cognitive machinery that makes it possible, we will look at the cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms which support these capacities, especially the cognitive neurobiology of imagination and cognitive maps.
3) Finally, we will examine the implications of this analysis for the project of understanding the mind in terms of the brain. This is perhaps the deepest question possible -- how can mere matter, atoms in the void, behave and interact so as to create meaning and a subjective mental life. That is, how are we possible?
Much of the material we will cover will be difficult, but not in the sense of requiring a strong background in any particular field, such as philosophy or neuroscience. Indeed, this seminar is structured around a chapter I am working on as part of a book manuscript, and I want this chapter to be accessible to a wide academic audience. Accordingly, I hope to benefit from the participation of people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
Readings:
Materials in BOLD TYPE will be copied and handed out. Materials marked with an asterisk are supplemental, and will be in my box so that they can be read in the lounge, or whoever likes can make their own copy. Materials preceeded by a question mark are not yet set in stone, and may be replaced with other readings, depending on how the seminar shapes up towards the end of the semester. In a few cases, there are notes on the relevant paper available from elsewhere on my site. In such cases, a NOTES links is included. But be forwarned, these notes were written by participants of pervios graduate seminars I have taught covering this material, and so there may be references to topics from those seminars that make little sense outside that context. But I think the notes are useful nonetheless.
Session 1 (11.9.97):
*Strawson, P.F. Individuals, Chapter 1, 'Bodies'. NOTES
Strawson, P.F. Individuals, Chapter 2 'Sounds'.
NOTES
Session 2 (25.9.97)
Evans, Gareth 'Things without the mind.' NOTES
Strawson, P.F. 'Reply to Evans'. NOTES
Session 3 (9.10.97)
Evans, Gareth The Varieties of Reference, Sections 6.1
- 6.3.
Session 4 (23.10.97)
Grush, Rick 'Manifolds, coordinations, imagination, objectivty'
Session 5 (6.11.97)
Andersen, R.A., et al. 'Multimodal representation of space
in the posterior parietal cortex and its use in planning movements.
Annual Review of Neuroscience 1997 20:303-330.
*Kandel, Erik 'Brain and Behavior'
Session 6 (20.11.97)
O'Keefe, John 'The hippocampal cognitive map and navigational
strategies'
*Grush, Rick 'The Architecture of Representation'
*O'Keefe, John 'Cognitive Maps, time, and causality
Session 7 (4.12.97)
?Markman, Arthur B., and Gentner, Dedre (1993) Structural alignment
during similarity comparisons. Cognitive Psychology 25:431-467.
Session 8 (18.12.97)
?Mandik, Pete 'Objective Memory and the Dispensibility of Space'