The course of Introduction to Cognitive Sciences is part of the program in Communication Studies (Bachelor’s degree course) and it is included among the complementary training activities. The course aims to provide students with a historical, conceptual and methodological introduction to cognitive science. This is the study of the mind through the synthesis of contributions coming from research fields such as philosophy, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology and social sciences.
After completing the course of Introduction to Cognitive Science the student should:
- know the diversity of viewpoints, the controversies and the areas of nascent consensus in the field of cognitive science;
- appreciate the contribution of each of the constituent disciplines;
- know multiple definitions of the foundational concepts of computation and representation and be able to discuss them from multiple points of view;
- have an overview of how perception, memory, language, motor control, and so forth come together to produce behavior.
teacher profile teaching materials
Programme
This course is a conceptual-historical introduction to cognitive science. The mind that psychologists and neuroscientists are concerned with is the child of the cognitivist revolution and is therefore defined as a set of information-processing processes carried out in the brains of complex organisms. What makes the cognitivist investigation of the mind peculiar is its being suspended between two worlds: on the one hand, the ordinary image of ourselves as persons, i.e. as subjects of conscious experiences, intentional states and deliberate action (the 'naive psychology'); on the other hand, the subpersonal sphere of cerebral events, the object of neuroscience. The course aims to introduce the student to the scientific study of the mind, but always against the background of the philosophical effort to shed light on the relationships that link these different ways in which we describe ourselves.Core Documentation
J. Bermudez, Cognitive Science. An Introduction to the Science of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020 (third edition).Reference Bibliography
J. Bermudez, Cognitive Science. An Introduction to the Science of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020 (third edition).Type of delivery of the course
.Attendance
.Type of evaluation
The verification of learning will take place through an oral test.