Dr. Dylan Ludwig
dylan.m.ludwig@gmail.com
Office Location:  N823 Ross Building
Phone Number:  TBA

Office Hours:  Tuesdays, 12:30-1:30 (or by appointment)

This course examines some central philosophical issues through the lens of psychological science. Drawing on research by both philosophers and psychologists, we will consider what different experimental and clinical paradigms in the history of psychology can tell us about persisting philosophical problems concerning the nature of the mind and its functions. In particular, this course will focus on a range of hotly debated topics related to perception, conceptual thought, emotion, and bias.

TBA

Attendance and Participation 5%-It is important to show up to each class ready to discuss the assigned reading material.

Reading Responses 40%-(Due at noon day of class) You will be asked to submit 4 short reading responses (worth 10% each) that will address topics that arise in the weekly assigned readings. These will be no more than 2 double-spaced pages, submitted to Turnitin BY NOON on the day of class where we will discuss the relevant readings. See Reading Schedule for specific dates.

Paper outline 15%-(Due November 1^st) You will be asked to submit an outline for your final paper idea, no more than 2 double-spaced pages, that includes an abstract with thesis statement and outline of the main argumentative strategy, and a short literature review.

Final Paper 40%-(Due December 13^th) Submit a final paper to Turnitin, 10-12 double-spaced pages, normal formatting and citation rules apply.

Reading Schedule:

(All readings available online through the York University Library/eClass)

Week 1 (September 13^th): Introduction-Course mechanics and core issues

Week 2 (September 20^th): Perception

• Clarke, Sam (2021). Cognitive penetration and informational encapsulation: Have we been failing the module? Philosophical Studies178 (8):2599-2620.
• Lupyan, G., Abdel Rahman, R., Boroditsky, L., & Clark, A. (2020). Effects of Language on Visual Perception. Trends in cognitive sciences, 24(11), 930–944.

Week 3 (September 27^th): Perception ****Reading Response Due by Noon****

• Siegel, Susanna & Byrne, Alex (2017). Rich or thin? In Bence Nanay (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 59-80.
• Kominsky, J. F., & Scholl, B. J. (2020). Retinotopic adaptation reveals distinct categories of causal perception. Cognition, 203, 104339.

Week 4 (October 4^th): Perception

• Peters, M. A. K., Kentridge, R. W., Phillips, I., & Block, N. (2017). Does unconscious perception really exist? Continuing the ASSC20 debate. Neuroscience of Consciousness. 1–11.
• Brogaard B. (2011). Are there unconscious perceptual processes?. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(2), 449–463.

Week 5 (October 11^th): Reading Week-No Class

Week 6 (October 18^th): Concepts ****Reading Response Due by Noon****

• Barsalou, L.W. (2016) Situated conceptualization: theory and applications. In Foundations of embodied cognition. Volume 1, perceptual and emotional embodiment (eds Y Coello, MH Fischer), pp. 11 – 37. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
• Machery, E. (2016). The amodal brain and the offloading hypothesis. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 23(4), 1090-1095.

Week 7 (October 25^th): Concepts

• Connell, Louise & Lynott, Dermot. (2014). Principles of Representation: Why You Can’t Represent the Same Concept Twice. Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 6, Issue 3, 390-406.
• Casasanto, D. & Lupyan, G. (2015). All Concepts Are Ad Hoc Concepts. In The Conceptual Mind, eds. Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence, MIT Press.

Week 8 (November 1^st): Emotion ****Paper Outline Due****

• James, W. (1884). What is an Emotion? Mind, 9(34), 188–205.
• Schachter, S., & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state. Psychological Review, 69(5), 379–399.

Week 9 (November 8^th): Emotion

• Ekman, P. (1999). Basic emotions. Handbook of cognition and emotion, 98(45-60), 16.
• Barrett, L. F. (2006). Valence is a basic building block of emotional life. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(1), 35–55

Week 10 (November 15^th): Emotion ****Reading Response Due by Noon****

• Ginot, E. (2015). The Lasting Power of Anxiety: The Developmental Building Blocks of Self-Systems. In The Neuropsychology of the Unconscious—Integrating Brain and Mind in Psychotherapy. Norton, New York.
• Capitão, L. P., Underdown, S. J., Vile, S., Yang, E., Harmer, C. J., & Murphy, S. E. (2014). Anxiety increases breakthrough of threat stimuli in continuous flash suppression. Emotion, 14(6), 1027.

Week 11 (November 22^nd): Bias

• Gigerenzer, G., & Brighton, H. (2009). Homo heuristicus: why biased minds make better inferences. Topics in cognitive science, 1(1), 107–143.
• Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2011). The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks. Memory & cognition, 39(7), 1275–1289.

Week 12 (November 29^th): Bias ****Reading Response Due by Noon****

• Rajsic, J., Wilson, D. E., & Pratt, J. (2015). Confirmation bias in visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(5), 1353–1364.
• Mercier, H. (2017). Confirmation Bias—Myside Bias. In R. F. Pohl (Ed.), Cognitive illusions: Intriguing phenomena in thinking, judgment and memory (p. 99–114). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Week 13 December 6: Bias

• Farrell, L., Cochrane, A., & McHugh, L. (2015). Exploring attitudes towards gender and science: The advantages of an IRAP approach versus the IAT. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 4(2), 121-128.
• Lai, C. K., Marini, M., Lehr, S. A., Cerruti, C., Shin, J.-E. L., Joy-Gaba, J. A., Ho, A. K., Teachman, B. A., Wojcik, S. P., Koleva, S. P., Frazier, R. S., Heiphetz, L., Chen, E. E., Turner, R. N., Haidt, J., Kesebir, S., Hawkins, C. B., Schaefer, H. S., Rubichi, S., . . . Nosek, B. A. (2014). Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4), 1765–1785.

Syllabus subject to change given sufficient notice

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