Professor Kristin Andrews
andrewsk@yorku.ca
Office Location:  S420 Ross Building
Phone Number:  (416) 736-2100 Ext. 77590

Office Hours:  Mondays 1-2; Tuesdays 10-11 am and by appointment

Humans have minds, humans are animals, therefore animals have minds. But it isn’t only humans who have minds, though most philosophy of mind, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, etc. focuses attention on human minds. To learn more about mind we need to look at kinds of minds.  We will consider philosophical questions about the nature of belief, rationality, consciousness, communication, social cognition, and moral thinking.  By looking at different species, we can see that abilities we might have supposed go together are not both present. We might also find that abilities we didn’t expect to be related are always found together. In this course we will examine kinds of minds, how to study them, and how to move forward on traditional philosophical questions in the philosophy of mind.

The Animal Mind Andrews. (AM)  Available as an E-book through York Library.

Articles available on E-class

Humans have minds, humans are animals, therefore animals have minds. But it isn’t only humans who have minds, though most philosophy of mind, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, etc. focuses attention on human minds. To learn more about mind we need to look at kinds of minds.  We will consider philosophical questions about the nature of belief, rationality, consciousness, communication, social cognition, and moral thinking.  By looking at different species, we can see that abilities we might have supposed go together are not both present. We might also find that abilities we didn’t expect to be related are always found together. In this course we will examine kinds of minds, how to study them, and how to move forward on traditional philosophical questions in the philosophy of mind.

Assignments:

6 Micro papers

The 6 micro papers are formal writing assignments consisting of three to five sentences. Micro papers consist of a thesis sentence and 2-4 sentences defending the thesis. There are different ways to defend a thesis. Defense can consist of examples, presentations of others’ arguments, a description of the evidence that would need to be generated, a consideration of the target’s reply to your worry and your rejoinder. For example, you may want to follow The Four-Sentence Paper structure, which has the structure:  They say..., I say..., one might object..., I reply...

Micropapers should be submitted on Moodle so I can read them before class (i.e. by 9 am). We will be talking about student micropapers in class. These can be harder to write than longer papers! Be prepared to spend time cutting down text and then rereading (and proofreading) what you have written.

Micropapers are an opportunity for you to start writing down your ideas after doing the reading. Though you only are required to do this six times, you can do it every week if you’d like. I think you’ll find that working through ideas on paper will help you develop your own ideas, and talking about them in class will help you refine your ideas through collaboration.

Glossary

This course will likely introduce a number of terms that will be new to you. Each week you can add terms to a glossary we are developing and suggest a definition. We will work together to try to define the terms! It isn’t always clear how to define a term (and even though there is a glossary in the back of my book it might not always be the best resource!). Let’s start by trying to figure out what the terms means. This is a deeply philosophical exercise, because so many assumptions get built into how we define our terms.

Paper development

One goal of this course is to develop a paper on a topic of your own choosing. We will be working on the paper through a series of exercizes.

Step 1: A four-sentence summary

Step 2: A two-page outline

Step 3: A five-page paper

Step 4: A four sentence summary

The idea is to start by developing an idea of your own, honing the argument, writing beautiful prose, and then summarizing the final ideas in a way you could explain to your parents or friends what you have done. It will be interesting to see how your four-sentence summary changes over the term. At each step we will be workshopping the material in class.

Grading

This course will use qualitative rather than quantitative assessment. I will raise questions and making comments on your written work, but will not assign a grade. You will be asked to reflect on your own work and the work of your peers, to help you focus on the quality of your work in this course rather than trying to meet some set standard that is supposed to support everyone’s learning. My intention is for this course to be a “busywork-free zone” so if at any time an assignment doesn’t seem productive, we can discuss and revise. From time to time during the course we will stop to engage in self-evaluation (including me). I will also invite you evaluate the course at these points. At the end of the course, you will be asked to write a self-assessment and assign yourself a letter grade that you will justify based on the work you did in the course. I will reserve the right to modify the final grade based on York’s qualitative scheme. We will be discussing this method of evaluation in the course, and if you ever feel unsure or anxious about where you stand please come see me. You will use York University’s qualitative scheme from assigning yourself a final grade.

To learn concepts and methods in the cognitive science

To learn the latest science of animal cognition

To think critically

To present one’s own views

To analyze other’s views constructively

To write clear and persuasive prose