Dylan Ludwig
dylan.m.ludwig@gmail.com
Office Location:  N821 Ross Building
Office Hours:  Thursdays, 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 10%-Attendance will be taken each class, and it is important to show up to each class ready to discuss the assigned reading material.

Reading Responses 30%-(Due at noon day of class) You will be asked to submit 3 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 20%-(Due March 2^nd) 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 annotated bibliography.

Final Paper 40%-(Due April 13^th) Submit a final paper to Turnitin, 8-10 double-spaced pages, normal formatting and citation rules apply.

Reading Schedule:

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

Week 1 (January 12^th): Introduction-Course mechanics and core issues

Week 2 (January 19th^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 (January 26^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 (February 2^nd): 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 (February 9^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 6 (February 16^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 7 (February 23^rd): Reading Week-No Class

Week 8 (March 2^nd): 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 (March 9^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 (March 16^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 (March 23^rd): 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 (March 30^th): Bias

• 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 (April 6^th): 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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