Instructor: Dylan Ludwig (dylan.m.ludwig@gmail.com)
Class Time/Location: Thursdays, 2:30-5:30, Accolades West 002
Office: Ross Building North 821
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.

Online readings

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 February 29th) 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 11th) Submit a final paper to Turnitin, 8-10 double-spaced pages,
normal formatting and citation rules apply.
AI Policy: The use of any generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) is strictly prohibited for all
assignments in this course and will be considered academic dishonesty if detected. If any such
use is suspected, students will immediately be asked to meet with the course director to discuss
the work in question. Please feel free to reach out at any point in the semester (the sooner the
better) if you have any questions concerning which tools are appropriate to use in support of
your academic writing.

TBA

TBA

Reading Schedule:
(All readings available online through the York University Library/eClass)
Week 1 (January 11th): Introduction-Course mechanics and core issues
Week 2 (January 18thth): Perception
• Clarke, Sam (2021). Cognitive penetration and informational encapsulation: Have we
been failing the module? Philosophical Studies 178 (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 25th): 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 1st): 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 8th): 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 15th): 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 22nd): Reading Week-No Class
Week 8 (February 29th): 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 7th): 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 14th): 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 21st): 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 28th): 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 4th): 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.