Introduction to Cognitive Science

Cognitive Science is founded on the realization that many problems in the analysis of human and artificial intelligence require an interdisciplinary approach.  The course is intended to introduce undergraduates from many areas to the problems and characteristic concepts of Cognitive Science, drawing on formal and empirical approaches from the parent disciplines of computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology.  The topics covered include Perception, Action, Learning, Language, Knowledge Representation, and Inference, and the relations and interactions between such modules.  The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact, and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed.  The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories, and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field.  This course is a requirement for the BA in Cognitive Science, the BAS in Computer and Cognitive Science, and the minor in Cognitive Science, and it is recommended for students completing the dual degree in Computer and Cognitive Science.