Varying Approaches to Cognitive Science

Varying Approaches to Cognitive Science Order Description The assignment. Address the essay topic provided below, and write an approximately 1,200-1,500 word essay addressing it. (This is a guideline, not a strict rule, though we rather doubt it can be done successfully in less than 1,200 words; and papers should only go much longer than 1,500 words if you have a pretty good reason to do so.) You should display both your mastery & understanding of the readings and our discussions of them, as well as your ability to think creatively & critically about those readings, and to express those thoughts with precision & clarity. Probably we should emphasize that last word a bit more, like this: CLARITY. It is one of the most central philosophical virtues that you must manifest in your writings. Is this a research paper? No. The point is to see how well you understand the three different main approaches to cognitive science that we have examined, by applying them to some particular case of your own choosing (see below). You may draw on some existing literature if you want to do so, but it is not a necessary part of the assignment, and it will not affect your grade at all negatively if you do not do so. The assignment. Address the essay topic provided below, and write an approximately 1,200-1,500 word essay addressing it. (This is a guideline, not a strict rule, though we rather doubt it can be done successfully in less than 1,200 words; and papers should only go much longer than 1,500 words if you have a pretty good reason to do so.) You should display both your mastery & understanding of the readings and our discussions of them, as well as your ability to think creatively & critically about those readings, and to express those thoughts with precision & clarity. Probably we should emphasize that last word a bit more, like this: CLARITY. It is one of the most central philosophical virtues that you must manifest in your writings. Is this a research paper? No. The point is to see how well you understand the three different main approaches to cognitive science that we have examined, by applying them to some particular case of your own choosing (see below). You may draw on some existing literature if you want to do so, but it is not a necessary part of the assignment, and it will not affect your grade at all negatively if you do not do so. Lateness/proofreading/formatting policies. Late essays will lose one-third of a letter grade for each three hours that they are late, rounding up. This is a terrible way to lose points. Just get it in on time. Please be sure to proofread carefully! You get two spelling/grammar errors for free, but beyond that, for every spelling or grammar mistake, you will lose one-third of a letter grade. (Be sure in particular not to misspell the name of any of the philosophers and scientists we have studied!) All papers must be double-spaced, with 1” margins, using standard-size fonts (12 point is usually good), and most of all, easily readable fonts (for example, Avenir, Bookman Old Style, or Lucida Bright are fine, whereas Kokonor or Wide Latin or Trattatello are not going to be your ticket to a good grade. ???????????? is still right out.) The assignment. First, select some cognitive/psychological/mental phenomenon that is in need of explanation. It could be something from the scientific literature (such as myside bias, or the pattern of results on the Wason Selection Task, or the sorts of facts about children’s acquisition of language that Pinker discusses), or it could be something more informally observed (such as, if you find out that you missed your airplane flight by 5 minutes, you’re likely to get more upset than if you missed it by 2 hours. Right? Or, when you drink root beer but were expecting milk, for a brief moment it seems like something horribly disgusting is in your mouth – even if you actually like root beer just fine.). The first part of your essay should describe, succinctly but clearly, the key features of the phenomenon that you think merit closer attention and explanation. If you are just making your own observations, that’s fine, and if you are reporting from the scientific literature (or, e.g., a magazine article that summarizes some of the literature), that’s totally fine, too but be sure to follow proper citation practices. If you are unsure about the rule governing academic dishonesty and plagiarism, you can follow the links on the syllabus. For the next three sections of your paper, articulate three hypotheses explaining your selected phenomenon, or at least some significant aspect of that phenomenon, within the general framework of each of the classical; connectionist; and embodiment/ecological/extended approaches. You should offer three different plausible hypotheses, one for each approach, and your articulation of each hypothesis should manifest your understanding of how each of those approaches works – what their key explanatory strategies are, and what sorts of things that they are better, or worse, at making sense of. You definitely don’t need to do anything like generate new evidence in favor of any of the hypotheses, but you should present them in a way that makes plain why they are at least plausible. Finally, in a concluding section, you should offer a comparative analysis of how each of the three hypotheses seem to do, as far as you can tell, in explaining your target phenomenon. It may be that one hypothesis is clearly better than the other two, though I suspect a more common pattern will be more like: one hypothesis is a pretty much a long-shot at best, or addresses only a small part of the phenomenon, and the other two will each have different strengths and weaknesses. If you can offer any interesting generalizations or conclusions from this case study, please feel free to articulate those as well, though it is fine if you do not do so. By the way, let me officially encourage you not to pick a phenomenon that we’ve already looked at in the class. What we want to see is how well you can apply these cog-sci explanatory frameworks to novel phenomena. You are also encouraged to bounce your ideas off of Prof. Weinberg and Matt, if you have any questions about what might be a good phenomenon to consider.