Mind, Brain and Consciousness

To acquaint students with current ideas, philosophical arguments and empirical evidence on the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and body. The focus is on modern cognitive and neuropsychological theories in the area of consciousness. Philosophical reflection on the problems associated with the notion of consciousness is stimulated.

The mind-body problem is a legacy of the scientific revolution that started in the 16th century and reached its culmination point with Newtonian physics. Starting with Galilei’s and Descartes’ formulation of this problem we will discuss different philosophical positions in a more in depth fashion. In the behavioral- and neurosciences these problems transform into questions about the nature of consciousness and conscious experience and perception. Those topics disappeared from science with the rise of behaviorism in the early 20th century. Now they are back in the behavioral- and neurosciences again. Only over the past few decades consciousness has reappeared in cognitive science and neuropsychology. We will start this course with a bit of philosophy and then we will scrutinize the modern day sciences, especially cognitive science and neuroscience for ideas on mind and consciousness. At the end of the course we will go back to philosophy and we will ask ourselves whether all this empirical knowledge from psychology and neuroscience has brought us further in unravelling the brain-consciousness (or mind-body) problem.

For more details, see the list of topic.

1. What is consciousness? (Philosophical perspectives on consciousness)

 Chalmers, D. (2010). The character of consciousness. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Pp. 3-16. (Reader)

 Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. New York, Viking

Penguin. Introduction: Pp. 1- 17. (Reader)

 Papineau, D., & Selina, H. (2012). Introucing consciousness: a graphic guide. Chapter 1: Pp 3-36. (Reader).

2. Behaviorism, functionalism, and cognitive neuroscience

 Bermudez, J. L., (2014). Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind. Cambridge, University Printing

House. Chapter 14, pp. 445-479. (Reader)

 Fodor, J.A. (1981). The Mind-Body Problem. Scientific American, 244: 124-133. (Reader)

3. Introspection and (neuro)psychological measurements of consciousness

 From the Summer 2014 Edition of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/introspection/

4. The problem of other minds or “Is she conscious?”

 Burton, R. (2007). The light’s on, but is anybody home? (Reader)

 Carruthers, P. (2004). The Nature of the Mind: An Introduction. London, Routledge. Chapter 1: The problem of other minds, pp. 6-36. (Reader)

 Monti, M. M., Vanhaudenhuyse, A., Coleman, M. R., Boly, M. Pickard, J. D., Tshibanda, L., Owen, A. M., & Laureys, S. (2010).

Willful Modulation of Brain Activity in Disorders of Consciousness. n engl j med, 362(7): 579-589 (Reader)

5. Dreaming and consciousness

 Nir, Y., & Tononi, G. (2010). Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology.Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.14 No.2, pp. 88-100. (Reader).

6. Conscious vs. unconscious processing

 Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. New York, Viking Penguin. Chapter 2. (Reader)

 Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. New York, Viking Penguin. Chapter 3. Reader)

7. Free will

 Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8:529-39. (Reader)

 Smith, K. (2011). Taking aim at free will. Nature, 477: 23-25. (Reader)

8. The solvability of the consciousness problem

 Chalmers, D. (2010). The character of consciousness. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Pp. 16-20. (Reader). Note: this reader is also for topic 1.

 McGinn, C. (1999). The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Mind in a Material World, New York, Basic Books. 31-77. (Reader) (Be selective, only read parts!)

 Papineau, D. (1995). The antipathetic fallacy and the boundaries of consciousness. In Metzinger T. (Ed.) Conscious Experience. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic/Paderborn: Schöningh. 259-271. (Reader) (Focus lies mostly on the latter half of the chapter)

To become familiar with the major perspectives in the psychology and philosophy of mind. To acquire knowledge about experimental paradigms in consciousness research and problems surrounding consciousness.