Language and Thought

Spring 1995; Radu Bogdan

An introduction to the philosophy of language and mental representation. Major topics: the explanation of the mental, models of mind, representation as computation, the language of thought, mental imagery, propositional attitudes, meaning and intentionality, the problem of consciousness.

This crazy philosophy/cognitive science class was two and a half hours long on a Thursday evening. Ugh.

A Few Selected Topics from the Syllabus

Projects and Papers

Fodor's "Modularity of Mind" with respect to Language. This was a kick-ass paper. Although the topic was fairly simple and I had (as always) waited until the last minute to write it, I was on a major roll. I expounded on this stuff in a big way, brought in personal examples, proposed a modification to the theory on the basis of some of my experiences, included references to a cool article about split-brain patients, and who knows what else. Unfortunately, this paper no longer exists, unless the professor still has it in the back of his filing cabinet somewhere. I never printed out a second copy of it, entrusting it to the "safety" of my hard drive. Less than 6 months later, that same hard drive had been wiped by my good-intentioned but sometimes downright bungling father. I could have killed him. This was but one of many precious things lost that fateful day. Let's have a moment of silence.

Texts and Readings




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