Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

May be repeated for credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

Selected Topics: Consciousness

Prerequisites: Either one of: PHIL 201 or 203; or one of PHIL 100W or COGS 100, plus COGS 200; or permission of the instructor. This course will be taught at a level suitable to 3rd and 4th year students from a variety of disciplines. 

[Note: this course is to be taught concurrently with COGS 310.]

Overview: What does it mean to be conscious?  How would one go about studying it?  Are there degrees of consciousness?  And what type of neural functions or capacities are required for consciousness?  What are we, as humans, conscious ‘of’?  What does it mean to have ‘altered’ consciousness—say, in virtue of dreams, hallucinatory drugs, brain lesions or a psychopathology?  Is there a theory that explains consciousness as a whole?  Is it even possible to understand the conscious experience of a mind unlike our own?

As the above questions make apparent, the study of consciousness encompasses a wide swath of issues.  And with the surge of interest in consciousness over the last 40 years or so, there is now a vast research literature, across multiple subjects, on these very questions.  Many courses on consciousness—and I’ve taught a few of them—focus only or largely on ‘the big questions”: How does consciousness arise?  How could it arise out of a physical body/brain? Can we ever know what it is like to be someone else or some ‘thing’ else, such as a bat?   In contrast, this term I’d like to focus primarily on what I will call the ‘little’ questions, questions about particular aspects of consciousness that we’ve managed to make progress on across a variety of disciplines.  It’s an emphasis on what we do know, from studying particular neural systems such as vision and attention, from looking at dreams and altered states, from studying pathologies such as dissociation, hemineglect, minimal consciousness, locked-in syndrome, dissociation and so on.   Most of these topics can be categorized as ‘Consciousness and X’ topics: Consciousness and Vision, Consciousness and the Body, Consciousness and Dreams/Hallucinations/Delusions, Consciousness and Agency, etc.   

We will begin with the question ‘How do we study consciousness?’ and begin to explore a number of these ‘little’ topics.   In the last third of the course we’ll move on to some bigger questions, beginning with general theories of consciousness (how it comes about).  We’ll end with some classical philosophical questions: Is it possible, in the end, to ever understand the conscious states of another conscious being, be that a person or a furry mammal?

Format. There will not be a textbook for this course.  Most readings will be original sources, the purpose of which is to introduce students to how researchers have framed their own ideas and work, and to gain some perspective on what it means to evaluate research work across disciplines.   Class hours will be composed of lectures, plus a variety of in-class group work and discussions.  Students will be asked to turn their cameras on during lectures, so that we can all see to whom we are talking, but exceptions may be possible based upon legitimate reasons for exception.  Please contact the instructor.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Students may repeat this course for further credit under a different topic.

Goals: 

• To understand how different disciplines approach and theorize about a shared research topic.   
• To learn how to read original scientific sources and place them within their historical context.  
• To learn to write concise summaries of and critical questions about original research.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Remote learning for this semester requires a computer or tablet, camera, microphone, and internet access. Headsets are advisable but not necessary. There is one computer lab on campus for limited access. Students have access to free Office 365 or Adobe Creative Cloud found here https://www.sfu.ca/itservices/remote-study-work-resources.html. It is recommended that students use broadband wired or wireless (3G or 4G/LTE) internet connection, with bandwidth of at least 1.5Mbps (upload and download). 

REQUIRED READING: