PHL342F MINDS AND MACHINES

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, ST. GEORGE CAMPUS — UPDATED OCTOBER 24, 2022

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This is a course in the philosophy of cognitive science. Its objective is to help you to develop reasoned
positions on the following questions: Is the mind a computer? Are mental states best understood in physical
terms or functional terms (or neither)? What are our beliefs and desires, and what does it mean when we
say that the brain ‘represents’ things in its environment? Can conscious experience be explained in
functional terms? What is ‘deep learning’ and how might it be significant for our understanding of
cognition? What is the role of the body in cognition? Does the mind need to be understood as a dynamical
system? Can cognitive systems have parts that extend beyond the brain and body? What is the relationship
between biological life processes and the mind? Are minds just Bayesian prediction machines? Could
machines become more intelligent than human beings, and could a human mind be uploaded to a machine?

COURSE WEBSITE
https://q.utoronto.ca/courses/277415

INSTRUCTOR
Dave Suarez | dave.suarez@utoronto.ca

Please bring questions about course material to class or office hours, and reserve the use of email for only
urgent administrative matters.

LECTURES
Mondays and Wednesdays, 1-2pm, LM159

OFFICE HOURS
Wednesdays, 4-5pm, JHB 524

TEACHING ASSISTANTS
Daniel LeBlanc | daniel.leblanc@mail.utoronto.ca
Dylan Jones | dgh.jones@mail.utoronto.ca
Andrew Lavigne | andrew.lavigne@mail.utoronto.ca

TUTORIALS
- Tutorials will begin the third week of classes, on Monday, September 19, in the room assigned
for your tutorial
- Tutorial attendance is mandatory and active participation will constitute part of your final grade

TUT0101 Mondays, 3-4pm UC65 Daniel LeBlanc

TUT0102 Mondays, 3-4pm HS618 Dylan Jones
TUT0103 Mondays, 3-4pm SS2114 Andrew Lavigne
TUT0201 Mondays, 4-5pm UC67 Daniel LeBlanc
TUT0202 Mondays, 4-5pm HS614 Dylan Jones
TUT0203 Mondays, 4-5pm SS2114 Andrew Lavigne
TUT5101 Mondays, 5-6pm UC67 Daniel LeBlanc
TUT5102 Mondays, 5-6pm HS614 Dylan Jones
TUT5103 Mondays, 5-6pm SS581 Andrew Lavigne

REQUIRED READINGS

1
All of the required readings can be accessed using the links provided in the Course Schedule, below. If any
of the links are broken, please let me know ASAP.

RECOMMENDED READING
Clark, Andy. Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science, 2nd Edition. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780199828159

This book gives a helpful overview of many of the topics we will be covering, and will be available for
purchase at the U of T Bookstore in the Koffler Student Centre, 214 College St.

Make sure that you purchase the Second Edition, with the red cover, published 2013; it covers topics that
are missing from the First Edition.

STUDENT CONDUCT
You are expected to complete the required readings each the week before lecture. As a rule of thumb, please
budget at least as much time for your reading as you do for class attendance.

For evaluation purposes, I will expect you to be familiar with the required readings, as well as anything
mentioned in the lectures. I will make my lecture slides available on the course website in the ‘Files’ section,
but they are not intended to serve as a substitute for the lecture itself. I will refer to the listed ‘supplementary
readings’ in the lectures, but I don’t expect you to read them in their entirety.

Discussion is a very important part of philosophical practice, so I strongly encourage you to participate in
tutorial discussions, to raise questions, and to come to office hours. Philosophical questions are much easier
to answer in person, since a short back-and-forth can very quickly reveal what issues need to be addressed.

ASSIGNMENTS AND EVALUATION

1. Tutorial attendance/
participation 15%
2. First paper 25% 4 pages Due date: Oct 20
3. Second paper 25% 4 pages Due date: Dec 1
4. Final short answer assignment 35% 6 pages Due date: Dec 20

Paper topics will be provided two weeks before the due date; short answer questions one week before.

SUBMITTING ASSIGNMENTS
Go to the course homepage and select ‘Assignments’ from the menu on the left. Select an assignment to
view the instructions and to upload your work. Please submit all assignments in .docx or .pdf format. Your
assignment will not count as submitted until it has been uploaded in a Quercus readable format. Check
after submitting to see whether your assignment uploaded properly.

ASSIGNMENT FORMATTING
12 pt. font, double-spaced, pages numbered, standard margins. Don’t monkey with the font, spacing, or
margins; it’s obvious, and embarrassing for everyone. Please use a standard citation format (MLA, Chicago,
APA, etc.), and include a bibliography. Always proofread and spellcheck your work before turning it in.

LATE POLICY AND EXTENSIONS

Late assignments will be deducted 5% of the value of the assignment for each day late, up to a total of 50%.
After 10 days, the assignment will no longer be accepted.

2
There may be times when you are unable to complete course work on time due to non-medical reasons. If
you have concerns, speak to your TA or to an advisor in your College Registrar’s office; they can help you
to decide if you want to request an extension or accommodation. They may be able to provide you with a
College Registrar’s letter of support to give to your instructors, and importantly, connect you with other
resources on campus for help with your situation.

PLAGIARISM DETECTION
Normally, students will be required to submit their course essays to the University’s plagiarism detection
tool for a review of textual similarity and detection of possible plagiarism. In doing so, students will allow
their essays to be included as source documents in the tool’s reference database, where they will be used
solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism. The terms that apply to the University’s use of this tool are
described on the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation web site (https://uoft.me/pdt-faq).

ACCESSIBILITY SERVICES
Students with diverse learning styles and needs are welcome in this course. If you have an acute or ongoing
disability issue or accommodation need, you should register with Accessibility Services (AS) at the
beginning of the academic year by visiting http://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/as/new-registration. Without
registration, you will not be able to verify your situation with your instructors, and instructors will not be
advised about your accommodation needs. AS will assess your situation, develop an accommodation plan
with you, and support you in requesting accommodation for your course work. Remember that the process
of accommodation is private: AS will not share details of your needs or condition with any instructor, and
your instructors will not reveal that you are registered with AS.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
All students, faculty and staff are expected to follow the University’s guidelines and policies on academic
integrity. For students, this means following the standards of academic honesty when writing assignments,
collaborating with fellow students, and writing tests and exams. Ensure that the work you submit for grading
represents your own honest efforts.

Plagiarism—representing someone else’s work as your own or submitting work that you have previously
submitted for marks in another class or program—is a serious offence that can result in sanctions. Speak to
me for advice on anything that you find unclear.

I will assume that you are familiar with the advice on this website, so please read it carefully if you haven’t
already: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/using-sources/how-not-to-plagiarize

To learn more about how to cite and use source material appropriately and for other writing support, see
the U of T writing support website at http://www.writing.utoronto.ca.

Consult the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters for a complete outline of the University’s policy and
expectations. For more information, please see http://academicintegrity.utoronto.ca.

WRITING A PHILOSOPHY PAPER

If you’ve never written a philosophy paper before, you may find the following resources useful:
http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html
http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/resources/writing.html
http://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/files/phildept/files/brief_guide_to_writing_philosophy_paper.pdf

CLASS SCHEDULE

Sep 12, 14 The Turing Test

3
 Required:
- Richard Luscombe, “Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has
become sentient” (link)
- Dan Dennett, “Can Machines Think?” (link)
Supplementary:
- Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (link)
- Ned Block, “Psychologism and Behaviorism” (link)
- Ned Block, “The Mind as the Software of the Brain.” §§1.1-2 (link)

Sep 19, 21 Functionalism and Computationalism

Required:
- Jerry Fodor, “The Mind-Body Problem” (link)
Supplementary:
- John Searle, “Is the Brain a Digital Computer?” (link)
- Gualtiero Piccinini, “Computation in Physical Systems,” in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) (link)
- Janet Levin, “Functionalism,” in SEP (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, ch. 1

Sep 26, 28 Representation

Required:
- Fred Dretske, “If You Can’t Make One, You Don’t Know How It Works” (link)
Supplementary:
- Paul Churchland, “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes”
(link)

Oct 3, 5 The Intentional Stance

Required:
- Dan Dennett, “True Believers” (link)
Supplementary:
- Dan Dennett, “Real Patterns” (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, ch. 3

Oct 10 No class — Thanksgiving!

Oct 12 Consciousness and Qualia

Required:
- David Chalmers, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness” (link)
Supplementary:
- Dan Dennett, “The Zombie Hunch: The Extinction of an Intuition?” (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, Appendix II

Oct 17, 19 Neural Networks: Connectionism and Deep Learning

Required:
- James Garson and Cameron Buckner, “Connectionism” in SEP (link)
Supplementary:
- Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton, “Deep Learning” (link)
- Douglas Hofstadter, “The Shallowness of Google Translate” (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, ch. 4

Oct 20 First Essay Due

4
Oct 24, 26 Embodiment
Required:
- John Haugeland, “Mind Embodied and Embedded,” in Having Thought (link)
Supplementary:
- Rodney Brooks, “Elephants Don’t Play Chess” (link)
- Rodney Brooks, “Intelligence without Representation” (link)
- Rodney Brooks, “Intelligence without Reason” (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, chs. 5 and 6

Oct 31, Nov 2 Dynamicism

Required:
- Tim van Gelder, “Dynamics and Cognition” (link)
Supplementary:
- Tim van Gelder and Robert Port, “It’s About Time: An Overview of The
Dynamical Approach to Cognition” (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, chs. 7 and 8

Nov 7, 9 No class — Reading Week!

Nov 14, 16 The Extended Mind

Required:
- Andy Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind” (link)
Supplementary:
- Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, “The Bounds of Cognition” (link)
- Rob Rupert, “Challenges to the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition” (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, ch. 9

Nov 21, 23 Mind and Life

Required:
- Hans Jonas, “Is God a Mathematician?” (excerpt; secs. V and VI) in The
Phenomenon of Life (link)
- Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson, “The Enactive Approach” (link)
Supplementary:
- Ezequiel Di Paolo, “The Enactive Conception of Life” (link)

Nov 28, 30 Predictive Processing

Required:
- Andy Clark, “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of
cognitive science”
Note: focus on the target article (link)
Supplementary:
- Rosa Cao, “New Labels for Old Ideas: Predictive Processing and the
Interpretation of Neural Signals” (link)
- Andy Clark, Mindware, Ch. 11

Dec 1 Second Essay Due

Dec 5, 7 The Singularity

Required:
- David Chalmers, “The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis” (link)

5
Dec 20 Final Short Answer Assignment Due