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Advanced Topics in Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition 2011-12 (MSc)

PHIL11038

Course organizer: Dave Ward (Dave.Ward@ed.ac.uk), Office hours: Wednesdays 10am-12, or by appointment.

Course Website:

John Haugeland: Having Thought

Course Description: This course will be based on our reading and discussing the arguments and themes of a selection of the papers from John Haugeland’s collection of essays, Having Thought (1998, Harvard University Press). During the first couple of weeks we will take a quick tour through some of the key themes and motifs in the book, in sessions that will consist in short presentations from me, followed by group discussion. In each subsequent week we will read one chapter from the book, plus occasional auxiliary readings. Our meetings and discussions will be based on presentations by course participants inspired by themes from the readings. More on what these should involve below…

Why Haugeland? John Haugeland was one of the founding fathers of the Embodied Turn in philosophy of cognitive science. His work shows a path from the early roots of that turn in Charles Taylor and Hubert Dreyfus, through the cognitivist, representationalist heyday of the 1980s and early 90s, to the study of embodied, embedded cognition as we know it today. Like many who contributed to the Embodied Turn, Haugeland has done important work on the conceptual foundations of AI, the metaphysics of mind, the relationship between language and cognition, and the way that work in the existential phenomenological tradition can shed light on analytic philosophy mind and cognitive science. Haugeland is unusual, though, in having drawn on his work on all these topics to address Big Questions in the philosophy of mind concerning truth, objectivity, and what it means to be human. The essays we will read and discuss on this course touch on all these topics, so there should be something to interest everyone.

Assessment will be by one 2500 word essay, to be handed in by 4pm on Tuesday 10th of April to the PPLS postgraduate office (Room 1.06 of the DSB). Your essay can be on any of the readings or themes covered by the course, but topics should be agreed upon with me in advance. Ideally, you should use the feedback gleaned from online and offline discussion of class presentations (see below) to hone and improve the argument of your essay.

Presentations: From week 3 onwards classes will be based on presentations inspired by the reading for the current week. We will agree on the order in which people will present at the end of week 2. There will be 2 presentations per class, with around 50 minutes allocated for each presentation and ensuing discussion. As a presenter, how you use this time is largely up to you. Presentations should last for a minimum of 15 minutes and a maximum of 30 minutes. But if you elect to give a short presentation, bear in mind that it is your responsibility to guide and sustain the discussion until the allotted time is up.

You also have a large degree of freedom as to the material you choose to present on. Your presentation should be ‘inspired by’ the reading for the relevant week, and you should bear in mind that this will be what your classmates are prepared to discuss and comment upon. However, your presentation need not be a simple summary and critical evaluation of that week’s reading (though this would be perfectly acceptable). You might, for example, choose to focus on a particular theme from the reading and present alternatives to Haugeland’s treatment of it. Or you might choose to examine the potential ramifications of some aspect of Haugeland’s views for other areas of philosophy or cognitive science. If you are having trouble choosing a presentation topic, or wondering whether a topic is suitable, don’t hesitate to contact me.

In some cases, you might want to stipulate a piece of reading in addition to the Haugeland for that week, in order to help people follow and critically engage with your presentation. If so, you should post a link to the reading on the course webpage no later than the Friday preceding your presentation.

Course Webpage: There is a webpage/blog for the course at:



Course participants should create a wordpress account to allow them to post and comment on the blog. The chief function of the blog is as a forum where we can discuss issues arising from the course readings and presentations outwith our weekly meetings. After your presentations, you should post a summary of your main conclusions and the outcomes of the group discussion, after which the comment thread for the post can serve as a forum for continued discussion of issues of interest. Hopefully this way we can create a useful resource for advancing our understanding of Having Thought! We will also use the blog as a place to post links and papers of interest to those on the course.

Weekly Topics and Readings

Most of the chapters and papers we will be reading are available online (often at: ). Where this isn’t the case, copies will be uploaded to the WebCT page for the course.

As noted above, the required reading for each week (marked with a ‘*’ in the lists below) will be a chapter from Haugeland. The presenters for each week may also wish to post a link to an additional reading on the blog. As noted above, this should be done no later than the Friday preceding the seminar of the presentation. Other than these readings, you are encouraged to let your own interests guide you in your choice of secondary readings. Part of the aim of this course is to give you experience in orienting yourself in the literature with respect to a topic or author. If you find readings that you feel are of particular interest for topics or discussions arising from the course, you are encouraged to share them on the blog.

Week 1: Orientation

A brief introduction to the course (consisting in a brief tour through this syllabus) and a summary of the main themes of Having Thought.

Reading

* No reading required in advance of this class, but it would be a good idea to start working your way through the papers we’ll be reading from HT to get a sense of the topics on which you’d like to present and lead discussion.

A natural place to start your background reading is Haugeland’s introduction to HT, which includes chapter summaries and an overview of the books themes:

“Toward a New Existentialism”, pp.1-9 in HT [and on WebCT]

Dan Dennett has a nice review of HT here:

Journal of Philosophy, vol.96, No.8 (August 1999), pp.430-435

This interview with John Haugeland from 2006 provides an overview of some of the main ideas in his work:



As does this commentary by Haugeland on The Mind’s Provisions by Vincent Descombes:

Haugeland, J. (2004) “Closing the last loophole: joining forces with Vincent Descombes”, Inquiry, 47:3, 254-266

Week 2: Background and Context

This week we’ll think about the ‘Frame Problem’ in AI, and consider how Haugeland’s understanding of the problem and the challenge it poses shapes his views. The class will begin with a short presentation from me, followed by discussion of the required reading. We will spend the end of the class organizing the schedule of presentations for the rest of the semester.

Reading

* Haugeland, J. (1987) “An Overview of the Frame Problem,” in The Robot's Dilemma, Zenon Pylyshyn, ed., Ablex Publishing, pp.77-93.

* Haugeland, J. (1996) “Review of What Computers Still Can’t Do”, Artificial Intelligence, 80, pp.119-128

(Both accessible via link on Haugeland’s website)

Chapter 2 of HT, ‘Understanding Natural Language’ is also relevant (accessible via Haugeland’s website)

A good summary of Dreyfus’s views of the failures of AI (and recent embodied cognitive science) is here:

Dreyfus, H. (2007) “Why Heideggerian AI failed, and how fixing it would require making it more Heideggerian”, Philosophical Psychology, 20(2), pp.247-268

And a recent response to Dreyfus on behalf of embodied cogsci is:

Wheeler, M. (2008) “Cognition in Context: Phenomenology, Situated Robotics and the Frame Problem”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 16(3), pp.323-349

Week 3: The Nature and Plausibility of Cognitivism

From this week onwards, our sessions will be organized around presentations inspired by chapters from HT, and ensuing discussion. This week focuses on chapter one, where Haugeland attempts to define cognitivism, and makes an initial stab at articulating his suspicions regarding it.

Reading

* Haugeland (1981) “The nature and plausibility of cognitivism”, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, I, pp.215-226 (or chapter 1 of HT)

A natural place to start your secondary reading is with the peer commentary in BBS and Haugeland’s responses. You might have a skim through, pick two or three commentaries that seem the most interesting, then look at them in detail. But let your search for secondary reading go where your interests take you, and don’t forget to post links to useful readings or discussions that you’ve found yourself on the blog!

Some possible research/presentation topics:

• Does Haugeland’s characterization of cognitivism identify a real research programme, either at the time of writing or 30 years later?

• Which is the most serious, or interesting of Haugeland’s reservations about cognitivism? Are the reservations related?

• How might actual or possible cognitivists respond?

Week 4: The Intentionality All-Stars

We skip all the way to chapter 7 this week, a taxonomy of attempts to naturalise intentionality, organized according to the fielding positions of a baseball team.

Reading

* Haugeland (1990) “The Intentionality All-stars”, in Philosophical Perspectives 4: Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, James E. Tomberlin (ed.) (Copyright by Ridgeview Publishing Co., Atascadero, CA, 1990), pp.387-427 (or chapter 7 of HT, also available on Haugeland’s website)

A natural starting point for secondary reading would be to pick one of the bases Haugeland considers then read more about it (e.g. Fodor, Davidson, Brandom).

Some possible research/presentation topics:

• Which base houses the right approach to intentionality?

• Should we respect the boundaries between the bases?

• How do nuances of baseball theory and practice provide helpful context and clarification for Haugeland’s treatment?

Week 5: Mind Embodied and Embedded

A classic paper, and a catalyst of the embodied turn in philosophy of cognitive science. Many of you will have read this already, but it merits revisiting!

Reading

* Haugeland (1995) “Mind Embodied and Embedded”, in Mind and Cognition: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Leila Haaparanta and Sara Heinämaa, eds., Acta Philosophica Fennica 58, pp.233-267 (chapter 9 of HT, and available on Haugeland’s website).

The range of further readings and research topics relevant to this paper is extremely broad, potentially encompassing all work in embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition since 1995! Post suggestions that are close to your heart on the blog!

Week 6: Innovative Learning Week

No seminar this week.

See: for details of the activities on offer. Keep blogging!

Week 7: Representational Genera

The last of the taxonomical/methodological papers by Haugeland we’ll be focused on, this paper aims to identify and taxonomise several distinct kinds of representation, and ascertain what might be explanatorily or theoretically unique about each.

Reading

* Haugeland (1991) “Representational Genera” in Philosophy and Connectionist Theory, W. Ramsey, S. Stich and D. Rumelhart, eds., Hillsdale, Lawrence Erlbaum, pp.61-89 (chapter 8 of HT, and available on Haugeland’s website)

Again, the range of readings and research topics relevant to the taxonomy and explanatory role of representations in cognitive science is vast. Let your own research interests guide you, and post thoughts and suggestions on the blog.

Week 8: Objective Perception

Beginning this week, the papers we will read concern Haugeland’s distinctive take on the problems and questions he has raised for philosophy of cognitive science. This essay introduces Haugeland’s central notion of ‘autonomous commitment to constitutive standards’ and uses it to frame a solution to a problem about the objects of perception.

Reading

* Haugeland (1996) “Objective Perception”, in Perception: Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, Volume V, K. Akins (ed.), NY, Oxford University Press, pp. 258-289 (chapter 10 in HT, and available here:

)

Other readings and research topics here might concern the informational (and other) theories of semantics that Haugeland rejects, or the Big Question of whether a partially observer-dependent account of objectivity such as that Haugeland adopts can do justice to our realist intuitions.

Week 9: Pattern and Being

This chapter is ostensibly a commentary on some of Dennett’s work on the Intentional Stance, but takes up and elaborates the ideas about objectivity and mindedness that Haugeland sketched in the previous chapter.

Reading

* Haugeland (1993) “Pattern and Being”, in Dennett and His Critics, B. Dahlbom, ed, Cambridge MA, Basil Blackwell, pp.53-69 (chapter 11 in HT, and available on Haugeland’s website)

Further reading and research here might focus on assessing the import of Haugeland’s analysis for Dennett’s views on intentionality or, more generally, work centering around the large themes of objectivity and the necessary conditions for mindedness that are in play.

Week 10: Haugedegger

We should now have enough of Haugeland’s framework in view to be able to see how it relates to his work on Heidegger. Haugeland, again building on important work by Dreyfus, was among the first to bring Phenomenology into serious and fruitful contact with issues in philosophy of cognitive science. We’ll look at a couple of his papers in this area.

Reading

* Haugeland (1982) “Heidegger on Being a Person”, Noûs, 16, pp.15-26 (also available on Haugeland’s website)

* Haugeland (1990) “Dasein’s Disclosedness”, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 28 (S1), pp.51-73

Further reading and research here might focus on the differences between Haugeland’s appropriation of Heidegger and that of others, such as Dreyfus and Wheeler, on the extent to which Heidegger provides materials that can genuinely bolster and illuminate Haugeland’s views, or on any of the philosophical or cognitive scientific issues arising from the Heideggerian framework.

Week 11: Truth and Rule-following

This is the final and, according to many, most important chapter in HT. It is long and difficult, but our immersion in all things Haugeland for the semester should make things much easier. This is the most detailed and sustained attempt to spell out the ideas of constitution, commitment and objectivity that have taken up the last weeks of the course, and will hopefully round off the semester by neatly tying together all the threads that have run through the course!

Reading

* Haugeland (1998) “Truth and Rule-Following”, chapter 13 in HT (and will be available on WebCT)

There should be no shortage of potential ideas for further reading and research here – relevant topics include all of those mentioned above, and many more besides!

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