BA Philosophy / Course details

This course will be concerned with specific questions about consciousness, perception, emotion, artificial intelligence, animal minds, as well as questions about the underlying mechanisms of the mind more broadly. 

Questions include: 

•            Is the mind made up of task-specific modules? 

•            How much is perception influenced by cognition? 

•            Can A.I. ever become conscious? 

Philosophy of psychology draws on a range of empirical results in psychology, and this course will introduce students to scientific evidence that has a bearing on these philosophical issues.

The course aims to:

• Help students to engage with some of the central problems in philosophy of psychology;
• Enhance students' power of critical analysis, reasoning and independent thought, and their ability to bring those powers to bear on important philosophical issues;
• Familiarise students with some of the most interesting and provocative texts in contemporary work on philosophy of psychology.

-Lectures (20 hours): delivery of content 

-Tutorials (10 hours): small group discussion will facilitate student engagement 

-Office Hours: students will have access to the course convenor through regular office hours 

-VLE: learning materials (reading lists, lecture slides, etc.) available online (asynchronous) 

-Essay Plans: students will be encouraged to submit essay plans for formative feedback

-Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a range of central 20th and 21st century texts on philosophy of psychology. 

-Explain philosophical and scientific positions about the mind accurately. 

-Articulate and defend precise philosophical and scientific positions, and to anticipate and rebut objections to those positions. 

-Identify and apply philosophical research methods consistently. 

- Interpret and criticise both primary and secondary texts.

-Critically reflect on the latest science, and to articulate and defend their own views. 

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate fora is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Blackboard; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

The following reading list is indicative, and students are not required to read all the publications listed.

-Bermùdez J. L. (2005), Philosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction.

-Bermùdez J. L. (2006), Philosophy of Psychology: Contemporary Readings.