SPM
Senior Research Seminar, Fall 2006
SPM 499,
W 1:30 – 4:20
Professor William Seeley,
323 Stager Hall
Office Hours: T,W,Th
12:00 – 1:00*
* (I can also be found most weekdays
at the Lancaster Ice Rink from 10:30-11:30—bring your skates)
Requirements: The goal of this class is to
familiarize you with the processes involved in professional research in
philosophy & cognitive science. This is a hands-on process that can be
divided into several stages: coming up with an idea; generating a references
list from a literature survey; generating a philosophical thesis or empirical
hypothesis; building an argument or designing an experiment; fleshing out your
argument or hypothesis into a paper. I have broken these steps out into a set
of required assignments. The purpose of these assignments is to set
intermediate goals in the writing process and generate feedback.
1. Submit a list of core references for your paper. You should spend the first week
conducting
a literature search to collect a manageable number of references for your
seminar
paper topic.
2. Submit a short prospectus. This is an abstract for you seminar
paper. It should contain
a
clear thesis statement and the bare bones of the argument you hope to derive
from
your
core reference list. In addition to the submitted draft of this document each
student
will
be required to present the argument informally to the class.
3. Submit an annotated bibliography. You should familiarize your self
early on with the
arguments
in your core references. The annotated bibliography includes a paragraph on
each
core reference describing its main thesis and why this argument is important to
the
issue
you intend to evaluate in your seminar paper.
4. Submit a full prospectus. This a 6 page paper that lays out
the structure of your paper
and
the details of your argument in schematic form.
5. Presentation of the full prospectus. Each student distribute his or her
prospectus and
give
a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation of their arguments to the class.
6. Submit a rough draft. Each student is required to submit a full rough draft
of their
seminar
paper at the mid-term.
7. Topical presentations. Each student is required to choose
two of the central issues or
core
references from their seminar paper and prepare a PowerPoint presentation for
the
class.
The student should inform the class of the appropriate readings in advance. The
purpose
of this assignment is to get you to really work through the arguments in your
paper
as you prepare your final draft.
8. SUBMIT
YOUR FINAL DRAFT on
eDisk by December 13.
Readings
& Presentations:
A critical component of this class is peer discussion and feedback. In general the
structure of class meetings will revolve around student presentations of
current research. Each of you will be required to give a presentation of your
prospectus and a topical presentation of some of the material from your final
paper. For these assignments you will be required to distribute your work (the
prospectus or the relevant part of your paper) and a supplementary reading.
Your colleagues are likewise required to prepare questions and constructive
comments for you to drive the discussion. I have assigned target readings for
the first several weeks. The purpose of these readings is to give you a sense
of interdisciplinary research in cognitive science. My field of research is
philosophy of neuroscience. I have chosen readings that address the issue of
what a fruitful collaboration between philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience
might look like. However, this bias is by no means intended as a constraint on
your research for the class.
Assignments:
Each of your written assignments and presentations will be
graded. Your final grade for the semester will reflect the quality of your work
throughout the semester.
August 30: discussion of potential topics
September 6: references list (6 – 10 target papers)
Bechtel and Mundale:
Multiple Realizability Revisited
Philosophy of Science, 66:2, 1998, pp. 175-207.
(JSTOR)
Marr:
Vision, Chapter 1, pp. 24-29 (3 levels
of explanation)
(eDisk)
Haugeland:
Artificial Intelligence, pp. 58-63 (functional
equivalence)
(eDisk)
September 13: prospectus #1 (1 page single spaced)
Akins:
Of sensory systems and the aboutness
of mental states
Journal of Philosophy 93:7, 1996, pp. 337-332.
(JSTOR)
September 20: annotated bibliography
Kozbelt & Seeley
Integrating Art Historical,
Psychological, and Neuroscientific Explanations of ArtistsŐ
Advantages in Drawing &
Perception,
Psychology of Aesthetics,
Creativity, and the Arts, 1(2), 2007
(eDisk)
Miall and Tchalenko:
A PainterŐs Eye Movements
Leonardo 34:1, 2001, pp. 35-40.
(eDisk)
Tchalenko, Dempere-Marco, Hu, &
Yang:
Eye Movement and Voluntary Control
in Portrait Drawing
in eds. J. Hyn, R. Radach, &
H. Deubel, The MindŐs Eye: Cognitive and Applied
Aspects of Eye Movement Research (New York: Elsevier Science, Ltd.),
2003, pp. 705 –
727.
(eDisk)
Kastner
Attentional Response Modulation in
the Human Visual System
In ed. M. I. Posner, The
Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention (New York: Guilford), 2004.
(eDisk)
September 27: prospectus #2 (6 page argument or
literature review)
October 4: presentations of prospectus #2
October 11: presentations of prospectus #2
October 18: rough draft
October 25: topical presentations
November 1: topical presentations
November 8: first revisions
November 15: topical presentations
Thanksgiving
November 29: topical presentations
December 6: second revisions & topical presentations
December 13: Exam Week - Paper Due