I. Objectives

Cognitive Science is the scientific study of the mind and mental phenomena. For example, what is consciousness? Do other animals have language? Could a computer ever think? What is mental imagery? Answering these questions relies upon an interdisciplinary perspective, and so Cognitive Science adopts methodologies from computer science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and neuroscience. Students who take this major will be exposed to research in all these disciplines, and will integrate results from across the different approaches in order to more fully understand the complexities of the mind and the brain.

A core aspect of the programme is to ensure that students learn skills from different research traditions; for example, a Cognitive Science student could be expected to learn how to run psychological experiments, apply formal linguistic analysis, or critique a philosophical argument. In doing so, this program will develop students who have a variety of formal intellectual skills, and can bring those skills to bear on a range of issues in our increasingly technological world. Students with a Major in Cognitive Science will also be able to act as a bridge between those who are technically skilled and those seek to understand technology, by placing formal computational analysis within the context of human thought and behaviour.

II. Programme structure

Pre-requisite requirement
Candidates who major or minor in this programme should take two of the following junior-level courses:

LING1001.     Introduction to linguistics (6 credits)
PHIL1002.     The human mind: An introduction to philosophy (6 credits)
PSYC1001.    Introduction to Psychology (6 credits)

Core courses (18 credits for majors; 12 credits for minors)
Candidates who major in this programme should take each of the following three courses; candidates who minor should take PSYC0066 and PSYC0067.

PSYC0066.    Foundations of cognitive science (6 credits)
PSYC0067.    Seminars in cognitive science (6 credits)
PSYC0068.    Research project in cognitive science (6 credits)

Elective courses (30 credits for majors; 12 credits for minors)
Candidates who major in this programme should take at least 5 elective courses from the course list below.
Candidates who minor in this programme should take at least 2 elective courses from the course list below. The following courses are grouped by subject area; students are free to specialize within one area or select courses from different areas. In course registration, students should pay special attention to the prerequisite of individual course as specified in the syllabus.

Philosophy of Mind    
PHIL2110.     Knowledge    
PHIL2220.     The mind    
PHIL2230.     Philosophy and cognitive science   
PHIL2510.     Logic   
PHIL2520.     Philosophy of logic   
PHIL2610.      Philosophy of language    
 
Artificial Intelligence and Computational Modelling   
LING2001.     Computational linguistics   
LING2025.     Corpus linguistics   
PHIL2250.     Logic, computation, and neural networks   
PSYC0061.    Advanced issues in perception    
 
Brain and Cognition    
LING2053.     Language and the brain   
PSYC0007.    Cognitive psychology
PSYC0008.    Advanced cognitive psychology   
PSYC0022.    Biological psychology   
PSYC0032.    Engineering psychology   
PSYC0051.    Perception    
PSYC0054.    Human neuropsychology    
 
Mind and Language    
LING2003.     Semantics: meaning and grammar   
LING2027.     Phonology   
LING2032.     Syntactic theory   
LING2034.     Psycholinguistics   
LING2037.     Bilingualism    
PHIL2075.     The semantics/pragmatics distinction

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