Course Description: This course will explore the cognitive science of human cognition. Topics we’ll cover include how and when the mind models the outside world, what kinds of cognitive processes are rational, the differences between machine intelligence and human intelligence, and what it takes for a computational system to be agentic. We will approach these problems through the lens of artificial intelligence, making the philosophical questions concrete by asking how they apply to concrete computational systems.

Yale Spring 2025

Course Description: This seminar course will look at philosophical issues in artificial intelligence. We’ll cover the foundational paradigms of the field and the theoretical debates that guided early AI. We will then examine several case studies in contemporary AI (such as computer vision, language modeling, and reasoning) to assess how these tasks have changed the theoretical landscape. A central theme will be the tenability and the desirability of building human-like AI. We’ll end the class with an exploration of the various ethical issues that arise from the deployment of AI systems, both present and future.

NYU Fall 2023

Syllabus

Course Description: In this introductory class, we will examine the Computational Theory of Mind— the view that mental processes are fundamentally computational processes. We’ll start by looking at the history of this idea and its origin as an alternative to other theses in philosophy and psychology. We’ll consider the philosophical challenges it faces, from triviality arguments to the problem of consciousness, and then look at the theory’s role as a foundation for contemporary cognitive science. Finally, we’ll look at some of the implications of the theory, including such possibilities as uploading a human mind or producing human-like AI. 

NYU Spring 2024