Is the mind a machine? Is it a computer? What does it mean to `compute?' Can a computer have a mind? In this seminar, we will explore answers to these and similar questions from a combination of neuroscientific, computational, and philosophical perspectives. The seminar will meet once a week and will feature a number of guest speakers from neuroscience, computer science, and philosophy, including:

Course particulars:

Instructor: Bruno A. Olshausen

Date/time:  T 7:00 p.m.

Location:  Center for Neuroscience conference room

Units: 3

CRN: 75911

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of neuroscience, computer science, or philosophy. PSC/NPB 163 recommended.

Grading: Students enrolled for credit will be required to write a short report on one of the articles/topics discussed in class.

Syllabus (tentative):

April 4          The future of artificial intelligence and neuroscience.  Guest speaker:
                            Tony Bell

                               Bell AJ (1999)  Levels and Loops: the Future of Artificial Intelligence and
                               Neuroscience, Phil. Trans. R Soc. Lond. B 354:2013-2020. pdf
 

April 11          Mind, brain, and computation.

                               Turing AM (1950)  Computing Machinery and Intelligence,  Mind, 59.

                               Harnad S (2001)  Minds, Machines and Turing,  Journal of Logic, Language,
                               and Information (in press) html
 

April 18          What does it mean to ``compute?''  Guest speaker: Phil Rogaway

                                Sipser, M (1997)   The Church-Turing Thesis.  Chapter 3 of Introduction to the
                                Theory of Computation.  PWS Publishing.
 

April 25          Computing with holistic representations.  Guest speaker:  Pentti Kanerva

                                Kanerva, P.  (1998) Dual role of analogy in the design of a cognitive computer.
                                In  K. Holyoak, D. Gentner, and B. Kokinov (eds.), Advances in Analogy
                                Research: Integration of Theory and Data from the Cognitive, Computational,
                                and Neural Sciences (workshop, Sofia), pp. 164-170.  Sofia: New Bulgarian
                                University.  postscript

                                Kanerva, P.  (1999) Artificial Minds, Stan Franklin, MIT Press, 1995.  Book
                                review.  Journal of Cognitive Systems Research 1(1):53-57. text
 

May 2             Mental representation.  Guest speaker:  Rob Cummins

                                Cummins, R. (2000) "The mind as computer, "  "The mind as neural network,"
                                and "The mind as brain."    In:  Minds, Brains and Computers  ed. by R.
                                Cummins and D.D. Cummins.  Blackwell Publishers.  html, rtf.
 

May 9             Searle's Chinese room - or, ``Can machines think?''

                                Searle JR (1980)  Minds, Brains, and Programs,  Behavioral and Brain
                                Sciences, 3.

                                Searle JR (2000) Consciousness,  Annual Reviews of Neuroscience, 23: 557-578.
                              pdf
 

May 15           ``Who shoves whom around in the careenium?''  Guest speaker: Doug
(Note: Monday)   Hofstadter.

                                ``Who shoves whom around in the careenium?'' and ``Waking up from the
                                Boolean Dream''  from Metamagical Themas

                                ``Prelude and Fugue'' from  Godel, Escher, Bach

                                Dawkin's  Selfish Gene excerpt from The Mind's Eye
 

May 23           Dynamics, computation, and neurobiology.

                                Hopfield JJ (1997) Dynamics, computation, and neurobiology.   In: Critical
                                problems in physics,  ed. V. L. Fitch, D. R. Marlow, and  M.A.E. Dementi.
                                Princeton University Press.

                                van Gelder T (1998)  The Dynamical Hypothesis in Cognitive Science
                                Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21:1-14. postscript

                                Mitchell, M (1998)  A complex-systems perspective on the "computation vs.
                                dynamics debate in cognitive science."  submitted to the 20th Annual
                                Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.  postscript
 

May 30           Perception as Bayesian inference.  Guest speaker:  Yair Weiss

                                Weiss Y, Adelson EH  (2000) Slow and Smooth: a Bayesian theory for the
                                combination of local motion signals in human vision.  preprint postscript
                                (63 pages)

                                Weiss Y  (1997)  Interpreting images by propagating Bayesian beliefs.  in: M.C.
                                Mozer, M.I. Jordan and T. Petsche, editors, Advances in Neural Information
                                Processing Systems 9: 908-915.   postscript, pdf
 

June 6             Quantum computation.

                                Bennett CH, DiVincenzo DP (2000)  Quantum information and computation,
                                Nature 404:247-255. pdf, postscript