Conceptual Integration

Conceptual Integration, also known as "blending," is a defining feature of higher-order human cognition, indispensable for all behaviors typically taken as distinctive to human beings. This course presents the cognitive mechanisms of conceptual integration, the constraints on its operation, and its deployment and expression in a range of human behaviors such as learning, invention, mathematical and scientific discovery, language, art, music, gesture, social understanding, institutional performance, reasoning, decision, judgment, choice, design, and engineering. A student in the class will work on an individual research project in any of a variety of fields, including engineering (e.g., designing with blends), computer science, the arts, the humanities, the social sciences, cognitive neuroscience, and linguistics.

Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics

An introduction to the scientific study of language and its structures, grounded in the study of the human mind. There are no prerequisites except an interest in language and the mind. This course is suitable as part of any undergraduate education. It can also be a gateway to further study in cognitive science, through advanced courses, special topics courses, the departmental seminar, and a capstone experience. This course focuses on research that has been conducted during the last ten to twenty years in the study of language, form, meaning, and their relations to cognition.

 

Mental Space Theory

Mental Space Theory is a fundamental branch of cognitive science, widely used throughout the discipline. Mental spaces are small conceptual arrays constructed for use in thought and action. This course treats mental space construction, activation, connection, and transformation, and the role of mental space networks in reason, communication, invention, creativity, and distributed cognition.

The Artful Mind

This course is at the center of the conception of the distinctive cognitive science program at Case, which emphasizes human higher-order cognition in activities that distinguish human beings from other species, and particularly behaviors for which there are no animal models.
Human beings with mental architecture like ours came into existence only yesterday, evolutionarily speaking—perhaps fifty thousand years ago. At least, the archaeological record as we have it shows no robust evidence of cognitively modern behavior before that epoch. The staggering behavioral singularities that come with cognitively modern minds—advanced tool use, decorative dress, language, culture, religion, science, mathematics, art—present us with the greatest scientific embarrassment, for they appear to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and the entire rest of Life.
To have a cognitively modern human mind is to be robustly artful, and conversely. This equivalence provides the inevitable starting point for a field of study aimed at exploring obvious yet hard questions: What is the evolutionary path from our remoter ancestors who somehow lacked artful minds to the existence of cognitively modern human beings, who cannot fail to be artful? How did the artful mind emerge? In a leap, or through slow development? What are the basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? What neurobiology subtends these abilities? What is the interplay, in the phenomena of artfulness, between biological dispositions, individual experience, and cultural history?

The Life of the Mind

We will explore the descent of the modern human mind and its exceptional capacities for innovation and creativity, with emphasis on art, science, religion, language, technology, mathematics, and other singularities. The writing component of the course will concentrate on how to recognize and master styles of writing, both academic and nonacademic, with emphasis on styles useful during a career.

Textbooks:

• Francis-Noël Thomas & Mark Turner. 1994. Clear and Simple As the Truth: Writing Classic Prose. Princeton University Press. Paper.
• Terrence Deacon. 1997. The Symbolic Species. Harvard University Press. Paper.
• Mark Turner. 1996. The Literary Mind. Oxford University Press. Paper.
• Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner. 2002. The Way We Think. Basic Books. Paper.

Human Cognition in Evolution and Development

We will explore the descent and development of the modern human mind and its exceptional capacities for innovation and creativity. The course will be based on original articles, which will be posted on Blackboard.