Course Outline
Lecturer: Stephen A. Butterfill
A quick look at the topics this course will cover.
Slides
- If the slides are not working, or you prefer them full screen, please try this link
Notes
I explain why we selected the topics for this course. The key idea is that understanding the emergence in development of knowledge will eventually require somehow bringing together the abilities that infants manifest in the very first months of life concerning physical objects, minds and actions and their abilities to act jointly with, and perhap to communicative with, those around them.
Two Breakthroughs
Support for this idea comes from the fact that the last decade or so has seen two major breakthroughs in research on ontogenetic development:
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Joint Action Preverbal infants enjoy surprisingly rich social abilities. These may well facilitate the subsequent acquisition of linguistic abilities and enable the emergence of knowledge (e.g. Csibra & Gergely, 2009; Meltzoff, 2007; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005).
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Core Knowledge Infants in the first year of life enjoy sophisticated abilities to track causal interactions, numerosity, actions, mental states and more besides in infants in the very first months of life (e.g. Spelke, 1990; Baillargeon, Scott, & He, 2010).
Whereas these are often treated in isolation, understanding developing minds probably requires combining them.
Shared document
We may occasionally want to edit a document together (e.g. to formulate questions).
Please open the document week01 under the files menu in the Origins of Mind teams channel. In case it saves you time, Here is a direct link to the document:
Assessment
We will also mention assessment. You will be offered individual meetings to gain feedback on outlines and drafts of your assessed essay.
To get an idea of the topics, you can see sample questions:
You do not have to answer any of these questions. You will be able to formulate your own question in individual discussion with your supervisor. The sample questions will give you an idea of the kinds of question you might answer. (And you may choose to write on any of these questions if you wish.)
More information
Much of this year’s course will overlap with the 2020 version, so you can get an idea of how some of the topics will be covered by considering the outline of lectures (or even the slides) for that version of the course.