URL study guide
https://tue.osiris-student.nl/onderwijscatalogus/extern/cursus?cursuscode=JBC000&collegejaar=2025&taal=enDescription
This course offers an introduction to the field of cognitive science, including its methodological and theoretical assumptions, and its constituent disciplines: philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and Artificial Intelligence. It provides a foundation for the third year course Language and AI (JBC090) .Understanding human cognition helps data scientists understand the (human-generated) data they often use and the human decision makers they support with data science analyses. For this reason the course addresses topics from cognitive science such as the history of cognitive science, human attention and memory, problem solving, reasoning and decision making, language and provides an introduction to artificial intelligence (AI), covering topics from basic problem-solving methods (such as classical search algorithms) to dealing with more challenging circumstances (such as constraints or adversaries), with specific focus on designing intelligent solutions to a variety of different problem settings. In debate sessions we will discuss to what extent AI can reach human level intelligence, based on the classical work of Turing and Searle, and how well data science and AI techniques can predict human behavior such as emotions.
Short knowledge quizzes (10%) will be used to support students in keeping track of the reading material. Tutorials and debates will help students deepen their knowledge and skills in AI search and problem solving algorithms and specific cognitive science topics such as network representations and human decision making. Assignments (30%) will be used as intermediate tests of this knowledge and to preprare students for the final written exam (60%).
Objectives
- Recognize and understand major themes that relate to Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, and Linguistics
- Critically evaluate and discuss methodological aspects of cognitive science research and boundary conditions of cognitive science as a discipline
- Explain the foundations, history, and philosophical status of AI
- Apply fundamental AI approaches to problem-solving
- Critically evaluate advantages and disadvantages of a variety of search algorithms
- Understand the challenges faced by AI in adversarial circumstances, such as facing an opponent or working under constraints
- Being able to formulate a discussion topic and defend and discuss this topic in groups