Cognitive Science Seminar ,  What Is Thinking? ,
Q700 ,  14935 ,  Douglas Hofstadter

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What Is Thinking?
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A seminar by Prof. Douglas Hofstadter
Spring 2007

Tuesday / Thursday 2:30-3:45 p.m.
at CRCC, 510 North Fess Avenue

This course might also have been called ³Cognition Equals
Perception².  The central idea of the course is that all concepts
(synonymous with ³categories²), from the lowliest to the most
exalted, are patterns in the mind, and that the business of the mind
is recognizing (that is, perceiving) what concept(s) the current
situation consists of.  ³The current situation² could mean the
external environment (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) or it could
mean the mind¹s internal state.
In other words, we are constantly perceiving what is in front
of us as well as what is concretely and abstractly inside us, and
labeling (i.e., perceiving, categorizing) it.  This ceaseless
activity of the brain ranges from recognizing a horse before our
eyes as a horse, to recognizing trotting as the horse¹s gait, and
onwards and upwards to recognizing baroque music on the radio to
recognizing a paranoid statement in a friend¹s discourse to
recognizing heroism in a news story, and further onwards and upwards
to recognizing ³but² situations, ³in fact² situations, ³hopefully²
situations, ³ain¹t² situations, ³sour grapes² situations, "better
late than never"
situation, ³and so forth² situations, and so on and so forth, ad
infinitum.  In summary, perception at many levels of abstraction at
once (which could also be called ³categorization², ³pattern
recognition², or ³analogy-making²) is what our minds do, and this,
in a word, is thinking.
We will talk about this view of thinking by considering
examples drawn from everyday life, from literature, from movies, and
so forth.
We will see how it covers such things as word choice, choice of
sentence structure (i.e., the generation of speech), cognitive
errors of all sorts, the spontaneous generation of witty remarks,
the invention or discovery of scientific ideas, the understanding of
complex stories including fiction, movies, news items, and of course
episodes in one¹s own life and the lives of one¹s family and friends.
The seminar is for anyone interested in the nature of the
human mind.  It will require constant attendance and intense
participation in class discussions, and the grade will be based in
part on a term paper exploring some theme of the course, agreed upon
by student and instructor.

Reading material:
Joe Becker:  ³The Mental Lexicon²
Douglas Hofstadter:  ³Analogy as the Core of Cognition²
Douglas Hofstadter:  ³Speechstuff and Thoughtstuff²
Douglas Hofstadter and David Moser:  ³To Err is Human...²
Douglas Hofstadter:  ³Bon Mots of the XX Century²
Donald Norman and David Rumelhart:  ³Model of Typing Errors²
Donald Norman:  ³Classification of Errors² The reading material
will be available at CRCC.