While communication is abundant throughout the living world, the human system we call language seems to stand out. Indeed, if humans themselves can be said to stand out among other species on Earth, it may well be language that played the crucial role in getting us here. So where does language come from? This question has been dubbed the hardest problem in science, but the last three decades have seen a notable renaissance in scientific attempts to answer it. This seminar will examine both the results of this multidisciplinary endeavor and the tools that have been employed in it. It will involve discussions of the nature of language and its place among other communication systems and will touch on fundamental questions of what it means to be human.

This is a course on how language relates to other cognitive systems. We will discuss the question of whether and how the language one speaks affects the way one thinks, the relation between words and concepts, the link between language acquisition and conceptual development in children, and the potential role of language in shaping uniquely human concepts. The course incorporates cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and developmental perspectives and combines readings from linguistics, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and other fields within cognitive science.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the basic concepts of sentence structure in a "pretheoretical" framework, demonstrating that any natural human language must have certain structures and must choose the rest from a restricted universal set. The textbook, which was written for this course, discusses each set of structures with examples from six languages: English, Spanish, Latin, Biblical Hebrew, Mandarin, and Navajo. The instructor will add languages from among those with which the students are familiar, within the limits of his competence. This course will help students not only to learn foreign languages, but also to improve their own writing skills, by making the structures that they must use more explicit and intelligible.

The historical origin of writing in Sumer, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica; the transmission of writing across languages and cultures, including the route from Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Latin to English; the development of individual writing systems over time; the traditional classification of written symbols (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic); methods of decipherment; differences between spoken and written language; how linguistic structure influences writing, and is reflected by it; social and political aspects of writing; literacy and the acquisition of writing.

The historical origin of writing in Sumer, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica; the transmission of writing across languages and cultures, including the route from Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Latin to English; the development of individual writing systems over time; the traditional classification of written symbols (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic); methods of decipherment; differences between spoken and written language; how linguistic structure influences writing, and is reflected by it; social and political aspects of writing; literacy and the acquisition of writing.

The historical origin of writing in Sumer, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica; the transmission of writing across languages and cultures, including the route from Phoenician to Greek to Etruscan to Latin to English; the development of individual writing systems over time; the traditional classification of written symbols (ideographic, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic); methods of decipherment; differences between spoken and written language; how linguistic structure influences writing, and is reflected by it; social and political aspects of writing; literacy and the acquisition of writing.

How do minds work? This course surveys a wide range of answers to this question from disciplines ranging from philosophy to neuroscience. The course devotes special attention to the use of simple computational and mathematical models. Topics include perception, learning, memory, decision making, emotion and consciousness. The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed. The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field. It is a requirement for the BA in Cognitive Science, the BAS in Computer and Cognitive Science, and the minor in Cognitive Science, and it is recommended for students taking the dual degree in Computer and Cognitive Science.

How do minds work? This course surveys a wide range of answers to this question from disciplines ranging from philosophy to neuroscience. The course devotes special attention to the use of simple computational and mathematical models. Topics include perception, learning, memory, decision making, emotion and consciousness. The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed. The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field. It is a requirement for the BA in Cognitive Science, the BAS in Computer and Cognitive Science, and the minor in Cognitive Science, and it is recommended for students taking the dual degree in Computer and Cognitive Science.

How do minds work? This course surveys a wide range of answers to this question from disciplines ranging from philosophy to neuroscience. The course devotes special attention to the use of simple computational and mathematical models. Topics include perception, learning, memory, decision making, emotion and consciousness. The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed. The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field. It is a requirement for the BA in Cognitive Science, the BAS in Computer and Cognitive Science, and the minor in Cognitive Science, and it is recommended for students taking the dual degree in Computer and Cognitive Science.

How do minds work? This course surveys a wide range of answers to this question from disciplines ranging from philosophy to neuroscience. The course devotes special attention to the use of simple computational and mathematical models. Topics include perception, learning, memory, decision making, emotion and consciousness. The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed. The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field. It is a requirement for the BA in Cognitive Science, the BAS in Computer and Cognitive Science, and the minor in Cognitive Science, and it is recommended for students taking the dual degree in Computer and Cognitive Science.