Hi all,
Hope you all are doing well and figuring out your fall plans! I wanted to make you aware of a new special-topics course in the department that is being offered in the fall: — Professor Abrams
Topics in Cognitive Science: Culture and Cognition
LGCS 185 PO
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 9:15-10:30 AM
Cognitive scientists aim to attain a complete understanding of the mind and its ability to represent and process information. For much of its history, this field largely assumed that it was possible to develop such an understanding without explicit reference to the cultural contexts in which cognition necessarily occurs. However, there is considerable evidence that culture and cognition instantiate complex interactions with one another, and that reference to culture is necessary to fully describe and analyze human cognition.
This course will investigate the interrelationship between culture and cognition, focusing on how cultural differences explain variability in cognition, and how this variability in turn can constrain the development of culture. Topics may include linguistic relativity (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) as well as cultural influences on processes like perception and reasoning. This course will focus on the presentation and discussion of primary literature and will generally meet synchronously.
For more information, please contact Professor Jeffrey Geiger, Jeffrey.Geiger@pomona.edu.