Brief Description: This course addresses basic questions about the nature and origins of human knowledge: What is true and how is it known? How does experience arise from the physical world and from the brain? How does emotion affect knowledge and reason? How can learning and thinking be improved?
Readings and discussions will involve most of the basic issues in contemporary psychological science ‹ perceiving, learning, feeling, thinking, remembering, creating, and acting ‹ but these issues will be examined from a broader and more interdisciplinary perspective than in most introductory courses in psychology. This course is intended as background for other courses in psychology, and also will involve basic issues in philosophy, sciences, and education.

Format: This course is a seminar. Students are expected to actively explore ideas and issues and to actively participate in discussions of issues and readings. For this reason, reading and thinking about assigned material before class are critically important.

Books: Assigned readings will be taken primarily from the following books.
€ Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., and Cocking, R.R. (Eds.) (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. (HPL)
€ Bransford, J.D. & Stein, B.S. (1993). The IDEAL problem solver, second edition. New York: Freeman. (IDEAL)
€ Bronowski, J. (1978). The origins of knowledge and imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. (K&I)
€ Damasio, A.R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York: Avon Books. (DE)
€ Simon, H.A. (1998). The sciences of the artificial, third edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (SA)
Additional readings will be available in the Reserve Room of the Heard (Central) Library.

9 / 4 Symbols, sentences, metaphors, & science JB, chs. 2, 3
6 Thought paper on JB, chs. 1 - 3
Attention and limitations of perception
8 Truth and laws of nature JB, ch. 4

9 / 11 Uncertainty, change, & truth in science and public affairs JB, chs. 5, 6
13 Knowledge and uncertainty [TBA]
15 Integrative essay ‹ on the nature of knowledge and truth

9 / 18 The strange case of Phineas Gage DE, Intro., ch. 1
20 Gage's brain. A modern Gage DE, chs. 2, 3
22 More evidence from damaged brains DE. ch. 4

9 / 25 Thought paper on Part 1 of Descartes' Error
Body, brain, mind, and behavior. DE, begin ch. 5
27 Complex biological systems DE, chs. 5, 6
29 Emotions and feelings DE, ch. 7

10 / 2 Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis DE, ch. 8
4 Testing Damasio's hypothesis DE, ch. 9
6 Descartes' error and the passion of learning DE, ch. 11

10 / 9 Integrative essay ‹ on mind, body, emotion, and reason
Problems everywhere IDEAL, ch. 1
11 The IDEAL model IDEAL, ch. 2
13 Creativity IDEAL, ch. 3

10 / 16 Critical thinking IDEAL, ch. 4
18 Communication IDEAL, ch. 5
20 Remembering IDEAL, ch. 6

10 / 23 Learning IDEAL, ch. 7
25 Group project reports
27 Group project reports

10 / 30 Natural and artificial systems SA, ch. 1
11 / 1 Human information processing SA, ch. 3
3 Learning and remembering SA, ch. 4

11/ 6 Thought paper on cognitive science
The science of design SA, ch. 5
8 Designing social systems SA, ch. 6
10 Complex systems SA, chs. 7, 8

11 / 13 Thought paper on designing complex systems
How people learn: Overview HPL, Exec summary
15 Progress in understanding how people learn HPL, ch. 1
17 What experts learn HPL, ch. 2

11 / 18 - 26 Thanksgiving Holidays

11 / 27 Transfer of learning HPL, ch. 3
29 How children learn HPL, ch. 4
12 / 1 How brains change HPL, ch. 5

12 / 4 Integrative essay on human learning
6 Designing environments for learning HPL, ch. 6
8 Effective teaching HPL, ch. 7

12 / 11 Wrap-up

12 / 18 3:00 p.m. Final Exam ‹ section 13
12 / 19 9:00 a.m. Final Exam ‹ section 12
* * * * * * * *

Grading (See notes below for descriptions of the following items.)
€ Thought papers (4) 7.5% each
€ Integrative essays (3) 10% each
€ Group project (1) 15%
€ Final exam (2 questions) 15%
€ Participation 10%

€ Grading standards: The following descriptive standards, taken from the handbook Teaching at its Best ‹ A Research-Based Resource for the Vanderbilt Teaching Community by Linda Nilson (1996) and the Center for Teaching, will be used as guidelines for translating numerical scores into letter grades:
A ‹ exceptional achievement. The student displays a superb command of the subject matter and can creatively apply it at many different levels.
B ‹ above average, but not outstanding achievement. Student demonstrates a good grasp of the material and the ability to apply it at several but not all levels.
C ‹ average achievement. The student shows some mastery of the material and a narrow application range. This grade may indicate a lack of motivation or interest or poor study skills.
D ‹ Student has little or no true understanding of the subject area and may not be interested in learning any more.

§ Note that these grading standards include achievements in applying ideas and evidence outside the context in which they are first encountered. Simply remembering "facts" and definitions of concepts is not sufficient. One also must try to critically evaluate evidence and ideas and to apply these to other phenomena and other issues.

Thought (HiPE) papers: Short essays, about 3 pages. These papers should accomplish three things, summarized by the acronym HiPE:
1.Highlight. Summarize and articulate one or two key ideas. What specific points are, in your opinion, especially interesting and potentially important?
2. Personalize. How are these particular ideas relevant or interesting to you?
3.Explore. What are potential implications or applications of these ideas? How might they relate to other ideas in this course, in other courses, or in other areas of knowledge?
€These papers are intended to be informal but clear. They are not intended as checks on whether you have emphasized the same key concepts that I have nor as tests of the completeness of your reading. Different students typically will highlight different ideas; and similar ideas typically will be articulated differently by different students. These papers will be graded for clarity, insight, and effectiveness in articulating and communicating ideas.

Integrative essays: Longer essays, about 5 pages. These should be more fully developed essays than the thought papers, aimed at integrating and organizing a set of reading, ideas, and issues. These will be graded for clarity, insight, and effectiveness in organizing ideas.

Group project: Two - person groups will each demonstrate and describe a creative application of the IDEAL approach to problem solving. Groups will be randomly assigned. The current plan is to present these projects in class, with both a written handout and an oral presentation or demonstration. Both persons in a group will receive the same grade (unless unusual circumstances indicate otherwise).

Final exam: The final exam probably will consist of two parts, each similar to the "thought papers" submitted throughout the semester. One part will be a thought paper on the last two chapters of the HPL book. The other part probably will be a thought paper focused on an important general idea abstracted from the whole semester.

Cooperative learning and application of the Vanderbilt Honor Code to this course:
The Vanderbilt Honor Code applies to all papers submitted in this course. The general principles of the Honor Code are the same in this course as in other courses and in other forms of research and scholarship, but some of the specific details differ here from the practices in other courses.
To clarify the application of the Honor Code to this course, distinguish between (a) collaborating with other students, and (b) clearly and honestly indicating the origins of ideas and evidence. This course differs from some others on the first aspect but not on the second.
In this course, unlike many others, cooperative work with other students is not only permitted, it is enthusiastically encouraged. Collaboration is encouraged here because human knowledge acquisition is explicitly considered as a partly social process, involving communication and other interactions among people. Learning, discovering, and creating are built on and catalyzed by knowledge and ideas of other people. Your learning and productivity in this course can be significantly expanded by your active involvement with other persons, other students, faculty, and friends. The papers written for this course will generally benefit from discussions with other persons, both in developing ideas and in finding effective ways to communicate these ideas.
The origins and basis for the ideas presented in your papers should be credited to the persons from whom they originated as fully as you are able. Obtaining ideas from other people and from previously written sources is certainly not dishonorable. What is dishonorable, however, is failing to acknowledge the origins of ideas or key words and the bases for information presented in a paper. It is dishonorable to present others' work as your own, to steal their ideas or words and to misrepresent them as your own. Indeed, these aspects of intellectual honesty are critical to the vitality of the social processes that facilitate the free flow of ideas and the creation of knowledge.

The broad purpose of this course
From a broad perspective, this course is less about learning specific facts and ideas than it is about learning who we are and about coming to understand our own capacities for changing both ourselves and our worlds. When we change, the world changes. When we change things that we can see and comprehend, when we see connections between things that previously were unrelated, when we can imagine new possibilities for the ways things might be, then in a very real sense the worlds in which we live change with us.
That is what I think this course is about ‹ about relationships between ourselves and the worlds in which we live, and about how these can change.
You may notice that I used the word "we" rather than "you" when I mentioned learning and changing. I plan to explore ideas and issues with you, as a fellow student. If I am successful, then you and I both will learn. We will help each other learn, and we will learn from one another. What we can learn from one another are possibilities for seeing and knowing the world from new perspectives, for expanding our understanding of the world. We have all come from different backgrounds, with different histories, different perspectives, different knowledge, and different ideas about what we want our lives and worlds to become. Each of us comprehends a different past, a different present, and a different future. Our combined imaginations are far richer than that of any one of us alone. And the whole of our combined imaginations is far greater than the sum of what we as individuals know at any given time. When two people of different sex spend time in bed with one another, then eventually new persons are created that differ from any that existed before. A similar magic of creation and birth and growth also occurs with knowledge and imagination. The sharing of ideas begets new knowledge and ideas.