COGS 311 - Seminar in Cognitive Science

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2025/26b: The Evolution of Cognitive Systems. Evolution is a physical law, one particular way in which particular kinds of systems change over time. In Cognitive Science, evolutionary explanations help us understand the deep historical roots of the cognitive systems we know as organisms, the current evolutionary pressures on populations of those lifeforms, and how we have and might continue to create other types of “artificial” cognitive systems. We draw on theories and methods of evolutionary biology, artificial life, embodied computational evolution, biorobotics, animal behavior, and neuroethology; our work is to synthesize these approaches to build an integrative understanding of how actors possessing minds might and do evolve. Topics include evolutionary forces in populations, reconstruction of evolutionary patterns in lineages, testing of adaptation hypotheses, the evolution of intelligence, and evolutionary modeling. John Long.

Prerequisite(s): At least one 200-level course in Cognitive Science and permission of the instructor.

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

75-minute period twice a week.

Course Format: CLS