Lecture 1: Introductions by each lecturer

• Pylyshyn: The introspection trap. Why the dual code idea is attractive and why it raises empirical problems
• Gleitman: How language influences thought, what can we learn from the language and thought of blind people.
• Fodor: Historical background: From Empiricism to the Computational Theory of Mind. Why the question “What are thoughts made of?” matters.

The constituents of thought: Concepts and what they are not

• Fodor: The Representational Theory of Mind

Three and a half lectures on why we don’t think in picture

• Pylyshyn: Some reasons for assuming that (at least some) thoughts are in pictures. What this could mean.
• The evidence for a “depictive” form of representation and what’s wrong with it.
• What’s all the fuss over neuroscience evidence finally solving the problem of mental imagery?
• What could a modality-specific representation system be? What is a perceptual symbol system?

Do we need analogues to encode thoughts?

• What’s an analog? What could it possibly mean to say we use analogues in thought?
• What are some arguments for analogue cognitive representations.
• How do we represent number? How do we represent magnitudes? Are these the same?

Why thoughts can’t be in natural languag

• Pylyshyn: Can thoughts be in Language?
• Gleitman: Does language influence how we think? From Whorf to Gleitman.
• What can we learn by studying the thoughts and language of special groups, such as the deaf or the blind?

Finale

• If thoughts are not in pictures and not in natural language, how do the “words” in the language of thought get their meaning, how are they learned?
• Pylyshyn: Connecting thoughts to things: The causal link.