200138 SE Advanced Seminar: Mind and Brain (2018W)

Aims: Attendees should be able to reflect on the “bigger picture” in the field of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences. Furthermore, we intend to enable attendees to reflect on what actual findings tell us, what they do not and why so. Through discussions in English we first aim to foster critical thinking when reading or listening to contributions to the area of Cognitive Sciences. And second students can train their skills in participating in discussions in English in a “safe space” with minimal pressure.

Contents: The seminar involves reading, presenting, and discussing seminal papers or book chapters in Cognitive Sciences. This includes topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Psychology as a Science, replication crisis, Philosophy of Mind, or History of Cognitive Sciences. Though the topics raise fundamental issues, the discussions regularly touch relevant topics of everyday life, such as the future of science, psychological consequences of digitalization, cultural dependence of psychological concepts, development of language, truth, or free will.

Methods: Student presentation of a paper/book chapter, student-guided discussion of the text in the seminar, written reflection on the course
Please note that in this course it is mandatory to also attend a weekly colloquium: This provides the opportunity to engage with current research in Psychology, as presented by renowned researchers. Through the talks, students experience state of the art research and current topics of Cognitive Science. They also get firsthand experience how research is communicated. In the seminar the talks from the colloquium will be reflected upon and further discussed to maximize the learning outcomes. The skills of critically reflecting research findings and conclusions should enable the students to reflect the contents of the talk and to critically review the presentations.

Course language: English

Please note that the topics of the seminar are chosen to be explicitly of interest for students of every Master specialization. The contents (current topics in Psychological Methods and fundamentals of Cognitive Science) cover fundamental topics of scientific methods and human experience (such as consciousness or cognition). In the first part of the term, we will discuss current topics in how Psychological Science, be it Clinical, Work, Education, or Experimental Psychology, is practiced and how findings are interpreted. In the second part we will discuss how basic skills such as intelligence, thinking, speech, and consciousness might develop (interesting for Education focus), might take a less adaptive route (interesting for Clinical focus), and how they influence our human experience (interesting for Mind and Brain focus) in our society (interesting for Work focus).