CourseReadings

1. Books:
2. Movies:
3. Other Readings:
4. Additional/Optional Readings:

Books:

• Jennifer Finney Boylan. She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (Broadway Books, 2003 (hc) or 2004 (pb) ).

• Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul (New York: Basic Books, 1981).

• Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics (Perennial; Reprint edition, April 1994).

• V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998).

• Art Spiegelman. Maus, A Survivor's Tale, Volumes 1 and 2 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986 and 1991).

• Sherry Turkle. Life on the Screen : Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

• Donna Williams. Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic (Times Books, 1992).

Movies:

• Being John Malkovich

• The Return of Martin Guerre

• Possibly one more TBD.

Other Readings:

• Jorge Luis Borges. “Borges and I” and “The Circular Ruins.” Both in Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1964). Both reprinted in Hofstadter and Dennett. Also at many websites, including:

  • http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jatill/175/CircularRuins.htm (The Circular Ruins)

  • http://www.georgetown.edu/irninemj/english016/borges/borges.htm (Borges and I)

  • http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/ (Both stories)

• Andy Clark. “I am John’s Brain”. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(2):144-148. 1995. At

  • http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/online/Clark.html

• Daniel C. Dennett. “Where Am I?” As excerpted from Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology and reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 217-232.

• Rene Descartes. Excerpts from Meditations on First Philosophy, specifically Meditation 2, “Of the Nature of the Human Mind; and that it is more easily Known than the Body” (entirety) and 6, “Of the Existence of Material Things, and Of the Real Distinction Between the Mind and Body of Man” through paragraph 9.

  • http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/index.html specifically

    • http://www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/Meditation2.html

    • http://www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/Meditation6.html

  • Also see Glynn Hughes' Squashed Philosophers condensed edition

    • http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/descartes.htm

• Philip K. Dick. “Impostor” and “The Commuter”. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume 2: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (New York: Citadel Twilight, 1995).

• Paul John Eakin. Excerpts from How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

• Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. Excerpt from Human Ethology (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989).

• Erik Erikson, 1902-1994 by Dr. C. George Boeree; specifically, read the section entitled THEORY (you can skip or skim the rest of the page).

  • http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/erikson.html

• Mike J. Eslea. “Theory of Mind.” PS2200 (Developmental Psychology) Virtual Lecture. University of Central Lancashire. 30-08-02. Online at

  • http://www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/science/psychol/bully/tom.htm

• Frank Klein. "Understanding Neurotypicality." Online at

  • http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/neurotypicality.html You may also want to look at The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical ( http://isnt.autistics.org/)

• Marc D. Hauser. Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (New York: Henry Holt, 2000). Prologue (“Mental Toolkits”) and Chapter 5 (“Know Thyself”).

• Franz Kafka. “The Metamorphosis”. At

  • http://www.vr.net/~herzogbr/kafka/meta.htm

    • (Above link no good. Alternate link: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/metam10h.htm)

• Stanislaw Lem. “The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good” As excerpted from The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, translated by Michael Kandel and reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 288-295.

• Peter B. Lloyd. “How Can You Tell Whether a Machine is Conscious?” University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education, Undergraduate Philosophy Certificate, Assignment 12a.

  • http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~ursa/philos/cert12a.htm

• Timothy May. Excerpts from “True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy.” In Vernor Vinge. True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier. Tor, TPB, © 2001

• Terrel Miedaner. “The Soul of Martha, a Beast” and “The Soul of the Mark III Beast,” both excerpted from The Soul of Anna Klane Reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett, pp. 100-108 and 109-115.

• Hans Moravec. Mind Children (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988) . Excerpts from Chapter 4, “Grandfather Clause”.

• Michael Munson. “Passing”. FORGE Newsletter 5(5):3. June 2000. At

  • http://www.execpc.com/~dmmunson/jun00_03.htm

• Thomas Nagel. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review, October 1974. As reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 391-414.

• Robert Nozick. “Fiction.” Ploughshares 6(3) Fall 1980. As reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 461-464.

• John R. Searle. Excerpts from “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Excerpted from The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3(3) 1980 and reprinted in Hofstadter and Dennett pp.

• Raymond M. Smullyan. “An Epistemological Nightmare.” Excerpted from Philosophical Fantasies as reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 383-388.

• Raymond M. Smullyan. “An Unfortunate Dualist.” Excerpted from ;'This Book Needs No Title by Raymond M. Smullyan (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1980) and reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 383-388.

• Amy Tan. “Mother Tongue.” Appeared originally in The Threepenny Review (1990). Reprinted in Bass pp. 11-15. Online at

  • http://www.usao.edu/~facbassitycb/amytan.htm and

  • http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/bordertexts/chapters/ch1.html#amytan

• Alan M. Turing. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” as excerpted in Hofstadter and Dennett, pp. 53-67.

Additional/Optional Readings:

• Chip Brown. “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Deer.” The New York Times Magazine, February 2, 2003, pp. 34-41, 53, 72, 79, 82, 83.

• Güven Güzeldere and Stefano Franchi. “Dialogues with Colorful Personalities of Early AI.” Stanford Electronic Humanities Review 4(2): Constructions of the Mind: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. July 1995. At

  • http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/dialogues.html

• Douglas Hofstadter. “Prelude….Ant Fugue.” As excerpted from Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid and reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 148-201.

• Douglas R. Hofstadter, “The Turing Test: A Coffeehouse Conversation,” in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 69-95.

• Stanislaw Lem. “The Princess Ineffable.” As excerpted from “The Tale of the Three Story-telling Machines” from The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, translated by Michael Kandel and reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 96-99.

• Stanislaw Lem. “Non Serviam.” As excerpted from A Perfect Vacuum: Perfect Reviews of Nonexistent Books by Stanislaw Lem, translated by Stanislaw Lem and reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 296-320.

• John Locke. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1560. especially book 2 chapter 27: “Of Identity and Diversity”.

  • http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/locke/understanding/chapter0227.html

• Pamela McCorduck. “Humans That Think: A Future Trialogue”. AI Magazine 4(3): 35 (1983).

• David Hawley Sanford. “Where Was I?” (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 232-241.

• Raymond M. Smullyan. “Is God a Taoist?” Excerpted from The Tao is Silent by Raymond M. Smullyan (Harper and Row, 1977) and reprinted (with reflections) in Hofstadter and Dennett pp. 321-343.

• Vernor Vinge. True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier. Tor, TPB, © 2001