80-203 Minds and Machines

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

What is a mind, how could we know whether something has one, and what can the construction of intelligent machines tell us about them? This course investigates the relationship between minds and machines through philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and the mind and brain sciences. Topics include self-knowledge and other minds; symbolic and neural architectures; foundation models; intentionality, learning, perception, and decision-making; cognition in brains, machines, cells, plants, and swarms; physicalism, functionalism, realization, causation, and consciousness; and the explanatory status of computational models, neural mechanisms, and methods for interpreting artificial intelligence.

Prerequisites: none listed

Offered: Spring 2027

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