Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: EYE AND BRAIN, MIND AND WORLD

Department: School of Continuing Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Description: How do humans know about the world around us? How does any system, natural or artificial, know about any other system? The question of epistemology is among the most fundamental in all of philosophy, and there is no better example with which to begin an answer than human perception, because it is through our senses that we acquire most of the knowledge we gain in our lifetimes. This course focuses on vision because it is the best understood, and perhaps the most important, of the human sensory systems, and it reveals how the eye and brain interact to give us reliable (albeit usually misleading) understanding of the world. We approach vision and the other senses from several disciplines. Along the way, we learn about how other animals perceive as well as about how our ability to perceive develops from infancy into old age. Department Permission Required.