Consciousness and Embodiment

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The School of Philosophy at University College Dublin is pleased to announce a new exciting one-year taught MA Programme on the topics of embodied consciousness and cognition.

The MA draws on the research interests of philosophers and cognitive scientists in UCD. It brings together expertise from the phenomenological and analytic traditions in philosophy as well as empirical approaches to the study of the mind/brain to offer a unique taught Masters course on a much discussed and important topic.

Background

Until quite recently, the experience of embodiment and the role that the body plays in shaping the mind had been neglected. Descartess view of the body as a machine assigned its study to physics and mechanics rather than to philosophy. Outside of the phenomenological circle, and the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty in particular, the explosion of interest in philosophy of mind and cognitive science in the 1980s and 90s, focused primarily on consciousness rather than the bodily
aspects of cognition. In the last decade a new appreciation of the role of the body and its physical and social surroundings has sharpened our traditional understanding of the key issues of perception, the emotions, and attention. Moreover, the relationship between consciousness and embodiment has brought into focus the intersecting roles of agency, rationality and society in an understanding of the embodied mind. This new course draws on the research interests of philosophers and cognitive scientists in UCD to address the above issues.

The programme is available over 1 year full-time or 2 years part-time. At the heart of the module are six taught modules, which may be taken in any order. Below is an indicative provisional list of modules that will be offered in 2012-13:

* PHIL 40710 Phenomenology of Embodiment (Dermot Moran)
* COMP 40000 Post Cognitivist Approaches to Mind (Fred Cummins)
* PHIL 40430 Philosophy of the Emotions (Rowland Stout)
* PHIL 40000 Carnal Hermeneutics (Richard Kearney)
* PHIL 40250 Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (Tim Mooney)
* PSY 40000 Advances in Neuroscience (Nuala Brady/Jessica Bramham)
* PHIL 40000 Mind and World (Jim O'Shea)
* PHIL 40000 The Cultural Mind (Maria Baghramian)
* PHIL 40000 Philosophy of Mind (tbc)

In addition, all students must complete a 12-15,000-word dissertation by late August 2013. The admission requirements are the same as those for the MA Philosophy (general programme).