Rationale

This program is designed to introduce students to a cluster of issues and approaches associated with the study of the mind and other intelligent systems, specifically as they relate to problems concerning cognition, computation, information, language, perception, and rationality. In one sense, these issues are as old as our first attempts at explaining the relationship between the mind and the brain, or between knowledge and reality, or between reasoning and truth. In another sense, these issues are as new as the latest developments in machine learning, and in expert systems and robotics, approaches to the study of intelligence which were barely conceived even a century ago.

A Cognitive Systems program therefore makes explicit both the theoretical connections between human and machine intelligence and the consequences of discovering such connections, for example with regard to the human-computer interface. What also distinguishes the UBC Cognitive Systems program from many other programs throughout the world is the opportunity that students have for detailed, practical work in at least one area of concentration explicitly designed to exhibit the practical consequences that arise from different theories of cognition.

Having students in four separate streams, taking several common courses each year together will provide both integration and breadth. At this initial stage, we are offering only B.A. and B.Sc. Cognitive Systems "majors." The multidisciplinary nature of the Cognitive Systems program makes the creation of a "minor" simply implausible. However, all students majoring in the Cognitive Systems Program take the four core courses regardless of stream.