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Emotions: a Philosophical Introduction

Online Free Online Course by  Coursera
Online / Free Online Course

Details

Emotions are the backbone of social activities as well as they drive the cognitive processes of several living entities. This course tries to elucidate the controversial nature of emotions and their evolutionary meaning. Several animals, including humans, have emotions but…what about machines? This is a course to feel and think about.

About the Course

The course is designed to cover a wide range of interests about the nature of emotional events. The biological emergence of emotional states, the relationship between emotions and consciousness, the deep interactions between cognitive and emotional processes, the bodily location of emotions are, among others, some of the main topics covered by this course. The sources of the course come from several research fields such as Philosophy, Neurology, Psychology, Anthropology, Robotics, or AI, among others. Thanks to a non-specialized use of vocabulary, the ideas explained will be easily assimilated by the audience. Anyhow general audiences from any academic specialization are welcome. At the end of the course, the student should be able to analyze critically and to synthesize information on emotions obtained by reading academic papers or specialized monographs, as well as that valuable information distributed through the Internet.

At the end of the course:
a) the student should be able to contribute to daily-life debates making significant and precise conceptual contributions in contexts of emotional analysis;
b) the student should be able to relate concepts and knowledge among different areas of contemporary philosophical research related to the bonds between emotions, culture and nature. She/he must be able to observe epistemic, ethical and political implications of these dependencies;
c) the student should be able to identify and describe relevant theoretical elements of contemporary research on emotions;
d) the student should be able to evaluate the implication for the human nature of the influence of emotional forces that operate intensively today in human societies.

Outline

Course Syllabus

1st week 
Where do emotions come from? Their evolutionary biological roots.
2nd week 
How many emotions do exist? From Budha to nociceptors.
3rd week
What does a plant feel? Bodies, minds, qualia and emotions
4th week
A neuroanthropologial approach to emotions: from neurons to societies
5th week 
The philosophies on emotions
6th  week
21st Century & emotions: affective computing and sociable robots

Speaker/s

Jordi Vallverdú
Professor Dr.
Philosophy Department
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Jordi Vallverdú, Ph.D., M.Sci., B.Mus, B.Phil is Tenure Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Catalonia). His research is dedicated to the epistemological and cognitive aspects of Philosophy of Computing, Sciences and AI.
He is founder and Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Synthetic Emotions (IJSE). He has written several books:
  • (2007) Una ética de las emociones¸ (2009) Bioética computacional, México: FCE; 
  • (2009) Handbook of Research on Synthetic Emotions and Sociable Robotics: New Applications in Affective Computing and Artificial Intelligence, USA: 
  • IGI Global Group;  
  • (2010) Thinking Machines and the Philosophy of Computer Science: Concepts and Principles, USA: IGI Global Group; 
  • (2011) ¡Hasta la vista Baby! Un ensayo sobre los tecnopensamientos, BCN: Anthropos;
  • (2012) Creating Synthetic Emotions through Technological and Robotic Advancements, USA: IGI Global Group;  
  • (2015) Bayesian vs. Frequentist Statistics, Springer, forthcoming; 
  • (2015) Synthesizing Human Emotion in Intelligent Systems and Robotics, USA:  IGI, forthcoming. 

In 2011 he won a prestigious Japanese JSPS fellowship to make his research on computational HRI interfaces at Kyoto University.  He has been keynote at ECAP09 (TUM, München, Germany), EBICC2012 (UNESP, Brazil) and SLACTIONS 2013 (Portugal).
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