ANBI 159: Biological and cultural perspectives on intelligence
Winter quarter, 2008
Jim Moore jjmoore@ucsd.edu
TA: Ashwin Budden abudden@ucsd.edu
Welcome to the website for ANBI 159 (Winter 2008)
NOTE: Nothing much here until late fall 2008; course will be offered Winter 2009. For now, most links are dead.
Syllabus
Lectures (available for at least 1 week following the day given; note that the video clips are not included in online lectures.) 14 Feb UPDATE: I'm using a new format for the online lectures, uses less disk space, so MAYBE will be able to keep all available through the quarter.
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Readings
Most of the articles are from Scientific American, which I chose in part because it is a good source of scientific information for nonspecialists that is easily available once you leave college -- get in the habit! :-) You should be able to download them FREE via MELVYL or ROGER from any campus computer (or home, once you configure your proxy server -- contact ACS - not me - for help on that).
Others:
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Gagneux et al. 2005
Sternberg & Grigorenko 2004
Gottlieb 2000
Only if you're interested:
The 12 January 2006 issue of Nature has a review of a recent book that examines the relationship among free will, neurobiology, epigenesis, and the law. The review is only a page long and gives you the idea... pdf here.
Though not directly linked to 'intelligence', prosocial (aka 'moral') behavior has bearing on how we use intelligence, for what purpose, with whom. Steve Pinker has written eloquently (and perhaps correctly) on the role of natural selection shaping "brain modules" such as the "language organ" that Noam Chomsky advocates. In this New York Times Magazine article he talks about our instinctive morality. I'm not at all sure I buy it, but it is interesting & state of the art in an important modern debate....
Pinker 2008 pdf (3mb)
Another take on natural selection for high IQ
CONTACT [SETI etc.] (Conference April 4-6, 2008)
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