Minor Culture and Cognition

FIRST BLOCK

The Evolution of Human Culture (10 EC, semester 1a) LBA017B10

How did human culture arise out of primate culture, and how is it evolving? This is an introductory course based on the solid and comprehensive work of cognitive archaeologist and neuroscientist Merlin Donald, and others. Students get acquainted with the three stages of the evolution of human cognition proposed by Donald: from the mimetic culture, through the introduction of linguistic abilities, to the foundation of the theoretical culture in which humans live today.

Biology of Cognition (5 EC, semester 1a) LBA029B05

What characterizes the biology of human cognition? This is a compulsory introductory course about the neurobiological basis of human cognition and the evolution of the nervous system. Themes include: the evolution of the human brain; chemistry and physiology of the nervous system; neural signal processing; memory, perception, consciousness, and imagination; cross-species comparisons and ecological discussions.

SECOND BLOCK

Art and Cognition (5 EC, semester 1b) LBA026B05

How functional are art behaviors to human beings? This course offers a deep dive into the cognitive perspective on art. It focuses on the functions of the cognitive processes underlying art behaviors drawing from both everyday cases (musicking, dancing, pantomiming, drawing, pretend playing, and verbal storytelling); and clinical cases (making use of different art therapies such as music therapy; dance therapy; visual/tactile therapy; drama therapy; and writing therapy).

Narratives We Live By (5 EC, semester 1b) LBA020B05

How do humans tell stories and how do they live by them? This course explores law as a set of narratives societies tell about justice, responsibility, authority, order, and humanity. Across different historical periods, legal systems construct narratives that shape how humans understand: what is right and wrong; who counts as a subject of rights; how power should be exercised; and how conflict, crisis, and guilt are explained. By reading legal sources alongside literary texts, students learn to analyze how law functions not only normatively, but also morally, and culturally.

Knowledge, Signs, and Meaning (5 EC, semester 1b) LBA037B05

How do humans interpret the world? Drawing from scholarship in philosophy this module is a deep dive into the relationships between the things that we know, that we do not know, and how we make meaning. The dominant western worldview dictates that we understand the world through rational analysis, but are there alternatives? In this course unit we dive into the history of our western rational thinking and relate this back to our day-to-day life. This course also provides other perspectives from phenomenology and alternative non-western knowledge systems on how to deal with contemporary human life.