Life of the mind

The Cognitive Science major and minor train students to think differently about what makes us human.

Faculty had tried multiple times over the years to start an interdisciplinary cognitive science major, says Chris Kennedy, William H. Colvin Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics. But the humanities / social sciences divide proved tricky to overcome—faculty members were unable to get on the same page. About 10 years ago, as Kennedy was attempting to get the ball rolling again, a group of students came together to advocate for the program. Majoring in linguistics, computer science, and other disciplines, they told Kennedy they wanted a cognitive science major so they could take more classes outside their fields to gain a deeper understanding of the mind. Once the student demand was clear, the major finally got off the ground.

Kennedy worked with colleagues across departments to identify model programs from other schools and to design the core classes for the major. His collaborators included Jason Bridges, associate professor in Philosophy; Howard C. Nusbaum, LAB’72, Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology; Peggy Mason, professor in Neurobiology and in the Neuroscience Institute; and Leslie M. Kay, professor in Psychology. Today, four years since the major was first offered, it has grown to 115 students, and the introductory class Mind, Brain and Meaning regularly fills up at 80 students. In fall 2025, Cognitive Science was first offered as a minor. 

Cognitive Science students “want to ask this really hard question: What is the nature of the mind?” says Kennedy, faculty director of the major. “You can get parts of that question from any of the subdisciplines”—linguistics, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and computer science—“but if you’re somebody who wants to think about that question from a more holistic view, then you’re going to be a Cognitive Science major.” 

Cognitive Science is uniquely positioned to bring together humanistic and scientific approaches, says Melinh Lai, assistant instructional professor in Linguistics and program coordinator for the Cognitive Science major. “We can ask scientific questions that are derived from very humanistic lines of inquiry,” says Lai. The challenge from a scientific perspective, she says, comes down to quantifying things we can’t see: “How does that mental process, that invisible process, manifest into something that we can actually observe?”

Through Mind, Brain and Meaning and another required introductory class, Cognitive Models, students gain exposure to the approaches and methods used across cognitive science. They learn how to bring together evidence such as psychological studies of behavior, neuroscientific measurements of brain activity, and computational models to draw conclusions about the mind. Then they choose two subfields to specialize in.  

With so many potential directions to take in the major, Lai notes that a priority over the past few years has been to build a sense of community and shared identity among students. The introductory classes help forge these connections, and the recognized student organization Mindscapes allows enthusiastic students to pursue their interest in the mind outside the classroom. For Lai, the next step is expanding this interdisciplinary community to include more faculty from across the University—for example, through class visits and speaker series—so students can gain exposure to even more research areas. 

For students, the divergent paths within the major are part of the fun, says Ada Meltzer, AB’26, who majored in Cognitive Science. Especially in the introductory classes, the types of assigned readings vary widely, reflecting the different subdisciplines, and students bring their own interests and perspectives to bear on class discussions. Though she and her friends in the major shared few classes once they began to specialize, “that leads to more interesting conversations” outside the classroom, she says. Meltzer chose to major in Cognitive Science because of the broad education it offered. She gravitated toward the subdisciplines of philosophy and computer science. “I wanted both to be able to articulate well what I was learning … and to be able to do the practical things, like modeling.” To prepare for a career in biotech consulting, she wrote an honors thesis about rationality, taking data science classes along the way. 

One way the major readied her for post-UChicago life, she notes, is by teaching her to think critically about artificial intelligence. With a clear understanding of how large language models (LLMs) work and the ability to logically assess an argument made by these tools, Meltzer is now asking deeper questions—about the value of those arguments and whether she can be proud of the work she creates with them. The major gave her the chance to grapple with the limits of this technology and to gain a greater appreciation of the unique aspects of human life, like our ability to experience art and to use language. 

It was a happy accident that the Cognitive Science major launched right as generative AI entered mainstream life, says Kennedy. Artificial intelligence and cognitive science have been closely linked for decades, but with the release of tools like ChatGPT, AI has taken on new relevance in students’ lives. He says language models also raise a question for cognitive scientists: Is an LLM really using language the way we do? 

“The way we set up the program here is to recognize the role that minds play in making us human,” Kennedy says. As students explore aspects of our consciousness, like our decision-making ability and experience of emotions, they start to get at “something that unites us as humans, independently of the language we speak or what we value.”