Few dilemmas in the history of human thought have aroused debates so exciting as that on consciousness. In the past, few scholars recognised scientific dignity to the issue, perhaps because of its subjective nature. Conditioned by limitations of the introspective method and by the unnatural opposition between conscious and unconscious, the study of consciousness has been the exclusive prerogative of philosophy, literature and theology, strengthening the prejudice that separates humanistic and scientific culture. Mauro Maldonato sets out to establish (...) a fruitful dialogue between different disciplines, investigating consciousness from points of view that shape awareness of ourselves and of the world. For every one of us, consciousness is a primary, immediate, permanent fact - the core of life itself. Why, then, are we so far from forming any definitive picture of what it is, and what it means for us? The study of the biological bases for consciousness has shown how physics is incapable of providing credible solutions; the lack of means to describe the interactions between neuronal structures and qualitative experiences leads to an investigative dead end. But this explanatory shortfall does not authorise us to postulate the existence of an inaccessible sancta sanctorum. A scientific project to naturalise consciousness - attempting to ground our relational life and human action in biology - has to recognise issues of complexity, and the irreversibility and historical contingency of our individual phenomenalistic experience. The ground-breaking Archipelago of Consciousness: How Biology invents Culture follows the author's well received writings on Natural Logic, Decision Making and the Predictive Brain. (shrink)

In this article the theoretic evolution and the empirical-experimental efforts that have led to the affirmation of the bounded/procedural rationality paradigm are discussed. Moreover, the debate on supporters of the "optimization" approach and supporters of the "bounded/procedural rationality" approach is traced, highlighting the irreconcilability of these two approaches and, in retort, a solid defense against a merely "reductionist" attempt of the innovative context of the Simonian theory. Critically going over the debate on decision dynamics, it becomes clear how, due to (...) the uncertain nature of rational processes, it is impossible to establish the decision-making best way. The imperfect character of individual choice is explained by how the decider identifies a solution that appears satisfying in that moment due to cognitive and temporal limits. (shrink)

Emerging at the margins of science fiction, the concept of posthuman has become the most potent and pervasive movement of contemporary culture. From science to ethics, from philosophy to art, from politics to communication, posthuman studies transcend analytical-conceptual categories of traditional disciplines. This new anthropology, open to a hetero-referential alterity (bio-techno-IT), requires, on the pathic level, new forms of adaptation and integration. The emancipation of the idea of a presumed human 'essence' brings possibilities as well as risks. This book sets (...) out to show how, beyond epistemological asymmetries and different forms of language, reflection on the posthuman in terms of the complex questions of our time imposes a biotechnopoiesis on multiple levels: from redefining our relationship with the planetary environment to questioning the dimensions of our historical condition. The study thereof revolves around sensorial, perceptual and emotional activity in terms of cognition and neurophysiology. Consciousness is to be regarded not as a workspace demarcated by the brain, but as a unitas multiplex that emerges from co-operation between brain and body. The posthuman defines a new model of existence and leaves an emerging anthropological identity open to dialogue with eteroreferential (otherness) in "bio-techno-informatics." This requires the development of a commensurate adequacy of emotions and affections (the pathic). Man and woman are thus called to 'care' for the posthuman: their passion for the new status of "nomadic subjectivity" will bring with it the ability to engage biotechnopoiesis in multiple ways to the greater good of mankind. [Subject: Psychology, Philosophy]. (shrink)

Nei suoi diversi stadi evolutivi la vita biologica sul nostro pianeta ha mostrato due principali “adattamenti” al tempo: in primo luogo, imprimendo nel codice genetico elementi che facilitassero la variabilità periodica ai cambiamenti ambientali (luce, temperatura, precipitazioni), fenomeni tipici del nostro pianeta e del suo satellite rispetto al sole; in secondo luogo, dotando il sistema nervoso animale di strutture che garantissero, oltre l’equilibrio, le attività sensoriali e motorie rego...

Ao propor um diálogo entre a tradição do pensamento europeu e as reflexões de artistas e intelectuais brasileiros, este livro permite ao leitor ampliar sua perspectiva a respeito dos efeitos da fragmentação do sujeito no mundo e da necessidade de construção de novos valores para a convivência com as diferenças. Para isso, Mauro Maldonato e Danilo Santos de Miranda abordam assuntos candentes da contemporaneidade como política, cultura, educação, ética, liberdade e alteridade. "Na base do farol não há luz" (...) contribui para uma indagação sobre o presente, a partir de aspectos como os novos papeis da história, do cidadão e do estado democrático; as relações entre a racionalidade, a moral e as emoções; a banalização da educação diante dos excessos da sociedade da informação; a função da intuição na construção do conhecimento e do pensamento científico; a consciência humana, o inconsciente e os processos de criação; o futuro e os riscos para a liberdade. Trata-se de um convite a manter viva a chama do inconformismo, motor a mover o homem, em busca de um porvir que não venha a assombrá-lo. (shrink)

Creativity is one of the central dimensions of human achievement and social development and has always fascinated scientists and non-scientists alike. But what is the essential nature of creativity? And what is the role of consciousness in the emergence of creativity? If it is true that it has been explored in many aspects in the cognitive and neurobiological field, it is also true that the lore chest—from which the conscious mind through unconscious mechanisms extracts the rough material that is then (...) brought to the surface—has been less investigated. The purpose of this article is to give an account of how the multiplicity of levels of awareness is made possible by a spontaneous order that has nothing to do with a monolithic view of creativity. (shrink)

During the lengthy and complex process of human evolution our ancestors had to adapt to extremely testing situations in which survival depended on making rapid choices that subjected muscles and the body as a whole to extreme tension. In order to seize a prey traveling at speeds that could reach 36 km per hour Homo sapiens had just thousandths of a second in which to anticipate the right moment and position himself before the prey arrived. He also had to prepare (...) the appropriate gesture, tensing his muscles and overcoming the resistance determined by body weight. While we are no longer faced with an environment that is anything so threatening, our brain continues to use these mechanisms day in day out to save time and energy, enabling us to avoid situations of danger, sense in advance the intentions of an interlocutor, and more besides. In this article we set out to show that our brain is not only a reactive mechanism, capable of reacting quickly to the stimuli that arrive from the external environment, but is above all a pro-active mechanism that allows us to make hypotheses, anticipate the consequences of actions, and formulate expectations: in short, to wrong foot an adversary. (shrink)

Musical improvisation is the expressive capacity of a performer fostered by access to their own “productive” or “reproductive” tonal imagery: a field of consciousness that includes experiences, images that are internal, combined, distorted, associated, or in competition between themselves. In the highly original form of life that is jazz, narrating means directing time: a time of epiphanies and introversions, of intuitions and revelations, of syncopated rhythms and aesthetic insights, which appear and disappear on the edges of interference between consciousness and (...) the unconscious. The performing urgency of gestures, voices, and sounds, although arranged in the same scene, highlights the difference in individual time. In this intense activity of opposition and resolution the experience becomes an unstable territory that rests on the capacity of the body to remember, decide, anticipate, and invent. The ego reveals itself to be an emerging representation of our nerve structures and, even if conscious organization continues to be attributed to it, its role is not at all crucial. Unity, if anything, means coordination. The conscious ego is the expression of the body. In its ultimate form its unity is a biological problem. (shrink)

Musical improvisation is a sophisticated activity in which a performer realizes, real-time, melodic, and rhythmic sequences in harmony with those from other musicians. The study of musical improvisation helps one to understand not only the cognition of creativity, but also the complex neuronal basis of executive functions, the relation between conscious and unconscious action, and even more. So far, the prevailing models, founded on the brain imaging method, have focused on the connection between the cortical areas and their cognitive processes. (...) Little attention, on the other hand, has been given to the huge variety of subcortical activities, especially in the basal ganglia. This fundamental subcortical component, through its implicit procedures and the role it plays in memory, is responsible to produce new information all the time, allowing the prefrontal cortex to transform a huge and disordered amount of data in explicit creative acts. The basal ganglia are strongly related to the activation of chemical signals generated by dissonance or lack of symmetry between perception and expectation, participating even in the responses to environmental demands according to the circumstances. Thus, they interact with the frontal cortex and with the limbic system, playing a key role in planning and selecting appropriate actions and in decision making. In this text, we try to explain in which sense improvisation is connected to the processes of executive functions, to creativity and to the integrated activity of cortical–subcortical areas controlling the free flow of ideas and to expressive spontaneity. Eventually, we purpose a model according to which structure and process take part at the centrencephalic space of functional integration, which, through both competing and cooperating dynamics, gives way to spontaneous composition. (shrink)

This article argues the necessity of overcoming the hierarchical and pyramidal conception of the central nervous system that has subordinated the motor function to the higher brain activities for at least the last 150 years. The evolution of some motor modes of behavior?such as the ability to construct and manipulate instruments?has given rise to an ?embodied logic? underpinning not only the development of models of action and prediction but also the production of gestures and sequences of syllables that are at (...) the basis of human communication. Whether it is a matter of shaking someone's hand, writing a letter, or whatever, each executive function?controlled by a series of nervous structures and mental procedures that process the information?requires behaviors that are oriented to a specific end. (shrink)

Up until only a few decades ago, not many scholars recognized scientific dignity in the problem of consciousness. In the last few years this scenario has changed. The rapid development of non-invasive research techniques that explore cerebral functions has not only increased our knowledge on the correlations between mental processes and cerebral structures, but it has fed our hopes for the possibility of facing the ancient and elusive question about the mind-brain relationship with a new way of thinking. The meeting (...) between neurosciences and phenomenology represents one of the most promising frontiers of current research. Neurophenomenology , a paradigm of research inaugurated by the Chilean neuroscientist Francisco Varela, tries to indicate a remedy to the various explicatory philosophical and scientific gaps, establishing a methodological and epistemological bridge between the so-called phenomenological reports in “first person” and the scientific evidence in “third person,” incorporating the experience on neurodynamic levels in an explicit and rigorous way and, above all, avoiding every alternative in the direction of any form of ontological reduction. (shrink)

From the seventies onward a large quantity of theoretical and empirical studies have investigated the heuristic principles and cognitive strategies that individuals use to deal with risky and uncertain situations. This research has shown how the explicative and predictive shortcomings of normative risk analysis depend in many respects on undervaluing the continuous interaction between the individual and the environment. There are factors that, day by day, represent significant obstacles to decision making.

Nei suoi diversi stadi evolutivi la vita biologica sul nostro pianeta ha mostrato due principali “adattamenti” al tempo: in primo luogo, imprimendo nel codice genetico elementi che facilitassero la variabilità periodica ai cambiamenti ambientali (luce, temperatura, precipitazioni), fenomeni tipici del nostro pianeta e del suo satellite rispetto al sole; in secondo luogo, dotando il sistema nervoso animale di strutture che garantissero, oltre l’equilibrio, le attività sensoriali e motorie rego...

Human aggression and war are mediated by culture and social evolution. Human beings have a wide range of possible behaviors and possible cultural responses to aggression and the possibility of fear. This article analyzes the psychobiological dimensions of aggression and war, and proposes a way of approaching the complex interrelationship between biology, psychology, and culture.

The decline of classical epistemology on unity-identity-totality shows it becomes more urgent to leave formal conventionalism behind, and to use a new diverging language. Every scientist must feel the emotion of the beginner. Nevertheless, we must not have illusions. Pure observation does not exist. Moreover, there are no laws that can remove the asymmetries of a system. The knowledge and scientific practice free themselves from the obsession of clarity, of linearity and from the idea of evolution that follows and precedes (...) through pre-determined ways and versions. What we need is a multiple, connected intellection that allows us to look at science and at the world without the distorting effect of ingenuous methodologies and classifications that, if on the one hand put us at our ease, on the other hand keep us from the knowledge of things. (shrink)

Starting from the most important conquests of contemporary post-positivistic epistemology and from its authors such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Edgar Morin and going through Gadamer's hermeneutics or Wittgenstein and de Mandeville's approaches to scientific and social paradigms, this article focuses on the limits of scientific dogmas and on the overbearing rationalism that claims to explain everything, marginalizing many aspects of human life which cannot be rationalized. The scientific approach cannot be just conceptual. It must be opened (...) to images and unusual connections. The scientist must concentrate his or her attention on limit-matters that are often unpredictable and go beyond the logical-philosophical field toward the metaphysical one. "I did not know I did not know" realized von Foerster, and aware of that, the scientist should become the specialist of the unknown, moving along the border-figures of science and philosophy. (shrink)

Since the dawn of time, humankind's singular ability to make decisions has allowed human beings to face innumerable environmental challenges and complex evolutionary dynamics. Environmental pressures are not so urgent anymore, comparing to our ancestors. Nonetheless, the number of decisions that contemporary humans are called to make is very high. During the last three centuries, the change from normative to descriptive theories, from formal to natural logic, from substantive to limited rationality has allowed us to explain how many of the (...) decisional strategies are coherent with the functioning of the cognitive economy of our species, even if they are limited and fallible. (shrink)

The existence of an unaware psychic space that influences the way we think, perceive, and decide has been known for over a century. This space, defined by Freud as the “unconscious,” contains in it...

Recently the complexity of discursive practices has been widely acknowledged by the humanities and social sciences. In fact, to know anything is to know in terms of one or more discourse. The "discursive turn" in psychology may be considered as a new paradigm oriented to a correct study of (wo)man only if it is able to grasp the semiotical ground of psychic experience both as an "effort after meaning" and as a "struggle over meaning." In this sense the notion of (...) "diatext" has been proposed as a contribution in working out a psychosemiotical approach to understand how the discursive practices assign subject-positions to the agents of each interlocution scenario. (shrink)

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment. But is it really the case that most people (...) spontaneously treat aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity? In this paper, we report the results of a cross‐cultural study with over 2,000 respondents spanning 19 countries. Despite significant geographical variations, these results suggest that most people do not treat their own aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories of aesthetic judgment and the purpose of aesthetics in general. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

When efficiently used for action, tool becomes part of body, with effect on the spatial temporal movement parameters and body size perception. Until now, no previous investigation was reported about tool embodiment in Parkinson’s disease (PD), that is a neurological disease characterized by several sensory and motor symptoms affecting body and action. We enrolled fourteen individuals affected by PD and eighteen healthy individuals as controls. We studied the spatial-temporal parameters on self-paced free pointing movements task, via an optoelectronic system, before (...) and after a short training in which a 27 cm long rod was used to point toward a far target. Moreover, we investigated changes in estimation of arm length through the Tactile Estimation Task. After the tool use training, controls showed changes in spatial-temporal parameters: they were slower to perform movements and reported higher value of deceleration, respect to the baseline. However, such a difference did not emerged in the PD individuals. In the Tactile Discrimination Task, no difference emerged before and after the tool use training in both groups. Our results were suggestive of possible difficulties of tool embodiment process in PD. We discussed our results in relation to aberrant multisensory integration as well as in terms of the effect of PD sensory and motor symptoms on body schema plasticity. The present study points at a novel way to conceive PD sensory motor signs and symptoms, in terms of their effect on individuals’ body representation. (shrink)

The 'Enciclopedia Filosofica' is an encyclopaedia of philosophical topics promoted by the Centre for Philosophical Studies of Gallarate and published, in its third and last edition in 2006, by the Bompiani publishing house in Milan. The first edition of the 'Enciclopedia Filosofica' was promoted by the Centre for Philosophical Studies of Gallarate in the 1950s, seeing the light in 1957-58. A second edition, published by the Sansoni publishing house in Florence, was published in 1968-69 and reprinted in 1979. The third (...) and last edition, published by Bompiani in 2006, is intended to cover the whole of philosophical knowledge and related disciplines with over ten thousand entries edited by about a thousand academics, both Italian and non-Italian, and distributed in twelve volumes for a total of 12,496 pages. (shrink)

Mechanisms are a way of explaining how biological phenomena work rather than why single elements of biological systems are there. However, mechanisms are usually described as physiological entities, and little or no attention is paid to malfunction as an independent theoretical concept. On the other hand, malfunction is the main focus of interest of applied sciences such as medicine. In this paper I argue that malfunctions are parts of pathological mechanisms, which should be considered separate theoretical entities, conceptually having a (...) priority over physiological sequences. While pathological mechanisms can be described in terms of a Cummins-like mechanistic explanation, they show some unnoticed peculiarities when compared to physiological ones. Some features of pathological mechanisms are considered, such as outcome variability, ambivalence and dependence on a range. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the reading of Heidegger's Kant that Derrida offers in his recently published 1978-9 seminar Donner le temps II (§§12–3). Here Derrida tracks across Heidegger's text the auto-affective or auto-dative structure (namely, the originary synthesis of spontaneity and receptivity) in which the Kantian conceptions of the experience of time and of transcendental imagination converge, and which is seen as scandalously underpinning the conception of respect. In particular, I draw attention to the moment in which Derrida (...) originally accounts for the structure of the Kantian respect as the movement of abandonment or delivery over to the event which he also ascribes to other figures of freedom (or unconditionality without sovereignty) explored in his later writings. My hypothesis is that, in doing so, Derrida may be building a bridge between two thoughts of imagination: on the one hand, imagination as a figure of his early differance, and, on the other hand, imagination as the non-sovereign freedom that undergirds his late work on sovereignty. (shrink)