Source: http://sites.unimi.it/neurophilosophy/events.php?scroll=1
Timestamp: 2018-02-25 10:06:38+00:00

Document:
21 March 2013 March
21 March 2013 12:30
Time Travel and Circular Explanations
Room: Sala Direzione
What counts as an explanation seems to depend on many contextual factors. The exchange “Why do you think Peter is a good guy?” — “Well, because I like him” may be an acceptable explanation in an ordinary context, but if it is followed by the exchange “And why do you like him?” - “Well, because I think he’s a good guy”, we are likely to be satisfied neither with the first reply ...
What counts as an explanation seems to depend on many contextual factors. The exchange “Why do you think Peter is a good guy?” — “Well, because I like him” may be an acceptable explanation in an ordinary context, but if it is followed by the exchange “And why do you like him?” - “Well, because I think he’s a good guy”, we are likely to be satisfied neither with the first reply nor with the second. I argue that this phenomenon is due to the sensitivity of explanations to hypotheses on the structure of the relations underpinning our explanatory talk, in particular their directionality. The ‘case study’ I will focus on is an argument given in the philosophical literature on time travel to the effect that the received view on their consistency is explanatorily fishy. My conclusion will be that once we got clear on the issue, the received view need to be neither abandoned nor revised.
09 May 2013 May
09 May 2013 14:30
Duration distortions familiar from trauma present an apparent counter-example to what we might call the naïve view of duration perception. Such distortions constitute a counter-example to naïveté only on the assumption that we perceive duration absolutely. This assumption can seem inevitable if we think of the alternative relative view as limiting our awareness to the relative durations of perc...
Duration distortions familiar from trauma present an apparent counter-example to what we might call the naïve view of duration perception. Such distortions constitute a counter-example to naïveté only on the assumption that we perceive duration absolutely. This assumption can seem inevitable if we think of the alternative relative view as limiting our awareness to the relative durations of perceptually presented events. However, once we recognize the constant presence of a stream of non-perceptual mental activity in our conscious lives, we can provide a highly attractive purely relative account of temporal distortions quite consistent with the naïve view. I briefly consider (and reject) a further empirical challenge to the naïve view arising from the so-called ‘oddball’ illusion. I conclude by tentatively pointing to further empirical findings, in particular a body of data traditionally accounted for in terms of an internal clock model of timing, which may be more illuminatingly understood by appeal to the idea that we perceive duration in part relative to our concurrent mental activity.
10 May 2013 May
La plasticità del cervello tra mito e realtà
Il concetto di plasticità cerebrale è quasi entrato a far parte del linguaggio comune, comparendo ormai frequentemente tanto nelle comunicazioni scientifiche quanto nei mezzi di comunicazione di massa. Viene usato genericamente per indicare il fatto che il cervello cambia durante l'arco della vita e che può essere plasmato dall'apprendimento; e viene usato per promuovere tecniche di apprendime...
Il concetto di plasticità cerebrale è quasi entrato a far parte del linguaggio comune, comparendo ormai frequentemente tanto nelle comunicazioni scientifiche quanto nei mezzi di comunicazione di massa. Viene usato genericamente per indicare il fatto che il cervello cambia durante l'arco della vita e che può essere plasmato dall'apprendimento; e viene usato per promuovere tecniche di apprendimento o prodotti per contrastare l'invecchiamento cognitivo (es., il brain-training). In questa relazione cercherò di delineare il concetto di plasticità cerebrale, secondo le indicazioni che derivano dalle neuroscienze cogntive, con particolare riferimento a quanto accade nei contesti di deprivazione sensoriale (cecità e sordità). Lo scopo è quello di contribuire a definire le potenzialità ed i vincoli dell'idea di plasticità cerebrale, delineando per quanto possibile i confini del mito mediatico e mettendo a fuoco alcune evidenze sistematiche che sono emerse dalla ricerca.
14 May 2013 May
14 May 2013 14:30
Where and When Does Consciousness Arise in the Brai
Room: Room 104 FdP
There has been an ongoing search to find the psychological and neural correlates of consciousness. To do this when must ask both where consciousness arises in the flow of information and when it arises. Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, this presentation argues that consciousness arises at a particular stage of information processing ("the intermediate level") and it arises when and o...
There has been an ongoing search to find the psychological and neural correlates of consciousness. To do this when must ask both where consciousness arises in the flow of information and when it arises. Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, this presentation argues that consciousness arises at a particular stage of information processing ("the intermediate level") and it arises when and only when we attend. This account can be used to identify the brain structures and processes that underlie conscious experience. The account is presented, and some objections are considered.
21 May 2013 May
Una rappresentazione sopramodale e topografica delle azioni nel cervello umano
Room: Sala Paci
Il recente sviluppo di sofisticate metodologie di esplorazione funzionale del cervello, quali la risonanza magnetica funzionale (fMRI), ha permesso di esaminare i correlati neurali delle attività cerebrali in maniera non invasiva direttamente nelluomo, in condizioni fisiologiche o in presenza di patologie mentali. Mediante paradigmi sperimentali sempre più raffinati si è cominciato a studiare i...
Il recente sviluppo di sofisticate metodologie di esplorazione funzionale del cervello, quali la risonanza magnetica funzionale (fMRI), ha permesso di esaminare i correlati neurali delle attività cerebrali in maniera non invasiva direttamente nelluomo, in condizioni fisiologiche o in presenza di patologie mentali. Mediante paradigmi sperimentali sempre più raffinati si è cominciato a studiare i meccanismi neurobiologici che sottendono non solo le funzioni sensoriali e motorie ma anche i processi cognitivi, le emozioni, il comportamento, fino ad arrivare allo studio di quelle funzioni che sono ritenute essere alla base della vita di relazione e delle interazioni sociali, quali lempatia e la comprensione delle intenzioni altrui. Facendo seguito ai risultati ottenuti nei primati non umani nei quali sono stati individuati neuroni che si attivano non solo quando lanimale compie unazione ma anche quando la vede fare da un altro (i cosiddetti neuroni specchio), studi recenti hanno dimostrato lesistenza di un analogo sistema specchio anche nelluomo. Il sistema specchio è ritenuto svolgere un ruolo di primo piano nei meccanismi di apprendimento dagli altri e di interazione sociale. Ricerche del nostro gruppo hanno rivelato che il sistema specchio è presente anche in individui privi della vista fin dalla nascita, indicando che lesperienza visiva non è un prerequisito fondamentale perché il sistema specchio si sviluppi e funzioni e mostrando al contempo che il sistema è capace di processare anche stimoli non visivi. Questo suggerisce che il sistema specchio elabora e sottende il concetto astratto di unazione e di un comportamento piuttosto che la mera rappresentazione dello schema motorio dello stesso. Infine, la recente introduzione di algoritmi di machine learning applicati alle misure di attività cerebrale ci ha permesso, non solo di confermare la natura sopramodale della rappresentazione delle azioni, ma soprattutto di dimostrare che questa rappresentazione è distribuita spazialmente nell'ambito del sistema specchio e in modo specifico a seconda della finalità dell'atto motorio
22 May 2013 May
22 May 2013 12:30
Development of the Mirror System under the Lens of Intersubjectivity and Evolutionary Theory
24 May 2013 May
24 May 2013 12:30
Metafore, paradigmi e programmi di ricerca: come interpretare l’evoluzione dell’Intelligenza Artificiale?
Spesso l’evoluzione dell’Intelligenza Artificiale, e della Scienza Cognitiva che si dice da essa ispirata, è stata interpretata come un succedersi di metafore contrapposte (per esempio, quella del calcolatore, quella della rete, quella dei sistemi dinamici). Questa interpretazione ha suggerito una ricostruzione della sua storia in termini di “paradigmi” incommensurabili alla Kuhn (da quel...
Spesso l’evoluzione dell’Intelligenza Artificiale, e della Scienza Cognitiva che si dice da essa ispirata, è stata interpretata come un succedersi di metafore contrapposte (per esempio, quella del calcolatore, quella della rete, quella dei sistemi dinamici). Questa interpretazione ha suggerito una ricostruzione della sua storia in termini di “paradigmi” incommensurabili alla Kuhn (da quello simbolico a quello subsimbolico a quello embodied). In questo intervento mi propongo di mostrare i limiti di questa e di altre ricostruzioni dell’evoluzione dell’Intelligenza Artificiale
21 June 2013 June
21 June 2013 14:30
Reconsidering representations
03 July 2013 July
03 July 2013 14:30
Neural Plasticity, Neuronal Recycling and Niche Construction
Stanislas Dehaene presents a compelling account of how the brain learns to read. Central to this account is his neuronal recycling hypothesis: Neural circuitry is capable of being ‘recycled’ or converted to a different function that is cultural in nature. The original function of the circuitry is not entirely lost and constrains what the brain can learn. Dehaene contrasts neuronal recycling wi...
Stanislas Dehaene presents a compelling account of how the brain learns to read. Central to this account is his neuronal recycling hypothesis: Neural circuitry is capable of being ‘recycled’ or converted to a different function that is cultural in nature. The original function of the circuitry is not entirely lost and constrains what the brain can learn. Dehaene contrasts neuronal recycling with a naïve model of the brain as a general learning device that is unconstrained in what it can learn. He is clearly concerned that the naïve model results in cultural relativism. Consequently a tension develops in Dehaene’s account of the role of plasticity in the acquisition of language. I argue that the functional and structural changes in the brain that Dehaene documents in great detail are driven by learning and that this learning driven plasticity does not commit us to a naïve model of the brain. Dehaene argues that functional plasticity is constrained by existing cortical functions, however another way to think of culturally acquired functions, driven by learning, is that they extend latent potential in cortical circuitry in a direction that was not determined by evolution. Finally, I suggest, the neural niche co-evolves with the environmental niche in a way that does not undermine the core ideas of NR, but which is quite different from the models of cognitive and cultural evolution provided by evolutionary psychology and epidemiology.
04 July 2013 July
04 July 2013 12:30
Marco Nathan
An Epistemic Model of Scientific Integration
Philosophers have traditionally addressed the issue of theory unification in terms of theoretical reduction. Reductive models, however, cannot explain the occurrence of unification in areas of science where successful reductions are hard to find. The goal of this talk is to present a concrete example of unication in biology - the Developmental Synthesis - as a general model of scientic unication, ...
Philosophers have traditionally addressed the issue of theory unification in terms of theoretical reduction. Reductive models, however, cannot explain the occurrence of unification in areas of science where successful reductions are hard to find. The goal of this talk is to present a concrete example of unication in biology - the Developmental Synthesis - as a general model of scientic unication, according to which two fields are in the process of being integrated when they become explanatorily relevant for each other. I conclude by suggesting that this methodological conception of unity, which is independent of the debate on the metaphysical foundations of science, is closely connected to the notion of interdisciplinarity.
05 July 2013 July
05 July 2013 12:30
Coordinating Minds: When Contingency Matters more than Synchrony
In our daily-life we are often engaged in mutual coordination and we are able to match our own movements and minds with others’ movements and minds at different levels of complexity. Coordination encompasses very different kinds of situations, ranging from low-level sensorymotor entrainment (see, for instance, Butterfill,Sebanz, 2011) to high-level deliberation, based on mutual expectations abou...
In our daily-life we are often engaged in mutual coordination and we are able to match our own movements and minds with others’ movements and minds at different levels of complexity. Coordination encompasses very different kinds of situations, ranging from low-level sensorymotor entrainment (see, for instance, Butterfill,Sebanz, 2011) to high-level deliberation, based on mutual expectations about mental states with a specific role in practical reasoning - such as beliefs, desires, and intentions (Lewis 1969;Tomasello et al., 2005; Brennan et al., 2007). Despite much evidence we can dispose on social coordination, coordination problems and coordinated actions, we lack a good notion of coordination. Polysemy, vagueness and common sense use of these terms obstruct the development of the experimental research and lead to the undesirable effect of using coordination as a sort of umbrella term, devoid of any operational meaning. I have drawn a working notion “near and far” from David Lewis’ use of coordination for Game Theory. In this setting the options among which the agents can choose define a strategy. This likely involves some representations of the contingency of the situation and of the alternatives, characterized by propositional or by motor contents (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2010, 2008; Knoblich &Wilson, 2005). What makes an action coordinated in a narrow sense is not the content of the representations, but their function, whether at lower or higher level. Hence, synchronous behaviours, motor resonance, mimicry...(forms of emergent coordination, see Knoblich et al., 2011) could be encoded as coordinated actions only when they involve some representations of contingency.
10 October 2013 October
10 October 2013 14:30
Pragmatic Representations versus Motor Representations (versus Intentions)
Room: Room 111 FdP
The standard way of thinking about actions appeals to intentions. Recently, alternative accounts have been offered that replace (or supplement) this intention-based picture with one that posits a much simpler kind of representation. I examine two such accounts, one that stresses the importance of pragmatic representations: the (often perceptual) representation of objects as having action-properti...
The standard way of thinking about actions appeals to intentions. Recently, alternative accounts have been offered that replace (or supplement) this intention-based picture with one that posits a much simpler kind of representation. I examine two such accounts, one that stresses the importance of pragmatic representations: the (often perceptual) representation of objects as having action-properties and one that posits motor representations: the motoric representation of action outcomes. I argue that the two accounts could be thought to complement each other offering a genuine alternative to the purely intention-based picture
22 October 2013 October
Sebo Uitho
ntentions Are Explanations, not Brain States
Intentions are commonly conceived of as discrete mental states that are the direct cause of actions. In the last several decades, neuroscientists have taken up the project of finding the neural implementation of intentions, and a number of areas have been posited as implementing these states. I argue, however, that adopting the folk notion of ‘intention’ or one of its philosophical descendants...
Intentions are commonly conceived of as discrete mental states that are the direct cause of actions. In the last several decades, neuroscientists have taken up the project of finding the neural implementation of intentions, and a number of areas have been posited as implementing these states. I argue, however, that adopting the folk notion of ‘intention’ or one of its philosophical descendants in neuroscientific explanations can easily lead to a misinterpretation of the data, and can negatively influence investigation into the neural correlates of intentional action. In fact, I will argue that it is likely that intentions in this guise will never be found in the brain. As a consequence, the general idea of an action hierarchy has to be rethought thoroughly. In the final part of the talk I will zoom out, and discuss the relation between folk concepts and neuroscience, and the role philosophy might play in relating them.
22 November 2013 November
Sociality and Self-hood: the Case of Shame
Room: Room 422 FdP
On many accounts, shame is an emotion that targets and involves the self in its totality. In shame, the self is affected by a global devaluation: it feels defective, objectionable, condemned. The basic question I wish to raise and discuss is the following: What does the fact that we feel shame tell us about the nature of self? Does shame testify to the presence of a self-concept, a (failed) self-i...
On many accounts, shame is an emotion that targets and involves the self in its totality. In shame, the self is affected by a global devaluation: it feels defective, objectionable, condemned. The basic question I wish to raise and discuss is the following: What does the fact that we feel shame tell us about the nature of self? Does shame testify to the presence of a self-concept, a (failed) self-ideal, and a capacity for critical self-assessment, or does it rather, as some have suggested, point to the fact that the self is in part socially constructed? Should shame primarily be classified as a self-conscious emotion or is it rather a distinct social emotion?
04 February 2014 February
04 February 2014 08:30
Cognition and Coordination
Corrado Sinigaglia: "Cognition for low-level coordination" & Francesco Guala: "Cognition for high-level coordination"
21 March 2014 March
21 March 2014 09:30
The Synthetic Uninformative
It is well-known that information, understood as a good, has three main properties that differentiate it from other ordinary goods, such as cars or loaves of bread: a) it is non-rivalrous: Alice holding or consuming the information that p does not prevent Bob from holding or consuming the same information at the same time; b) tends to be non-excludable. Some information – such as intellectual ...
It is well-known that information, understood as a good, has three main properties that differentiate it from other ordinary goods, such as cars or loaves of bread: a) it is non-rivalrous: Alice holding or consuming the information that p does not prevent Bob from holding or consuming the same information at the same time; b) tends to be non-excludable. Some information – such as intellectual properties, non-public and sensitive data, or military secrets – is often protected, but this requires a positive effort precisely because, normally, exclusion is not a natural property of information, which tends to be easily disclosed and shareable; c) once it is available, the cost of its reproduction tends to be negligible (zero marginal cost). Another equally well-known tripartite characterisation specifies that information can be 1) analytic vs. synthetic; 2) a priori vs. a posteriori; and 3) necessary vs. contingent. In this paper, I use the two kinds of characterisations (a-c) and (1-3) in order to understand what kind of information is the maker’s information, as when Alice is informed (holds the information) that Bob’s coffee is sweetened because she just put two spoons of sugar in it. In the course of the presentation, I shall argue that: i) we need to decouple a fourth distinction, namely informative vs. uninformative, from the previous three in (1-3), in particular from its implicit association with analytic vs. synthetic and/or a priori vs. a posteriori; ii) such decoupling facilitates, and is facilitated by, moving from a propositional to an agent-oriented approach: the distinctions qualify a proposition, a message, or a set of well-formed, meaningful and truthful data not just in themselves but with respect to an informational agent; iii) the decoupling and the agent-oriented approach facilitate a re-mapping of currently available positions in epistemology (Classic, Innatist, Kant’s and Kripke’s) on these four dichotomies; iv) within such a re-mapping, a fifth position, capturing the nature of a maker’s information in terms of these four dichotomies, is best described as the synthetic uninformative; v) the synthetic uninformative is paralleled by what I shall call the non-accruable nature of information in (a-c): if Alice holds that p she cannot be further informed (say, by Bob) that p. In the conclusion, I shall explain why the analysis of the maker’s information has important consequences in all those cases in which the poietic (constructive) intervention of the maker determines the maker’s information, from everyday perception to the design of scientific experiments.
15 April 2014 April
15 April 2014 08:30
Social Intelligence as an Embodied Skill
17 April 2014 April
17 April 2014 12:30
Concepts: on the Need of an Integrated Perspective in A
The study of concept representation concerns different research areas, such as Philosophy, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. In this talk, by arguing against the anti-cognitivist approach to AI, I will suggest that the insights coming from the philosophical and psychological debate about concepts can be beneficial for the realization of artificial systems showing some simple forms of ...
The study of concept representation concerns different research areas, such as Philosophy, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. In this talk, by arguing against the anti-cognitivist approach to AI, I will suggest that the insights coming from the philosophical and psychological debate about concepts can be beneficial for the realization of artificial systems showing some simple forms of "cognitive" abilities. A case study in the area of Question Answering will be provided.
20 May 2014 May
20 May 2014 12:30
Lorenzo Cammi
Il ruolo della mediazione
27 May 2014 May
27 May 2014 12:30
Explanatory Role Functionalism
I to put forward a new version of analytic functionalism, based on an apparently minor change regarding what the commonsense component of the view is supposed to ascribe. In particular, I will call this new version “explanatory role functionalism” instead of “causal role functionalism”, thus indicating that it is the explanatory role mental state types play between stimulus and behaviour ...
I to put forward a new version of analytic functionalism, based on an apparently minor change regarding what the commonsense component of the view is supposed to ascribe. In particular, I will call this new version “explanatory role functionalism” instead of “causal role functionalism”, thus indicating that it is the explanatory role mental state types play between stimulus and behaviour that serves as the meaning of mental terms. I will first formulate the details of the view, after which I will argue that it can be turned into an argument for physicalism in the guise of the type identity theory, à la Lewis 1966. I then show how explanatory role functionalism resists all the objection that have been put against causal role functionalism per se or against its physicalistic type identity component.
03 June 2014 June
03 June 2014 14:30
Do We See Emotions by Seeing their Expressions?
06 June 2014 June
06 June 2014 12:30
George Northoff
Philosophy and the Brain – Do we need a Non-Reductive Neurophilosophy?
10 June 2014 June
10 June 2014 12:30
Bayesian Cognitive Science, Inference to the Best Explanatory Framework, and the Value of Specialization
It is widely assumed that the Bayesian framework enjoys special epistemic virtues over alternative frameworks for representing and dealing with uncertainty. If this framework enjoys these epistemic virtues, then cognitive scientists have reason to privilege it for explaining phenomena whose production involves uncertainty. However, it is far from obvious that the Bayesian framework actually enjoys...
It is widely assumed that the Bayesian framework enjoys special epistemic virtues over alternative frameworks for representing and dealing with uncertainty. If this framework enjoys these epistemic virtues, then cognitive scientists have reason to privilege it for explaining phenomena whose production involves uncertainty. However, it is far from obvious that the Bayesian framework actually enjoys such special epistemic virtues. The adoption of this framework cannot be justified by simply appealing to its superiority in allowing us to effectively tackle problems of uncertain inference. Rather, what both justifies the widespread adoption of the Bayesian framework in cognitive science is related to the fact that, compared to alternatives, it currently comprises a richer body of tools that can be opportunistically exploited. Exploitation of existing models and tools can foster specialization, and specialization can yield relatively higher epistemic utility for both individual scientists and the cognitive science community as a whole. Thus, the case of current Bayesian cognitive science illustrates three general points about the rationality and dynamics of theory choice in science: first, the utility of adopting a scientific framework partly depends on the level of specialization it can foster, second, this level of specialization is a function of the adoption of the same framework by others; third and finally, exploiting an existing framework is often the rational thing to do for scientists.
28 October 2014 October
Motor Control: Handling Conditions Vary
When reflecting on the nature of skilled action, it is easy to fall into familiar dichotomies such that one construes the flexibility and intelligence of skill at the level of intentional states while characterizing the automatic motor processes that constitute motor skill execution as learned but fixed, invariant, bottom-up, brute-causal responses. In this essay, I will argue that this picture of...
When reflecting on the nature of skilled action, it is easy to fall into familiar dichotomies such that one construes the flexibility and intelligence of skill at the level of intentional states while characterizing the automatic motor processes that constitute motor skill execution as learned but fixed, invariant, bottom-up, brute-causal responses. In this essay, I will argue that this picture of skilled, automatic, motor processes is overly simplistic. Specifically, I will argue that an adequate account of the learned motor routines that constitute motor skills cannot be given in a purely bottom-up, brute-causal fashion.
15 December 2014 December
15 December 2014 12:30
Room: 205M
A major source of scientific skepticism about free will is the belief that conscious decisions and intentions never play a role in producing corresponding actions. I present three serious problems encountered by any attempt to justify this belief by appealing to existing neuroscientific data. Experiments using three different kinds of technology are discussed: EEG, fMRI, and depth electrodes
16 December 2014 December
16 December 2014 14:30
Chris Gauker
08 March 2015 March
08 March 2015 14:30
Seeing without an I
Room: 435 FdP
One can argue that the principle of immunity to error through misidentification (IEM) is contingent or de facto if one associates it with specific forms of access (introspection or proprioception) or aspects of experience (sense of ownership or sense of agency). All of these aspects can break down in pathologies or be manipulated through experimentation. I’ll review some of these instances. I...
One can argue that the principle of immunity to error through misidentification (IEM) is contingent or de facto if one associates it with specific forms of access (introspection or proprioception) or aspects of experience (sense of ownership or sense of agency). All of these aspects can break down in pathologies or be manipulated through experimentation. I’ll review some of these instances. In contrast, one can argue for ade jure principle of IEM if one understands it to be essentially tied to the first-person perspective. I’ll defend this position and I’ll consider the most serious challenge to it by looking at the case of DP ( Zahn et al. 2008) , a person whose visual perception happens in two steps: he sees and then he has to confirm that it is he who is seeing
20 March 2015 March
20 March 2015 14:30
Yes You Can! A Plea for Reverse Inference in Cognitive Neuroscience
Reverse inference is the most commonly used inferential strategy for bringing images of brain activation to bear on psychological hypotheses, but its inductive validity has recently been questioned. In this talk, I show that, when it is analyzed in likelihoodist terms, reverse inference does not suffer from the problems highlighted in the recent literature, and I defend the appropriateness of trea...
Reverse inference is the most commonly used inferential strategy for bringing images of brain activation to bear on psychological hypotheses, but its inductive validity has recently been questioned. In this talk, I show that, when it is analyzed in likelihoodist terms, reverse inference does not suffer from the problems highlighted in the recent literature, and I defend the appropriateness of treating reverse inference in these terms.
30 May 2015 May
30 May 2015 16:30
Phenomenal Compositionality and Context Effects
If there is a “phenomenology of cognition” – a sui generis conceptual, or propositional, kind of phenomenology that constitutes the content of conscious occurrent thought – then one would expect that it is compositional. That is, one would expect that thought content is compositional – that the content of a complex concept or thought is a function of the contents of its constituent conce...
If there is a “phenomenology of cognition” – a sui generis conceptual, or propositional, kind of phenomenology that constitutes the content of conscious occurrent thought – then one would expect that it is compositional. That is, one would expect that thought content is compositional – that the content of a complex concept or thought is a function of the contents of its constituent concepts and their structural relations. This is especially so if one supposes that conceptual content is identical to linguistic meaning, since linguistic meaning is compositional. But there’s reason to wonder whether the phenomenology of a complex concept or thought could be a function of the phenomenology of its constituent concepts. Phenomenology in general appears to be subject to contextual variation – for example, contrast effects, whereby appearances change depending upon experiential background or juxtaposition with other states. (A common example is the way that the apparent colors of things change depending upon the colors of things they appear with.) I argue that a suitably sophisticated notion of compositionality can handle any such cases, and that in any case it is doubtful that contrast effects occur for phenomenally constituted concepts.
14 December 2015 December
14 December 2015 10:30
Motor Responses to Action Observation: a Dual-Route Account
Room: M205
Motor Simulation is thought to be a mechanism allowing automatic mapping of the observed actions from visual to motor domain, i.e., the visual information activates correspondent motor representations of the action observed, as the observer was to perform the action himself. However In light of these considerations how is it possible that we can perform actions that are different from those observ...
Motor Simulation is thought to be a mechanism allowing automatic mapping of the observed actions from visual to motor domain, i.e., the visual information activates correspondent motor representations of the action observed, as the observer was to perform the action himself. However In light of these considerations how is it possible that we can perform actions that are different from those observed when reacting to an observed action? In this talk I will describe the results I obtained so far studying the interplay between the automatic activation of the motor representations correspondent to the actions observed and the motor representations voluntarily selected to fulfill task requirements.
25 January 2016 January
25 January 2016 10:30
Marta Bortoletto
TMS-EEG: A Novel Technique to Study Cortico-Cortical Connectivity
In the past, the major focus of research defining the brain-behavior relationship was to identify the segregated brain regions recruited by a given task. More recent developments have emphasized the importance of distributed networks at all levels, from individual neurons to neural populations and brain regions. Defining the human brain connectome has become one of the major goals of neuroscience,...
In the past, the major focus of research defining the brain-behavior relationship was to identify the segregated brain regions recruited by a given task. More recent developments have emphasized the importance of distributed networks at all levels, from individual neurons to neural populations and brain regions. Defining the human brain connectome has become one of the major goals of neuroscience, as confirmed by the large-scale economical investments on this topic (e.g., NIH-funded Human Connectome Project and the Brain Initiative; The European CONNECT project and the Human Brain Project; the Asian Brainnetome project). Our current understanding is that the brain architecture has a modular organization in which segregated networks supporting specialized processing are linked through a few long-range connections, ensuring processing integration. Although such architecture is structurally stable, it appears to be flexible in its functioning, enabling long-range connections to regulate the information flow and facilitate communication among the relevant modules, depending on the contingent cognitive demands. In my talk, I will highlight an emerging distinctive approach to study cortical connectivity based on the direct activation of an area by non-invasive brain stimulation (TMS) and the simultaneous evaluation of the distribution of this activity in cortical networks by electrophysiological recordings (EEG). The TMS-EEG coregistration allows to study cortico-cortical connectivity by measuring the spatio-temporal distribution of cortical currents evoked by the stimulation. By reviewing TMS-EEG studies on network dynamics at rest and during cognition, and comparing them with fMRI-based functional connectomics, I will show how TMS-EEG data support the general principles of brain architecture inferred from graph theory models and provide further insights into the properties of effective connectivity. Moreover, I will highlight the types of data that can be obtained through TMS-EEG, such as the timing of signal propagation, the excitatory/inhibitory nature of connections and causality. Last, I will discuss recent emerging applications of TMS-EEG in the study of brain disorders.
15 February 2016 February
15 February 2016 10:30
Space without Sight
Vision typically provides the most reliable information about our surrounding space. What happens when you cannot rely on this sensory input due to blindness? I will explore the behavioral and brain reorganizations that occur in blind people for the processing of space. Aside from quantitative differences, I will demonstrate that congenitally blind individuals have a qualitatively different way of...
Vision typically provides the most reliable information about our surrounding space. What happens when you cannot rely on this sensory input due to blindness? I will explore the behavioral and brain reorganizations that occur in blind people for the processing of space. Aside from quantitative differences, I will demonstrate that congenitally blind individuals have a qualitatively different way of representing space, that impacts also on the way they represent more abstract concepts like numbers.
25 February 2016 February
25 February 2016 14:30
There is a certain excitement in vision science concerning the idea of applying the tools of Bayesian decision theory to explain our perceptual capacities. Bayesian models are thought to be needed to explain how the inverse problem of perception is solved, and to rescue a certain constructivist and Kantian way of understanding the perceptual process. Anticlimactically, I argue both that Bayesian o...
There is a certain excitement in vision science concerning the idea of applying the tools of Bayesian decision theory to explain our perceptual capacities. Bayesian models are thought to be needed to explain how the inverse problem of perception is solved, and to rescue a certain constructivist and Kantian way of understanding the perceptual process. Anticlimactically, I argue both that Bayesian outlooks do not constitute good solutions to the inverse problem, and that they are not constructivist in nature. In explaining how visual systems derive a single percept from underdetermined stimulation, orthodox versions of predictive coding accounts encounter a problem. The problem shows that such accounts need to be grounded in Natural Scene Statistics (NSS), an approach that takes seriously the Gibsonian insight that studying perception involves studying the statistical regularities of the environment in which we are situated. Additionally, I argue that predictive coding frameworks postulate structures that hardly rescue a constructivist way of understanding perception. Except for percepts, the posits of Bayesian theory are not representational in nature. Bayesian perceptual inferences are not genuine inferences. They are biased processes that operate over non-representational states
29 February 2016 February
29 February 2016 12:30
From Symmetry Perception to Neuroaesthetics.
ilateral symmetry is a prominent feature of the visual world. Not only are human faces and bodies symmetric, but most other living organisms have at least one axis of symmetry, as do manufactured items, such as tools and buildings. I’ll present the results of a series of experiments that shed light on the neural correlates of visual (and haptic) symmetry detection, also considering the case of b...
ilateral symmetry is a prominent feature of the visual world. Not only are human faces and bodies symmetric, but most other living organisms have at least one axis of symmetry, as do manufactured items, such as tools and buildings. I’ll present the results of a series of experiments that shed light on the neural correlates of visual (and haptic) symmetry detection, also considering the case of blind individuals (is the perceptual salience of symmetry rooted in normal visual development?). Symmetry is not just a principle of perceptual organization, it is also an important cue in driving visual aesthetic preference. Moving from more basic perceptual mechanisms to neuroaesthetics, I’ll discuss some recent brain stimulation data that contribute to shed light on the complex neural network mediating human aesthetic experience.
14 March 2016 March
14 March 2016 12:30
Self and Other in the Human Sensorimotor System and Beyond
People experience and think of themselves as individuals or as a “self” that forms a coherent entity and is clearly distinct from other persons and the world that surrounds them. Recent theories emphasize the sensorimotor experience of the body as the basis of self-awareness. Here intentional actions make a key contribution to the sense of self by allowing the interaction with the world in a f...
People experience and think of themselves as individuals or as a “self” that forms a coherent entity and is clearly distinct from other persons and the world that surrounds them. Recent theories emphasize the sensorimotor experience of the body as the basis of self-awareness. Here intentional actions make a key contribution to the sense of self by allowing the interaction with the world in a flexible way as to produce specific desired effects and by mediating the accompanying subjective experience of causing and being in control of one’s actions and their effects. To date only little is known on empirical indicators of a pre-reflexive sense of agency, and more generally a pre-reflexive sense of self independent of any verbal report. I will present several neurocognitive studies in which we validated different implicit sensorimotor based mechanisms that appear to underlie agency and thus allow an automatic identification of events as self-generated.
31 March 2016 March
31 March 2016 12:30
Max Cappuccio
What are skills, and what does disrupt skillful performance? A portable dynamic EEG study on choking effect
What are embodied skills, how do we learn them, and what psychological factors disrupt them? The study we are conducting at the Interdisciplinary Cog Sci Lab of UAE University addresses these issues by complementing behavioral experimentation with the data collected through a portable dynamic wireless EEG system. Our approach targets skill disruption (aka “choking effect”) as a way into more f...
What are embodied skills, how do we learn them, and what psychological factors disrupt them? The study we are conducting at the Interdisciplinary Cog Sci Lab of UAE University addresses these issues by complementing behavioral experimentation with the data collected through a portable dynamic wireless EEG system. Our approach targets skill disruption (aka “choking effect”) as a way into more fundamental questions concerning the acquisition and the very nature of skill: is skillful expertise acquired through a process of automatization of sensorimotor routines? Is skill disrupted when the automatic flow of pre-reflective activity is interrupted by explicit monitoring and conscious control? In order to answer these questions, our study combines behavioral and EEG paradigms. Some influential studies in sport psychology (e.g., Beilock et al. 2001) suggest that choking affects expert athletes when they perform in pressure-filled environments (e.g., during tournaments) because they tend to compulsively monitor the component processes of their own actions: the fluidity of the automatized motor routines (as in a golf putting task) is not disrupted by cognitive overload or distraction, but by the explicit analysis of one’s own movements. Today this model is under attack from multiple directions (reviewed in Cappuccio 2015, Cappuccio 2016, and Sutton et al. 2016): some converging lines of experimental research and theoretical investigation argue that, even if conscious control is not always necessary to expert performance, in many cases it offers a great help. In spite of their apparent opposition, these approaches can be integrated, as each of them can help highlight at least some of the factors involved in the disruption of skillful performacne. Portable EEG technology could allows us to measure when exactly, and to what extent, these factors intervene, suggesting when it is preferable to rely on one model of choking or the other. We will build on an experimental paradigm that has already been effectively used to identify the EEG markers of certain specific brain activities (de-synchronization of the Mu rhythms in the alpha-beta range, associated with the recruitment of the motor system in the preparation to cognitive tasks involving spatial reasoning, see Babiloni et al. 2008) that consistently predict success during the early stages of skillful activity (golf putting again). In order to complement, and possibly critically discuss, the validity of the theory by Beilock et al. (2001), we are studying how the effect found by Babiloni et al. (2008) is modulated by experimental conditions that interfere with automatic routines (self-monitoring instructions) and/or reduce the effectiveness of the skillful expertise of the subjects (unfamiliar tools).
18 April 2016 April
18 April 2016 10:30
Bodily Sense and Sensibility: Anosognosia, Asomatognosia and Anorexia
According to the ‘embodied cognition’ approach several facets of selfhood are causally related to the physical body and its properties. In cognitive neuroscience, primary sensorimotor signals are thought as integrated and re-represented in various levels of the neurocognitive hierarchy to form a number of neurocognitively distinct bodily models, including unconscious and conscious facets of th...
According to the ‘embodied cognition’ approach several facets of selfhood are causally related to the physical body and its properties. In cognitive neuroscience, primary sensorimotor signals are thought as integrated and re-represented in various levels of the neurocognitive hierarchy to form a number of neurocognitively distinct bodily models, including unconscious and conscious facets of the bodily self. However, the precise mechanisms by which bodily signals are integrated and re-mapped in the brain, as well as the relation between bottom-up and top-down factors in each of these hierarchical levels remain unknown. In this talk, I will discuss empirical studies on neuropsychiatric disorders of body awareness, including anosognosia for hemiplegia and somatoparaphrenia following right hemisphere stroke, as well as anorexia nervosa (if time permits). The results highlight that these disorders can be described as different aberrations of a core antagonism between bottom-up sensory signals, and top-down motor and higher-order signals at different hierarchical levels, reflecting psychological differences in perceiving the body from 1st versus 2nd and 3rd person perspectives. I will particularly focus on the constitution of the embodied self in 1st person perspective, the constitution of social reality in the 3rd person and the unique role of 2nd-person, embodied cognition for mediating the transition from the ‘subjectivity’ to the ‘objectivity’ of the bodily self (and back).
09 May 2016 May
09 May 2016 10:30
Cortical Networks for Hand Dexterity
The dexterity of the hand in grasping and manipulating objects is one of the distinctive properties of human and non human primates. Grasping movements involve transforming the visual properties of the object into the coordinated activation of arm and hand muscles to move the upper limb in a coherent way. The cerebral cortex, with its descending outputs to the brainstem and the spinal cord is the ...
The dexterity of the hand in grasping and manipulating objects is one of the distinctive properties of human and non human primates. Grasping movements involve transforming the visual properties of the object into the coordinated activation of arm and hand muscles to move the upper limb in a coherent way. The cerebral cortex, with its descending outputs to the brainstem and the spinal cord is the major structure for the control of grasping movements. We will present our recent studies describing the spatio-temporal structure of motor cortex activity during complex reach-to-grasp tasks. In particular, we will focus on recent technical advances that allow investigating the dynamic of neuronal activity at the mesoscopic scale for upper limb control and discuss novel ideas about the functional organization of the motor cortex.
16 May 2016 May
16 May 2016 08:30
The Problem with the ‘Information’ in Integrated Information Theory
Giulio Tononi’s proposed theory of consciousness – Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness – presents an interesting advance in the scientific study of consciousness. Tononi suggests that consciousness is quantifiable in both quantity and quality in terms of integrated information. Accordingly, information is one of IIT’s two foundational pillars (alongside integration) and if...
Giulio Tononi’s proposed theory of consciousness – Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness – presents an interesting advance in the scientific study of consciousness. Tononi suggests that consciousness is quantifiable in both quantity and quality in terms of integrated information. Accordingly, information is one of IIT’s two foundational pillars (alongside integration) and if one such pillar were to fall, the theory would have little to stand on. I argue that IIT is committed to a physicalist notion of information. Because of this, IIT suffers from a number of objections commonly directed against physicalist accounts of consciousness. Furthermore, I argue that this commitment to a physicalist notion of information is in direct conflict with how the theory is developed and against some of the motivating reasons given to argue the theory. The damage, thus, is two-fold. Firstly, in its present form IIT exhibits an internal incoherence in adhering to a position of consciousness it was designed to stay neutral on, i.e., physicalism. Secondly, this fact strips IIT of its purported novel ability to avoid the objections that plague rival theories of consciousness. Once I have shown that IIT is committed to a physicalist account of information and falls victim to these objections, I move on to give a tentative response on behalf of IIT for solving these problems.
26 September 2016 September
From 26 September 2016 08:30 To 27 September 2016 08:30
Acting Together: Coordination, Collective Goals, and Cooperation
nvited Speakers: Alexandra Battaglia, Olle Blomberg, Steve Butterfill, Dimitrios Kourtis, Tom Smith Many of the things we do are done together with others. We play duets, move pianos together and drink toasts together. Acting together in these and other ways raises three questions, which are the focus of this workshop. First, acting together often requires our actions, yours and mine, to be coo...
From 26 September 2016 08:30
To 27 September 2016 08:30
nvited Speakers: Alexandra Battaglia, Olle Blomberg, Steve Butterfill, Dimitrios Kourtis, Tom Smith Many of the things we do are done together with others. We play duets, move pianos together and drink toasts together. Acting together in these and other ways raises three questions, which are the focus of this workshop. First, acting together often requires our actions, yours and mine, to be coordinated. How is such coordination achieved? Second, acting together is often (but not always) something we do with a purpose: when playing a duet, unlike when filling a room with noise, there is a single outcome, the performance, to which our actions are collectively directed. In acting together with a purpose, what is the relation between our actions, yours and mine, and the outcome or outcomes to which they are directed? Third, in acting together with a purpose we are sometimes (but not always) acting cooperatively. What distinguishes acting together cooperatively from acting together noncooperatively, and what underpins cooperative action?
03 October 2016 October
03 October 2016 16:00
Perceiving as Predicting?
Room: Sala di Rappresentanza
According to an emerging vision in computational and cognitive neuroscience, perception (rich, full-blooded, world-presenting perception of the kind we humans enjoy) depends heavily on prediction. To perceive, if this schema is correct, is to meet incoming sensory information with a set of matching ‘top-down’ predictions, where these amount to the brain’s best guesses about the shape of the ...
According to an emerging vision in computational and cognitive neuroscience, perception (rich, full-blooded, world-presenting perception of the kind we humans enjoy) depends heavily on prediction. To perceive, if this schema is correct, is to meet incoming sensory information with a set of matching ‘top-down’ predictions, where these amount to the brain’s best guesses about the shape of the present sensory signal. Perception occurs when (after a flurry of processing) the top-down guessing matches, and hence ‘explains away’, the sensory signal. That same story suggests, intriguingly, that perception, understanding and imagination - which we might intuitively consider to be three distinct chunks of our mental machinery - are inextricably tied together, emerging as simultaneous results of that single underlying strategy. In the talk, I first introduce this general explanatory schema, and then discuss these (and other) implications. I end by asking what all this suggests concerning the fundamental nature of our perceptual contact with the world.
10 October 2016 October
10 October 2016 10:30
Cosimo Urgesi
Top-Down Modulations of Motor Resonance to Social Stimuli
Several previous studies have shown a muscle-specific facilitation of cortico-spinal excitability during observation of others’ actions (motor resonance). While motor resonance has been shown to be automatically triggered independently from the observer’s effort to simulate the actions, high-level aspects of actions, including the actor’s intention and context, can modulate its extent and sp...
Several previous studies have shown a muscle-specific facilitation of cortico-spinal excitability during observation of others’ actions (motor resonance). While motor resonance has been shown to be automatically triggered independently from the observer’s effort to simulate the actions, high-level aspects of actions, including the actor’s intention and context, can modulate its extent and spatio-temporal selectivity. In a series of studies, we used single-pulse and repetitive TMS and behavioral action prediction tasks to investigate how the observer’s motor system maps the kinematics and intention of actions embedded in congruent or incongruent contexts. Participants watched videos showing everyday actions and were asked to predict their final outcome ahead of realization. We manipulated both the context in which the actions were embedded, being congruent, incongruent or ambiguous, as well as the intention of the actor, who could provide either genuine or fooling information to the observers. At different delays from action onset, we recorded motor evoked potentials (MEPs) from arm and forearm muscles to measure motor resonance. We found that both context and intention modulate participants’ performance, leading to improved discrimination of actions embedded in congruent context and driven by genuine intention and impaired discrimination of actions embedded in incongruent contexts and driven by deceptive intentions. Crucially, these two high-level aspects modulated motor resonance in a different way. In particular, we found an early facilitation of motor resonance for actions embedded in congruent context and a later inhibition for those embedded in incongruent contexts. Conversely, the reduction of performance in predicting deceptive actions was associated to a muscle-specific facilitation of motor resonance as compared to observing genuine actions. These results suggest that high-level aspects of actions can boost or suppress motor resonance through top-down modulations from high-level systems, including prefrontal and temporo-parietal areas involved in semantic representations and social cognition. To investigate the mechanisms underlying top-down modulations of motor resonance, we used a perturb-and-measure TMS approach, which combines off-line continuous theta burst stimulation of areas within and beyond the action observation network with online spTMS of the primary motor cortex to measures the consequent functional modulation of motor resonance. The results showed that prefrontal and temporo-parietal areas play an important role in modulating the facilitation of cortico-spinal excitability during action observation, suggesting that motor resonance does not emerge from an encapsulated system, but reflects the processing of multiple aspects of actions (e.g., kinematics, intention, context) in different and interconnected networks.
25 October 2016 October
Movement in Music. An Enactive Account of the Dynamic Qualities of Music
08 November 2016 November
08 November 2016 12:30
Mirror neurons in the tree of life: A mosaic evolution hypothesis of the social brain
I will approach the evolution of the social brain, by focusing on the properties of mirror neurons (MNs), which constitute one of its important parts. I will offer a novel, unifying, and testable account of MNs evolution according to the available data, integrating a substantial amount of apparently discordant research, including the plasticity of MNs during development, their adaptive value and t...
I will approach the evolution of the social brain, by focusing on the properties of mirror neurons (MNs), which constitute one of its important parts. I will offer a novel, unifying, and testable account of MNs evolution according to the available data, integrating a substantial amount of apparently discordant research, including the plasticity of MNs during development, their adaptive value and their phylogenetic relationships. I will state that the MN system reflects a set of interrelated traits, each with a relatively independent natural history due to unique selective pressures, and propose that there are at least three evolutionarily significant trends that gave raise to three subtypes of MNs: hand visuo-motor, mouth visuo-motor, and audio-vocal, underlying respectively manual, facial and vocal communicative gestures. Specifically, I will put forward a mosaic evolution hypothesis of the social brain, which posits that different types of MNs may have evolved at different rates within and among species. This evolutionary hypothesis represents an alternative to both adaptationist and associative models of brain traits, such as mirroring sensorimotor regions. Some scholars propose that macaque and human MNs are a necessary phylogenetic stage within the evolutionary path leadings to the emergence of high-level cognitive functions, such as action-understanding, imitation, mind-reading and language. These classic views mostly focuses on the functional role of MNs during phylogeny, but neglected the developmental processes that contribute to its construction during ontogeny. Other models mainly addressed the question of the ontogenetic origin of MNs. According to the associative models, MNs acquire ontogenetically their observation–-execution matching properties through a domain-general process of sensorimotor associative learning. As by-product of motor learning, MNs may still play a functional role, but do not necessarily have a specific evolutionary purpose or adaptive function. Some authors propose an integration of MNs’ the developmental and evolutionary dynamics of MNs. Some of them focused the attention on the role of canalization developmental plasticity and consider MNs as the result of both maturational processes of the brain, and epigenetic regulation of specific populations of motor neurons under the influence of sensorimotor experiences during ontogeny. They thus propose that some of the environmental, social and molecular conditions, which contribute to the development of MNs, have been canalized or stabilized during phylogeny, promoting the adaptive ability to decode social information and facilitating social interactions from the first phases of development. Although this latter seems to be a suitable evolutionary explanation, what remains unclear in these models is the process or mechanism that produced the canalization, including how mirror neurons became canalized during evolutionary history. I will bridge these gaps, by including additional critical information regarding MNs in songbirds and marmosets, as well as inferences based on neuroimaging in chimpanzee. I will thus conclude that the evolution of mirroring mechanisms has co-occurred under the influence of changes in behavioral functions, such as the understanding and imitation of specific types of communicative gestures, representing an interesting case of co-evolution of mind and brain interactions in primate history. I will further explain that the mosaic evolution hypothesis of social brain offers a strong heuristic potential in predicting the circumstances under which specific variations and properties of social cognitive traits are expected. Such predictive value is critical to test new hypotheses about the evolution of social cognitive skills and their variations, depending on the species, the neuroanatomical substrates, and the ecological niche.
15 November 2016 November
15 November 2016 12:30
Free will and causation
The problem of mental causation lies at the core of the interaction between neuroscience and philosophy of mind. However, one might doubt whether the two disciplines are dealing with the same conceptual issues. In philosophy of mind, the interest for mental causation often grows from the dispute between compatibilist and incompatibilist perspectives about metaphysical determinism and free will. In...
The problem of mental causation lies at the core of the interaction between neuroscience and philosophy of mind. However, one might doubt whether the two disciplines are dealing with the same conceptual issues. In philosophy of mind, the interest for mental causation often grows from the dispute between compatibilist and incompatibilist perspectives about metaphysical determinism and free will. In neuroscience, mental causation remains a central issue, but the focus is shifted from metaphysical determinism to the neurobiological mechanisms regulating the structure of voluntary actions. Here, the problem is not if the acts of the will are or are not deterministically caused by some previous event, but if the will can cause anything. Indeed, modern neuroscience is committed to reject the picture of the will as a force generating a physical movement, which would be at odd with a materialistic conception of the mind. Claiming that consciousness of a decision, where reduced to a biochemical afterthought, does not play a causal role in the production of the subsequent action might signify that conscious will and conscious mental states are just bypassed by unconscious stimuli. Following this line, Wegner has questioned if intentions might be located among the causes of the correspondent actions (Wegner 2004). Within this framework, our sense of causing and controlling events in the external world (sense of agency) might be deceptive. In this paper, I explore whether different explanations of human sense of agency and of the effectiveness of mental causation could be viable. In particular, Haggard and colleagues introduced the intentional binding effect as a marker of the sense of agency, reflecting a subjective temporal association between intentional actions and correspondent outcomes (temporal attraction of the action towards the effect and of the effect towards the action) (Haggard et al. 2002). Interestingly, intentional binding might be produced by the same circuits, in the frontal lobe, that cause intentional action. An important consequence would be that the same circuits causing the preparation and the initiation of voluntary actions also produce a prediction of the expected outcomes: our sense of agency might be not just a retrospective confabulation, but a “measurable signal within the motor system” (Haggard 2014, p. 883). Within this perspective, the crucial point becomes how to understand what kind of neural mechanisms enable our consciously willed actions, giving individuals the sufficient degree of control that is necessary for causally interacting with the external world. I will argue that, moving beyond the classic compatibilist-incompatibilist divide, also philosophical discussion could highly benefitted from such move.
22 November 2016 November
22 November 2016 12:30
Don’t Fail the Module! On the assessment of Fodor’s modular/non-modular distinction
Abstract Jerry Fodor has famously, and persistently, argued that the human mind is made up of modular and non-modular cognitive systems. Typically, this is understood as the claim that some (but only some) cognitive systems (the modular ones) display a cluster of properties to some interesting extent (e.g. informational encapsulation, inaccessible processing, shallow outputs, and so on). But this...
Abstract Jerry Fodor has famously, and persistently, argued that the human mind is made up of modular and non-modular cognitive systems. Typically, this is understood as the claim that some (but only some) cognitive systems (the modular ones) display a cluster of properties to some interesting extent (e.g. informational encapsulation, inaccessible processing, shallow outputs, and so on). But this is a mistake, and for at least two reasons: Reason 1: Modules are taken (by their proponents) to form a natural psychological kind. At a minimum, this dictates that the distinction between modules and non-modules be non-arbitrary. But all the properties that are discussed in this context come in degrees. Indeed, any conceivable cognitive system would possess them all to some extent (a system could always be encapsulated from more or less information, or produce its outputs faster or slower, etc.). Thus, these properties seem to provide no non-arbitrary means of carving up the mind, rendering the idea that modules form a natural kind a non-starter. Reason 2: Modularity is supposed to do explanatory work. Cognitive scientists appeal to modularity in order to explain the fact that some systems possess the oft-discussed properties to some interesting extent. But, if the modularity of a system is identified with its possession of these properties themselves then appeals to modularity will simply serve to label the findings that they purport to explain. For these reasons, it would be a mistake to identify the modularity of a system with its possession of the properties that Fodor and his followers discuss (to some arbitrary extent). Instead, we should recognise that it is the relative extent to which these properties are instantiated in certain systems that evinces the idea that they belong to a natural kind of system (one we can refer to as ‘modular’) and one that distinguishes them from other systems (ones we can refer to as ‘non-modular’). This matters. Criticism of the modular/non-modular distinction currently centres on evidence purporting to show that cognitive systems lack the properties that modularists propose certain systems to possess to the extent that they propose. But, if the modularity of a system is not to be identified with its instantiation of properties like encapsulation to some arbitrary degree, as I suggest it cannot possibly be, then this is largely irrelevant. Why? Because what is at issue is not whether these systems are as encapsulated (etc.) as Fodor or his followers claim. Rather, it is whether or not these (or other) properties provide a relevant point of contrast that stands in need of an explanation by appeal to a difference in kind. Unfortunately, this issue remains neglected by both sides of the debate. Proponents of modularity are required to formulate and examine firm hypotheses about what the underlying difference in kind might amount to. Meanwhile, critics of modularity are required to identify reasons for denying the existence of some such difference. In the second half of the talk, I consider both these challenges. In the first instance, I consider three ways in which a critic of modularity might seek to deny that the input systems (most plausibly thought of as modular) belong to a natural kind of system that distinguishes them from central systems (by denying that there is any contrast between input systems and central systems; by claiming that any such contrast merely reflects a difference of degree; and by denying that the input systems, themselves, form a unified kind of system). I then offer a response to each of these on behalf of the Fodorian. In so doing, I aim to clarify what might be meant by saying that modular systems form a natural kind, and to offer a far-reaching defence of this suggestion, while simultaneously showing how critics of modularity ought to proceed in their future work—something for everyone.
29 November 2016 November
29 November 2016 12:30
Janko Nesic
Ego as an individual substance
Abstract According to Gurwitch’s (1941) canonical distinction there are egological and non-egological theories of consciousness. An egological theory would maintain that, when I watch a film, there is a self or ego being aware of itself as an ego watching a film, it is a metaphysical and phenomenological truth that every experience is for a subject. Non-egological theory sees this experience as...
Abstract According to Gurwitch’s (1941) canonical distinction there are egological and non-egological theories of consciousness. An egological theory would maintain that, when I watch a film, there is a self or ego being aware of itself as an ego watching a film, it is a metaphysical and phenomenological truth that every experience is for a subject. Non-egological theory sees this experience as an anonymous awareness of awareness, that consciousness has with itself, there is no ego watching the film. In this talk I am to advance an egological approach to self-awareness in which an ego as an individual substance is pre-reflectively present in consciousness. Acknowledgement of ubiquitous pre-reflective self-awareness cautions us against the deflation of subjects to experience and it needs to be accounted for by any convincing theory of consciousness. Talk will follow a tripartite structure. Although argumentation will predominantly lead to apophatic conclusions, I will also try to develop a positive account of what an ego is. In the first part of the talk I will argue that the ego is neither a product of experiential combination, nor a bundle of experiences. Co-consciousness relations also fail as an explanation of experiential unity because there is pre-reflective self-awareness. I will present arguments that the ego is not an object of its self-awareness as self-awareness is not an experience. Self experiencing itself as an object leads into infinite regress. Thus, I follow the philosophers of the Heidelberg School (Henrich, Pothast, Frank) in criticizing the reflection theory of self-awareness. Henrich has maintained that there is pre-reflective self-awareness presupposed by reflection, which is not a result of inter-experiential relations. It is an anonymous dimension or „field“ that is the ground for experiences to present themselves in the first place. Ego or self is an active principle of organisation in the field of consciousness but it is not fundamental feature of consciousness. Although prima facie appealing, this position succumbs to a dilemma caused by the clash between exclusivity and anonymity of the subjective dimension. Experiences are given first-personally to me in a way they can never be given to anyone else. My experiences are individuated by my first-person perspective, by being given to me as an ego. These authors insist that egological theories suffer from same devastating problems as the reflection theory of self-awareness. Pace Henrich, I would like to argue that adhering to the given approach to self-awareness and ego is inadequate to convince us in the non-egological character of self-awareness. Advancing a different conception of the self can help us answer the non-egological challenge. If we are to push the dimension/field metaphor of self-awareness further, so as to regard the self as a kind of space for experiences, a more satisfying conception of the ego, still retaining advantages of the previous view, could be fleshed out. Second part of the presentation is devoted to the defending of the notion of subjective space, something I do by cashing in on the „space-like“ and „field-like“ talk about subjects of experience that is found in the relevant phenomenological and analytical literature on self-awareness. I would propose that the self is to experiences what spacetime is for material objects. On a monistic substantivalist, rather than relationalist position, spacetime is a substance and fundamental fields are “pined to” it as properties (Schaffer 2009). The same relation could be defended between a self and its experiences. In the third part of my talk I will give metaphysical support, backed up by phenomenological insights, to the claim that we have to bite the bullet and appraise the ego as substantivalist. As I will argue, subjects of experience are to be undrestood as individual substances (Lowe 2003). This position can give exclusivity its due without invoking mysterious entities and creating additional metaphysical problems. Argument by elimination for ego being an individual substance will mirror Lowe’s arguments for identification of fundamental self-individuating entities: deep problems with entities like tropes, bare particulars and haecceities force us to infer that the most plausible candidates are ordinary individual substances. Ego as substratum of an object's properties is neither an aspect, part or property of it, nor a bundle of properties, but that very object.
13 December 2016 December
13 December 2016 12:30
The adaptive rationality of confabulation(s)
In 2011, the Edge Foundation posed the following question to dozens of academics, writers, and intellectuals: ‘What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?’ They received nearly 200 responses on a variety of topics, ranging from evolutionary biology and theoretical physics to economics and psychology. Interestingly, cognitive psychologist Fiery Cushman argued that ...
In 2011, the Edge Foundation posed the following question to dozens of academics, writers, and intellectuals: ‘What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?’ They received nearly 200 responses on a variety of topics, ranging from evolutionary biology and theoretical physics to economics and psychology. Interestingly, cognitive psychologist Fiery Cushman argued that the concept of “confabulation” typically used in the context of neurological patients and clinical populations should also be used in non-clinical contexts and to refer to the explanations of our own behavior that we typically provide, which are sometimes wholly fabricated, and certainly never complete. The idea that confabulation is quite common in non-clinical populations is widely held (Bargh 2006; Evans 2010; Wilson 2002). Further, the fact that people have been described as prone to widespread confabulation when it comes to the accounts they provide of their own thinking and decisionmaking seems potentially unsettling. On the one hand, some researchers have pointed to potential benefits associated with confabulatory explanations, where these phenomena would enhance coherence, selfconfidence, and well-being (Fotopoulou 2008). Notably, these assessments of confabulatory explanations would seem to go in line with a more general trend to reinterpret purportedly irrational behaviour as adaptively rational, i.e. furthering the achievement of people’s prudential and epistemic goals (Polonioli 2015). Still, it is widely held that confabulation is generally conducive to sub-optimal behavior when considering not only epistemic, but also pragmatic goals (cf. Bortolotti 2014 for a critical discussion). In this talk I will accomplish two main goals. First, I argue that the concept of confabulation used in the literature is not a clear one and that, pace Cushman, we should be very careful in using this notion to also try and account for people’s explanations of their behavior in non-clinical contexts. To support this claim, I show how the concept of confabulation is used very differently in different research programs such as those focusing on false memories and those focusing on people’s decisionmaking. Second, I also discuss and evaluate a number of ways to assess the adaptive value of different kinds of behaviors and cognitive phenomena that are referred to as confabulations in the literature. In particular, here I look in detail at the import of resorting to research on individual differences in thinking and decision-making. Specifically, the links between imperfect cognition, personality traits and cognitive ability have attracted increasing attention (e.g. Stanovich 2011). These associations are particularly interesting because personality traits and cognitive ability have been linked to important life outcomes (Polonioli 2015; Deary et al. 2010). Exploring confabulatory phenomena in relation to personality and cognitive ability thus helps to clarify the role played by these behaviours in the achievement of life outcomes.
20 December 2016 December
20 December 2016 12:30
Émile Thalabard and Matthias Michel
The overflow argument and the global workspace theory of consciousness
We argue that one can accept the rich view of consciousness while still considering that consciousness is the result of a global process in the brain, and that cognitive access is constitutive of consciousness. In other words, our thesis is that the overflow argument does not imply the falsity of the global workspace theory of consciousness. In order to defend such view, we argue that one must di...
We argue that one can accept the rich view of consciousness while still considering that consciousness is the result of a global process in the brain, and that cognitive access is constitutive of consciousness. In other words, our thesis is that the overflow argument does not imply the falsity of the global workspace theory of consciousness. In order to defend such view, we argue that one must distinguish between weak and strong cognitive access. A representation is cognitively accessible in the weak sense if it is a possible target for an intentional act of attentional amplification, resulting in its being reformatted and encoded into working memory. A representation is cognitively accessible in the strong sense if and only if it has been encoded into working memory, and as a consequence can be used as input for higher-level, central cognitive processes without any further computational transformation. We show that Block’s overflow argument relies on a strong understanding of cognitive access and that it presupposes an “identity thesis” according to which working memory is identical to the global workspace. Although the identity thesis is often presupposed in the literature on consciousness (for example, Prinz, 2012; Wu, 2014), we argue that the global workspace must be dissociated from working memory. On our view, the global workspace is first and foremost an informational hub, the function of which is to make information globally available throughout the brain. While top-down attention is not necessary for a representation to enter the global workspace, it is necessary for a representation being tokened in working memory. We defend that information can transiently enter the global workspace without being sustained by top-down attention in working memory. Thus, we argue that the impression of overflow in Sperling’s experiment is due to representations becoming transiently access-conscious (in the weak sense) without being sustained in working memory. Drawing on data from cognitive science, we show that the arguments provided by Block in order to demonstrate that conscious perception can happen within a module in low-level precategorical iconic memory are based on a flawed view of iconic memory. Rather, we contend that representations can become conscious thanks to bottom-up attention and that bottom-up attention is not a process that can happen within a module, but rather, is implemented by priority maps (Fecteau and Munoz, 2006; Awh et al., 2012). As priority maps involve both sensory and executive systems, such a process would be global, and consciousness would be the result of a global process within the brain. Hence, while we agree with the rich view that phenomenology overflows the content of working memory, we argue, in accordance with the global workspace theory, that cognitive access constitutes phenomenology and that consciousness results from a global cerebral process involving executive systems.
10 January 2017 January
10 January 2017 12:30
Are Mental Disorders Continuous with Healthy Functioning? A New Proposal for a Dimensional Model in Philosophy of Psychiatry
In this talk I put forward a novel approach to psychopathology that aims to describe and classify mental disorders in a dimensional way. This step proves crucial in providing a defense of what has recently come to be known as the Continuity Thesis (CT) in philosophy of psychiatry (see Bortolotti 2009). I believe a convincing defense of CT should be two-fold. First, it has to provide a model of men...
In this talk I put forward a novel approach to psychopathology that aims to describe and classify mental disorders in a dimensional way. This step proves crucial in providing a defense of what has recently come to be known as the Continuity Thesis (CT) in philosophy of psychiatry (see Bortolotti 2009). I believe a convincing defense of CT should be two-fold. First, it has to provide a model of mental disorders where the distinction between normal and pathological cognition boils down to a difference of degree or intensity. In other words, it has to paint a plausible picture of what it means to be an extreme variation of a phenomenon that is otherwise non-pathological or healthy. Second, CT has to provide some way to distinguish between health and pathology without trivializing this distinction and also without neglecting the phenomenological peculiarity that accompanies many manifestations of mental disorder. The account I outline here suggests that the core differences between normality and pathology can be effectively explained in terms of quantitative variations within a subject’s experience. On this account I thus characterize mental disorders as points (or collections of points) along continua of intensity. In order to do so, I start by identifying four kinds of disorders that encompass many psychiatric conditions as currently classified. Then I propose to conceive of these disorders as disruptions of four dimensions corresponding to different ways of modulating the relationship with one’s environment (i.e. appraisals): these are salience, confidence, familiarity and agency. Roughly speaking, on every dimension we would find instances of loss at the one extreme (hypo) and instances of overload at the other extreme (hyper). Along the spectrum lies also a multiplicity of intermediate cases: some of them approximate one of the extremes and could be characterized as local imbalances, whereas others can be regarded as healthy or conducive to wellbeing. The list of dimensions I provide here should not be taken as complete: indeed, I am not committed to the claim that every mental disorder could be subsumed under these categories. Rather, the goal of the talk is methodological. What I propose is a way of thinking about mental disorders that sheds light on some important theoretical issues, such as: - What mental disorders are. Roughly speaking, I characterize mental disorders as disruptions of appraisal relationships: each of them exhibits a specific structure and consists in a particular alteration of one’s interaction with the environment. - How mental disorders arise at the personal-level. In what follows I argue that most mental disorders arise from disruption in processes that influence the way in which individuals interact with their environment (appraisals). The talk is divided into five sections. Each section from §1 to §4 begins with a brief characterization of a mental disorder category (e.g. disorders of salience). This is followed by a detailed discussion of selected case studies aiming to illustrate the relevant disorder from a phenomenological viewpoint. This discussion makes clear that all these disorders can be mapped onto a continuum, where the two extremes are characterized as instances of loss (hypo) and overload (hyper). It also shows that disorders that strike us as very different from a phenomenological viewpoint (e.g. schizophrenia and depression) may be regarded as disruptions of the same appraisal in opposite directions. At the end of each section I briefly introduce a number of intermediate cases, namely situations in which an experience is significantly close to one of the extremes (i.e. local disruption) or in which there is sufficient balance within a given dimension (i.e. health or well-being). In §5 I offer a synthetic view of the model and I discuss some important similarities and differences among the disorders discussed in §1 to §4.
17 January 2017 January
17 January 2017 12:30
Visual Representations in Action
Perceptual Representations in Action It is easy to claim that the hottest debate in contemporary philosophy of mind and of perception is about whether the mind perceptually represents the properties of the world and, provided that a positive answer is possible, the question is about which properties of the world are represented in perception (Siegel 2006; Nanay 2013). That said, several philoso...
Perceptual Representations in Action It is easy to claim that the hottest debate in contemporary philosophy of mind and of perception is about whether the mind perceptually represents the properties of the world and, provided that a positive answer is possible, the question is about which properties of the world are represented in perception (Siegel 2006; Nanay 2013). That said, several philosophers claim that we perceptually represent objects as having a lot of properties (Siegel 2006). At the same time, neuroscientists usually talk about portions of the brain representing something in the external environment. The big philosophical issue at stake here is that philosophers and neuroscientists start from very different background assumptions when they use the term “representation”. On the one hand, neuroscientists seem to use the verb “representing” as a near synonym of “encoding”. So, they talk about portions of the brain, especially of the cortical mantle, as representing something in the external world. The problem with this usage is that it seems to ignore the importance of the philosophical implications of the word “representation”. Too often, they talk about a simple detection based on a causal covariation/cooccurrence between the neural firing of a brain area and an object being presented in the external environment at the same time. On the other hand, even those philosophers who are more careful when they talk about perceptual representations when describing some mental process are usually guided by philosophical arguments that do not need to take into account the specific empirical brain-based counterpart of the mental processes they are talking about. At best, they need to take into account the bare minimum empirical evidence in order to argue that a minimal confirmation for their claim is held from neuroscience. The result is that it is hard to find a rigorous philosophical representational interpretation of the technical empirical data from neuroscience, concerning such and such mental phenomenon. Yet, it would be desirable, for several mental phenomena, to have an account that is, at the same time, empirically well-founded and philosophically rigorous. The aim of the present paper is exactly to provide this account, in particular with respect to the claim that action properties are perceptually represented. I refer to the example of action properties because the question about the nature of the processing at the basis of their detection is in the spotlight of the contemporary debate in both philosophy (Nanay 2013; Ferretti 2016a, 2016c) and neuroscience (Borghi and Riggio 2015; Ferretti 2016b). My aim is to show that, in the light of empirical evidence from neuroscience, the case of action properties is a good candidate in order to properly talk of perceptually represented properties. My claim is that the neurophysiological states encoding action properties are perceptual processes and that these perceptual processes are representational processes. That is, in the case of those neurophysiological states involved in the detection of action properties, it is correct to speak of perceptual representational states, and hence, ipso facto, of perceptually represented properties. In what follows, I develop this idea.
21 March 2017 March
From 21 March 2017 08:30 To 22 March 2017 08:30
Workshop Culture, Cognition and Action
Program Tuesday 21/3 16:00 – 17:00 Richard Menary (Sydney): Did social cognition culturally evolve? 17:00 – 17:30 Break 17:30 – 18:30 Vivian Bohl (Tartu): Social relationships and shared emotions Dinner: if you would like to join the speakers and organizers, please email anika.fiebich@unimi.it (in advance!) Wednesday 22/3 09:30 – 10:30 Francesco Guala (Milan): Institutio...
From 21 March 2017 08:30
To 22 March 2017 08:30
Program Tuesday 21/3 16:00 – 17:00 Richard Menary (Sydney): Did social cognition culturally evolve? 17:00 – 17:30 Break 17:30 – 18:30 Vivian Bohl (Tartu): Social relationships and shared emotions Dinner: if you would like to join the speakers and organizers, please email anika.fiebich@unimi.it (in advance!) Wednesday 22/3 09:30 – 10:30 Francesco Guala (Milan): Institutions and functions 10:30 – 11:30 Christine Caldwell (Stirling): Insights on cumulative culture from laboratory studies of cultural evolution 11:30 – 12:00 Break 12:00 – 13:00 Olivier Morin (Jena): How to say things with things: the evolution of graphic codes Abstracts: http://www.cssa.unimi.it/events/ Organizer: Anika Fiebich (anika.fiebich@unimi.it)
21 April 2017 April
21 April 2017 17:00
The Cognitive Impenetrability of Recalcitrant Emotions
Recalcitrant emotions are emotions that conflict with your judgements, e.g. fearing flying despite judging that it is safe. Much of the present controversy concerning these emotions has to do with spelling out the precise nature of this conflict, and determining what this, in turn, tells us about a theory of emotions. This debate, however, leaves unexamined a crucial feature of these emotions, viz...
Recalcitrant emotions are emotions that conflict with your judgements, e.g. fearing flying despite judging that it is safe. Much of the present controversy concerning these emotions has to do with spelling out the precise nature of this conflict, and determining what this, in turn, tells us about a theory of emotions. This debate, however, leaves unexamined a crucial feature of these emotions, viz. their recalcitrant, mulish nature. This paper aims to make up for this neglect. In particular, I argue that the recalcitrant nature of recalcitrant emotions can be accounted for by their cognitive impenetrability.
08 May 2017 May
Experientialism about Moral Concepts
I present an experientialist account of moral concepts, on which moral judgments are beliefs about when moral feelings represent objective facts. For example, guilt represents wrong actions while admiration represents virtuous character. Experientialism is suggested by an elegant empirical model of moral psychology. It fits into a cognitivist, externalist, and Humean picture of moral judgment, pro...
I present an experientialist account of moral concepts, on which moral judgments are beliefs about when moral feelings represent objective facts. For example, guilt represents wrong actions while admiration represents virtuous character. Experientialism is suggested by an elegant empirical model of moral psychology. It fits into a cognitivist, externalist, and Humean picture of moral judgment, providing an alternative to views that analyze moral concepts in terms of reasons. It also provides new support for ethical hedonism.
26 April 2018 April
26 April 2018 14:30
How to Solve the Developmental Puzzle
Room: Aula Paci
Most preschoolers have been shown to fail explicit false-belief tasks where they are directly asked to predict the action of a mistaken agent. However, findings based on implicit false-belief tasks show that preverbal infants expect an agent to act in accordance with the content of her belief (whether true or false). How to reconcile these discrepant findings? This is the developmental puzzle abou...
Most preschoolers have been shown to fail explicit false-belief tasks where they are directly asked to predict the action of a mistaken agent. However, findings based on implicit false-belief tasks show that preverbal infants expect an agent to act in accordance with the content of her belief (whether true or false). How to reconcile these discrepant findings? This is the developmental puzzle about false-belief understanding. There are two broad approaches to this puzzle, according to whether or not one accepts a mentalistic interpretation of the infant data. I will criticize non-mentalistic deflationary approaches to the infant data and advocate a pragmatic account of why most preschoolers fail explicit false-belief tasks.
24 May 2018 May
The Perception/Cognition Divide in Predictive Models of the Mind
According to predictive models, perception is a hierarchical and predictive process : instead of sensory signals being processed in a bottom-up fashion, they are compared to inner predictions at different levels of processing. Many, such as Andy Clark, but also Friston, Frith, or Lupyan, point out that such a model “makes the lines between perception and cognition fuzzy … In place of any...
According to predictive models, perception is a hierarchical and predictive process : instead of sensory signals being processed in a bottom-up fashion, they are compared to inner predictions at different levels of processing. Many, such as Andy Clark, but also Friston, Frith, or Lupyan, point out that such a model “makes the lines between perception and cognition fuzzy … In place of any real distinction between perception and belief we now get variable differences in the mixture of top-down and bottom-up influences". This, in turn, has been taken to imply that perception is through and through cognitively penetrated, or that the very idea of 'cognitive penetration' ceases to be relevant. Here, i will argue that these diagnoses comes from looking in the wrong place: focusing on our recent work on top-down influences in face perception, i will suggest that the perception/cognition divide still needs to be drawn, even if one adopts predictive models of the effects, because of two distinctive characters of cognition
20122 - Italy
Most preschoolers have been shown to fail explicit false-belief tasks where they are directly asked ...
According to predictive models, perception is a hierarchical and predictive process : instead of se...
C.i.A Lectures Series Conferences & Workshops PhiloNeuro Seminar LunchTime Seminar External events & links

References: sui generis
sui generis
 §1
 §4
 §5
 §1
 §4