Università Roma Tre

The course is an introduction to the philosophy of mind informed by cognitive sciences. Cognitive science investigates complex organisms at the information-processing level of analysis, and it can be defined a peculiar level in the sense that it is suspended between two worlds. On the one hand, there is the ordinary image of ourselves as persons, namely as self-conscious, intentional, rational agents. On the other hand, we have the sub-personal sphere of the cerebral events, as investigated by neuroscience. Therefore, one of the main tasks for the philosopher of psychology is to unravel this peculiarity, trying to shed some light upon the relations between these different ways of describing ourselves. This course critically explores some classical attempts to accomplish this task.

M. Marraffa e A. Paternoster - Persone, menti, cervelli. Storia, metodi e modelli delle scienze della mente. Milano: Mondadori, 2011.
S. Dehaene - Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. London: Penguin Books, 2014.