Upcoming Seminar
Latest Seminar
Riccardo Manzotti
IULM, Milan, Italy
20/04/22 @ 3:00pm
The hypothesis of the mind-object identity as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness
Until now, neurosciences have not provided any explanation as to how and why neural activity generates conscious experience (only correlations). It is fair to say that consciousness has never been observed directly. Moreover, phenomenal experience is not compatible with the causal closure of the physical world. Therefore, how to overcome this impasse without slipping into explanations that run afoul ontological parsimony (Occam)?
An interesting alternative approach consists in setting aside the unproven premises that scholars have so far assumed and to consider a different physical candidate for consciousness – i.e. the external world. This hypothesis, dubbed the mind-object identity, is extremely parsimonious, is consistent with the neuroscientific data, solves the problem of mental causation, and in fact cancels the hard problem. The identity between consciousness and physical objects – rather than between consciousness and neural activity – requires two revisit two fundamental aspects of the physical world: the relative nature of physical properties and the spatiotemporal extension of events. Fortunately, such aspects are both widely supported by contemporary physics and phenomenologically consistent.
The mind-object identity is discussed and compared with a number of empirical cases offered by neuroscience: from hallucinations to dreams, from illusions to memory.
Davide Crepaldi
International School for advanced Studies (SISSA), Italy
25/11/21 @ 4:00pm
Meaning and awareness
Upon hearing a word, we recollect, both implicitly or explictly, a big load of very diverse information -- a chair might reactivate childhood memories of granny's home, trigger brain circuits for patterned vision, prime the associated word ''table'' and spur the proprioceptive information connected with the sitting position. How does this information compose into a nicely coherent whole? What aspects remain under the surface of our awareness and what information requires instead conscious access to get activated? We will address this question through computational evidence and experimental data across different populations (e.g., sighted vs. blind). These findings point to a theory of (word) meaning where multiple sources of information co-exist (contra both purely embodied and purely symbolic approaches) and possibly characterise neural processing with different spatio-temporal profiles.
Visiting Professors
Susan Bookheimer
UCLA
Clinical neuropsychologist with a broad interest in the study of human cognition in relation to brain structure, function, and pathology. Her experimental expertise includes structural and functional MRI and intraoperative electrocortical stimulation mapping, as well as classical neuropsychological approaches.
Jack
Van Horn
University of Virginia
Author, researcher, lecturer on the human brain, its structure and function, and the role of information technology in sharing data for use in understanding fundamental neurological processes in health and disease.
Andrea
Mechelli
King's College London
In 2004 he joined the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London. His research Interests: Integration of machine learning and neuroimaging to develop diagnostic and prognostic models of psychosis; Development and validation of novel clinical tools for improving detection and treatment of psychosis; Use of smartphone technologies to investigate the impact of the built and social environment on mental health in real time (see urbanmind.info).
Corrado
Sinigaglia
Università degli Studi di Milano
Professor of Philosophy of Science at University of Milan since 2001. Before that he studied at the Husserl-Archives of Leuven (1992-1993), at the Ecole Normale Superiéure of Paris (1994), and at the University of Genova (1995-1999), where he obtained my PhD in Philosophy of Science. Fields of research: Cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. He is currently working on the role of motor processes and representations in joint action.
Past Visiting Professors
Russ Poldrack
Stanford University
Professor of Psychology and director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience. His research uses brain imaging to understand how we learn and make decisions and how we exert self-control. Some projects he developed are Cognitive Atlas and OpenfMRI.
Leah Krubitzer
University of California, Davis
American neuroscientist, Professor of Psychology and head of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobiology. Her research interests center on how complex brains in mammals (e.g., humans) evolve from simpler forms.
Past Seminars
Pieter Roelfsma
Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
James Haxby
Dartmouth College
Jody Culham
Western University
Hans Op de Beeck
KU Leuven
Michael Hanke
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Maria Ida Gobbini
Dartmouth College
Takao Hensch
Harvard University
Michela Fagiolini
Boston Children's Hospital
Robert Riener
ETH Zürich
Thomas Andrillon
Monash University