- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Kant & neo-Kantianism, Neuroscience, History of Science, and 11 moreNeuropsychology, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Patricia Churchland, History of Philosophy, Giulio Tononi, History of Philosophy of Science, 18th Century Philosophy, Immanuel Kant, 17th Century & Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, and Materialismedit
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This interdisciplinary book ties the historical work of Descartes to his successors through current research and critical overviews on the neuroscience of consciousness, the brain, and cognition. This text is the first historical survey... more
This interdisciplinary book ties the historical work of Descartes to his successors through current research and critical overviews on the neuroscience of consciousness, the brain, and cognition. This text is the first historical survey to focus on the cohesions and discontinuities between historical and contemporary thinkers working in philosophy, physiology, psychology, and neuroscience.
The book introduces and analyzes early discussions of consciousness, such as: metaphysical alternatives to scientific explanations of consciousness and its connection to brain activity; claims about the possibilities and limits of neuroscientific accounts of consciousness and cognition; and the proposition of a “non-reductive naturalism” concerning phenomenal consciousness and rationality. The author assesses the contributions of early philosophers and scientists on brain, consciousness and cognition, among them: Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Newton, Haller, Kant, Fechner, Helmholtz and du Bois-Reymond. The work of these pioneers is related to that of modern researchers in physiology, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, including: Freud, Hilary Putnam, Herbert Feigl, Gerald Edelman, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers, amongst others. This text appeals to researchers and advanced students in the field.
The book introduces and analyzes early discussions of consciousness, such as: metaphysical alternatives to scientific explanations of consciousness and its connection to brain activity; claims about the possibilities and limits of neuroscientific accounts of consciousness and cognition; and the proposition of a “non-reductive naturalism” concerning phenomenal consciousness and rationality. The author assesses the contributions of early philosophers and scientists on brain, consciousness and cognition, among them: Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Newton, Haller, Kant, Fechner, Helmholtz and du Bois-Reymond. The work of these pioneers is related to that of modern researchers in physiology, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, including: Freud, Hilary Putnam, Herbert Feigl, Gerald Edelman, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers, amongst others. This text appeals to researchers and advanced students in the field.
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In this paper, I reconsider the notion of “physiological Kantianism”, applied to Hermann von Helmholtz, Friedrich Lange and other philosophers and scientists of the late nineteenth century. From Hermann Cohen to contemporary scholarship,... more
In this paper, I reconsider the notion of “physiological Kantianism”, applied to Hermann von Helmholtz, Friedrich Lange and other philosophers and scientists of the late nineteenth century. From Hermann Cohen to contemporary scholarship, this designation has been usually referred to a mistaken “naturalization” of Kant’s original theory of knowledge in terms of organic structures and dispositions. I argue that, on the contrary, although Helmholtz and Lange indeed endorsed a kind of biological innatism, thus modifying to some extent Kant’s original perspective, their views of the physiology of mental processes coexisted with the recognition of the irreducibility of a priori forms and principles to concepts and laws of physiology. I show that this coexistence of transcendental philosophy and physiology was an elaboration that can be traced back to a neglected late essay by Kant himself and hence should be understood as a genuine element of Kant’s legacy.
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In this paper I present an interpretation of du Bois-Reymond's thesis on the impossibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness and of its present importance. I reconsider du Bois-Reymond's speech "On the limits of natural... more
In this paper I present an interpretation of du Bois-Reymond's thesis on the impossibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness and of its present importance. I reconsider du Bois-Reymond's speech "On the limits of natural science" (1872) in the context of nineteenth-century German philosophy and neurophysiology, pointing out connections and analogies with contemporary arguments on the "hard problem of consciousness." Du Bois-Reymond's position turns out to be grounded on an epistemological argument and characterized by a metaphysical skepticism, motivated by the unfruitful speculative tendency of contemporary German philosophy and natural science. In the final sections, I show how contemporary research can benefit from a reconsideration of this position and its context of emergence, which is a good vantage point to trace open problems in consciousness studies back to their historical development.
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La filosofia e le scienze moderne si sono sviluppate a partire da uno stesso campo di indagine e continuano ad affrontare questioni comuni, ma oggi sono spesso considerate come due forme di conoscenza del tutto eterogenee. Il volume mette... more
La filosofia e le scienze moderne si sono sviluppate a partire da uno stesso campo di indagine e continuano ad affrontare questioni comuni, ma oggi sono spesso considerate come due forme di conoscenza del tutto eterogenee. Il volume mette in evidenza la loro omogeneità, esaminando i problemi e le teorie che più hanno sollecitato la riflessione filosofica sulle scienze del XX secolo. Il lavoro congiunto degli autori – storici, filosofi e scienziati – fa emergere una dimensione filosofica delle teorie scientifiche contemporanee, che risulta ancora oggi fondamentale per il loro sviluppo e la loro interpretazione. Il percorso del libro attraversa temi come l’applicazione della matematica alla natura e l’assiomatizzazione della scienza, teorie come la relatività generale e la meccanica quantistica, campi di ricerca come l’intelligenza artificiale e le scienze cognitive, giungendo fino a questioni aperte della fisica teorica e della neurobiologia di oggi. Con il primo volume, dedicato a vicende e autori che vanno dalla rivoluzione copernicana alla teoria dell’evoluzione, compone un itinerario complessivo attraverso la storia comune della filosofia e delle scienze moderne e contemporanee, che si caratterizza per l’interdisciplinarità e per l’attenzione allo stato attuale delle ricerche.
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La filosofia e le scienze moderne si radicano storicamente in uno stesso campo di indagine e continuano spesso ad affrontare questioni comuni. Il libro mette in evidenza questa omogeneità, esaminando teorie e problemi fondamentali della... more
La filosofia e le scienze moderne si radicano storicamente in uno stesso campo di indagine e continuano spesso ad affrontare questioni comuni. Il libro mette in evidenza questa omogeneità, esaminando teorie e problemi fondamentali della scienza moderna. Gli autori – storici, filosofi e scienziati – mostrano che la riflessione filosofica ha giocato un ruolo nella nascita e nello sviluppo della moderna conoscenza scientifica, e che ancora oggi è fondamentale per la sua comprensione. Il percorso critico descritto nei diversi capitoli affronta temi come la rivoluzione copernicana, la matematizzazione della natura, il meccanicismo, la diffusione della fisica newtoniana, il vitalismo nelle scienze della vita, la nascita del concetto di spazio e delle geometrie non euclidee, gli sviluppi della teoria dell’evoluzione. Al volume se ne affianca un secondo, dedicato a vicende e autori che vanno dall’inizio del XX secolo a oggi, per comporre un itinerario complessivo attraverso la storia comune della filosofia e delle scienze moderne, che si caratterizza per l’interdisciplinarità e per l’attenzione allo stato attuale delle ricerche.
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Questo libro affronta un tema centrale della cultura filosofica e letteraria moderna, l’intreccio tra identità personale e immaginario narrativo, individuandovi un’ambivalenza cruciale: la possibilità che l’immaginario, per un verso,... more
Questo libro affronta un tema centrale della cultura filosofica e letteraria moderna, l’intreccio tra identità personale e immaginario narrativo, individuandovi un’ambivalenza cruciale: la possibilità che l’immaginario, per un verso, serva da esperienza di rielaborazione della realtà e della vita individuale e, per l’altro, risulti luogo di occultamento della realtà e alienazione. La prima parte è dedicata all’analisi filosofica di questo problema attraverso diverse opere narrative che dal proprio interno l’hanno tematizzato: ne risulta una breve fenomenologia dell’immaginario, che distingue le modalità del rapporto tra la coscienza e la sua elaborazione immaginativa. L’esame di queste modalità muove a partire da un classico della letteratura fantastica, l’Alice di Lewis Carroll, e si snoda poi attraverso altre opere che, in modo implicito o esplicito, riprendono i temi della favola di Alice, tra cui romanzi di Flaubert, Proust, Nabokov, e film di Miyazaki, Kubrick, Lynch. La riflessione filosofica sviluppata attraverso questo percorso critico è ripresa nella seconda parte del libro, che ne traccia le premesse storiche (a partire dal XVIII secolo) e le coordinate concettuali.
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Traduzione, Introduzione, note e apparati a cura di P. Pecere
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This book presents a number of approaches to the question of the role of deductive and non-deductive (inductive, analogical, etc.) reasoning in mathematics and the natural sciences.
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The neurological explanation of consciousness has become in the last decades a widespread field of research among neurobiologists and philosophers of mind. The development of experimental models of consciousness involves a parallel search... more
The neurological explanation of consciousness has become in the last decades a widespread field of research among neurobiologists and philosophers of mind. The development of experimental models of consciousness involves a parallel search for a suitable ontological background. Although most researchers share anti-dualistic and naturalistic ideas, there are controversial claims about the ontological interpretation of phenomenological data. After sketching some historical premises of this issue, the paper focuses on two case studies: Dennett’s “multi-draft” model of consciousness, and Edelman’s theory of consciousness, included in his “theory of the selection of neuronal groups”. Edelman’s theory turns out to provide a better solution to the open issues of contemporary research, since it avoids speculative hypotheses and dismissive attitudes, while leaving room for experimental and conceptual developments in a classical, “Newtonian” methodological style.
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ArgumentIn this paper I present an interpretation of du Bois-Reymond’s thesis on the impossibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness and of its present importance. I reconsider du Bois-Reymond’s speech “On the limits of natural... more
ArgumentIn this paper I present an interpretation of du Bois-Reymond’s thesis on the impossibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness and of its present importance. I reconsider du Bois-Reymond’s speech “On the limits of natural science” (1872) in the context of nineteenth-century German philosophy and neurophysiology, pointing out connections and analogies with contemporary arguments on the “hard problem of consciousness.” Du Bois-Reymond’s position turns out to be grounded on an epistemological argument and characterized by a metaphysical skepticism, motivated by the unfruitful speculative tendency of contemporary German philosophy and natural science. In the final sections, I show how contemporary research can benefit from a reconsideration of this position and its context of emergence, which is a good vantage point to trace open problems in consciousness studies back to their historical development.
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In this article, I argue that the interpretation of Kant's a priori in Marburg neo-Kantianism involved a historiographical problem concerning the Platonic interpretation of the history of exact sciences. According to Hermann Cohen,... more
In this article, I argue that the interpretation of Kant's a priori in Marburg neo-Kantianism involved a historiographical problem concerning the Platonic interpretation of the history of exact sciences. According to Hermann Cohen, the history of modern science supports the philosophical view initiated by Plato and revived by Kant that ‘the diversity of things has to be dissolved in differences of ideas’ and thus points to the “victory of idealism” over empiricism and materialism. I first examine how Cohen and Paul Natorp tried to confirm this epistemological thesis in their historical research on Plato and modern physics. Then I focus on Cassirer's work, which provides the most extensive realization of this historiographical programme and, I submit, clearly shows the problematic gap between the ‘Platonic’ epistemology of the Marburg school and the historical reality of physics from Galileo to the early twentieth century.
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Questo libro affronta un tema centrale della cultura filosofica e letteraria moderna, l’intreccio tra identità personale e immaginario narrativo, individuandovi un’ambivalenza cruciale: la possibilità che l’immaginario, per un verso,... more
Questo libro affronta un tema centrale della cultura filosofica e letteraria moderna, l’intreccio tra identità personale e immaginario narrativo, individuandovi un’ambivalenza cruciale: la possibilità che l’immaginario, per un verso, serva da esperienza di rielaborazione della realtà e della vita individuale e, per l’altro, risulti luogo di occultamento della realtà e alienazione. La prima parte è dedicata all’analisi filosofica di questo problema attraverso diverse opere narrative che dal proprio interno l’hanno tematizzato: ne risulta una breve fenomenologia dell’immaginario, che distingue le modalità del rapporto tra la coscienza e la sua elaborazione immaginativa. L’esame di queste modalità muove a partire da un classico della letteratura fantastica, l’Alice di Lewis Carroll, e si snoda poi attraverso altre opere che, in modo implicito o esplicito, riprendono i temi della favola di Alice, tra cui romanzi di Flaubert, Proust, Nabokov, e film di Miyazaki, Kubrick, Lynch. La riflessione filosofica sviluppata attraverso questo percorso critico è ripresa nella seconda parte del libro, che ne traccia le premesse storiche (a partire dal XVIII secolo) e le coordinate concettuali.
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In this chapter I discuss the impact of mechanistic science on the theory of the soul in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, focusing on Descartes. I point out that Descartes left a double legacy: a metaphysical legacy, centered on his... more
In this chapter I discuss the impact of mechanistic science on the theory of the soul in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, focusing on Descartes. I point out that Descartes left a double legacy: a metaphysical legacy, centered on his theory of the two substances, and a physiological legacy, centered on the mechanistic analysis of perception and voluntary movement. The unpublished Treatise on Man (L’homme) was the source of a rigorously mechanistic approach to mental activity, which would provide a model for later physiologists. I examine Descartes’ account of perception, memory and reflex motion, pointing out his objective to strip matter of sensibility in the light of the new physics and thus rule out alternative views of the soul. Then I consider Descartes’ arguments concerning the limits of physiology and the existence of the soul, showing how the investigation of cognition and its conditions played a major role for the development of these arguments. In the final section, I f...
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Kant and ‘Pragmatic’ Schematism. The «Material Idea» Between Plato and Aristotle · Kant’s philosophy is often animated by the aim of conciliating opposite positions. With regard to the opposition between the two classical options of the... more
Kant and ‘Pragmatic’ Schematism. The «Material Idea» Between Plato and Aristotle · Kant’s philosophy is often animated by the aim of conciliating opposite positions. With regard to the opposition between the two classical options of the history of metaphysics, namely Platonism and Aristotelism, he discusses the problem of the so-called « idea materialis » as a possible ‘bridge’ between material reality and immaterial knowledge. Kant ascribes the invention of « material ideas » to Descartes, but no occurrance of this expression can be found in the writings of the French thinker. On the contrary, it is Wolff that discusses « material ideas » in his psychological works. Moreover, an interesting occurrence of the expression « material idea » can be found in the architectural theory of Leonhard Christoph Sturm, where it refers to scale models. This may represent an interesting link to the Kantian theory of schematism. Rather than denoting a third level of gnoseological data – images besides senses and intellect – Schematism can indeed be interpreted as a pragmatic function and as method
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Introductory chapter to "Il libro della natura. Scienze e filosofia da Copernico a Darwin"
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Kant’s admission of a “gap” in the philosophical system of criticism, which his unpublished project of the “Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics” would have been meant to fill, has been the object of... more
Kant’s admission of a “gap” in the philosophical system of criticism, which his unpublished project of the “Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics” would have been meant to fill, has been the object of controversy among scholars. This article reconsiders the problem by connecting the manuscripts with the operation of “exhibition” of concepts, which already had a systematic role in the 1780s, concluding that the new project was intended to provide not a reform, but a necessary complement of previous works. In the final section Kant’s new awareness of this problem in the 1790s is connected to the contemporary reception of criticism (Garve, Reinhold, Maimon, Beck, Schulze, Tiedemann, Fichte). This context provides more evidence supporting the main argument of the article about the inner development of Kant’s thought.
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An analysis of Kant's arguments on the limits of the physiology of mind and its legacy in German physiology of mind of the XIXth Century
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Kant’s Construction of Nature is an extraordinarily thorough and stimulating reading of one of Kant’s most difficult and underestimated works, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MFNS) It also represents, as the author... more
Kant’s Construction of Nature is an extraordinarily thorough and stimulating reading of one of Kant’s most difficult and underestimated works, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MFNS) It also represents, as the author himself recognizes, the «culmination of an intellectual journey of more than thirty years» (p. ix). If one considers Friedman’s first book on this topic, Kant and the Exact Sciences (1992), followed by the English edition and translation of the MFNS (2004) and by a number of important articles, this book appears as the accomplishment of a double methodological objective. First, Friedman wants to consider Kant’s lifelong engagement with the natural science of his time as the «best way» to inquire into the relationship of Kant’s views to successive scientific developments and in particular to «our modern (Einsteinian) conception of space, time and motion» (p. xi), thus considering Kant’s philosophical understanding of natural science as the beginning of a «...
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ABSTRACT In this paper, I reconsider the notion of “physiological Kantianism”, applied to Hermann von Helmholtz, Friedrich Lange and other philosophers and scientists of the late nineteenth century. From Hermann Cohen to contemporary... more
ABSTRACT In this paper, I reconsider the notion of “physiological Kantianism”, applied to Hermann von Helmholtz, Friedrich Lange and other philosophers and scientists of the late nineteenth century. From Hermann Cohen to contemporary scholarship, this designation has been usually referred to a mistaken “naturalization” of Kant’s original theory of knowledge in terms of organic structures and dispositions. I argue that, on the contrary, although Helmholtz and Lange indeed endorsed a kind of biological innatism, thus modifying to some extent Kant’s original perspective, their views of the physiology of mental processes coexisted with the recognition of the irreducibility of a priori forms and principles to concepts and laws of physiology. I show that this coexistence of transcendental philosophy and physiology was an elaboration that can be traced back to a neglected late essay by Kant himself and hence should be understood as a genuine element of Kant’s legacy.
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The article examines different aspects of Kant’s Newtonianism, focusing on Kant’s attempt in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft to realize a new “pure part” of physics, complementary to Newton’s “mathematical... more
The article examines different aspects of Kant’s Newtonianism, focusing on Kant’s attempt in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft to realize a new “pure part” of physics, complementary to Newton’s “mathematical principles”. The first section regards the philosophical objectives of Kant’s engagement with Newtonian physics, highlighting the role of physics for the “exhibition” of metaphysical concepts and criticizing the view that Kant’s intention would have been to provide a “foundation” of Newton’s physics. The second section provides an example of Kant’s original reappraisal of Newton’s physics, focusing on the concepts of material substance and force. The third section shows how Newton’s thesis about the limited (but sufficient) knowledge of gravity represented for Kant the main example of a general limitation of philosophical knowledge.
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To give an account of intentionality in terms of the concepts and methods of natural science has been considered as a crucial step towards a naturalization of mental phenomena in general, and as such it has been pursued by a large number... more
To give an account of intentionality in terms of the concepts and methods of natural science has been considered as a crucial step towards a naturalization of mental phenomena in general, and as such it has been pursued by a large number of naturalist philosophers and cognitive scientists. Starting from the late 1960s the problem has been addressed in very different, reductionist (Dennett, Millikan: § 2) and antireductionist ways (e.g. Searle, Chalmers, Putnam: § 3). The development of these philosophical programs has benefited from the contemporary technical and theoretical progresses of neuroscience, and leading scientists such as Changeux, Edelman and Damasio have presented articulated proposals of naturalization of intentionality (§ 4). A common element of philosophical investigations turns out to be the reference to a still undeveloped neuroscientific theory. This reference belongs to the legacy of early XXth century anti-metaphysical “scientific philosophy”. In spite of this dominant philosophical a...
Research Interests: Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and 12 moreEpistemology, Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Phenomenology, Intentionality, Naturalism, Reductionism, Cognitive Sciences, Embodied and Enactive Cognition, History of Philosophy, Naturalization, and quaestio facti
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In this paper I present an interpretation of du Bois-Reymond’s the- sis on the impossibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness and of its present importance. I first argue that late 19th c. Germa- ny is the neglected context of... more
In this paper I present an interpretation of du Bois-Reymond’s the- sis on the impossibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness and of its present importance. I first argue that late 19th c. Germa- ny is the neglected context of emergence of what has been called by David Chalmers the «hard problem of consciousness», showing how many contemporary thought experiments and arguments findhere their first formulation. Then I examine du Bois-Reymond’s position, which turns out to be grounded on an epistemological argument and characterized by a metaphysical skepticism, motivated by the speculative tendency of German philosophy and natural science. In the final sections I show how the revival of metaphysics in contemporary research on consciousness can take advantage from a reconsideration of this position and its context of emergence.
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Introductory chapter to: "Il libro della natura. II. Scienze e filosofia da Einstein alle neuroscienze contemporanee"
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Introductory chapter to "Il libro della natura. Scienze e filosofia da Copernico a Darwin"
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An analysis of Kant's arguments on the limits of the physiology of mind and its legacy in German physiology of mind of the XIXth Century
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Review of C.T. Wolfe, Materialism. A Historico-Philosophical Introduction, Springer 2016, in "Rivista di Filosofia", Vol. CVII (3), December, 2016
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review of M. Friedman, Kant's Construction of Nature. A Reading of the "Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science" (2013)
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(French translation published in: C. Cherici, J.C. Dupont, C.T.Wolfe (eds.), Physique de l'esprit, Hermann, Paris 2018). Possibility and limits of the neurophysiology of mental functions from Kant to Helmholtz I. While the Kantian legacy... more
(French translation published in: C. Cherici, J.C. Dupont, C.T.Wolfe (eds.), Physique de l'esprit, Hermann, Paris 2018).
Possibility and limits of the neurophysiology of mental functions from Kant to Helmholtz I. While the Kantian legacy in the philosophy of exact sciences and biology of XIX th Century Germany has been widely explored, considerably less attention has been devoted to the case of neurophysiology. In this paper I will focus on the neglected role of Kantianism in the joint investigation of mental functions and their neural conditions. I will argue that Kant was the source of a distinctive approach to this problem in German physiology and philosophy, characterized by the recognition of the possibility of a detailed localization of mental activity and at the same time by a non-metaphysical, epistemological limitation of localization hypotheses.
Possibility and limits of the neurophysiology of mental functions from Kant to Helmholtz I. While the Kantian legacy in the philosophy of exact sciences and biology of XIX th Century Germany has been widely explored, considerably less attention has been devoted to the case of neurophysiology. In this paper I will focus on the neglected role of Kantianism in the joint investigation of mental functions and their neural conditions. I will argue that Kant was the source of a distinctive approach to this problem in German physiology and philosophy, characterized by the recognition of the possibility of a detailed localization of mental activity and at the same time by a non-metaphysical, epistemological limitation of localization hypotheses.