The present article has as its purpose to analyze the “spectacle” (ὄψις), from the conceptions developed in the Poetics of Aristotle, as a fundamental part in the tragic conception of Sophocles, in the work Oedipus Tyrannus. The analysis focused on the exodus of the play to demonstrate how aspects of theatrical representation are present in the tragic text.

Predictive processing is an ambitious neurocomputational framework, offering an unified explanation of all cognitive processes in terms of a single computational operation, namely prediction error minimization. Whilst this ambitious unificatory claim has been thoroughly analyzed, less attention has been paid to what predictive processing entails for structure–function mappings in cognitive neuroscience. We argue that, taken at face value, predictive processing entails an all-to-one structure–function mapping, wherein each individual neural structure is assigned the same function, namely minimizing prediction error. Such a (...) structure–function mapping, we show, is highly problematic. For, barring few, rare occasions, such a structure–function mapping fails to play the predictive, explanatory and heuristic roles structure–function mappings are expected to play in cognitive neuroscience. Worse still, it offers a picture of the brain that we know is wrong. For, it depicts the brain as an equipotential organ; an organ wherein structural differences do not correspond to any appreciable functional difference, and wherein each component can substitute for any other component without causing any loss or degradation of functionality. Somewhat ironically, the very neuroscientific roots of predictive processing motivate a form of skepticism concerning the framework’s most ambitious unificatory claims. Do these problems force us to abandon predictive processing? Not necessarily. For, once the assumption that all cognition can be accounted for exclusively in terms of prediction error minimization is relaxed, the problems we diagnosed lose their bite. (shrink)

The representation-hungry challenge is a popular challenge leveled against anti-representational approaches to the mind sciences. It contends that any general anti-representationalist conclusion is presently premature, as anti-representationalists have not yet offered a non-representational account of representation-hungry cognition; that is, cognition aimed at absent or abstract targets. Anti-representationalist tried to face this challenge in a number of different ways, but these attempts failed to convince representationalists. Hence, the need for an alternative way to handle the challenge. Here, I provide such an (...) alternative: rather than facing the representation-hungry challenge, I will try to defuse it, showing that it does arise in any meaningful form. I’ll do so by arguing that the challenge hinges on a presupposition that is factually false, and so that the challenge fails to arise. Additionally, I will argue that even if the challenge were to arise, it won’t be a serious challenge to anti-representationalism. For, given certain, widespread representationalists assumptions, must concede that anti-representationalists have already met the challenge, and that no additional explanatory work is required on their part. (shrink)

According to Gadamer’s hermeneutical “principle of the history of effect (Wirkungsgeschichte),” in order to understand Parmenides’ thought, it is necessary to examine not only the traces left by the historical impact of his poem, but also the unrealized possibilities of development that did not influence the subsequent history of philosophical thought. Gadamer himself explored one of these unexplored “lines of effects” when he revisited the poem during a conference dedicated to Parmenides held in Velia in 1988. He did so by (...) analyzing the role and function of the “nameless goddess.” This study examines how the German philosopher developed this “line of effects.”. (shrink)

In the last few decades, there has been a resurgence of monistic theories of consciousness. Among the most notable ones receiving renewed attention are panpsychism, cosmopsychism, dual-aspect monism, and some variants of idealism. This article argues that while each of these frameworks accounts for some aspects of the relationship between consciousness and reality, they can be integrated into a perspective that can naturally accommodate and extend them to a broader ontology. The philosophical approach termed ‘integral monism’ extends these to a (...) theory of universal consciousness based on a monistic, panentheistic, teleological, spiritual evolutionary emergentist metaphysical cosmology stemming from a multi-dimensional and trans-rational ontology of universal planes of existence. An ontology inspired by Sri Aurobindo's integral cosmology, adapted to the context of contemporary science and Western philosophy. The paper will also discuss how and why this extension has a greater explanatory power applicable to problems of contemporary natural philosophy and science, in particular to evolutionary biology and consciousness studies. Nonetheless, this philosophical manifesto does not present itself as a definitive theoretical framework; rather, it is offered as a working hypothesis and preliminary guiding principle that could provide a broader platform for reconciling science and metaphysics, allowing us to explore where it may lead. (shrink)

Sometimes, we act in concert with others, as when we go for a walk together, or when two mathematicians try to prove a difficult theorem with each other. An interesting question is what distinguishes the actions of individuals that together constitute some joint activity from those that amount to a mere aggregation of individual behaviours. It is common for philosophers to appeal to collective intentionality to explain such instances of shared agency. This framework generalizes the approach traditionally used to explain (...) individual action: a behaviour is an action just in case it causally follows from the relevant intention. Contemporary philosophers of action, as well as cognitive psychologists, however, have criticised this way of explaining individual actions, favouring instead an approach that puts “control” or “guidance” as the discerning factor: a behaviour is an action just in case the agent controls it, or just in case it is guided by the agent. In this paper, I argue that we should include talk of guidance even in cases of joint action. I first show that problems of deviant causation arise also in cases of joint action, and that therefore guidance is required to face this issue. Then, I show what a “capacity to jointly guide” amounts to for an individual in a group and how joint guidance relates to individual guidance. Joint guidance is actually constituted by task co-representation and the sense of being jointly committed. I argue that an approach that favours joint guidance over collective intentions eschews a lot of metaphysical problems about collective mentality and group subjects, and it is thus more explanatorily fruitful. (shrink)

When we perceive, there is something we perceive. When we think, there is something we think of. When we dream, something is dreamt. These seem all platitudes: obvious and unproblematic truths. And, given that the things perceived, thought of, or dreamed are what philosophers call the mental contents of our states, few things should seem as obvious and unproblematic as the existence of mental contents. And yet, I shall here argue that, when closely examined, mental contents appear to be illusions. (...) Just like the proverbial sawn-in-half assistant on the magician stage, they merely appear to exist, without actually existing. To substantiate this view I will first fix the reference of “mental content” and “illusion” in an innocent, theory neutral manner - that is, by relying on paradigmatic positive and negative examples of them (Sects. 2 and 3). I will also show that such paradigmatic examples allow us to extract a list of features that such examples allow us to identify features that paradigmatically identify contents and illusions as such, enabling us to recognize them. With these features at hand, I will thus argue that mental contents bear all the features that paradigmatically identify illusions. Otherwise put, I will argue that mental contents are anomalous, causally insulated, systematic, persistent and bound to a single mode of access in the same way paradigmatic examples of illusions are (Sect. 4). Having argued for my main claim, I will defend it from a couple of intuitive objections; namely that it is too silly to be taken seriously, given that mental content is given in a way that does not permit to seriously doubt of its existence (Sect. 5), and that my claim is incoherent (Sect. 6). I’ll show that, intuitive as they are, the objections are not compelling, and indeed they can be easily answered. Lastly, I will conclude the paper sketching the possible developments of an illusionistic view of content (Sect. 7). (shrink)

According to the modal account, risk is a function of modal closeness. A puzzling consequence of this account is that all truths are maximally risky. I defend this puzzling claim against several objections found in the literature, by drawing connections between axiom T for safety and risk and between counterfactual reasoning and risk. I conclude by briefly explaining why we find the conclusion puzzling and by advocating for a pluralist notion of risk where modal risk is a legitimate notion alongside (...) the probabilistic one. (shrink)

This article explores Adorno’s reflections on animality as a central motif in his critique of Enlightenment. Far from being a mere figure of otherness, animality appears in Adorno’s work as a repressed dimension of spirit that continuously resurfaces, exposing the limits of human self-understanding. Through a critical reconstruction of Adorno’s dialectic of spirit and nature, the article shows how the repression of animal resemblance shapes philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Particular attention is given to art and music as privileged spaces in (...) which the memory of nature and the likeness to animals are preserved, offering a fragile image of reconciliation and a utopian anticipation of non-dominating life. (shrink)

This paper explores significant shifts in Kant’s moral thought during the years 1762-1763, focusing on the transition from an analytic to an aesthetic approach to morality. Through an examination of "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime" and "Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality", the study highlights Kant’s evolving methodology in understanding moral principles. Departing from the analytic emphasis on cognitive and conceptual clarity, Kant embraces an aesthetic perspective that prioritizes feeling as (...) a means of accessing universal moral obligations. The paper investigates the challenges of applying analytic methods to morality, including the problem of particularised duties and the tension between justice and emotional impulses such as sympathy and complaisance. By analysing Kant’s reflections on the sublime and the beautiful, the paper elucidates how Kant’s aesthetic turn provides a resolution to the limitations of his earlier analytic framework. (shrink)

This article analyses the role of compassion in the two major works of Fanny de Beauharnais (1737–1813). A writer who has been almost completely overlooked by critics until recently, she offers a distinctly feminine interpretation of eighteenth-century thought, closely associated with the social and intellectual world of the literary salons. The two texts under study, published in 1776 and 1811 respectively, are the long philosophical tale Volsidor et Zulménie, conte pour rire, moral si l’on veut, et philosophique en cas de (...) besoin and La Marmotte philosophe ou la Philosophie en domino. The article aims to demonstrate how the theme of compassion, which played a central role in eighteenth-century philosophical debates, enabled Fanny de Beauharnais to position herself in relation to her philosophical role model, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and in response to the ‘egalitarian’ and ‘differentialist’ currents that dominated discussions of gender relations in late eighteenth-century France. (shrink)

With few exceptions, biological research dealing with stochasticity in molecular and cellular biology has focused on transcriptional processes (e.g., Elowitz et al. 2002; Lipniacki et al. 2006). Consequently, philosophical analyses have also centered on its role in transcription (e.g., Casali and Merlin 2020). Nonetheless, recent empirical evidence clearly shows that stochasticity is also pervasive in translation (e.g., Boersma et al. 2019). Focusing on time and a non-canonical case of translation (i.e., standard vs. alternative start codon selection), this paper aims to (...) disentangle a way in which stochasticity can intervene in models of this intracellular process. Having provided a definition of what we mean by stochasticity, first, we introduce two models of time in order to show where and how stochasticity can make a difference in the timing of translation processes. Second, we show how this difference can be biologically relevant for cell physiology. We conclude that, from an explanatory point of view, it is thus worth dissecting stochasticity when studying translation, gene expression and, more generally, biological processes at the molecular level. (shrink)

This short paper focuses on understanding moral dilemmas, Artificial Moral Advisors, and their possible roles in ethical decision-making. After a brief analysis of the philosophical debate around dilemmas, we propose three different classes of dilemmas. We then discuss how AI-based advisors could be used to enhance human ethical decision-making, with a particular focus on three possible AI skills (identifying, presenting and settling dilemmas), as well as on their role as ethical experts. The resulting proposal opens up to new possible uses (...) of AI moral advisors, and to the help they might offer in difficult decisions. (shrink)

Jack Spencer has recently argued that somebody might be able to do the impossible. In response, Anthony Nguyen has argued against Spencer’s arguments. In this pa per, I do not argue against Spencer’s arguments. Instead, I argue directly against Spencer’s thesis. In the first part of my paper, I develop an argument that suggests that it is implausible that somebody is able to do the impossible (because somebody who is able to do the impossible would be able to do something (...) that would have incredible consequences). In the second part of my paper, I develop an argument that suggests that it is impossible that somebody is able to do the impossible (because somebody who is able to do the impossible would have inconsistent obligations). In the third part of my paper, I discuss and reject three objections to my arguments. I conclude that there are good reasons to believe that it is impossible that somebody is able to do the impossible. (shrink)

This chapter intends to offer a theory of empty names that is consistent with the doctrine of direct reference and respects the intuition that sentences such as _Vulcan does not exist, Le Verrier imagined Vulcan, and Le Verrier believed that Vulcan orbited between Mercury and the sun_, express propositions to which the name Vulcan makes its contribution and which are either true or false. The theory has recourse to a notion of structured propositions that are quite unlike singular propositions, but (...) it still assumes that all proper names, empty or otherwise, have no descriptive content that is semantically relevant. The new-style propositions are language-bound. Thus, the theory reminds us of sententialism–i.e. the theory that the proper objects of propositional attitudes are sentences–but is not vulnerable to the same objections. It is argued that the new-style propositions fare better than the gappy ones in accounting for the semantics of empty names and, more generally, of attitude ascriptions. (shrink)

We are already living in the apocalypse. Wars, nuclear threats, and environmental and humanitarian crises shape our present, with the Doomsday Clock now only 85 seconds from midnight. As Webley writes, “the apocalyptic mood has returned to haunt us. [...] It’s already here, if we choose to look; we can see it clearly” (2020, pp. 270-271). Among these threats, global warming and its resulting ecological disasters appear both imminent and inevitable. In response, dystopian fiction has gained traction across popular culture, (...) resonating with an audience that senses its proximity to collapse. Unlike utopias, which suggest an ideal but unrealizable world, dystopias feel disturbingly plausible. As Muzzioli notes, “it is not futile or trivial: we immediately understand that it concerns us closely” (2021, p. 26). This cultural trend is reflected in video games, where titles like Fallout, Deus Ex, and The Division portray fragmented societies and post-apocalyptic futures. Among these, Horizon and The Last of Us stand out for both their commercial success and narrative depth. In Horizon, players explore a 31st-century world where civilization has collapsed and been artificially reborn, marked by giant machine-creatures. The Last of Us presents a darker vision: a world devastated by a fungal infection, where humanity clings to survival. Both games engage directly with environmental discourse, offering a critique of contemporary society and a warning about ecological catastrophe. This essay explores Horizon and The Last of Us as reflections on societal collapse and the consequences of climate change, analysing their game worlds, protagonists, and antagonists within the framework of dystopian storytelling. (shrink)

From LLM-based artificial friends to social robots, an increasing number of artificial agents are explicitly designed to interact with us in an emotionally salient way. The notion of emotional transparency has recently been proposed to describe the mechanisms behind users’ emotional involvement with such systems. However, the details and theoretical boundaries of emotional transparency have been left largely unspecified. This article provides an in-depth analysis of emotional transparency. First, emotional transparency is characterized as a form of transparency in use and (...) situated in the current theoretical landscape of varieties of transparency in the philosophy of mind and technology. Then, the drivers of emotional transparency are investigated, focusing on the features of artificial systems, users, and context of use. Finally, the epistemic state of users interacting with emotionally transparent artificial agents is analyzed, focusing on the apparent paradox by which users behave as if such agents had emotions even if they are perfectly aware that this is not the case. (shrink)

The article proposes a theory of what it calls ‘emersivity’, or the permanence of fictional characters in readers’ lives once they have finished reading books. Reflecting on empirical data from a study of four hundred readers of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the article provides a model and a theoretical framework to account for readers’ reporting how fictional characters “stay with them” after readerly immersion (i.e., “experiential crossing”). To date, cognitive literary theories of immersion have focused exclusively on the other (...) direction of transit: namely, how our real past experiences can sustain or enhance our experience of a literary narrative. By contrast, how fictional elements from a storyworld can surface or transmigrate into real-­life cognition has been basically ignored. The emersivity of fictional characters is intriguing and complex because it raises important issues regarding the possibility of entertaining in the real world intersubjective relations with non-­ actual beings, or what the article calls phantasmal intersubjectivity. The article concludes by claiming that the emersivity of literary characters can provide further empirical and theoretical ground to support claims about the impact of literary narratives in everyday life. It also argues for the relevance of emersivity to the broader study of permeability between imaginative and real worlds in human consciousness. (shrink)

This article develops a fictionality-based approach to artificial intelligence, proposing that human–AI interaction unfolds through the dynamics of character engagement. Drawing on narrative theory, cognitive science, and AI studies, it examines large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and LAURA(modeled on Laura Palmer) as fictional objects of relation—emergent agents whose apparent minds arise through interpretive stances, narrative framing, and phenomenological opacity. Integrating Dennett's notions of real patternsand intentional stancewith theories of characterization and fictionality, it identifies four illusions—of independent agency, independent (...) identity, codependency, and independent poetics—through which users perform mind-building and world-probing exchanges with AI. Distinguishing between designedand emergent fictionality, and between AI immersivityand emersivity, the article shows how linguistic patterning and cognitive projection together sustain real yet imagined forms of intersubjectivity. While such patterned engagements enable genuine cognitive and creative extensions, they also expose the ethical perils of counterfeit people. Fictionality, however, offers a training ground for double exposure—the capacity to navigate what is both real and fictive at once. The article concludes by proposing a view of human–AI interactions as introspection by computation: AI as a technology that extends self-knowledge through the externalization of mind. (shrink)

Come possiamo comprendere i fallimenti delle azioni collettive di fronte ai super-wicked problem come il cambiamento climatico e la disinformazione online? A partire da questa domanda, il libro esplora le architetture concettuali dei beni sociali, mettendo in luce i limiti delle interpretazioni che si basano principalmente sulle teorie economiche dei beni pubblici. Adottando un approccio di ontologia sociale applicata, il volume sviluppa due contributi teorici principali. In primo luogo, argomenta l’esistenza di beni collettivi ontologicamente irriducibili a meri vantaggi individuali e (...) dipendenti da specifici tipi di cooperazione. In secondo luogo, viene proposta una tassonomia organica dei beni individuali, gruppali e collettivi che identifica interdipendenze ontologiche tra di essi e introduce le nozioni di "bene connettivo" (come la fiducia) e "bene trasformativo" (per esempio, processi di sensemaking). Attraverso l'analisi di casi empirici – dalla gestione delle risorse comuni, ai contesti festivi, fino ai conflitti eco-sociali – viene infine valutata l’efficacia ermeneutica di questa classificazione. Il risultato è uno strumento teorico descrittivo flessibile, che si colloca oltre le dicotomie tra agency individuali e collettive, offrendo una cornice interdisciplinare per comprendere la genesi e il mantenimento del cambiamento sociale in contesti ad alta polarizzazione. -- How can we understand the failures of collective action in the face of "super-wicked problems," such as climate change and online disinformation? This volume explores the conceptual architecture of social goods, challenging the limitations of models based exclusively on economic theories of public goods. Adopting an applied social ontology perspective, this work develops two fundamental theoretical contributions. First, it argues for the existence of collective goods that are ontologically irreducible to individual benefits, the subsistence of which is contingent upon specific forms of cooperation. Second, the text proposes an organic taxonomy of goods—individual, group, and collective—that highlights their ontological interdependencies, introducing the original notions of "connective goods" (e.g., trust) and "transformative goods" (e.g., shared sensemaking processes). By integrating conceptual analysis with empirical case studies—ranging from the management of common resources to the dynamics of eco-social conflicts—the volume offers a flexible descriptive tool. The objective is to transcend the dichotomy between individual agency and social structure, providing an interdisciplinary framework for understanding the genesis and maintenance of social change in highly polarized contexts. (shrink)

This article promotes the idea that current cognitive models of mind wandering and inner speech can help us better understanding the phenomenological constituents of what Joyce calls “the mystery of the conscious” as simulated by modernist literary investigations. We will rework a model of perceptual decoupling (or how attention disengages from perception) and peripheral awareness (the interplay of focus and periphery in perception).On the other hand, we argue that modernist introspective explorations can challenge, correct and update cognitive models. We also (...) reflect on reading as a process reversing authorial introspective quests (presenting a model of reading as reversed introspection). (shrink)

This essay critically examines the implicit ontological assumptions underpinning modern scientific and cultural paradigms, particularly the Cartesian view of the human being as a rational, self-contained individual. Drawing from philosophy, cognitive science, and network theory, the author challenges this reductionist model, highlighting its influence on decision theory, the scientific method, and social institutions. Through historical analysis and contemporary examples, the article illustrates how this ontological framework has shaped not only analytical tools but also normative expectations of human behavior, often at (...) odds with empirical evidence from psychology and neuroscience. The essay proposes an alternative ontology that conceives the human being as a fundamentally relational and psychic entity—embedded in shared contexts, shaped by symbolic and affective spaces, and irreducible to purely rational mechanics. It advocates for the integration of this new ontology with network science, providing an analytical framework more consistent with the complex, context-dependent nature of human existence. Ultimately, the work calls for a re-foundation of the human and social sciences on more accurate ontological grounds, arguing that doing so is essential to understanding and addressing the pathologies of modernity. (shrink)

We reflect on some of the main worries about present-day developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and argue that they stem from an abstract, functional-informational understanding of intelligence. Focusing on the several dimensions of intelligence, we analyse five capacities (or powers) that constitute our intelligence and relate them to the current worrisome developments of AI. To conclude, we propose three corrective actions that may help us steer towards a more hopeful development of AI technologies.

This chapter proposes a cognitive and phenomenological account of personification as part of a broader human capacity for worlding perceived relations, which I term élanification. Drawing on recent frameworks in cognitive science, philosophical panpsychism, new materialism, and cognitive literary studies, the chapter contributes to current debates on human entanglement with the world by focusing on the dynamic interplay between individual agency and the ascription of vitality, mentality, and intentionality to real, imaginary, or fictional beings and objects. The chapter advances two (...) interlinked proposals. The first is what I call the personification as agency combustion (PAC) principle: rather than co-existing independently, individual agency and personification stand in an energetic, resource-based relationship, whereby personification consumes individual agency as its fuel. The more subjective agency diminishes, the more personifying dynamics are unleashed. The PAC principle is shown to operate across a spectrum of experiences — literary writing and reading, child play with imaginary companions, religious and mystical states (drawing on Simone Weil), and hallucinatory phenomena such as voice-hearing and felt presence — where the lessening of agentive control is inversely proportional to the autonomy and vividness of perceived personified agents. The second proposal is that this combustion of agency unfolds temporally, and that narrative plays a key scaffolding role in progressively layering mentality and intentionality into perceived agents. (shrink)

This article promotes the idea that current cognitive models of mind wandering and inner speech can help us better understanding the phenomenological constituents of what Joyce calls “the mystery of the conscious” as simulated by modernist literary investigations. We rework a model of perceptual decoupling (or how attention disengages from perception) and peripheral awareness (the interplay of focus and periphery in perception).On the other hand, we argue that modernist introspective explorations can challenge, correct and update cognitive models. We also reflect (...) on reading as a process reversing authorial introspective quests (presenting a model of reading as reversed introspection). (shrink)

This chapter proposes an interdisciplinary model for oneiric experientiality, which makes the case for dreams being immersive, and for immersive worlds. It compares dream and waking lives, and it provides conceptual, phenomenological, and ontological contrast by adding also our experience of fictional worlds to the mix (via the concepts of fictional immersion and ‘saturation’). The chapter argues that dreamworlds share some ontological and phenomenological properties with fictional worlds that are missing in our waking reality (or, vice versa, they lack properties (...) that the real world displays). To capture, explore, and partly explain dreams’ phenomenological and ontological specificity, the chapter proposes a new model for dreams’ immersive experiences that it calls ‘heightened narrowed immersivity’ (HNI). The chapter concludes by suggesting that HNI supports recent theories proposing an evolutionary value for dreams against the brain’s overfitting—a function that HNI extends to fictional indeterminacy too, thus linking dreamworlds and fictional storyworlds even more. (shrink)

This article applies the extended mind theory (EMT) together with Malafouris's notion of "material agency," to the long-standing problem of authorial intentions in literary narratives and creative writing. While "4E" cognitive approaches have recently entered narrative theory through the study of fictional minds and the cognition of narration, the extended mind framework has lagged behind. The article argues that EMT entails a substantial reconsideration of literary intentions, since it provides a distributed account of agency during the act of writing. -/- (...) Drawing on the principles of active externalism, parity, and continuous reciprocal causation, the essay shows that writing is not the offloading of pre-formed mental contents but a technology that actively transforms thought — what Richard Menary calls "thought in action." Words, writing tools, and the imaginative elements they elicit constitute a coupled cognitive system in which the author's mind is extended and supersized. Within this system, intentions are not unidirectionally "built into the doing" but are continuously modified by it, in a "dance of agency" between maker and material. This framework illuminates phenomena widely reported by writers, including verbal parsimony about creative processes, the "illusion of independent agency" of characters, and the porousness of authorial planning under the pressure of textual and imaginative feedback loops. -/- On this basis, the article proposes a revised model of narrative communication that triangulates author, text, and reader, distinguishes "coupled" from "uncoupled" intentions, and places the "cognitive gap" between maker and reader in inverse relation to a zone of "interpretive proximity." All literary authors, it suggests, should be understood as extended mind-workers, collapsing Scheibe's classic distinction between Kopfarbeiter and Papierarbeiter. The essay concludes by calling for a cross-disciplinary integration of narratology, manuscript genetics, and cognitively informed theories of aesthetic creativity - supersizing not only the mind but narrative theory itself. (shrink)

This chapter proposes interdisciplinary mind modeling as a new framework for coupling the cognitive sciences, narrative theory, and fictional creativity through shared modeling practices. It argues that both scientists and fiction writers construct purposeful, selective, and simplified representations of the mind—models that serve exploratory rather than purely descriptive functions. Drawing on philosophy of science debates between the “fiction view of models” and the “modeling view of fiction,” the chapter advances the latter, contending that fictional narratives operate as autonomous cognitive models. (...) Through examples from Beckett, Joyce, and Woolf, it shows how literary modeling of processes such as mind wandering and inner speech can both complement and challenge scientific accounts, generating what Bernini terms “exploratory cycles.” These cycles describe iterative loops in which conceptual, empirical, and fictional models inform and refine each other. The chapter also reinterprets structuralist narratology and cognitive literary theory as modeling traditions, linking creative and analytical modeling through shared epistemic drives. The conclusion outlines an ethos of co-modeling and operational empathy, calling for collaborative ecologies that sustain long-term interdisciplinary exchanges. As the theoretical and pragmatic manifesto of the Narrative and Cognition Lab, the chapter envisions mind research as a collective modeling enterprise across disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

According to neo-Russellianism, in a sentence such as John believes that Mont Blanc is 4000 m high, any other proper name co-referring with Mont Blanc can be substituted for it without any change in the proposition expressed. Prima facie, our practice of translation shows that this cannot be correct. We will then show that neo-Russellians have a way out of this problem, which consists in holding that actual translations are not a matter of semantics, but also make an attempt at (...) preserving some pragmatic features of the sentences to be translated. We then turn to translations that only preserve the semantic characteristics of the sentences and we argue that, although these translations are unable to show that neo-Russellianism is incorrect, they still show that it relies on some theses that seem to have no justification, apart from saving neo-Russellianism itself. (shrink)

Referring to Kant’s presence in Heidegger’s late ‘20s courses, this essay aims to investigate: 1. the productive and hidden consequences of these interpretations; 2. how Heidegger assumes the fundamental-question of Kant’s transcendental philosophy as a stand-point to the turn; 3. how the question of metaphysics – which Heidegger has always thought about and around which the Kehre moves – hinges on Kant. The Heideggerian reappraisal of Kantian critical-transcendental metaphysics leads to the question of foundation which reverts towards Aristotelian thought, and (...) the recovery or abandonment of the former jointly proceeds with the recovery or the abandonment of the latter. The question about metaphysics signifies a trail sign towards Kant, following which one can try to read Heidegger in a non-dogmatic way. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the relationship between Cornelius Castoriadis and Ancient Greece by focusing on the meaning of tradition and on the possibility to produce new philosophical and political reflections through it. I analyze the general features of his reading and I argue that his interest also develops in many texts and forms. I distinguish different dimensions of this relationship, which does not concern only the analysis of Greek society but also that of philosophers and their works. I clarify (...) that Castoriadis turns to ancient authors’ texts in order to philosophize through them and to develop his own thinking. (shrink)

Referring to Kant’s presence in Heidegger’s late ‘20s courses, this essay aims to investigate: 1. the productive and hidden consequences of these interpretations; 2. how Heidegger assumes the fundamental-question of Kant’s transcendental philosophy as a stand-point to the turn; 3. how the question of metaphysics – which Heidegger has always thought about and around which the Kehre moves – hinges on Kant. The Heideggerian reappraisal of Kantian critical-transcendental metaphysics leads to the question of foundation which reverts towards Aristotelian thought, and (...) the recovery or abandonment of the former jointly proceeds with the recovery or the abandonment of the latter. The question about metaphysics signifies a trail sign towards Kant, following which one can try to read Heidegger in a non-dogmatic way. (shrink)

Recent post-Cartesian accounts of cognition, notably Peter Carruthers's interpretive theory of self-knowledge, have argued that the felt transparency of our own thoughts, emotions and phenomenal experiences is illusory: access to inner states is sensorily mediated, inferential, and continuous with the mindreading machinery we deploy to interpret others. Yet these interpretive processes are notoriously hard to capture from the first-person stance or in standard experimental paradigms. This chapter argues that narrative fiction offers a privileged probe into this opacity of mind, and (...) uses the point to reassess Dorrit Cohn's "Exceptionality Thesis" - the claim that fiction is unique in granting transparent access to other minds. Post-classical cognitive narratologists such as David Herman and Alan Palmer have rightly challenged Cohn's Cartesian framing, showing that traces of "the whole mind" are distributed across visible actions and environments; but this externalist move risks downgrading the complexity of inner cognition and its fictional rendering. A central move of the chapter is therefore to disentangle the metaphor of transparency as it travels between cognitive science (self-transparency, phenomenal transparency) and narrative theory (the inside and outside transparencies of fictional minds), and to trace how these bear on one another. Through a reading of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, with particular attention to moods and emotions as "dynamic patterns," the chapter shows how fiction renders interpretive processes legible whether they remain below a character's awareness (unconscious opacity) or surface to it (conscious opacity). Fiction, it concludes, is exceptional not in offering transparent access to other minds but to their opacity - and, in so doing, can function as a tool for phenomenological and cognitive investigation. (shrink)

The article presents an interdisciplinary theory of what it will call “innerscapes”: artefactual representations of the mind as a spatially extended world. By bringing examples of innerscapes from literature (Kafka’s short story The Bridge), radio plays (Samuel Beckett’s Embers), and a creative documentary about auditory-verbal hallucinations (a voice-hearer’s short film, Adam + 1), it suggests that these spatial renditions of the mind are constructed by transforming the quasi-perceptual elements of inner experience into affording ecologies. In so doing, they enable an (...) enactive exploration of inner worlds as navigable environments. The resulting storyworlds display features that resemble the logic and ontology of dreams. Cognitive research on dreams and cartographical studies of the personal geographies of dreamscapes will thus inform the understanding of what innerscapes are, do and can do if used, as the essay argues they should be, as enhancing devices for what Jesse Butler has called ‘extended introspection” (2013: 95). (shrink)

This essay reads Marcel Proust's Swann's Way through the lens of extended and enactive theories of cognition, asking what happens to the self when it is conceived not as bounded and internal but as continuously coupled with environments, technologies and times. While distributed accounts of cognition have unleashed the mind from its Cartesian boundaries, they have said comparatively little about how an extended self persists across time. Proust, the essay argues, offers a powerful literary investigation of precisely this problem. His (...) protagonist's self is shown to be distributed along three axes: synchronically, in spatial couplings with rooms and objects; diachronically, in a history of structural couplings stabilised by habit; and heterocosmically, in a plurality of previously enacted and even imagined worlds that re-emerge whenever habit misfires. Drawing on Douglas Hofstadter's claim that analogy lies at the core of cognition, the essay contends that for Proust analogy is at once a cognitive process, an ontological condition, and a writing tool - the "miracle" through which the self is both held together and exposed to its own groundlessness. In conclusion, it suggests that Proust's distributed ontology can expand current cognitive accounts by foregrounding the role of analogy in selfhood and temporality. (shrink)

Despite the universal nature and significance of dreaming, the psychological sciences have had a historically uneasy relationship with dreams as a topic of study. The past three decades, however, have seen this wheel turn again, with advances in cognitive research provoking a reawakening of sorts. Such research is provoking new questions not just about dreaming but also its relevance for consciousness, the self, social cognition, and our relationship with reality. This introduction outlines how the volume aims at answering these questions (...) by grouping them under four key clusters (narrativity, permeability, immersivity, and reportability), in an interdisciplinary framework encompassing not just the psychological sciences but the full breadth of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It also contextualizes this volume within the history of an interdisciplinary project at Durham University, Threshold Worlds: Dreams, Narrative, and Liminal Cognition, which was an incubator for the ideas and directions that structure the volume. The project included the design and implementation of a novel interdisciplinary survey, which is reported for the first time in this volume, including reflections and analysis from several of the contributing authors. (shrink)

In a narrow macroeconomic sense, the euro has delivered a high degree of monetary stability over more than two decades, including through successive crises. The core vulnerability lies elsewhere: the euro remains insufficiently embedded in a corresponding political economy architecture. A monetary union normally rests on complementary regimes for fiscal capacity, capital markets, taxation, labour markets and crisis management. At the same time, the EU is entering an era of fragmented globalization in which currencies, payment infrastructures and value chains are (...) increasingly weaponised. This contribution argues that these two challenges should be addressed together through a societal security agenda. Building strategic autonomy in defence, energy, digital infrastructure and critical value chains requires financing, risk-sharing and credible euro-denominated financial depth. A functional “upward spiral” can link security, competitiveness and the green transition provided that institutional coupling and democratic legitimacy are treated as first-order constraints. (shrink)

My latest book is devoted to artificial intelligence. AI compels us to rethink some of the most fundamental questions in the history of philosophy: What does it mean to think, to understand, and to be intelligent? It also invites us to reconsider concepts such as creativity, rationality, and even the relationship between mind and body. As Galileo already recognized, engaging with machines can deepen our understanding of the nature of things. In this sense, artificial intelligence can be seen as a (...) form of “experimental epistemology.” . (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the conditions under which functional neuroimaging can contribute to the study of higher cognition. We begin by presenting two case studies—on moral and economic decision making—which will help us identify and examine one of the main ways in which neuroimaging can help advance the study of higher cognition. We agree with critics that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies seldom “refine” or “confirm” particular psychological hypotheses, or even provide details of the neural (...) implementation of cognitive functions. However, we suggest that neuroimaging can support psychology in a different way—namely, by selecting among competing hypotheses of the cognitive mechanisms underlying some mental function. One of the main ways in which neuroimaging can be used for hypothesis selection is via reverse inferences, which we here examine in detail. Despite frequent claims to the contrary, we argue that successful reverse inferences do not assume any strong or objectionable form of reductionism or functional locationism. Moreover, our discussion illustrates that reverse inferences can be successful at early stages of psychological theorizing, when models of the cognitive mechanisms are only partially developed. (shrink)

Commentary on Andy Clark's target article on predictive coding.

The philosophical model of constellation has been applied to contemporary musical form, but it reveals too many limitations when confronted with late Adorno’s model of informal music. Once the component of heteronomy, in hierarchical and centered structures of traditional music, has been overcome, it reemerges in the opposite type, the decentered, non-hierarchical or free structures, between the opposites of serialism and aleatoric music. Therefore, the model of informal music, as an "image of freedom", pursues the realization of a musical-aesthetic nominalism (...) that is subtracted from all forms of heteronomy, ancient or modern. To do this, it has to achieve the 'actually constructed totality' of the work, integrating in it the opposite of free subjectivity. (shrink)