Gualtiero Piccinini
Assistant Professor

Philosophy Department

University of Missouri – St. Louis

599 Lucas Hall (MC 73) • 1 University Blvd. • St. Louis, MO 63121-4400

Tel. 314-516-6160
piccininig AT umsl.edu

Updated: January 2008

My CV

My research. A brief description is below. A longer description is here.

Online versions of some of my works

I am the administrator of a group blog in the philosophy of mind, called Brains

Some Resources for Students on how to study, write papers, apply to graduate school, publish, and get a job in philosophy.

How my students did: my placement record.

My family

Bio

I work primarily in philosophy of mind, with an eye to psychology, neuroscience, and computer science. My main current interests include computational theories of mind, the relation between psychology and neuroscience, consciousness, and intentionality.

In 2003, I graduated from the department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Between 2003 and 2005, I was a James S. McDonnell Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis. Since 2005, I am a member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.

My articles have been published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophy of Science, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, Neural Networks, Synthese, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Minds and Machines.

A Brief Description of My Research

A central idea in philosophy of mind as well as in psychology and neuroscience is the computational theory of mind and brain, according to which mental capacities are explained by computations that are realized by neural processes (in the case of organisms studied by psychology and neuroscience). Disputes over the computational theory (whether it’s true, which version—“classical” or “connectionist—is true, why it’s true or why it’s false) have been waged for over sixty years, but there is still no consensus on how to resolve the disputes. A major goal of my work is to reformulate those disputes so that they can be resolved.

One of my projects is to clarify what it means to say that something is a computing mechanism. To that end, I am developing an account of computing mechanisms, the mechanistic account, which integrates conceptual resources from computability theory, computer design, and philosophy of science. According to the functional account, computing mechanisms have the function of generating output strings of digits from input strings of digits (and perhaps internal states), in accordance with a general rule that applies to all inputs and depends on the inputs for its application.

Once we know what it means to say that the mind is a computing mechanism, we can test this idea empirically. When we do so, I argue, we find a negative answer. Contemporary neuroscience explains mental capacities in terms of the processing of spike trains by neuronal ensembles. Although contemporary neuroscientists often call this process “neural computation,” this is not computation in the strict sense employed in computer science and computability theory. In this sense, current empirical evidence suggests that the mind is not a computing mechanism. (Note: notwithstanding some claims to the contrary, “neural computation” has also little to do with so called “analog computation.”)

If this is correct, we need to rethink the relationship between mental and neural processes without appealing to the notion of computation. This will require getting clear on the relationship between levels within a mechanistic explanation, something on which we can gain new insights from Carl Craver’s recent work. Those who defend the autonomy of mentalistic (including computational) explanations from neuroscience usually appeal to functional explanation. They argue that psychologists offer functional explanations, which are distinct from and independent of the mechanistic explanations offered by neuroscientists. I think this view is based on an inadequate notion of mechanistic explanation. I’m hoping to write a paper on how the relationship between functional and mechanistic explanation should be understood.

I am interested in intentionality. I have argued at length that contrary to the mainstream view in philosophy, the notion of computation is independent of (i.e., does not presuppose) the notion of representation. In thinking about intentionality, I think we need to pay more attention to neuroscience. A lot of neuroscience is relevant to explaining intentionality and yet is ignored or underappreciated by philosophers. I have some ideas about how to proceed here. As a preliminary step, I have written a paper (co-authored with Sam Scott) arguing that the notion of concept may need to be split into several different notions, each of which explains different phenomena.

I am also interested in consciousness. The main way to study consciousness is introspection, which has a controversial status in science and philosophy. I have argued in print that introspective reports, if handled carefully, are a useful source of public scientific evidence. I’m also working on a paper on conceivability arguments against physicalism about consciousness.

For more on my research, with links to papers, click here.