Gualtiero Piccinini
Associate Professor
Philosophy Department
599 Lucas Hall (MC 73) •
Tel. 314-516-6160
piccininig AT umsl.edu
Updated: March 2010
My
CV
My
research. A brief description is below. A longer description is here.
Online
versions of some of my works.
I founded and administer the
premier 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 getting into
Ph.D. programs: 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
My research has been funded by
the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
Charles Babbage Institute, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the University of
Missouri Research Board, the University of Missouri – St. Louis, and the
Regione Sardegna.
My articles have been published
in Philosophers’ Imprint, 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, Minds and Machines,
and Metaphilosophy.
A Brief
Description of My Research
I’d like to understand how the mind works. Mainstream psychologists and neuroscientists say that the mind works by computing—that cognition involves a kind of computation. But different scientists disagree on which kind of computation cognition involves, and some even deny that cognition involves computation. To shed light on these debates and make progress, we need an account of what computation in physical systems is. So one of the things I’ve done is give an account of computation in physical systems.
The most important notion of computation is that of digital computation—what digital
computers do. According to my account,
which I call the mechanistic account, computing systems are mechanisms that
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.
But to make sense of all uses of the term “computation” in cognitive
science, we need a broader notion than that of digital computation. In this generic sense, computing systems are
mechanisms that have the function of manipulating medium-independent vehicles
in accordance with a general rule that applies to all vehicles and depends on
the inputs for its application. A
medium-independent vehicle is a vehicle defined simply in terms of differences
between different portions of the vehicles along a relevant dimension, and not
in terms of any of its more specific physical properties. Thus, medium-independent vehicles can be
implemented in different physical media.
Digits are one kind of medium-independent vehicle, but there are others
(e.g., continuous variables).
It’s safe to say that cognition involves computation in the generic sense. For one thing, cognition involves the processing of information, and the processing of information requires the processing of medium-independent vehicles to carry the information, because information is a medium-independent notion. But the real action is about which more specific kind of computation cognition involves. Here, the original computational theory of cognition hypothesizes that cognition involves digital computation. This seems to me implausible at least for most cognitive processes, for reasons having to do with how the brain works. By and large, neural processes do not resemble digital computations much. Based on what neuroscientists have found out, it seems more plausible that neural computations are sui generis—their own kind of computation.
If this is correct, we need
to rethink the relationship between psychological and neurological explanations
without appealing to the notion of digital 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 couple of papers arguing that the notion of concept may
need to be split into at least two different notions, each of which explains
different phenomena.
I am also interested in
consciousness. An important way to study
consciousness is through first-person reports, which have a controversial
status in science and philosophy. I have
argued in a series of papers that first-person reports, if handled carefully,
are a useful source of public scientific evidence, because they are the outcome
of a process of self-measurement on the part of the subjects.
For more on
my research, with links to papers, click here.
