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307Looking for the agent: An investigation into consciousness of action and self-consciousness in schizophrenic patientsCognition 65 (1): 71-86. 1997.The abilities to attribute an action to its proper agent and to understand its meaning when it is produced by someone else are basic aspects of human social communication. Several psychiatric syndromes, such as schizophrenia, seem to lead to a dysfunction of the awareness of one’s own action as well as of recognition of actions performed by other. Such syndromes offer a framework for studying the determinants of agency, the ability to correctly attribute actions to their veridical source. Thirty…Read more
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13Bolzano’s Analytic RevisitedThe Monist 64 (2): 214-230. 1981.What I propose is to reconsider the interpretation of Bolzano’s concept of analytic propositions which was offered thirty years ago by Bar-Hillel. The claim of Bar-Hillel was that, in a late addition to his book, The Theory of Science, Bolzano actually had been radically improving his concept of analyticity, thus creating some inconsistencies with the previous, uncorrected version. This allows us to equate the new Bolzanian definition of analytic with what was to be defined, a century later, as …Read more
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5This article summarizes how I came to deal with the subject matter of action, the main claims that I have defended, the prospects for future research, the interdisciplinary collaborations that are needed, and the obstacles to be surmounted.
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8This chapter discusses what is the specific difference of mental function, relative to the general concept of a biological function. It contrasts various approaches of this problem through evolutionary psychology, developmental system theory and neuroscientific growth theory models. It concludes that an holistic, dynamic approach to mental function suggests to reject the traditional division in mental faculties.
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47A critical review of G. Lynn Stephens & G. Graham's when self-consciousness breaks (review)Philosophical Psychology 15 (4). 2002.This book deals with the experience of externality, i.e. an experience, common in schizophrenia, present both in verbal hallucination and in thought insertion. The view defended is that thought insertion is a case of failed agency, experienced by the agent at the personal level as an intelligible thought with which she cannot identify. Such a case in which sense of agency and sense of subjectivity come apart reveals the existence of two dimensions in self-consciousness. Several difficulties of t…Read more
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26Intentionality, Consciousness and the System's PerspectiveIn Denis Fisette (ed.), Consciousness and Intentionality: Models and Modalities of Attribution, Springer. pp. 51--72. 1999.
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50Rationality and metacognition in non-human animalsIn Susan L. Hurley & Matthew Nudds (eds.), Rational Animals?, Oxford University Press. pp. 247--274. 2006.The project of understanding rationality in non-human animals faces a number of conceptual and methodological difficulties. The present chapter defends the view that it is counterproductive to rely on the human folk psychological idiom in animal cognition studies. Instead, it approaches the subject on the basis of dynamic- evolutionary considerations. Concepts from control theory can be used to frame the problem in the most general terms. The specific selective pressures exerted on agents endowe…Read more
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Kai Vogeley, Martin Kurthen, Peter Falkai, and Wolfgang Maier. Essential Functions of the HumanConsciousness and Cognition 8 270. 1999.
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274Perceiving IntentionsIn Johannes Roessler & Naomi Eilan (eds.), Agency and Self-Awareness: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology, Clarendon Press. 2003.This paper defends the view that knowledge about one's own intentions can be gained in part through perception, although not through introspection. The various kinds of misperception of one's intentions are discussed. The latter distinction is applied to the analysis of schizophrenic patients' delusion of control.
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60Can Nonhuman Primates Read Minds?Philosophical Topics 27 (1): 203-232. 1999.Granted that a given species is able to entertain beliefs and desires, i.e. to have (epistemic and motivational) internal states with semantically evaluable contents, one can raise the question of whether the species under investigation is, in addition, able to represent properties and events that are not only perceptual or physical, but mental, and use the latter to guide their actions, not only as reliable cues for achieving some output, but as mental cues (that is: whether it can 'read minds'…Read more
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104Overlooking metacognitive experienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (2): 158-159. 2009.Peter Carruthers correctly claims that metacognition in humans may involve self-directed interpretations (i.e., may use the conceptual interpretative resources of mindreading). He fails to show, however, that metacognition cannot rely exclusively on subjective experience. Focusing on self-directed mindreading can only bypass evolutionary considerations and obscure important functional differences
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |