Riccardo Manzotti

The debate as to the nature of free will focused on two options: either free willruns afoul of the natural order or it is somehow compatible withsome kind of complex and articulated causal process . Both alternatives are not satisfying for a series of well known reasons. Yet, such a discussion is based on a mechanistic view of the natural world assuming that natural phenomena are reducible to local phenomena. In this paper, I will briefly summarize the recent approaches in philosophy of mind and in the neurosciences. Eventually I will introduce and criticize what could be dubbed the “problem of the instantaneous choice” – namely the idea that a free choice has to take place instantaneously. On the contrary, I will consider whether free will could be an intrinsic capacity endorsed by natural phenomena when unfolding themselves into further phenomena. To recap: free will inside the natural order, then, rather than free will versus the natural order

It is customary to assume that agents receive information from the environment through their sensors. It is equally customary to assume that an agent is capable of information processing and thus of computation. These two assumptions may be misleading, particularly because so much basic theoretical work relies on the concepts of information and computation. In similarity with Dennett's intentional stance, I suggest that a lot of discussions in cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence is biased by a naïve notion of computation resulting from the adoption of a computational stance. As a case study, I will focus on David Chalmers' view of computation in cognitive agents. In particular, I will challenge the thesis of computational sufficiency. I will argue that computation is no more than the ascription of an abstract model to a series of states and dynamic transitions in a physical agent. As a result, computation is akin to center of masses and other epistemic shortcuts that are insufficient to be the underpinnings of a baffling-yet-physical phenomenon like consciousness.

What distinguishes a whole from an arbitrary sum of elements? I suggest a temporal and causal oriented approach. I defend two connected claims. The former is that existence is, by every means, coextensive with being the cause of a causal process. The latter is that a whole is the cause of a causal process with a joint effect. Thus, a whole is something that takes place in time. The approach endorses an unambiguous version of Restricted Composition that suits most commonsensical intuitions about wholes.

Throughout much of the modern period, the human mind has been regarded as a property of the brain and therefore something confined to the inside of the head—a view commonly known as ‘internalism’. But recent works in cognitive science, philosophy, and anthropology, as well as certain trends in the development of technology, suggest an emerging view of the mind as a process not confined to the brain but spread through the body and world—an outlook covered by a family of views labelled ‘externalism’. In this paper, we will suggest there is now sufficient momentum in favour of externalism of various kinds to mark a historical shift in the way the mind is understood. We dub this emerging externalist tendency the ‘New Mind’. Key properties of the New Mind will be summarised and some of its implications considered in areas such as art and culture, technology, and the science of consciousness