Duccio Manetti
Ph.D student, (University of Florence)
Assistent of Prof. Alberto Peruzzi
Interests of research
- Philosophy of Mind/ Neurosciences
- Levels theory between Physics and Philosophy
- Neural foundations of conceptual systems and language
- The implications of Cognitive Science for Philosophy
- Theory of Science Communication
Curriculum
B.A. in Philosophy (2003), University of Florence (Master dissertation's title: «L’uomo incline al male: il pessimismo antropologico in William Golding, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes»).
B.A. in Theory of communications (2006), University of Florence ( Master dissertation's title: «L’uomo che non c’è: una ricognizione nella filosofia della mente contemporanea»)
Specialization school in Epistemology (2005/2006) - University of Florence (Title: Temi di epistemologia generale e applicata)
Actually Ph.D student Department of Philosophy University of Florence (2008)
Assistent of prof. Alberto Peruzzi University of Florence
Director of “Humana.Mente – Il pensario della Biblioteca Filosofica Fiorentina” (ISSN 1972-1293), magazine of philosophical studies, website: http://www.humana-mente.it
Teaching
Tutor/online (2006-2007-2008) Theorethical philosophy , Philosophy of language , Contemporary Aesthetic , University of Florence.
Main topics:
Theories of the mind
Theories of the mind (2)
Mind/body
Embodied mind
Meaning and mind.
Publications
- Il pessimismo antropologico e il concetto di male in Niccolò Machiavelli, on the florentine magazine of studies “La Fortezza”, Edizioni Polistampa, IL DIASPRO, Firenze, XIII, n. 1-2/2002 – XIV, n. 1-2/2003.
- “Lord of the Flies”, un romanzo filosofico. Il concetto del male in William Golding, on the national magazine AUT-AUT, Il Saggiatore, Milano, n° 326 Aprile-Giugno 2005.
Research project
The purpose of the research project I’m working at is to clarify some philosophical concepts linked to the study of the mind. The starting point is a very specific question: do mental causes exist?
This is known in philosophy of mind as the problem of mental causality. With my investigation, I want to analyze the concept of cause in light of the connection between the material level of the brain and the ‘immaterial’ level of cognitive functions.
I would like to focus my research on the study of the most recent ‘laboratory’ discoveries on the human mind and to devote part of my effort to the study of how cognitive systems vary as the physical reference conditions change, in order to elaborate on an ‘ontological levels theory’ applied to the mind.
The idea that I want to propound is that there is no such thing as free will, but that this concept should be reduced to a soft version of freedom, that we could call “free veto”. Free veto means that we certainly have some kind of freedom, but this freedom only exists as the possibility of a binary choice out of the menu that the brain gives us: we may either accept or deny the stimuli that arise from our body.
We have to reconsider the idea of freedom, as understood as the ability to activate and start actions or decisions. I believe that we somehow have a power of on/off on the plans that the brain makes for us: it organizes, ‘prepares’ and ‘shows’ us all the possible responses and we – at the conscious level – are the potential deactivators of these actions/decisions suggested by the brain.
The aim of the research project is to determine which notion of cause is the most reliable in respect to the connection between mind and brain, to understand how mental functions lift from inferior levels, and thus – once determined the type of interaction between the levels – to understand what degree of freedom the superior level retains.