Philosophy

Human brain is made of physical stuff and usually we do not believe that physical stuff has sensations, emotions, thoughts… and so on. Then, how is it possible that mind emerges from the physical brain? Perhaps the physical material of the brain is a special one? Or is it possible to imagine that mind is a different substance, which is not physical in itself?Sensations, emotions and thoughts are instances of states of the mind and the course is aimed at describing their properties, with particular reference to: a) the intentional properties, which make the mental states capable of being referred to something; b) the phenomenal properties, which allow the bearer of those mental states to make experience of them; c) causal properties, which make mental states capable of acting upon reality and make us causal agents.The main theoretical arguments in the philosophical debate, together with the main attempts to empirically investigate the problem will be described and discussed.

The course will provide basic notions about the cognitive processes and their biological substrates in order to allow the students to understand the contents of the course.

Title: Mind. A brief introduction Author: John Searle Editor: Oxford University Press, Inc. For the part of the course dealing primarily with the empirical study of cognitive processes, some papers (in English) published on international journals will be indicated

Attendance to the classes is to be considered important for the acquisition of the skills planned in the course. Then attendance to the course is highly recommended, albeit not compulsory.

The exam entails a written test, consisting of open questions concerning the topics discussed in the Course. The exam will take place in the classroom, in person. - GOAL OF THE TEST: Verifying student's understanding level related both to the part dedicated to philosophical debate over the nature of mind and to the part dedicated to the knowledge of the models of mental functioning from the standpoint of the Cognitive Sciences. - NUMBER AND TIME OF TESTS: There will be as many exams as exam sessions scheduled by the Master’s Degree Course - TYPE, DURATION, AND ADMINISTRATION: The exam is about the contents of the course program and will take place in the classroom, in person. It will be written and consists of open questions aimed at evaluating not merely the knowledge of the topics discussed, but especially if they have been effectively understood. Questions will then not be formulated in a way that requires of the student a mere description of theories or details, but they will verify student's ability to discuss the reasons and evidence at the basis of a certain theory, as well as his/her ability to create cross connections (detecting similarities and differences) among different theories.The test will last 60 minutes. - FINAL EVALUATION: To pass the exam it is necessary to get a total mark of at least 18/30.To get at least the minimum mark in the exam, the student must correctly answer at least half of the questions.Each answer will receive a score between 0 and 2: the more the student will be able to understand question's contents and accurately answer in the space available, the higher the score.In this test it will not be evaluated only answers' correctness; a formally wrong answer but that reveals student's skills at reasoning, or an answer imperfect from a linguistic point of view but that indicates the student has understood the meaning of the question will receive evaluations higher than 0.

The course will be carried out with lectures with the systematic support/aid of audio-visual technology.