Riccardo Manzotti

IULM University, Milan, Italy

Summary -- Internalism vs. Externalism

Where is the mind? Internalism maintains that neural activity internal to the body is enough to produce consciousness. This does not entail that the factors such as environment, feedback, embodiment are not useful, but rather that they are only contingent causes. Why most neuroscientists embrace sinternalism? What are its limits?

Summary -- Varieties of Externalism

A possible alternative to internalism is externalism which holds that our mind depends either totally or partially to factors external to the subject's body. Yet there are several varieties of externalism based on the kind of mental content and also on whether what is external is either the content or the vehicles to get to that content.

Summary -- The Spread Mind

Is it possible to develop an externalism model of consciousness? The spread mind model aims at locating phenomenal experience in a network of causal processes partially external to the subject's body. The model is confrontend with both direct parception and cases of indirect perception such as dreaming and after images.

Resume

Riccardo Manzotti is Assistant Professor of Psychology at IULM University, Milan (Italy) since 2004. Previously he spent four years (1999-2004) as a research associate at LIRA-Lab, DIST, Department of Computer Science, Robotics, and Bioengineering. He got a degree in Philosophy (2004) and another in Electronic Engineering (1994). He also got a PhD in Robotics (2001), University of Genoa. Riccardo Manzotti is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at IULM University in Milan. His main interests are the nature of consciousness and the design and implementation of models of conscious agents. He is a lecturer in Psychology of Art, and Neuroscience of Perception. He published several papers on consciousness, externalism, and ontological issues as to the nature of phenomenal experience in a physical world. He edited a book on the topic of artificial consciousness.