17 APhEx num 17, anno 2018

Questo articolo si propone di fornire una breve panoramica del problema della causazione mentale e delle soluzioni proposte attualmente. La causazione mentale risulta infatti uno dei più difficili enigmi della filosofia della mente. Nelle prime due sezioni, offriamo una descrizione del problema e del dibattito filosofico su di esso, e mostriamo come il problema della causazione mentale sia fondamentale nella filosofia della mente contemporanea. Nella terza sezione, ci concentriamo sui modelli più popolari di causazione mentale, ovvero i resoconti di Kim e Davidson, discutendo anche le obiezioni sollevate contro di essi. Nella sezione finale, prendiamo in considerazione alcune proposte recenti tese a risolvere il problema della causazione mentale, inclusa la teoria dei poteri mentali. Data la plausibilità logica e metafisica di quasi tutte queste diverse opzioni, la conclusione è che la causalità mentale rimanga un problema aperto e sia lungi dall'essere risolto.

Robert Brandom’s Normative inferentialism is the thesis that for something to have conceptual content is for it to stand in a certain position in a space of reasons or justifications and that, therefore, conceptual contents should be understood and expressed primarily in terms of inferential relations. Pietro Salis’ book Pratiche Discorsive Razionali offers an introduction to Brandom’s philosophy of language. Review is focused in particular on two issues. On the one hand, the way in which Salis discusses the relation between Brandom inferentialist approach and the traditional representational semantics. On the other hand the way in which Salis deals with the problem of semantic holism for Brandom’s proposal. Some difficulties are also highlighted in some of the author’s interpretational choices.

Edoardo Datteri's most recent book, Introduzione alla Scienza Cognitiva, is a quick but insightful journey around the theoretical foundations of cognitive science. Its tripartite structure (from ontology to epistemology, and then to methdology) allows the author to address some relevant issues such as the mind-brain problem from many perspectives. Important theories and controversies are nicely exposed, also thank to a few examples, and with a critical stance. All in all, even though its brevity makes it unsuitable as a stand-alone tool for teaching (it is nothing like a handbook), it can be used profitfully for many other purposes.

Issues about non-human animals are gaining an increasing attention in the public debate. Such kind of problems could not fail to concern moral philosophy and, more specifically, applied ethics. In recent decades, the need to include animals in the sphere of moral consideration has been specifically addressed by the philosophical analysis and a new area of research has arisen, i.e. “animal ethics”. Simone Pollo’s Umani e animali: questioni di etica is a contribution in this field of investigation and develops an original point of view with respect to the current philosophical debate. A first element of novelty can be found in the way the author takes into account the problem, since he does not care about ascribing to human beings a series of obligations towards animals, but he rather questions the position of animals in the moral life of human beings. Thus, in presenting the contents of the text, we will analyze in particular its theoretical framework and will discuss its main characteristics: (1) the anti-theoretical approach, (2) the reference to naturalism, and (3) the sentimentalist view. These points will offer the opportunity to point out a topic discussed by the author and which constitutes the background of his whole reflection, namely the notion of moral progress.

This paper aims at presenting critically one of the leading theories of consciousness in the contemporary philosophical and scientific debate, namely Integrated Information Theory (IIT). After a brief exposition of the theory's virtues, its formulation and its main implications will be addressed. Then, I shall focus on IIT's relation both with the "hard problem of consciousness" (Chalmers 1995), and with some forms of panpsychism, allegedly implied by the theory. In the conclusion, I shall consider problems, objections, and disagreements that IIT must tackle, offering an outline of the future philosophical and neuroscientific challenges that it will need to engage with.