Qualia and the Problem of Consciousness

• Dott.ssa Sara Dellantonio - Università di Trento

Abstract

This colloquium will provide a sketch of the most important scientific and psychological theories of the 20th century. In this period, philosophy of science and, more specifically, logical empiricism specified a number of essential criteria which defined scientific enquiry, maintaining that a discipline could be considered scientific only if it met these criteria. Both behaviorism and cognitive psychology developed methods in line with these criteria. But to do so they had to ignore qualitative components of human experience in causal explanations of behavior and models of information processing. The classes will explore new perspectives on the mind -- for instance, simulation theories of mind -- which hypothesize that some of the most important human capacities rely on qualitative experience which is only accessible introspectively in the first person. If these new perspectives are correct, we need to allow that qualitative information must play a causal role in any theory of mind and therefore, we should revisit, at least in part, the criteria for scientificity in cognitive science.