Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience
A.Y. 2026/2027
Learning objectives
Students will gain in-depth knowledge and expertise in an ongoing debate at the intersection of philosophy of language and metaphysics.
Expected learning outcomes
Students will acquire the ability to:
- critically analyse arguments in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of cognitive neuroscience;
- discuss and compare different philosophical positions in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of cognitive neuroscience;
- reflect on complex and articulated philosophical arguments, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses;
- take their own position in a philosophical debate and to put forward arguments in support of it;
- communicate the results of their research effectively, also using multimedia techniques to represent information with possible applications in teaching;
- use relational, communicative and organisational skills also in highly complex contexts and in the management of group work;
- transmit the skills obtained also in non-specialist contexts;
- reflect on their own skills and evaluations;
- autonomously research the philosophical sources of a debate or a school of thought;
- independently investigate a philosophical position or theoretical thesis.
- critically analyse arguments in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of cognitive neuroscience;
- discuss and compare different philosophical positions in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of cognitive neuroscience;
- reflect on complex and articulated philosophical arguments, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses;
- take their own position in a philosophical debate and to put forward arguments in support of it;
- communicate the results of their research effectively, also using multimedia techniques to represent information with possible applications in teaching;
- use relational, communicative and organisational skills also in highly complex contexts and in the management of group work;
- transmit the skills obtained also in non-specialist contexts;
- reflect on their own skills and evaluations;
- autonomously research the philosophical sources of a debate or a school of thought;
- independently investigate a philosophical position or theoretical thesis.
Lesson period: Second semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course can be attended as a single course.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
Second semester
The lessons will be held face-to-face and also recorded and saved on Teams. The Teams' channel code will be available on the moodle page. The recordings of the lessons will remain available for the entire semester. Students wishing to participate in face-to-face lessons must refer to the following University provisions: https://www.unimi.it/en/study/bachelor-and-master-study/following-your-programme-study/teaching-activities-campus
Students wishing to participate in MSTeams lessons must refer to the following technical guides: https://www.unimi.it/en/study/student-services/technology-and-online-services/microsoft-office-365-education
To participate in the exam sessions, students must refer to the following provisions:
https://www.unimi.it/en/study/bachelor-and-master-study/following-your-programme-study/sitting-exams
Students wishing to participate in MSTeams lessons must refer to the following technical guides: https://www.unimi.it/en/study/student-services/technology-and-online-services/microsoft-office-365-education
To participate in the exam sessions, students must refer to the following provisions:
https://www.unimi.it/en/study/bachelor-and-master-study/following-your-programme-study/sitting-exams
Course syllabus
(WHY) DO COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY MATTER FOR EACH OTHER?
Many of the topics which philosophers have been grappling with for centuries — morality, agency, consciousness, reasoning, and many more — are also topics of central importance to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and other researchers across the cognitive sciences. What, if anything, do these different disciplinary perspectives have to offer each other? In this course, we we will discuss the philosophical underpinnings of cognitive neuroscience, and use detailed case studies to evaluate how philosophy and other disciplines with the cognitive sciences can work together and benefit each other.
We will begin by tracing the historical development of psychology and neuroscience leading up to the cognitive revolution and beyond, and then focus on three exemplary areas of interdisciplinary cooperation:
A) Action
What differentiates mere bodily movement from action? What are intentions and how do they relate to actions? How do reasoning and decision-making shape action?
B) Joint action
What distinguishes joint action from merely acting in parallel with others? What are shared intentions, and what role do they play in joint action? What role does commitment play in constituting or enabling joint action? Is joint action inherently normative, giving rise to obligations and entitlements, and how might this differ across cultures?
C) Moral psychology
What are the cognitive and neural processes that underpin our moral judgments and our moral intuitions? How do they differ across cultures? Are there two or more distinct moral systems? Could scientific discoveries undermine, or support, ethical principles?
The course is open to all students of the master course in Philosophical Sciences and to all students of other master courses of the University of Milan who are interested understanding an ubiquitous phenomenon such as joint action from a theoretical and empirical point of view.
Many of the topics which philosophers have been grappling with for centuries — morality, agency, consciousness, reasoning, and many more — are also topics of central importance to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and other researchers across the cognitive sciences. What, if anything, do these different disciplinary perspectives have to offer each other? In this course, we we will discuss the philosophical underpinnings of cognitive neuroscience, and use detailed case studies to evaluate how philosophy and other disciplines with the cognitive sciences can work together and benefit each other.
We will begin by tracing the historical development of psychology and neuroscience leading up to the cognitive revolution and beyond, and then focus on three exemplary areas of interdisciplinary cooperation:
A) Action
What differentiates mere bodily movement from action? What are intentions and how do they relate to actions? How do reasoning and decision-making shape action?
B) Joint action
What distinguishes joint action from merely acting in parallel with others? What are shared intentions, and what role do they play in joint action? What role does commitment play in constituting or enabling joint action? Is joint action inherently normative, giving rise to obligations and entitlements, and how might this differ across cultures?
C) Moral psychology
What are the cognitive and neural processes that underpin our moral judgments and our moral intuitions? How do they differ across cultures? Are there two or more distinct moral systems? Could scientific discoveries undermine, or support, ethical principles?
The course is open to all students of the master course in Philosophical Sciences and to all students of other master courses of the University of Milan who are interested understanding an ubiquitous phenomenon such as joint action from a theoretical and empirical point of view.
Prerequisites for admission
B2 English
Teaching methods
Lectures
Debate and discussion
Debate and discussion
Teaching Resources
Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2001). The bounds of cognition. Philosophical psychology, 14(1), 43-64.
Barrett, H. C., & Kurzban, R. (2006). Modularity in cognition: framing the debate. Psychological review, 113(3), 628.
Bermúdez, J. L. (2014). Cognitive science: An introduction to the science of the mind. Cambridge University Press.
Botvinick, M. M. (2008). Hierarchical models of behavior and prefrontal function. Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(5), 201-208.
Bratman, M. (1984). Two faces of intention. The Philosophical Review, 93(3), 375-405.
Bratman, M. E. (1993). Shared intention. Ethics, 104(1), 97-113.
Butterfill, S. (2012). Joint action and development. The Philosophical Quarterly, 62(246), 23-47.
Chapman, H. A., & Anderson, A. K. (2013). Things rank and gross in nature: a review and synthesis of moral disgust. Psychological bulletin, 139(2), 300.
Christensen, M. S., & Grünbaum, T. (2018). Sense of agency for movements. Consciousness and Cognition, 65, 27-47.
Chomsky, N. (1959). Chomsky, N. 1959. A review of BF Skinner's Verbal behavior. Language, 35 (1), 26-58.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. analysis, 58(1), 7-19.
Conway, P., & Gawronski, B. (2013). Deontological and utilitarian inclinations in moral decision making: a process dissociation approach. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104(2), 216.
Crockett, M. J. (2013). Models of morality. Trends in cognitive sciences, 17(8), 363-366.
Cummin, R (2000) "How does it work?" vs. "What are the laws?"
Two conceptions of psychological explanation. In F. Keil and R. Wilson (eds), Explanation and Cognition, MIT Press, 2000, pp 117-145.
Cushman, F. (2013). Action, outcome, and value: A dual-system framework for morality. Personality and social psychology review, 17(3), 273-292.
Cushman, F., Murray, D., Gordon-McKeon, S., Wharton, S., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Judgment before principle: engagement of the frontoparietal control network in condemning harms of omission. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 7(8), 888-895.
Evans, J. S. B. (2017). Dual process theory: Perspectives and problems. Dual process theory 2.0, 137-155.
De Neys, W. (2022). Advancing theorizing about fast-and-slow thinking. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1-68.
Fodor, J. A. (1985). Fodor's guide to mental representation: The intelligent auntie's vade-mecum. Mind, 94, 76-100.
Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R. B., & Mangun, G. R. (2018). Cognitive neuroscience: fifth international student edition. WW Norton & Company.
Gilbert, M. (1990). Walking together: A paradigmatic social phenomenon. MidWest studies in philosophy, 15, 1-14.
Gomez-Lavin, J., & Rachar, M. (2022). Why we need a new normativism about collective action. The Philosophical Quarterly, 72(2), 478-507.
Greene, J. D. (2009). The cognitive neuroscience of moral judgment.
Haggard, P. (2017). Sense of agency in the human brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18(4), 196-207.
Holroyd, C. B. (2022). Interbrain synchrony: on wavy ground. Trends in Neurosciences.
Holton, R., & Berridge, K. (2013). Addiction between compulsion and choice. Addiction and self-control: Perspectives from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, 239-268.
Sripada, C. (2021). The atoms of self‐control. Noûs, 55(4), 800-824.
Kourtis, D., Woźniak, M., Sebanz, N., & Knoblich, G. (2019). Evidence for we-representations during joint action planning. Neuropsychologia, 131, 73-83.
Lashley, K. S. (1951). The problem of serial order in behavior(Vol. 21, p. 21). Oxford: Bobbs-Merrill.
Libet, B. (1999). Do we have free will?. Journal of consciousness studies, 6(8-9), 47-57.
Mandelbaum, E. (2019). Troubles with Bayesianism: An introduction to the psychological immune system. Mind & Language, 34(2), 141-157.
Michael, J. (2022). The philosophy and psychology of commitment (p. 126). Taylor & Francis.
Michael, J., Sebanz, N., & Knoblich, G. (2016). The sense of commitment: A minimal approach. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1968.
Niv, Y. (2021). The primacy of behavioral research for understanding the brain. Behavioral Neuroscience, 135(5), 601.
Novembre, G., Sammler, D., & Keller, P. E. (2016). Neural alpha oscillations index the balance between self-other integration and segregation in real-time joint action. Neuropsychologia, 89, 414-425.
Pacherie, E. (2008). The phenomenology of action: A conceptual framework. Cognition, 107(1), 179-217.
Piccinini, G., & Craver, C. (2011). Integrating psychology and neuroscience: Functional analyses as mechanism sketches. Synthese, 183, 283-311.
Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Can cognitive processes be inferred from neuroimaging data?. Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(2), 59-63.
Schurger, A., & Uithol, S. (2015). Nowhere and everywhere: The causal origin of voluntary action. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6, 761-778.
Schurger, A., Sitt, J. D., & Dehaene, S. (2012). An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(42), E2904-E2913.
Sebanz, N., Bekkering, H., & Knoblich, G. (2006). Joint action: bodies and minds moving together. Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(2), 70-76.
Shea, N. (2018). Representation in cognitive science (p. 304). Oxford University Press.
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2016). The disunity of morality. Moral brains: The neuroscience of morality, 331-354.
Alan, M. Turing. 1950. Computing machinery and intelligence. Parsing the Turing Test, 23-65.
Vesper, C., Butterfill, S., Knoblich, G., & Sebanz, N. (2010). A minimal architecture for joint action. Neural Networks, 23(8-9), 998-1003.
Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological review, 20(2), 158.
Barrett, H. C., & Kurzban, R. (2006). Modularity in cognition: framing the debate. Psychological review, 113(3), 628.
Bermúdez, J. L. (2014). Cognitive science: An introduction to the science of the mind. Cambridge University Press.
Botvinick, M. M. (2008). Hierarchical models of behavior and prefrontal function. Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(5), 201-208.
Bratman, M. (1984). Two faces of intention. The Philosophical Review, 93(3), 375-405.
Bratman, M. E. (1993). Shared intention. Ethics, 104(1), 97-113.
Butterfill, S. (2012). Joint action and development. The Philosophical Quarterly, 62(246), 23-47.
Chapman, H. A., & Anderson, A. K. (2013). Things rank and gross in nature: a review and synthesis of moral disgust. Psychological bulletin, 139(2), 300.
Christensen, M. S., & Grünbaum, T. (2018). Sense of agency for movements. Consciousness and Cognition, 65, 27-47.
Chomsky, N. (1959). Chomsky, N. 1959. A review of BF Skinner's Verbal behavior. Language, 35 (1), 26-58.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. analysis, 58(1), 7-19.
Conway, P., & Gawronski, B. (2013). Deontological and utilitarian inclinations in moral decision making: a process dissociation approach. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104(2), 216.
Crockett, M. J. (2013). Models of morality. Trends in cognitive sciences, 17(8), 363-366.
Cummin, R (2000) "How does it work?" vs. "What are the laws?"
Two conceptions of psychological explanation. In F. Keil and R. Wilson (eds), Explanation and Cognition, MIT Press, 2000, pp 117-145.
Cushman, F. (2013). Action, outcome, and value: A dual-system framework for morality. Personality and social psychology review, 17(3), 273-292.
Cushman, F., Murray, D., Gordon-McKeon, S., Wharton, S., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Judgment before principle: engagement of the frontoparietal control network in condemning harms of omission. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 7(8), 888-895.
Evans, J. S. B. (2017). Dual process theory: Perspectives and problems. Dual process theory 2.0, 137-155.
De Neys, W. (2022). Advancing theorizing about fast-and-slow thinking. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1-68.
Fodor, J. A. (1985). Fodor's guide to mental representation: The intelligent auntie's vade-mecum. Mind, 94, 76-100.
Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R. B., & Mangun, G. R. (2018). Cognitive neuroscience: fifth international student edition. WW Norton & Company.
Gilbert, M. (1990). Walking together: A paradigmatic social phenomenon. MidWest studies in philosophy, 15, 1-14.
Gomez-Lavin, J., & Rachar, M. (2022). Why we need a new normativism about collective action. The Philosophical Quarterly, 72(2), 478-507.
Greene, J. D. (2009). The cognitive neuroscience of moral judgment.
Haggard, P. (2017). Sense of agency in the human brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18(4), 196-207.
Holroyd, C. B. (2022). Interbrain synchrony: on wavy ground. Trends in Neurosciences.
Holton, R., & Berridge, K. (2013). Addiction between compulsion and choice. Addiction and self-control: Perspectives from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, 239-268.
Sripada, C. (2021). The atoms of self‐control. Noûs, 55(4), 800-824.
Kourtis, D., Woźniak, M., Sebanz, N., & Knoblich, G. (2019). Evidence for we-representations during joint action planning. Neuropsychologia, 131, 73-83.
Lashley, K. S. (1951). The problem of serial order in behavior(Vol. 21, p. 21). Oxford: Bobbs-Merrill.
Libet, B. (1999). Do we have free will?. Journal of consciousness studies, 6(8-9), 47-57.
Mandelbaum, E. (2019). Troubles with Bayesianism: An introduction to the psychological immune system. Mind & Language, 34(2), 141-157.
Michael, J. (2022). The philosophy and psychology of commitment (p. 126). Taylor & Francis.
Michael, J., Sebanz, N., & Knoblich, G. (2016). The sense of commitment: A minimal approach. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1968.
Niv, Y. (2021). The primacy of behavioral research for understanding the brain. Behavioral Neuroscience, 135(5), 601.
Novembre, G., Sammler, D., & Keller, P. E. (2016). Neural alpha oscillations index the balance between self-other integration and segregation in real-time joint action. Neuropsychologia, 89, 414-425.
Pacherie, E. (2008). The phenomenology of action: A conceptual framework. Cognition, 107(1), 179-217.
Piccinini, G., & Craver, C. (2011). Integrating psychology and neuroscience: Functional analyses as mechanism sketches. Synthese, 183, 283-311.
Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Can cognitive processes be inferred from neuroimaging data?. Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(2), 59-63.
Schurger, A., & Uithol, S. (2015). Nowhere and everywhere: The causal origin of voluntary action. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6, 761-778.
Schurger, A., Sitt, J. D., & Dehaene, S. (2012). An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(42), E2904-E2913.
Sebanz, N., Bekkering, H., & Knoblich, G. (2006). Joint action: bodies and minds moving together. Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(2), 70-76.
Shea, N. (2018). Representation in cognitive science (p. 304). Oxford University Press.
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2016). The disunity of morality. Moral brains: The neuroscience of morality, 331-354.
Alan, M. Turing. 1950. Computing machinery and intelligence. Parsing the Turing Test, 23-65.
Vesper, C., Butterfill, S., Knoblich, G., & Sebanz, N. (2010). A minimal architecture for joint action. Neural Networks, 23(8-9), 998-1003.
Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological review, 20(2), 158.
Assessment methods and Criteria
Students who attend at least 70% of the lectures will be assessed on the basis of a short papers (3000 words) and a presentation (9CFU). Non-attending students have to write one short paper (3000 words) and take an oral examination 6(CFU). Evaluation criteria:
(A) the knowledge of the main topics of the course;
(B) the capability to integrate conceptual analysis and experimental methodologies as well as to master the relevant literature;
(C) independent judgment with respect to philosophical and scientific issues
(D) the ability to provide sounded arguments in written and oral communications.
(A) the knowledge of the main topics of the course;
(B) the capability to integrate conceptual analysis and experimental methodologies as well as to master the relevant literature;
(C) independent judgment with respect to philosophical and scientific issues
(D) the ability to provide sounded arguments in written and oral communications.
Modules or teaching units
Parte A e B
PHIL-02/A - Logic and Philosophy of Science - University credits: 6
Lessons: 40 hours
Parte C
PHIL-02/A - Logic and Philosophy of Science - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Professor(s)