Gualtiero Piccinini

Gualtiero Piccinini
Born	November 11, 1970 Italy
Alma mater	University of Pittsburgh
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Institutions	University of Missouri, Columbia University of Missouri–St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis
Main interests	Philosophy of mind Cognitive science Philosophy of language
Notable ideas	Criticism of pancomputationalism

Gualtiero Piccinini (born 1970) is an Italian–American philosopher known for his work on the nature of mind and computation as well as on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience. He is Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Background

Piccinini was born and raised in Italy, and studied philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Turin, from which he earned a Bachelor of Arts, and graduated cum laude. He then went to graduate school at University of Pittsburgh, specializing in the history and philosophy of science. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 2003, he held the position of "James S. McDonnell Post Doctoral Research Fellow" at the PNP (Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology) program at Washington University in St. Louis. He started as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, in 2005 and received early tenure and promotion to associate professor in 2010 and early promotion to full professor in 2014. From 2011 to 2014 he was the Chair of the Philosophy Department at the university.From 2015 to 2024, Piccinini was the Associate Director of the Center for Neurodynamics and an Affiliate in Gender Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. He held the title of Curators' Distinguished Professor at the same university from 2019 to 2024.

Piccinini has served as a visiting professor several times in his career, including at Washington University in St. Louis in spring 2015, a fellow at Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2011, as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the engineering graduate school of the Polytechnic University of Turin both in May 2007 and 2009, and in 2023, Piccinini was a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University.

Work

Piccinini specializes in theories of Neuroscience, Computation, Psychology and the human Mind. An overview of his work in these areas is below.

Cognitive science

In the area of cognitive science Piccinini is best known for his mechanistic account of what it takes for a physical system to perform computations. He has argued that computation is a kind of mechanistic process that does not require representation. Building on his account of computation, he and co-author Sonya Bahar, a physicist and Director of the Center for Neurodynamics at University of Missouri, St. Louis, argue that neural computations are neither digital nor analog, but sui generis.

Philosophy of mind

Piccinini is also widely known for his critique of pancomputationalism and for his view about first-person data such as data from first-person reports. He has argued that first-person data are scientifically legitimate because they are public like other scientific data. Piccinini has also published influential articles on computational theories of cognition, concepts, and consciousness, with award-winning physicist Sonya Bahar and his post doc and research associate Corey Maley from Princeton University, among others.

In 2020, he published the book Neurocognitive Mechanisms, in which he develops a neurocomputational explanation of cognition.

Miscellaneous

Piccinini has received several grants, awards, fellowships and teaching releases, including two Scholars' Awards by the National Science Foundation. Piccinini has received several awards, including the 2019 Chancellor’s Award for Research and Creativity from the University of Missouri–St. Louis, the 2018 K. Jon Barwise Prize from the American Philosophical Association, and the 2014 Herbert Simon award by the International Association of Computing and Philosophy.

He has been Philosophy Program Chair for the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

He is the founder of Brains, an academic group blog in the philosophy of mind, psychology, and neuroscience and one of the founders of SLAPSA, a St. Louis-based organization for the philosophy of science, run by Piccinini, Carl Craver (Washington University in St. Louis) and Kent Staley (Saint Louis University). He administered the blog until 2012.

He is also the founder of ISPSM,a hub for connecting researchers around the globe in all areas of the philosophy of mind and related sciences, including, but not limited to, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of neuroscience.

Piccinini has edited multiple academic journals, including: Cognitive Science, Humanities, Journal of Cognitive Science, and The Rutherford Journal. He is also Editor-in-chief of "Studies in Brain and Mind", a Springer book series. He has held this position since 2010.

Bibliography

This is only a partial list of publications by Gualtiero Piccinini. A full list is viewable on the "Published Articles" section of his Curriculum Vitae, viewable here.

• Piccinini, Gualtiero; Anderson, Neal G. (2024). The Physical Signature of Computation: A Robust Mapping Account. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198833644.

• Piccinini, Gualtiero; Colombo, Matteo (2023). The Computational Theory of Mind. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009183734. ISBN 9781009183734.

• Piccinini, Gualtiero (2020). Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological Cognition. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198866282.001.0001. ISBN 9780198866282.

• Piccinini, Gualtiero (2015). Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199658855.001.0001. ISBN 9780199658855.
• Piccinini, Gualtiero; Bahar, Sonya (5 November 2012). "Neural Computation and the Computational Theory of Cognition". Cognitive Science. 37 (3). Wiley: 453–488. doi:10.1111/cogs.12012. ISSN 0364-0213. PMID 23126542.
• Piccinini, Gualtiero; Craver, Carl (11 March 2011). "Integrating psychology and neuroscience: functional analyses as mechanism sketches". Synthese. 183 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 283–311. doi:10.1007/s11229-011-9898-4. ISSN 0039-7857. S2CID 6726609.
• “Information Processing, Computation, and Cognition” (with Andrea Scarantino). Journal of Biological Physics, 37.1 (2011), pp. 1–38.
• Piccinini, Gualtiero (2010). "The Mind as Neural Software? Understanding Functionalism, Computationalism, and Computational Functionalism" (PDF). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 81 (2). Wiley: 269–311. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00356.x. ISSN 0031-8205.
• “Computation in Physical Systems,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.(Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
• “First-Person Data, Publicity, and Self-Measurement.” Philosophers’ Imprint, 9.9 (2009), pp. 1–16.
• Piccinini, Gualtiero (21 September 2006). "Computation without Representation". Philosophical Studies. 137 (2). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 205–241. doi:10.1007/s11098-005-5385-4. ISSN 0031-8116. S2CID 17406419.
• Piccinini, Gualtiero (2007). "Computational modelling vs. Computational explanation: Is everything a Turing Machine, and does it matter to the philosophy of mind?1". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 85 (1). Informa UK Limited: 93–115. doi:10.1080/00048400601176494. ISSN 0004-8402. S2CID 170303007.
• “A Unified Mechanistic Account of Teleological Functions for Psychology and Neuroscience” (with Corey J. Maley), in David Kaplan (ed.), Integrating Psychology and Neuroscience: Prospects and Problems, Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming). 10,600 words.
• “The Computational Theory of Cognition,” in V. C. Müller (ed.), Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence (Synthese Library), Berlin: Springer (forthcoming). 8,300 words.
• Boone, Worth; Piccinini, Gualtiero (10 June 2015). "The cognitive neuroscience revolution" (PDF). Synthese. 193 (5). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 1509–1534. doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0783-4. ISSN 0039-7857. S2CID 10453762.
• ROBINSON, ZACK; MALEY, COREY J.; PICCININI, GUALTIERO (2015). "Is Consciousness a Spandrel?". Journal of the American Philosophical Association. 1 (2). Cambridge University Press (CUP): 365–383. doi:10.1017/apa.2014.10. ISSN 2053-4477. S2CID 170892645.

Sources

• "Gualtiero Piccinini's Homepage". St. Louis: University of Missouri. 10 March 2010. Retrieved 31 December 2012.
• Fresco, Nir (15 July 2008). "An Analysis of the Criteria for Evaluating Adequate Theories of Computation". Minds and Machines. 18 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 379–401. doi:10.1007/s11023-008-9111-9. ISSN 0924-6495. S2CID 19633213.
• Arkoudas, Konstantine (2008). "Computation, hypercomputation, and physical science". Journal of Applied Logic. 6 (4). Elsevier BV: 461–475. doi:10.1016/j.jal.2008.09.007. ISSN 1570-8683.
• Chalmers, D., The Character of Consciousness, Oxford University Press (2010), p. 53

External links

• List of Piccinini’s Works
• Brains, a group blog in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science