Consciousness and Cognition | Summer / Short course | Humanities & Culture | Blended Learning | 9 days | University of Pisa | Italy

The enigma of Consciousness is perhaps the most fascinating mystery in the Universe. There are many hypotheses, on the basis of which we try to give an answer to the most difficult problems but, wanting to schematize, all can be traced back to two broad categories: those who consider Consciousness entirely reducible to the electro-chemical-physical processes that take place in the brain, and those who acknowledge that Consciousness has an intrinsic existence, independent, at least in part, from its physical substratum. Whereas the former fit well into the monistic vision of the so-called Scientific Materialism, the latter can lead either to a dualistic vision of Reality, in which the external world obeys the laws of Physics and the internal one requires a different level of analysis, or to a reconfiguration of the subject-object relation in a unitary picture of Reality. This unitary vision is compatible, for example, in Western culture with phenomenological approaches in philosophy and with Quantum Mechanics in physics, and in Eastern culture with Buddhist and Hindu traditions based on contemplative practices such as meditation and yoga. The path in search of the solution winds between these alternatives and passes through the answer to two fundamental questions: 1) "Is Scientific Materialism capable of embracing the totality of Reality?" 2) "Is a unitary vision of Reality possible, in which Consciousness is not completely reducible to its neuronal correlates?" In the absence of definitive and widely shared answers to these two questions, the study of consciousness and of the process through which we have cognition of Reality must be fronted with a multidisciplinary approach that includes not only neurosciences, but also biology, artificial intelligence, philosophy of science and epistemology. A space has to be reserved to two domains that are apparently very different, but that on the contrary show, very surprisingly, some convergences: the one of Quantum Physic