Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2026
Pietro Perconti
This paper addresses commentaries on “Rethinking Subjectivity: The Social Roots of Consciousness”. In response to Marraffa-Meini, the author defends his view by arguing that empirical evidence supports the emergence of social cognition faculties, such as motor mirroring and emotional contagion, before higher-level cognitive processes like deception. The author acknowledges the critique of the...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2026
Massimiliano L. Cappuccio
Perconti’s paper argues that social cognition is more fundamental than self-consciousness and indeed forms its foundation. Drawing on perspectives from enactivism and empirical fields like social neuroscience, robotics, and performance psychology, the argument challenges the traditional view that self-consciousness represents the pinnacle of human cognition. Instead, the author maintains that...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2026
Artem P. Besedin
Pietro Perconti’s article outlines a cognitive social theory of self-consciousness, navigating between phenomenological views and illusionist perspectives. His argument suggests that rather than being intrinsically valuable, self-consciousness is evolutionarily instrumental, facilitating social cognition. However, both extremes – self-consciousness as the pinnacle of the human spirit and the...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2026
Pietro Perconti
The mind has a subjective side. This is evidenced by a number of cognitive processes, including self-consciousness, first-person perspective, qualia, and individual differences in perception and emotion. In the early decades of cognitive science, these types of mental events were studied very cautiously. It was feared that they would compromise the experimental character of the new science of...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2026
Evgeny V. Loginov
In his paper, Professor Pietro Perconti advocates a social cognition approach to understanding human consciousness, arguing that self-consciousness enhances social cognition. Perconti supports his argument with empirical evidence showing that social cognition capabilities precede the development of self-consciousness in children. However, this paper raises two concerns with his reasoning: the...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2025
V. A. Bazhanov
The article aims to discuss the problem of applicability of quantum-mechanical concepts to the analysis of the mechanisms of brain and the nature of consciousness. Are these tools sufficient and adequate to solve this problem? We claim that despite numerous attempts made in this direction it is difficult to speak about any significant progress. Although the intersection and active interaction...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2025
K. Morozov
This article addresses a normative problem for panpsychist views of consciousness. This problem arises when panpsychism is combined with sentientism. According to sentientism, entities endowed with phenomenal consciousness have a special moral status. According to panpsychism, all entities in the universe have phenomenal consciousness in some form. Synthesizing these positions leads to a...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2025
Viktor D. Bakulov, Danil R. Melnikov
The aim of the article is to analyze Hilary Putnam’s philosophy of mind. The early and late periods of the philosopher's work are analyzed to identify the key ideas of Putnam’s philosophy of mind in each. The early period is characterized by the development of a functionalist approach to the interpretation of mental states. According to functionalism, mental states must be explained in terms of...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2025
Ivan Deviatko
This paper provides reflection how contemporary analytic philosophy of mind applies justification criteria differently to dualism and physicalism. It shows that arguments in favor of dualism often face increased demands for standards of evidence, while the physicalist position is often treated more leniently. Paper shows that such a gap in standards is not necessarily a mistake, but it does...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2024
Maxim Gorbachev
1 citation
A few years ago, an illusionist theory of consciousness appeared in the philosophy of consciousness. It makes an unexpected statement – there is actually no phenomenal consciousness, it is illusory. This illusion is created introspective distortion of physical processes in the brain, which seem to us to have special phenomenal properties. However, an equally strong form of physicalism in the...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2022
M. Sysoev
This article examines the fundamental ontological significance that the category of perception has in philosophy of G.W. Leibniz, and establishes the connection between the category of perception and modern panpsychism. There is a problem of definition of protopsychic properties in modern panpsychism. The problem is expressed not only in the absence of such a definition, but also in the absence...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2021
Sergei Yu. Shevchenko
The article deals with the problem of compatibility of the extended mind thesis with the concept of epistemic responsibility. This compatibility problem lies at the intersection of two current trends in Virtue Epistemology (VE): the study of extended cognition, and the return of VE to the topic of epistemic responsibility. I give objections to two seemingly independent positions; their...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2020
Mikhail S. Sopov
The article discusses the possibility of a naturalistic explanation of phenomenal experience (qualia). It starts with the analysis of one of the thought experiments described by D. Chalmers in his book “The Conscious Mind. In search of a fundamental theory”, namely, a zombie experiment. The article shows that the conclusions of this experiment can be recognized as correct only provided that the...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2018
Karim Zahidi
2 citations
Both mainstream cognitive science and analytic philosophy of mind remain wedded to the Cartesian picture of the mind as an isolated, self-sufficient, and constitutively individual phenomenon. However, recently approaches to the mind (e.g. extended mind thesis, enactivism) that depart from the standard view have emerged. Aunifying thread that runs through these approaches can be summed up in the...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2018
Igor Gasparov
This is a review of the book by Bruntrup & Jaskolla (eds.) “Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives” (Oxford University Press, 2017). The author provides a detailed overview and critical analysis of a recent volume which is dedicated to different aspects of contemporary panpsychism. Among its authors are prominent experts in analytic philosophy of mind such as David Chalmers, Galen Strawson,...
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
2016
D. Ivanov
The paper deals with the enactivist approach to the problem of consciousness. The problem of consciousness is the problem of naturalistic explanation of phenomenal aspects of our experience. According to classical cognitive science, we can explain all mental states as functional, representational states. Many philosophers disagree with this view. They demonstrate that phenomenal qualities of...