La coscienza incarnata: come la materia diventa immaginazione

Consciousness cannot be reduced to cognition, which is problem-solving ability and lacks subjectivity, emotion, and free choice. Drawing on Edelman, consciousness is an evolutionary leap present from higher vertebrates onward. Words and narrative are vehicles for consciousness, but it originates not in grammar or syntax but when an individual, shaped by personal experience, accesses the metaphorical meaning of perceptions. This marks a new evolutionary path: individual psychological development, whose consequences we embody and observe.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article supports the thesis that consciousness cannot be understood in terms of cognition, since the latter represents the ability to solve problems and is not congruent with the psychological categories of subjectivity, emotion and freedom of choice. On the other hand, the author also shuns any disembodied theory of consciousness and proposes, on the basis of Edelman, to consider consciousness as an extraordinary evolutionary leap that characterizes life from the superior vertebrates onwards. Words, or rather narrative consciousness, represent for Lorenzini a vehicle that consciousness can take, giving rise to far-reaching consequences, but it is not with grammar and syntax that consciousness is born, but at the primary level, when an individual, marked by personal experience, accesses the metaphorical value of perceptions. From that moment on, a new type of evolution takes place, or rather, evolution takes a new path: that of individual psychological development, with all the consequences of which we ourselves are both expression and witnesses.