Gualtiero Piccinini


Gualtiero Piccinini 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 a professor in the Philosophy Department and the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, United States.

Background

Piccinini was born and raised in Italy, and studied philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Turin. He then went to graduate school at University of Pittsburgh, specializing in the philosophy of science. Upon completion of his Ph.D. he held a postdoctoral position at the PNP program at Washington University, St. Louis, devoted to Philosophy, Neuroscience and Psychology. He started his position at 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 University of Missouri, St. Louis.

Work

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.

Miscellaneous

Piccinini has received several grants, awards, fellowships and teaching releases, including a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Scholars' Award by the National Science Foundation. He is the recipient of 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 , 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, Professor Carl Craver and Professor Kent Staley.