Rethinking the Mind with Neuroscience: Introducing Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind

Rethinking the Mind with Neuroscience: Introducing Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind

By Gualtiero Piccinini

Many thanks to Dan Burnston for this opportunity to introduce the new edited volume, Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind.

For decades, many philosophers of mind wrestled with the question of what the mind is and how it works as though it could be answered in isolation—through introspection, conceptual analysis, or cognitive modeling—while leaving neuroscience largely on the sidelines. This outlook, which I call Autonomism, treats philosophy of mind and psychology as if they can proceed largely independently from the study of the brain.

But the brain is more than relevant. It is the most complex organ we know of, and it—along with its embodiment and embeddedness—is what makes minds possible. Neuroscience is no longer in its infancy; it now provides detailed, testable accounts of how perception, thought, and action work. If philosophy of mind and psychology ignore this evidence, they risk building castles on sand.

This edited volume—Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind—emerged from my conviction that more philosophers need to appreciate what a difference neuroscience can make. The collection brings together leading voices who show, in concrete ways, how neuroscience enhances our understanding of the mind. It is both a snapshot of the state of the art and a manifesto for where the field must go.

How the Volume Came to Be

For many years, I watched with delight as a growing number of philosophers drew insight from neuroscience. I turned The Brains Blog (which started as my personal blog) into a group blog precisely to give such philosophers an outlet. I am delighted with how past and present editors have turned The Brains Blog into a powerhouse. Yet I also felt mounting frustration at how slowly this perspective was spreading. I still see too many colleagues act as though psychology and philosophy can do their work without looking at the brain—or while looking at the brain only superficially. The aim of this book is to remedy that disconnect—to highlight the progress that becomes possible once neuroscience is taken seriously.

The project began as an idea for a traditional, in-person conference, followed by an edited volume. But I didn’t have funding for it. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. While it disrupted our professional lives, it also changed how we collaborate. Online platforms became central, opening new ways to gather scholars across the globe without the financial and environmental costs of travel.

At that point, I reached out to two colleagues, Fabrizio Calzavarini and Marco Viola, who had already created one of the most successful virtual events in our field: Neural Mechanisms Online, a webinar series dedicated to the philosophy of neuroscience. I asked if they would help me organize a conference on Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind, and they agreed. Thanks to their leadership, the October 2022 conference was a resounding success.

A diverse group of scholars from around the world presented their latest ideas, exchanged views, and forged new connections. Many of the chapters in this book began as talks delivered by some of the participants at that event. The University of Turin, my undergraduate alma mater, generously provided virtual conferencing support, making the meeting accessible to participants everywhere. The result was not just a successful conference, but a contribution to something larger: an intellectual community dedicated to integrating neuroscience and philosophy.

The conference catalyzed the International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind, which I co-founded with Inês Hipólito. Fittingly, Fabrizio and Marco served as program chairs of the inaugural conference. This new society is now a hub for researchers worldwide who share the vision that guided this book: a philosophy of mind that is continuous with the all the mind sciences.

Why Autonomism Is Not Enough

The guiding intellectual backdrop of this project is the debate between Autonomism and what I call Integrationism.

Autonomism is the view that philosophy of mind and psychology can remain largely independent from neuroscience. It is a tempting perspective: at first glance, the mind seems to have its own level of explanation involving beliefs, desires, and intentions, which—autonomists bet—can be studied without descending into the details of synapses and circuits. At any rate, it’s much easier to speculate about the mind without worrying about the plethora of data, hypotheses, and models coming out of neuroscience. For much of the last century, the Autonomist approach was not only popular but dominant.

Yet Autonomism comes at a cost. Without neuroscience, theories risk drifting free of reality. They may define mental states and processes in ways that are elegant but biologically impossible or at least distant from how our mind works. They may treat the mind as if it were implemented on any substrate, overlooking the constraints imposed by neural wetware. In short, Autonomism can leave us with theories that are clever but detached.

By contrast, Integrationism—the perspective embodied in this volume—argues that neuroscience is indispensable. Understanding the mind requires understanding how it is built: what kinds of representations the brain uses, how computation is carried out in neural circuits, and which cognitive architectures are realized in biological systems. This doesn’t mean reducing everything to cellular or molecular neuroscience. No one here is advocating reductionism. It means building a framework in which philosophical and psychological insights are informed by, and consistent with, what we know about the brain.

What the Book Offers

The chapters in Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind show what Integrationism looks like in practice. They address long-standing questions—about representation, computation, inference, semantics, inner speech, intention, and emotion—in ways that are deeply informed by neuroscience.

Readers will encounter essays on:

• Representation and vehicles: How brain processes, from regions to individual cells, can serve as representational vehicles.
• Cognitive ontology: How we should classify cognitive functions in light of brain, evolution, and development.
• Computation: What it means to say the brain computes, and how to characterize neural computation.
• Inference and explanation: How neuroscientific practices reshape our accounts of inference, confirmation, and explanation.
• Language and thought: How inner speech and natural language relate to the “language of thought” hypothesis.
• Emotion and intention: How emerging neuroscientific findings force us to rethink old debates about basic emotions and intention.

What unites these contributions is not a single doctrine but a shared method: philosophers can enhance our understanding of the mind by learning from neuroscience.

A Collective Effort

Bringing this volume together was a deeply collaborative process. Each author not only contributed their expertise but also worked to harmonize their chapter with the underlying project, so that the volume would form a cohesive whole. The patience and cooperative spirit of the contributors made this possible.

I am indebted to Fabrizio Calzavarini and Marco Viola for their exemplary leadership in helping to organize and run the conference that gave birth to this book. I also thank the University of Turin for their support, and everyone who participated in the conference and the volume. The project received partial support from the University of Missouri’s Provost Great Books Program, for which I am grateful. Finally, my thanks go to Andrew Weckenmann, Rosaleah Stammler, and the Routledge team, who guided the project with professionalism and care.

Looking Forward

The publication of Neurocognitive Foundations of Mind is not the end of a project, but the continuation of a movement. The philosophy of mind and the mind sciences are entering a new phase. The old division between psychology and neuroscience is giving way to a more integrated vision.

This book is meant as a milestone in that transition. It showcases how philosophy can benefit from neuroscience, and how neuroscience can, in turn, be sharpened by philosophical reflection. It demonstrates that by working together, we can address questions that neither field can answer alone.

I hope this volume will speak not only to specialists but also to students, researchers, and curious readers who want to understand the mind in a way that is faithful to both its philosophical richness and its biological reality.

The foundations of the mind are neurocognitive. This book is one step toward building a unified science and philosophy of mind—one that does justice to both our deepest questions and our best evidence.

Table of Contents:

1. New foundations for the philosophy of mind and the mind sciences, GUALTIERO PICCININI
2. A Neuroecological architecture for situated cognizing systems”, LUIS H. FAVELA
3. Confirmation and explanation in neuroscience: Reassessing the relationship between functional and mechanistic approaches, MARCIN MIŁKOWSKI
4. Cognitive ontology in terms of cognitive homology: The role of brain, behavior, and environment for individuating cognitive categories, BEATE KRICKEL AND MARIEL K. GODDU
5. Representational vehicles, from regions to cells, ADINA L. ROSKIES
6. Frames of discovery and the formats of cognitive representation, DIMITRI COELHO MOLLO AND ALFREDO VERNAZZANI
7. Structural representation as complexity management, MANOLO MARTINEZ
8. The mind-brain is a computer, but what is (neural) computation?, COREY J. MALEY AND ORON SHAGRIR
9. Inference in (neuro)cognitive systems, URTE LAUKAITYTE AND MATTEO COLOMBO
10. Interventionist methods for interpreting deep neural networks, RAPHAEL MILLIERE AND CAMERON BUCKNER
11. From cognitive semantics to neurosemantics: The neuroscience turn in the empirical study of word meaning, FABRIZIO CALZAVARINI
12. Talking to ourselves: Inner speech and natural language as a language of thought, WADE MUNROE
13. Working memory and the neural basis of intention, WAYNE WU
14. Basic emotion theory meets the brain: Radicals and reformists in the arena of neuroscience, MARCO VIOLA AND FAUSTO CARUANA