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L'identità personale
No full textDa sempre al centro della riflessione filosofica, il tema della conoscenza di sé e della formazione dell’identità personale è stato recentemente arricchito grazie all’apporto di una gran messe di risultati scientifici provenienti da diversi ambiti delle scienze psicologiche e, più in generale, dalle scienze cognitive. Il presente volume vuole contribuire al dibattito sull’interpretazione di questi risultati, esplorando la natura e la genesi dell’autocoscienza psicologica e dell’identità narrativa in una prospettiva di psicologia teorica (o di filosofia della mente orientata empiricamente)
Verso una psichiatria cognitiva
No full textIn questo articolo cerchiamo di fornire un esemplare (in senso kuhniano) di sintesi tra
scienza cognitiva e psichiatria. Nella prima parte sosteniamo che l’ipotesi
del carattere modulare dell’architettura della mente costituisce un quadro di riferimento fondamentale per la psichiatria, essendo possibile costruire su di essa una tassonomia dei disturbi psichici alternativa a quella del Manuale diagnostico e statistico dei disturbi mentali. Forti di questo quadro di riferimento, passeremo a esaminare un (probabilmente «il») caso esemplare di interazione «coevolutiva» fra scienza cognitiva e psichiatria: la costruzione di modelli dell’autismo e della schizofrenia in seno alla Theory of Mind. Vedremo allora come situare nell’ambito della riforma modularista della tassonomia psichiatrica l’interpretazione
di disturbi quali autismo e schizofrenia come deficit metarappresentazionali. E vedremo anche come questa interpretazione ha dato
origine a un nuovo approccio cognitivo a tali disturbi e, viceversa, lo studio di questi disturbi psichici ha contribuito allo sviluppo di una comprensione a grana più fine del concetto di metarappresentazione
La priorità della mentalizzazione in terza persona: implicazioni per la teoria dell’attaccamento
No full textDi recente Peter Carruthers (2011) ha offerto solide ragioni in favore della tesi secondo cui la mentalizzazione in III persona ha una priorità funzionale ed evoluzionistica rispetto alla mentalizzazione in I persona. Tuttavia la teoria della conoscenza di sé di Carruthers non formula la previsione che la mentalizzazione in III persona precede ontogeneticamente la mentalizzazione in I persona. In questo articolo sosterremo, invece, che vi sono valide ragioni per ritenere che l’autodescrizione mentalistica (o identità soggettiva) del bambino si strutturi attraverso l’atto di volgere su se stessi la capacità di “leggere” le menti altrui; e che questo si determini in virtù di quella interazione socio-comunicativa fra bambino e caregiver che è oggetto di studio della teoria dell’attaccamento. La conclusione sarà che queste tesi vincolano fortemente la teorizzazione sulla relazione fra mentalizzazione e attaccamento.Recently, Peter Carruthers [The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011] has made a strong case for the claim that third-person mindreading has a functional and evolutionary priority over first-person mindreading. However, Carruthers’ model of self-knowledge does not predict that third-person mindreading is developmentally prior to first-person mindreading. In this article we shall argue, instead, that there are good reasons for thinking that the child’s mentalistic self-description (or subjective identity) develops through the act of turning on oneself the capacity to mindread other minds; and that this occurs through that socio-communicative interaction which is the subject of attachment theory.
This claim puts strong constraints on theorizing about the relation between attachment and mentalization. We’ll argue that the implicit and automatic ability to mindread other minds is not a developmental achievement, but “an innate social-cognitive evolutionary adaptation implemented by a specialized and pre-wired mindreading mechanism that seems active and functional at least as early as 12 months of age in humans” (Gergely & Unoka, 2008, p. 58). An adaptation, therefore, independent of the attachment instinct system; this is tantamount to a refutation of the hypothesis of a direct ontogenetic causal and functional link between the quality of early infant attachment on the one hand, and the development of the ability for third-person mindreading on the other.
When we take into consideration first-person mindreading, however, the relationship between attachment and mentalization is no longer a “facilitating” one: the child’s socio-communicative interaction with the caregiver becomes a necessary condition of the act of turning on oneself the capacity to mindread other minds. The approach to first-person mindreading is then more markedly socio-constructivist compared with the ability for third-person mindreading. Self-consciousness as introspective recognition of the presence of the virtual inner space of the mind, separated from the other two primary experiential spaces (i.e. the corporeal and extracorporeal spaces) is less neurocognitively guaranteed, if we may say so.
Thus the subject constructs itself as psychologically self-conscious (and not only as physically self-conscious) in an interplay of mindreading, autobiographical memory, and socio-communicative capacities modulated by socio-cultural variables. The child who at 2-4 years of age turns his third person mind-reading capacities upon himself under the influence of caregivers’ mind-related talk, at around 4-5 years of age begins to grasp his subjective identity as rationalized in terms of autobiography. In this process of narrative self-construction, there is an essential psychodynamic ingredient: affective growth and construction of identity cannot be separated; the description of the self that from 2-3 years of age the child feverishly pursues is an “accepting description”, i.e., a description that is indissolubly cognitive (as definition of self) and emotional-affective (as acceptance of self). In brief, the child needs a clear and consistent capacity to describe itself, fully legitimized by the caregiver and socially valid.
We conclude, therefore, that it is here, with regard to the construction and defense of a well-defined and interpersonally valid identity, that the idea of a direct ontogenetic causal and functional link between attachment and (first-person) mentalization finally finds its cogency
Self-Consciousness as a Construction All the Way Down
Full text linkContemporary mind and brain sciences provide theories and data that seem to confirm a hypothesis about human nature that we might formulate as follows. Human life is conditioned by a need that is no less important than elementary biological needs (such as survival and reproduction) or universal forms of social competition: the need to build and, indeed, defend a subjective identity whose solidity and clarity are the foundation of our intra- and inter-personal equilibrium and therefore of psychological well-being and mental health. In this article, distancing ourselves from a neo- Cartesian position still prevalent in the philosophy of mind and approaching instead the outcomes of contemporary cognitive sciences, we sketch the complex interweaving of the cognitive, emotional, and affective elements that are constitutive of subjective identity, with a focus on the role played in self-identity construction by Theory-of-Mind abilities. We will suggest that, at every stage of self-construction, individuals engage in processes of understanding others that have a largely innate basis. In this perspective, a mature self-awareness is somewhat secondary to the knowledge of others, an evolutionarily refined acquisition primarily serving as a defense mechanism
La comprensione della dialettica fra biologia (individuale) e relazionalità (sociale) richiede una spiegazione su più livelli
No full textVulnerability to disinformation in older age
Full text linkDisinformation poses a significant challenge to contemporary society, as it has the potential to undermine the stability of democratic systems, put public health at risk, and undermine the credibility of science. We explore the question of whether certain groups of people are especially exposed to disinformation and, in particular, we focus on older people. We examine the purported impact of cognitive and linguistic factors, such as source amnesia and the need for consistency, the decline of pragmatic skills in recognizing intentions and decoding figurative language, as well as motivational factors like the need for affiliation. Taken together, these empirical data suggest that there may indeed be specific vulnerabilities associated with older age. This hypothesis calls for finding ways to protect a category of people who already suffer from numerous other vulnerabilities
La costruzione dell’interiorità. Dall’identità fisica alla memoria autobiografica.
No full textQuesto libro esplora i temi della costruzione e della difesa dell’identità personale. Dopo aver preso le mosse dalle teorie a cui continua tuttora a riferirsi tutta la riflessione filosofica e psicologica sull’identità, quelle cioè di John Locke e William James, il testo persegue una sintesi fra la psicologia dello sviluppo di ispirazione chomskiana, il costruttivismo a partire dall’individuo di Jean Piaget, la prospettiva socioculturale sullo sviluppo di Lev Vygotskij e la teoria dell’attaccamento di John Bowlby. In questo quadro teorico, il volume attinge ai dati delle scienze psicologiche per ricostruire la traiettoria che dalla nascita della coscienza di sé legata al corpo e alle emozioni passa per l’arricchimento del mondo interiore, per giungere al costituirsi di un io collocato nel tempo e razionalizzato come autobiografia. Questo io non è però un possesso stabile: è piuttosto qualcosa di perennemente precario, e per la cui difesa l’individuo mobilita continuamente tutte le sue risorse
La mente sociale. Le basi cognitive della comunicazione (The Social Mind. The Cognitive Bases of Communication)
No full textPonendosi all’intersezione di scienza cognitiva e pragmatica, gli autori esplorano e compongono in un quadro unitario il rapporto tra mente, socializzazione e comunicazione.“Theory of Mind” is the branch of cognitive science that investigates the so-called “mindreading” abilities, i.e., the skills shared by almost all human beings beyond early childhood to treat the agents as the bearers of unobservable psychological states and processes, and to anticipate and explain their behavior in terms of such states and processes. These mentalistic abilities are also called “folk psychology” by philosophers, and “naïve (or intuitive) psychology” by cognitive scientists. According to the “theory theory”, mindreading depends on the deployment of a “theory” of the mental realm; and according to the modularist version of theory theory, that folk-psychological theory is a body of information specific to the domain of naïve psychology which is manipulated by a domain-specific algorithm. The psychologist Alan Leslie has postulated such a module (the Theory of Mind Mechanism), which receives as input information about the past and present behavior of other people and utilizes this information to compute their probable psychological states. This mechanism has been considered, contra Fodor, as one of the strongest candidates for central modularity; a claim that is the main subject of the book
The Developmental Psychology of Personal Identity. A Philosophical Perspective
No full textBy integrating contemporary philosophical theories inspired by John Locke and William James with empirical and neuropsychological research, the book explores the construction of personal identity.
Drawing on Chomsky-inspired developmental psychology, Jean Piaget's constructivism, Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective on development, and John Bowlby's attachment theory, the book utilizes psychological data to reconstruct the trajectory of the self as a 'Lockean person' (i.e., a morally responsible agent). The book connects the emergence of self-consciousness through bodily experiences and emotions to the construction of a narrative self. The outcome of this constructive process of self-recognition is a fundamentally fragile individual, constantly vulnerable to threats of disintegration or regression. Overcoming these challenges requires the mobilization of significant cognitive and emotional resources, which are not always readily available to everyone.
The interdisciplinary approach integrating philosophy and cognitive sciences that is characteristic of the book opens up new avenues for understanding identity, self, autobiographical memory, and personality. Among the contemporary authors considered, all fully inscribed within the realm of philosophy and cognitive sciences, we find Peter Carruthers, Peter Fonagy, Gyorgy Gergely, Daniel Stern, Michael Tomasello, Dan Sperber, and Pierre Jacob
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