K&C Reading Seminars "Anatomy of the mind: the brain between body and world"

The K&C Reading Seminars, organized by Ph.D students and Post-Doc Researchers, are research meetings based on reading and discussing classics or fundamental texts in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. This year's cycle will revolve around a subject at the center of contemporary debate: the brain. It is well-established that the brain is linked to our cognitive faculties, yet how and why our mental life is rooted in this organ, about which we still know relatively little, remains unclear. Its scientific history is extensive, marked by discoveries and constant reconsiderations regarding its functioning, role, and modeling. This history appears to be undergoing a shift with the contemporary paradigms of cognitive sciences, labeled as 4E cognition. These paradigms aim to study the brain through nonreductionist lenses, drawing on reflections from key philosophers such as Spinoza, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty, or appealing to contemporary currents like post-humanism, STS studies, and advanced reflections on language and its evolution.

This variety of topics will be addressed using three seminal texts on the study of the brain from an embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive perspective. These texts include two classics of contemporary cognition studies and a recently published work that will frame this year's readings and bridge last year's themes.

• Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, (Macmillan, 1994). This text argues that the brain cannot produce any cognitive form unless conceived an inseparably linked to corporeality. Damasio revisits the philosophical distinction between Descartes and Spinoza to explain his neuroscientific viewpoint.

• Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind (Oxford University Press, 2008). In this book, Clark explains why the mind cannot be reduced to the brain alone. The mind, according to Clark, extends across bodies and technological objects, reaching into the symbolic and aesthetic universes that form our cognitive niches. Brain and world are co-equal actors in the production of the mind.

• Thomas Fuchs, Ecology of the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2018). In this book, psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs conceptualizes the brain as an interface between body, culture, and world. The brain serves as the medium through which the external world influences us, forming a continuous loop of action and reaction.

During each session, a scholar will introduce the day's thematic content, providing a personalized reinterpretation while articulating their own insights on the subject matter. This will be followed by a rigorous discussion centered around the scrutiny of the book's chapters

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