Gualtiero Piccinini (born 1970) 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 Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy Department and Associate Director of the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.[1]
Piccinini was born and raised in Italy, and studied philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Turin, from which he earned a Bachelor of Arts, and graduated cum laude. He then went to graduate school at University of Pittsburgh, specializing in the history and philosophy of science.[2] Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 2003, he held the position of "James S. McDonnell Post Doctoral Research Fellow" at the PNP (Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology) program at Washington University in St. Louis. He started as an assistant professor at the 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.[2] From 2011 to 2014 he was the Chair of the Philosophy Department at the university.[3]
Piccinini has served as a visiting professor several times in his career, including at Washington University in St. Louis in spring 2015, a fellow at Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2011, and finally as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the engineering graduate school of the Polytechnic University of Turin both in May 2007 and 2009.[4]
Piccinini is also widely known for his critique of pancomputationalism[7] and for his view about first-person data such as data from first-person reports.[8] He has argued that first-person data are scientifically legitimate because they are public like other scientific data.[9][10] 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.[2]
In 2020, he published the book Neurocognitive Mechanisms, in which he develops a neurocomputational explanation of cognition.[11]
Piccinini has received several grants, awards, fellowships and teaching releases, including two Scholars' Awards by the National Science Foundation.[2] He is the recipient of the 2014 Herbert Simon award by the International Association of Computing and Philosophy.[12]
He has been Philosophy Program Chair for the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology.
Piccinini has edited multiple academic journals, including: Cognitive Science, Humanities, Journal of Cognitive Science, and The Rutherford Journal. He is also Editor-in-chief of "Studies in Brain and Mind", a Springer book series. He has held this position since 2010.
This is only a partial list of publications by Gualtiero Piccinini. A full list is viewable on the "Published Articles" section of his Curriculum Vitae, viewable here.
Piccinini, Gualtiero; Bahar, Sonya (5 November 2012). "Neural Computation and the Computational Theory of Cognition". Cognitive Science. 37 (3). Wiley: 453–488. doi:10.1111/cogs.12012. ISSN0364-0213. PMID23126542.
Piccinini, Gualtiero; Craver, Carl (11 March 2011). "Integrating psychology and neuroscience: functional analyses as mechanism sketches". Synthese. 183 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 283–311. doi:10.1007/s11229-011-9898-4. ISSN0039-7857. S2CID6726609.
Piccinini, Gualtiero (2007). "Computational modelling vs. Computational explanation: Is everything a Turing Machine, and does it matter to the philosophy of mind?1". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 85 (1). Informa UK Limited: 93–115. doi:10.1080/00048400601176494. ISSN0004-8402. S2CID170303007.
“A Unified Mechanistic Account of Teleological Functions for Psychology and Neuroscience” (with Corey J. Maley), in David Kaplan (ed.), Integrating Psychology and Neuroscience: Prospects and Problems, Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming). 10,600 words.
“The Computational Theory of Cognition,” in V. C. Müller (ed.), Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence (Synthese Library), Berlin: Springer (forthcoming). 8,300 words.
