Research

One simple question, one radical consequence: where does experience exist?

My work brings together philosophy of mind, robotics, cognitive science, media and art around Mind-Object Identity: the hypothesis that experience is not an internal copy of the world, but the object itself in its existence relative to the body.

Riccardo Manzotti · Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, IULM Milan · PhD in Robotics · Fulbright Visiting Scholar, MIT
Research programme

From perception to reality.

The starting point is an objection to the dominant paradigm: if the brain produces a representation of the object, what accounts for the object of experience? MOI replaces the relation among object, brain and representation with an identity: experience is the physical object that exists relative to a body.

This hypothesis makes it possible to rethink perception, dreams, hallucinations, imagination, personal identity and artificial intelligence without reintroducing a mental world separate from the physical world.

Philosophy of consciousness

Mind-Object Identity, critique of representationalism, the hard problem, perception and the transparency of experience.

Artificial intelligence

LLMs, machine consciousness, creativity, agency and the difference between manipulating symbols and meeting the world.

Media, images and art

Technical objects and images as ways of accessing reality; aesthetics and the psychology of art as a laboratory for MOI.

Freedom and value

Choice, responsibility for ends and human value in the age of cognitive automation.

Key books

For readers, students and researchers.

The Spread Mind

OR Books, 2017. The first international presentation of Mind-Object Identity.

Consciousness and Object

John Benjamins, 2018. The systematic and technical formulation of the theory.

La mente allargata

Il Saggiatore, 2019. An Italian introduction to consciousness as world.

Dialogues on Consciousness, with Tim Parks

OR Books, 2018. Fifteen conversations across philosophy, literature and cognitive science.

See all books
For universities and research

For seminars, collaborations and academic material.

For CVs, publications, research seminars, supervision or university invitations, contact me directly.

Write to my university address