Topic description:
Cognitive processes can be considered, in the first instance, as self-organizing and complex processes characterized by a continuous emergence of new categorization forms and by self- referentiality. In order to understand the inner mechanisms of this kind of processes we have to outline a theory of more and more sophisticated forms of organization. We need, for instance, to define new measures of meaningful complexity, new architectures of semantic neural networks, etc. In particular, we have to take into consideration the genetic and "genealogical" aspects that characterize the inner development of cognitive symbolic structures. However, cognition is not only a self-organizing process. It is also a co-operative and coupled process. If we consider the external environment as a complex, multiple and stratified Source which interacts with the nervous system, we can easily realize that the cognitive activities devoted to the "intelligent" search for the depth information living in the Source, may determine the same change of the complexity conditions according to which the Source progressively expresses its "wild" action. In this sense, simulation models are not neutral or purely speculative. True cognition appears to be necessarily connected with successful forms of reading, those forms that permit a specific coherent unfolding of the deep information content of the Source. Therefore, the simulation models, if valid, materialize as "creative" channels, i.e., as autonomous functional systems, as the same roots of a new possible development of the entire system represented by brain and its Reality.

Biographical note:
Arturo Carsetti is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. He is the Editor in chief of the International Journal “La Nuova Critica”.

Selected publications:
(ed) (1999) Functional Models of Cognition. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
(2000) Randomness, information and meaningful complexity: Some remarks about the emergence of biological structures. La Nuova Critica 36: 47-128.
(2003) The embodied meaning: Self-organisation and symbolic dynamics in visual cognition. La Nuova Critica 41-42: 145-178.
(2003) Rational perception and self-organisation of forms. Axiomathes 13: 459-470.
(ed) (2004) Seeing, Thinking and Knowing: Meaning and Self-Organisation in Visual Cognition and Thought. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
(2004) Conceptual Invariants, Scientific Languages and Knowledge Construction. Rome: U.P. Press.
(2004) Intuitive categorisation and knowledge construction. La Nuova Critica 43-44: 95-115.
(2005) Linguaggi, procedure del riferimento e Realtà, In: Contesti e validità del discorso scientifico (Cuccurullo L, Mariani E, eds), 262-279. Rome: Armando.
(2005) Entropia, morfogenesi autonoma e sistemi cognitivi. La Nuova Critica 45-46: 45-76.
(2005) Verità, decisione razionale e teoria della complessità. In:Quaderni della Rivista Trimestrale di Diritto e Procedura civile, Milan, 25-41.
(2006) Functional realism, non-standard semantics and the genesis of the mind’s eyes. La Nuova Critica 47-48. (ed)
(2007) Truth, Causality and Categorial Intuition. U. P. Press, Rome. (in press) The role of simulation models in visual cognition. In: Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Engineering (Magnani L, ed).
(in press) Meaning and self-organisation in cognitive science. In: Computing, Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Dodig Crnkovic G, Stuart S, eds).
(in press) Complexity, self-organisation and natural evolution. In Handbook of Evolution (Wuketits FM, ed), Vol. 3. Wiley.
(in press) Semantic Information and Biological Functions. Rome: T.R.