Scuola di Studi Superiori "Ferdinando Rossi" dell'Università degli Studi di Torino - SSST

The aim of this course, that will be divided in four modules, is to deepen the key determinants of decision-making. Particularly, the process and the concept of decision making will be addressed from the point of view of neuroscience, cognitive science, law and philosophy.

Decision making is a process of generating, evaluating and selecting among a set of at least two choice alternatives. In real-life situations, the choices involve a variable of uncertainty.

In recent years, growing knowledge, new technologies, and progress in science have broadened existing definitions and concept of decision making. Recent functional imaging and clinical evidence indicates that a remarkably consistent network of brain regions is involved in decision making, in decisions made in the context of social interactions and in moral cognition.  More recent work emphasizes the role of intuitive and emotional processes in decision making.

The challenge to address this issue is that it requires extensive cross-field integraztion of neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology and anthropology.

The exploration of the neurobiology of decision making and its implications for the legal system has highlighted the complexity of the interaction between the two. The theories of free will in a philosophical perspective will be considered.

Module 1 - Decision-Making/Free Will and Neuroscience 

Teaching staff: Silvio Bellino, Paola Rocca, Paola Bozzatello (10 hours)

Program:

Introduction: determinism, cognitivism, free will.

Neurobiology of decision making: neural bases of decisions and of social behavior; neural bases of moral cognition; Decision Making and emotions.

Decision making and psychiatry: decision making and psychopathology; “capacità di intendere e di volere” ; forensic psychopathology.

Module 2 - The problem of choice in psychology

Teaching staff: Maurizio Tirassa (10 hours)

Program:

1. Introduction; epistemology of the psychological sciences.
2. Choice and action in nineteenth-century psychology.
3. Choice and action in twentieth-century psychology: behaviourism.
4. Choice and action in twentieth-century psychology: the cognitive sciences.
5. Individual action, social action, power.

Module 3 - Neurosciences and law 

Teaching staff: Paolo Heritier (8 hours)

Program:

1) The three caves: the case of speluncean explorers; Plato's cave; the 360°VR cave; and individual and collective freedom of choice
2) Interpretive choices in the process; syllogistic model and rhetorical model of reasoning, the principle of coproduction between science and law.
3) The manipulation of individual and collective choice in democracies and the market: from marketing to social networks. Profiles of legal aesthetics
4) Affective neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience: iconic turn and affective turn between law and neuroscience. The problematic horizon of the metaverse and social robotics.

Module 4 - Free will and intentionality 

Teaching staff: Sofia Bonicalzi (8 hours)

Program:

Theories of free will

Theories of intentionality