PhD in Philosophy, Science, Cognition, and Semiotics (PSCS)

Curriculum 1: Philosophy and Science Studies
It is well-known that ca. 1830 the domain of philosophy and the domain of science began parting ways. Before that date, philosophy included also the kind of natural philosophy that we would now call science, and philosophers had often a training allowing them to excel in the sciences. After that date, science and scientists grew increasingly autonomous, and began establishing new specialties, new languages, and robust ties with technology in ways that have estranged many subsequent generations of philosophers up to this day. While acknowledging the substantial autonomy of philosophy and science in present-day research and educational institutions, the curriculum in Philosophy and Science Studies will provide a training allowing doctoral students to explore both the conflicts and the persistent links characterizing the relationships between philosophy and science. The curriculum will combine fields like analytic and continental traditions in philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, logic and the philosophy of language, science and technology studies. There is a growing awareness that the humanities can provide important cultural, historical and philosophical perspectives on questions affecting citizens living in a world largely shaped by science and technology. Reciprocally, there is a growing awareness in scientific circles that a clearer understanding of the intellectual, philosophical, social, and moral issues at stake in science and technology may benefit science itself. The curriculum aims at training PhD students who will develop fresh insights into a range of issues that defy the traditional partitions among philosophy, science, and technology.

Curriculum 2: Semiotics
The educational goals of the curriculum in semiotics are to develop theoretical and practical competencies in semiotics both from a theoretical-philosophical perspective, and in terms of their practical-methodological application. In particular, from a theoretical perspective, we shall examine relevant themes related to the development of philosophical and linguistic theories of signs and semiosis, key elements in the history of semiotics, as well as comparisons between different sign systems: linguistic, visual, multimodal, etc. On the application plane, necessary methodological tools will be provided to carry out in depth analyses of different types of textual objects: verbal, visual, behavioural, musical, audiovisual, etc. To this end the principal theoretical and methodological currents characterising the semiotic tradition, from structuralism to interpretational semiotics, will be examined in depth.

Curriculum 3: Cognitive Science

The main research topics of the curriculum on Cognitive science are:

• Attention
• Objects and action, affordances
• Role of the body in cognition, sense of body
• Language grounding in the perception, action and emotion systems
• Emotions and sensorimotor system
• Numerical cognitiom and its relationship with embodied cognition
• Social cognition

Students are required to learn to perform experiments in the lab - they will have to learn to plan them, to execute them and to analyse the data. They will be required to learn to realize classical behavioural experiments, in which reaction times and errors are recorded. In addition, they will be invited to learn to use at least one of the three instruments that we possess - eye tracking, motion tracking or TMS. In order to discuss with students the experiments they are conducting, from their planning to the data analysis, we will organize a lab meeting to be held every month. Students and professors will discuss together research projects, and students will have the opportunity to learn how to present a study. We will also organize periodical meetings to discuss some scientific papers. Students will be invited to present to the others an overview of the main topics and open issues in their area. Compared to other doctoral curricula in cognitive science, our curriculum is characterized by a higher attention paid to psychology (especially cognitive psychology and communication psychology).