people iuss

I am Associate Professor at the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, where I am member of the Linguistics & Philosophy IUSS Center (L&PIC). My main research interests lie in the metaphysics of mind and persons.

I cultivate these interests by combining the analytical approach in which I was trained with the phenomenological approach and ideas about minds and persons from the Sanskrit works of Classical Indian philosophy.

I have published several books and articles on these topics. Among the books there are “Persone umane” (Carocci 2015) and “Filosofia della mente” (with M. Di Francesco and M. Maraffa, Carocci 2017).

I am currently writing a new book on the metaphysics of the self in the Nyāya and Abhidharma traditions.

Michele Di Francesco is full professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and deputy-rector for the development of humanities projects of the School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia. He is a past Director («Rettore») of the IUSS and a past Dean («Preside») of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. He has been president of: the European Society for Analytic Philosophy, the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy and the Italian Society of Neuroethics and Philosophy of Neuroscience. At IUSS, he is now the Director of Linguistics & Philosophy IUSS Center (L&PIC). He is the author of eleven books and about one hundred scientific articles and book chapters; he edited various books and conference proceedings. His most recent books are The Self and Its Defences. From Psychodynamics to Cognitive Science, London, Palgrave Macmillan 2016, (with M. Marraffa and A. Paternoster) and Filosofia della mente. Corpo, coscienza, pensiero, Rome, Carocci Editore 2017 (with M. Marraffa and A. Tomasetta), His main field of research is the philosophy of mind and of cognitive science, and in particular the philosophical problems of subjective experience (such as the nature of the Self and the place of consciousness in the natural order), the extended-mind model of cognition, and the philosophical basis of cognitive neuroscience. 

I am an Assistant Professor (Rtd-b) at the University School IUSS Pavia, where I am member of the Linguistics & Philosophy IUSS Center (L&PIC). My primary research interests are in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, where my focus of research has been on situated and extended cognition and mind. Recently I am interested in the realm of philosophy of affectivity and philosophy of technology. I have published several books and articles on these topics. Among my recent publications is the book “Filosofia, tecnologia e scienze della mente” (with M. Fasoli, Il Mulino 2023). I graduated in Philosophy at the University of Rome La Sapienza (2003), where I also defended her PhD in Philosophy of Language (2007). I have been Associate Post-doc at Institut Jean Nicod in Paris and then a two-year research fellow at the University of Cagliari, where I held several teaching positions in Philosophy of Language and in Pedagogy. At IUSS I have been a junior researcher since 2019 and a research fellow since 2015. In 2018 I obtained the National Academic Qualification as Associate Professor in the area “Philosophy of Language” (11/C4).

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Linguistics & Philosophy Center (L&PIC), IUSS Pavia and adjunct researcher at the University of Tasmania, Australia. My main research interests are in epistemology and philosophy of technology. Most recently I worked on epistemic authority,  Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) devices, epistemic dependence on Large Language Models (LLM) and cognitive trust in AI. I am currently working on the development of a theoretical framework for appropriate reliance on AI.

I received my PhD in Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where I also taught courses in logic, epistemology and metaphysics. I have then been an associate lecturer for the School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania, where I worked in medical ethics and philosophy of technology.