The social roots of subjectivity
A self is not an isolated point of view. Subjectivity emerges through bodies, language, shared practices and the ways in which other people address us.
Philosopher of mind · Author · Speaker
The mind is never only inside us.
Pietro Perconti studies consciousness, self-consciousness and social cognition—and what artificial intelligence reveals about the boundaries of mind.
Minds are embodied, but they are also socially made.
Philosophy of mind for a world of other people, intelligent machines and changing forms of experience.Ideas
Four questions that guide the work.
Other minds come first
Understanding ourselves may depend on capacities first developed to understand others.
Artificial minds
AI forces an old philosophical question into a new form: what, if anything, lies behind intelligent behaviour when there is no obvious subject to whom it belongs?
Language and common sense
Language is more than a code for transmitting information. It carries the practical background through which people coordinate, interpret and inhabit a world together.
Selected work
Recent writing
2026Rethinking subjectivity: The social roots of consciousnessWith commentaries by Artem Besedin, Massimiliano Cappuccio, Keith Frankish, Evgeny Loginov, Massimo Marraffa and Cristina Meini · Epistemology & Philosophy of Science, 63(1), 22–692026Artificial intelligence and consciousnessWith Antonio Chella and Alessio Plebe · Elsevier Comprehensive Reference2025Narrative coherence in neural language modelsWith Alessandro Acciai, Lucia Guerrisi, Alessio Plebe, Rossella Suriano and Andrea Velardi · Frontiers in Psychology2025Making sense of transformer successWith Nicola Angius, Alessio Plebe and Alessandro Acciai · Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence2023Do Machines Really Understand Meaning? (Again)With Alessio Plebe · Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness2020Deep learning and cognitive scienceWith Alessio Plebe · Cognition, 203, 104365
Books
Philosophy in public.
Books about consciousness, language, artificial intelligence and the ways cognitive science changes our image of ourselves.
About
Philosophy between the laboratory, the university and public life.
Pietro Perconti is a Professor of Philosophy of Mind in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of Messina, Italy. His main research areas include consciousness, social cognition, and the social role of cognitive science. He served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Education at the University of Messina (2013–2018) and as Dean of COSPECS (Department of Cognitive Science, Psychology, Education, and Cultural Studies, University of Messina, 2018–2023). He has authored over one hundred scholarly articles and books in five languages. He has been invited to lecture at nearly 100 universities and research institutes in Italy and around the world. He co-founded the ICCS, the International Center for Consciousness Studies (hardproblem.it). He is a member of the NISC Lab, where AI, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy meet in the study of cognition.
Affiliation
Professor of Philosophy of Mind · COSPECS — Department of Cognitive Science, Psychology, Education, and Cultural Studies · University of Messina, Italy
100+scholarly articles and books, published in five languages
100+universities and research institutes around the world invited him to speak
Drawing: Olga LamdoWriting and conversation across national newspapers, cultural magazines, radio and public events.
Explore the public workSchedule
Talks, visits, encounters.
Where I've been—and where I'll be going next.
Come and gone2025–2026
— Africa
Academic visit and talk at Mekelle University
Mekelle, Ethiopia
— Asia
Talks and visiting lectures in Vietnam and Japan
Hanoi University · National Economics University · Phenikaa University · Institute of Philosophy, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences · Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
— Bulgaria & Romania
From the Black Sea to Bucharest
Summer school in Sozopol · ICUB workshop at the University of Bucharest
· Bulgaria & Romania
From the Black Sea to Bucharest
Two stops, connected by a shared question: how do social relations and technologies shape the ways we become someone? A summer school in Sozopol and a workshop in Bucharest offered occasions to discuss consciousness and human and artificial subjectivity with colleagues and students.
4–7 September · Sozopol, Bulgaria
Between Selves: Human and AI Subjectivity
At the summer school, my talk, The Self Is Between Selves: Enunciative Effects and First-Person Commitment, explored how speaking in the first person connects us to other people and to the commitments we undertake.
10 September · Bucharest, Romania
What Technologies Stabilize
At the University of Bucharest, I joined the ICUB workshop organised by Alin Olteanu. My talk, What Technologies Stabilize: The First Person, the Bearer Problem, and Artificial Subjectivity, examined how technologies stabilise social practices and what this means for artificial subjectivity.
In pictures
Places, encounters and moments.
Scenes from academic and public life—and from the journeys between them.
Public philosophy
Philosophy should be useful.
Writing, broadcasting, festivals and public conversation across languages and borders.
“You are the only professional philosopher I know who is simultaneously an anti-mafia activist. Could you tell us a little about this side of your work?”
“My involvement as an anti-mafia activist began when I was a high school student. Palermo and Sicily at that time were ravaged by the challenge of the Mafia, which then had a significant role in the international drug trafficking. I have always been suspicious of philosophers' complacency about the futility of our job. On the contrary, I think philosophy should be a useful activity, in the sense of socially productive. This is not to say that every single philosophical inquiry needs to have an appreciable social effect, but that on the whole philosophical activity must be socially engaged.”
P. Perconti and E. V. Loginov, “Italian Philosophy, Consciousness and Sex with Robots. An Interview with Pietro Perconti,” Date Palm Compote, no. 19 (2024), pp. 91–99. Published in Russian; quotation translated into English.
Philosophy at cruising altitude
Seat belts fastened; ontological commitments optional.
A helicopter conversation with Dmitry Volkov about machine consciousness—and whether humans might fall in love, and have sex, with artificial humans.
Podcasts & conversations
Listen & watch01Spreaker · Podcast 03La collana di AdaIntelligenza artificiale e questioni di genere · with Simona Morini, Maria Mannone and Valeria Patera02Dario Zanca Podcast · #11Coscienza umana e artificiale, cognizione socialeA conversation on minds, AI and social cognition03Innovation Island · VideoIA e autonomia delle macchine: cogliere i vantaggi di stili diversi di intelligenzaConnessioni Digitali · Palermo, 9 May 202504VideolessicoMenteWhat does it mean to have a mind?05ICCS · Recorded sessionModels of ConsciousnessThe First ICCS Conference · Siena06ICCS · Conference filmPhilosophy, Neuroscience, AIThe First ICCS Conference07Roma Tre Radio · PodcastIA e coscienzaA conversation on artificial intelligence and consciousness08Festa di Scienza e Filosofia · 2025Come l’Intelligenza Artificiale sta cambiando le neuroscienze, la filosofia e la societàWith Raffaella Rumiati, Domenica Bruni, Antonio Chella and Gianluca Nicoletti
Selected public writing
Articles by Pietro PercontiInnovation IslandRagionare a cuor leggero. Sulla possibilità del giudizio artificialeBussola AI · 19 June 2026il manifestoL’illusione di leggere nella mente altruiArticle · 20 February 2007il manifestoAnche gli elefanti fanno i conti con lo specchioArticle · 9 December 2006il manifestoLe scimmie non parlano ma sanno contareArticle · 16 January 2008DomaniIl leader per un Pd fra dinamismo liberale e lotta alle disuguaglianzeWith Pietro Navarra · 13 March 2021
Highlights · ICCS Rome 2026
3rd Annual Conference
1–3 September 2026
Creativity: Minds and Machines
Three memorable days of philosophy, science and art, with old friends and new colleagues. The third ICCS conference brought us together in Rome and Vatican City to explore creativity in human, animal and artificial minds.
Roma Tre University · Casina Pio IV, Pontifical Academy of Sciences · Pontifical Gregorian University · Campidoglio
I came away with a question that will stay with me: will AI deepen our creativity, or multiply novelties without meaningful discontinuity? Our discussions explored how creativity reaches beyond the human case, and whether consciousness is necessary for it. The magnificent venues gave these conversations an extraordinary setting; the people made the occasion.
We closed at the Campidoglio, in the Sala della Protomoteca, with the Dennett Prize ceremony and Nicholas Humphrey's Dennett Lecture.
In my interview with Eugenio Murrali for Vatican News, I discussed artificial creativity as a collective endeavour, and the care needed to understand what machines bring to it.
Community
International Center for Consciousness Studies
Co-founder of a research community bringing philosophy, neuroscience, psychology and AI into conversation around the hard problems of mind.
Visit ICCSSummer Philosophy School · Palermo 2023
The Metaphysics of Uploading
Philosophers debate the future of the human mind.
With Pietro Perconti and Eric Olson: a week of lectures and conversations about mind uploading, consciousness, personal identity and technological optimism.
We debated mind uploading. Then they uploaded us.
GAIA, by Sharon Bloom, Yaroslav Kravtsov and Artem Konevskikh, transformed the school participants into digital avatars inside a simulation—and made the experiment into a film.
Watch the avatar filmContact
Ideas begin in conversation.
For lectures, academic collaborations, interviews and public events.
Get in touch