This week we will be presented with a highly original, and controversial thesis: there is no "mind-body problem", since the mind and the world are one! Or rather: see the abstract, including the links, for a proper introduction to Prof. Manzotti's Mind-Object Identity Hypothesis. While on the face of it, this thesis seems be diametrically opposed to phenomenology and cognitive semiotics, I have always felt since meeting Ricardo more than 20 years ago, that there are in fact more similarities than differences between MOI and phenomenology, especially of the kind to be found in the (late) works of Merleau-Ponty. In any case, there should be ample space (and time) for discussion - and all are warmly welcome - in the H402, or on zoom, with cameras on.

Bertolt Brecht's Galileo said, "the greatest error of science is to assume to know more than what it knows." In the case of consciousness, something everyone thinks they know but has never been experimentally confirmed, is that consciousness is localized within the central nervous system. Yet, internalist models, such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT), Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT), and others, have repeatedly failed, accumulated anomalies, and gathered ad hoc hypotheses; all symptoms of a paradigm in crisis according to Kuhn's interpretation. Here, I present a different hypothesis, named the Mind-Object Identity Hypothesis (MOI) which is entirely physicalist but does not presuppose that consciousness is identical to an INTERNAL property of the nervous system. Instead, the MOI proposes that consciousness is IDENTICAL to physical objects that exist EXTERNALLY to the nervous system and RELATIVELY to one's body. The MOI is neither a form of panpsychism nor a form of idealism. By suggesting the identity between an object's consciousness and the object itself, the MOI eliminates the problem of consciousness as a set of subjective properties opposed to the physical world. Moreover, the opposition between subjective properties and objective properties can be resolved in terms of relative properties (where relative is understood as in the case of relative speed). Even classic objections based on memory, mental imagery, illusions, and hallucinations can be resolved. In this way, the hard problem is dissolved, and it is possible to conceive our existence in terms of the external world that exists relatively to a particular object, which is our body.

Byrne, Alex and Manzotti, Riccardo (2022), 'Hallucination and Its Objects', The Philosophical Review, 131 (3), 327-59.
Manzotti, Riccardo (2017), The Spread Mind. Why Consciousness and the World Are One (New York: OR Books).
Manzotti, Riccardo (2019), 'Mind-object identity: A solution to the hard problem', Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1-16.

https://iai.tv/articles/there-is-no-problem-of-consciousness-riccardo-manzotti-auid-2378 

https://youtu.be/EGBEC6RNaOU