Marking the Mark of the Mental

This book explores new perspectives on venerable problems about being mental that have always attracted philosophers’ attention. For human beings, being mental is one of the most fascinating research subjects, since having a mind is the feature that makes our life unique. Yet what does mentality really consist in? Is there a realm of the mental that can be singled out from other domains, and in what relation does being mental stand with other basic features of the world, notably being physical or having a body? By linking mentality with intentionality, phenomenal consciousness, and other interesting features this book provides a fresh perspective on philosophy of mind.

Alberto Voltolini (PhD Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1989) is a philosopher of language and mind whose works have focused mainly on intentionality, depiction and fiction, perception, and Wittgenstein. He is currently Professor in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Turin (Italy). He has got scholarships at the Universities of Geneva and Sussex. He has been visiting professor at the Universities of California, Riverside (1998), Australian National University, Canberra (2007), Barcelona (2010), London (2015), Auckland (2007, 2018), Antwerp (2019). He has been a member of the Steering Committee of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy (2002-2008), of the Board of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (2009-2012), and of the International Society for Fiction and Fictionality Studies (2018-2023). His publications include How Ficta Follow Fiction (Springer, 2006), as well as the “Fictional Entities” and the “Fiction” entries (with F. Kroon) of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction (Palgrave, 2015) and Down But Not Out (Springer, 2022).