Come la rappresentazione organizza la realtà

Abstract

In this paper we explore the role of simulations, understood as internal mental representations, and as external entities such as material repositories of memory, artistic expressions, technologies. All simulations aim to momentarily interrupt the mind-body-world relationship and re-organise it, equipping human beings with flexible strategies with which to speed up the decision-making process. In this context, even culture, modelled on the possible worlds of modal logic and counterfactual reasoning, are simulations whose purpose is not to add meanings and complicate choice; they are not a redundancy of alternative situations to the current one, already rich in meanings, on the contrary, they allow for a reduction in information overload, accelerating strategic selection on the basis of a common ground of co-created assumptions. The mind is not internal, but distributed and dynamically extended in different involvements with a reality that includes cultural institutions, technologies and other minds.