Domenico Futia - Portfolio

Foundational Inquiry

“What does it mean for a human being to experience the world, make sense of life, and construct personal identity?”

Theoretical Foundations: Beyond the Disembodied Mind

At the core of my research and theoretical inquiry lies the fruitful intersection of two major traditions in European philosophy — phenomenology and hermeneutics — in continuous dialogue with contemporary cognitive science and urgent debates surrounding artificial intelligence and technology.My foundational premise is a radical rejection of any disembodied and purely abstract account of the mind: the human being is neither an isolated consciousness nor a biological computer housed within the skull, but primarily an embodied subject — a living, vulnerable presence situated in space, driven by needs, and embedded in social and cultural contexts.

Research Pillars & Conceptual Horizons

European Philosophical Traditions

Phenomenology & Hermeneutics of Lived Experience

Phenomenology invites us to 'return to the things themselves', investigating with descriptive rigor the structures of first-person lived experience and how phenomena, others, and ourselves appear in everyday consciousness. Simultaneously, hermeneutics demonstrates that there is no immediate or transparent access to who we are: self-understanding is always mediated by symbols, texts, historical practices, and language.

Phenomenology (SEP)

Hermeneutics (SEP)

Contemporary Cognitive Science

The Enactive Approach & 4E Cognition Paradigms

My work focuses on the enactive approach and 4E cognition paradigms, which regard the mind as embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted through continuous sensorimotor loops. Thinking, perceiving, and understanding are not computational operations of internal symbol manipulation, but forms of skillful coping and active ways of inhabiting the world to co-create meaning through the dynamic capacities of our lived body.

Embodied Cognition (SEP)

Enactivism (IEP)

Selfhood Theory & Social Philosophy

Narrative Identity, Ethics of Alterity & Social Norms

Grounded in this biological and bodily reality is the crucial problem of narrative identity: selfhood is not a static essence, but a diachronic temporal construction intertwining autobiographical memory, actions, and co-authored stories. The self is an ongoing responsibility for one's own history, where biological continuity meets promise-keeping, responsibility toward alterity, and the sedimentation of cultural norms, collective habits, gender performativity, and social categorizations.

Personal Identity (SEP)

Artificial Intelligence & Human-Centered Design

Artificial Intelligence, Genuine Meaning & Human-Centered Design

It is precisely at this nexus that my research connects directly with contemporary discussions on AI and computational systems. Today, cognition is frequently reduced to statistical patterns, token manipulation, or probabilistic generation. Yet, a rigorous phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective exposes the fundamental gap between artificial information processing and authentic sense-making: computational models lack a living body that acts and suffers, lacking bodily vulnerability and existential stakes — the primal matrix of all genuine meaning. Storytelling is an existential act of historical accountability between humans.

Artificial Intelligence (SEP)

The Irreducibility of Human Experience

Bringing phenomenology, the hermeneutics of the body, and narrative theory into the technological debate moves past reductive tropes and myths of AI autonomy, clarifying the irreducibility of human experience and informing the design of digital, interactive, and educational tools that honor empathy, imagination, and embodied complexity.

Authoritative Peer-Reviewed Philosophical Reference Entries

Phenomenology (SEP)

Hermeneutics (SEP)

Embodied Cognition (4E) (SEP)

Personal Identity (SEP)

Enactivism (IEP)

Download Resume (PDF)

Read Essays & Articles

Resume