The Third ICCS Conference
"Creativity: Minds and Machines"
Rome, Vatican City, September 1–3, 2026
Location: Roma Tre University
9:00–9:30 — Conference opening
09:30–11:20 — The Possibility of Artificial Wisdom
Chair: Mario De Caro
Speakers: Arianna Pipitone, John Sullins, Andrea Lavazza
This panel explores the possibility of artificial wisdom, with particular attention to the notion of practical wisdom. While contemporary AI systems can process information, generate recommendations, and simulate forms of reasoning, it remains unclear whether they can possess, or even approximate, the kind of judgment traditionally associated with wisdom. Practical wisdom is not merely a capacity to select efficient means to given ends; it involves sensitivity to context, ethical discernment, an understanding of human vulnerability, and the ability to deliberate well about what is good in particular circumstances. The panel will therefore ask whether artificial systems can genuinely display such capacities, whether they can only support human practical wisdom, or whether the very idea of artificial wisdom rests on a conceptual mistake. By bringing together philosophical, ethical, and technological perspectives, the discussion will examine both the promise and the limits of AI in domains where judgment, responsibility, and human flourishing are at stake.
11:20–11:40 — Coffee break
11:40–13:30 — AI and Consciousness in Creative Processes
Chair: Antonio Chella
Speakers: Peter Mantello, Riccardo Manzotti, Fabio Ciotti
The panel will explore one of the most fascinating and controversial questions emerging at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy, and the arts: can artificial systems genuinely participate in creative processes, and what does this imply for our understanding of consciousness itself? Recent advances in generative AI, large language models, digital media, and embodied robotics are transforming creative practices. Machines are no longer limited to executing predefined instructions; they increasingly generate texts, images, music, performances, and interactive experiences that appear original, adaptive, and culturally meaningful. These developments raise deep questions concerning intentionality, imagination, self-representation, agency, and the possible emergence of forms of artificial cognition associated with creative behavior. The panel will bring together perspectives from philosophy, media studies, digital humanities, and AI research. It will discuss whether current systems merely simulate creativity or whether they may represent the first steps toward new forms of autonomous creative cognition. Special attention will be devoted to the relation between consciousness and creative production, the role of embodiment and social interaction, and the broader cultural implications of increasingly creative artificial agents.
13:30–15:00 — Lunch
15:00–16:50 — Synthetic Creativity. The Observer’s Perspective
Chair: Pietro Perconti
Speakers: Robin Zebrowski, Gino Roncaglia, Andrea Velardi
This panel examines synthetic creativity from the perspective of the interpreters who evaluate and interact with AI-generated artifacts. The discussion explores how contemporary generative systems are changing the ways creativity is recognized and socially negotiated. Rather than asking whether machines possess creativity in some inner or human-like sense, the panel focuses on the observer’s role in attributing originality, meaning, and aesthetic value to synthetic artifacts. How are authorship, imagination, cultural production, and epistemic authority being transformed in the age of generative AI? Particular attention will be devoted to the social environments in which AI systems operate, the interpretive practices through which artificial artifacts acquire creative status, and the emerging forms of collaboration between human and synthetic agents. The panel will not ask whether AI is “truly” creative. Instead, it will investigate whether synthetic creativity represents a genuinely new phenomenon or whether it reveals something more fundamental: namely, that creativity has always depended on processes of collective interpretation, cultural framing, and social recognition.
16:50–17:10 — Coffee break
17:10–19:00 — Standards for Artificial Consciousness
Chair: Mimma Bruni
Speakers: Vincenzo Ambriola, Massimo Chiriatti, Alessio Plebe
9:30–11:20 — The Existential Agency of AI
Chair: Alex O'Connor
Speakers: Dmitry Volkov, Luc Steels, Joscha Bach, Arathi Sethumadhavan, Pavel Rebernik
Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping how human beings communicate, create, remember, form relationships, and understand themselves. As AI systems become integrated into everyday life, they raise a broader philosophical question: are they merely tools that serve human purposes, or are they becoming active participants in the formation of human experience itself? This panel explores the existential consequences of living with AI. Rather than focusing on consciousness or technical capabilities alone, the discussion asks how AI affects personal identity, creativity, dignity, autonomy, and the experience of meaningful human relationships. Does generative AI expand the possibilities of self-expression and cultural participation, or does it encourage conformity, dependency, and the erosion of authentic agency? Can algorithmically mediated lives remain fully human forms of existence? Bringing together perspectives from philosophy, theology, cognitive science, and AI development, the panel will examine whether AI enriches human life or risks diminishing its existential depth.
11:20–11:40 — Coffee break
11:40–13:30 — Consciousness and Creativity in Machines and Animals
Chair: Anton Kuznetsov
Speakers: Liad Mudrik, Artem Besedin, Robert Clowes
This panel explores the relationship between consciousness and creativity in artificial intelligence and non-human animals. It examines whether creativity necessarily depends on conscious experience or whether novel and meaningful outputs can emerge through unconscious, distributed, or computational processes. Many animal species display remarkably sophisticated and creative forms of behavior, including problem-solving, innovation, and adaptation to new situations. Contemporary AI systems can also produce impressive works of art, music, and literature. Yet, unlike animals, they do not appear to exhibit some of the cognitive features commonly associated with creativity, such as insight, curiosity, surprise at unexpected outcomes, or a sense of achievement. This contrast raises important questions. What can the study of animal cognition teach us about the most basic forms of creativity? Can highly complex creative products emerge in AI systems that lack elementary creative actions and experiences? Or do artificial systems represent a fundamentally different kind of creativity? Particular attention will be devoted to the roles of awareness, intention, integration, reflection, and agency in creative activity. Rather than seeking definitive answers to whether AI is conscious or genuinely creative, the panel will investigate how recent developments in artificial intelligence challenge traditional understandings of creativity and cognition. More broadly, it will explore whether creativity should be understood primarily as a feature of conscious minds, as a product of extended cognitive systems, or as an emergent phenomenon arising from new forms of interaction between biological and artificial agents.
13:30–15:00 — Lunch
15:00–18:00 — Art, Theory of Mind, and the Layers of Consciousness
Chair: Emanuele Castano
Speakers: David Freedberg, Gregory Currie, Susan Aldworth, Eftychia Stamkou
Mentalizing—attributing thoughts, feelings, and intentions to oneself and others—is often considered central to social cognition and consciousness. The arts, meanwhile, are frequently seen as privileged spaces for imagining and understanding other minds. Bringing together perspectives from art history and neuroaesthetics, philosophy, social psychology, and contemporary artistic practice, this panel explores how artistic experiences shape our understanding of minds, selves, and conscious awareness. The discussion will examine the roles of emotion, embodiment, imagination, perspective-taking, and altered forms of selfhood in aesthetic engagement, asking whether art merely helps us understand other minds—or whether it challenges and transforms our assumptions about what minds and consciousness are.
Pontifical Gregorian University
9:00–12:00 — Consciousness, Perspectivism, and the Arts
Chair: Michael Pauen
Speakers: Sergio Durante, Henrike Moll, Lisa Zunshine, Maria Kasmirli
Perspectivism is key to understanding the brain: On the one hand, a host of scientific perspectives from molecular and cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy are necessary to grasp the most complex biological system we know. At the same time, perspective-taking is one of the important tricks that the mind/brain employs to understand its social and physical environment. But it took scientists and philosophers centuries to understand what perspectives are and how they contribute to the acquisition of knowledge. Artists were much faster in using and understanding perspectivism, and there are reasons to believe that aesthetic perspectivism was essential for the development of a philosophical understanding of this phenomenon. The panel will bring together researchers focused on perspectivism in music, literature, developmental psychology, and philosophy. They will describe perspectivism in their respective fields and question whether implicit perspective-taking in the arts might have encouraged explicit understanding of perspectivism in science and philosophy.
12:00–12:20 — Coffee break
12:20–14:00 — General discussion
Chair: Maria Kasmirli
14:00–16:00 — Lunch
Capitoline Palace
Registration for listeners is now open!
Dmitry Volkov, Keith Frankish, Andy Clark. Introduction of the Dennett Prize winner
Nick Humphrey. Dennett Lecture: "Consciousness and the Soul: the reality of an illusion"
The idea of the disembodied soul is no longer scientifically respectable. But in several ways it is consonant with evolutionary psychology and an “illusionist” theory of consciousness. The concept of the Soul—as the locus of personhood and agency—has played a key role in the social and biological survival of human beings. But the concept originates, psychologically, in the evolutionarily ancient experience of the “phenomenal self”, a feature of the mind that humans presumably share with many other animals. If selfhood is founded on the experience of sensations with illusory non-physical properties, this suggests that Descartes was right to draw a sharp distinction between physical stuff and mind stuff. When it comes to the evolution of the Soul, in the beginning was not the material Brain but the ghostly Word.
