CEFH - Centre for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies: UID/00683/2025. Pluriannual 2025-2029

Classificação Global: Bom
As a result of recent scientific developments in neurosciences, artificial intelligence, and digital technologies, human beings have once again become problematic to themselves. At the same time, social phenomena like migrations and the rise of national and religious identities have challenged the international social order inherited from the 20th century. These changes have an impact on individual and social existence, which should be addressed from an interdisciplinary approach, gathering the contributions from philosophy, psychology, language and communication sciences, and literary and cultural studies. It is our goal to reflect upon what it means to be human and the processes that may enhance or hinder human development.

Within this general context, CEFH addresses fundamental anthropological questions associated with recent scientific and societal developments from three different though complementary issues: the nature of the biological and social processes that underpin the emergence of human beings and their capacity to be more and create novelty; the limits of human existence, which have become less clear in face of scientific and technological discoveries (human being); and the capacity of the human being to create new forms of personal and social existence, through processes of human development that may be enhanced or hindered by different factors (human becoming). Accordingly, the CEFH project is organized into three research topics.

The first research topic addresses the ontological foundations of human nature from the brain to sociality, focusing on biological and social processes, specifically body-brain-mind relations, language, culture, and religion. The research integrates complex systems theory, embodied cognition, especially the enactive approach and ecological psychology, and approaches to intersubjectivity.

The second research topic addresses anthropological questions associated with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), and the digitalization of society. We will discuss the extent to which artificial intelligence and robotics challenge and redefine our understanding of human nature and what it means to be a human being in the digital age, exploring new forms of existence in the digital environment.

Finally, the third research topic focuses on the processes of human development, which may be boosted or blocked by different types of personal and social factors. Adopting the “capabilities” and “positive development” approaches we will address the impact of the rapidly changing contemporary context and situations of crisis on human development and fulfillment.

CEFH takes advantage of an interdisciplinary spectrum of empirical data, coming from psychological, linguistic and communication research, from phenomenological research into the human mind and embodied cognition, from interdisciplinary perspectives on intersubjectivity, and from social scientific research into social group phenomena.