Giulio Mecacci

Giulio Mecacci is a philosopher of technology and cognitive science. He obtained his PhD degree at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior in philosophy of neurotechnology in 2017. He currently teaches ethics of technology at TU Delft and theoretical cognitive sciences at Radboud University Nijmegen.

Most of his time, however, is dedicated to post-doctoral research that he is conducting within the project "Meaningful Human Control over Autonomous Driving Systems". His role in this project is to provide ethical and philosophical insights on the notion of meaningful human control applied to automated driving systems. He is researching a notion of human control that could be meaningfully applied to the interaction between controllers and systems with different degrees of automation. By clarifying how a rational human agent can be kept meaningfully in control of a vehicle, he aims at miniming accountability gaps in case of traffic accidents.

Besides meaningful human control, he is also interested in philosophy of neurotechnology and neuroscience. In particular, he is fascinated by how scientific knowledge about the brain -and the increasing capacity to technologically intervene on it- influences our understanding of identity and self, freedom of will and mental privacy.