Philosophers, theologians, physicists, and psychologists join their efforts to reflect on the crucial issues of limit and infinity, time and eternity, empty space and material space. The volume offers an invaluable contribution to some of the most important issues of our times: questions on God and consciousness are discussed in parallel with quantum theory, black holes, the inflationary universe, the Big Bang, and string theory, from different perspectives and angles, ranging from neuroscience to AI.

Panpsychism is a solution to the mind-body problem that presumes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality instead of a product or consequence of physical processes (i.e., brain activity). Panpsychism is an elegant solution to the mind-body problem: it effectively rids itself of the explanatory gap materialist theories of consciousness suffer from. However, many theorists and experimentalists doubt panpsychism can ever be successful as a scientific theory, as it cannot be empirically verified or falsified. In this paper, I present (...) a panpsychist model based on the controversial idea that consciousness may be a so called higher physical dimension. Although this notion seems outrageous, I show that the idea has surprising explanatory power, even though the model (as most models) is most likely wrong. Most importantly, though, it results in a panpsychist model that yields predictions that can be empirically verified or falsified. As such, the model's main purpose is to serve as an example how a metaphysical model of consciousness can be specified in such a way that they can be tested in a scientifically rigorous way. (shrink)

This paper discusses the epistemic status of biology from the standpoint of the systemic approach to living systems based on the notion of biological autonomy. This approach aims to provide an understanding of the distinctive character of biological systems and this paper analyses its theoretical and epistemological dimensions. The paper argues that, considered from this perspective, biological systems are examples of emergent phenomena, that the biological domain exhibits special features with respect to other domains, and that biology as a discipline (...) employs some core concepts, such as teleology, function, regulation among others, that are irreducible to those employed in physics and chemistry. It addresses the claim made by Jacques Monod that biology as a science is marginal. It argues that biology is general insofar as it constitutes a paradigmatic example of complexity science, both in terms of how it defines the theoretical object of study and of the epistemology and heuristics employed. As such, biology may provide lessons that can be applied more widely to develop an epistemology of complex systems. (shrink)

The Metamorphosis of Plants, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, by Rupert Sheldrake The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance by Fritjof Capra, by Rupert Sheldrake Quantum Aspects of Life, edited by Derek Abbott, Paul C. W. Davies, and Arun K. Pati, by Michael Levin Medicine, Miracles, & Manifestations: A Doctor’s Journey through the Worlds of Divine Intervention, Near-Death Experience, and Universal Energy, by John L. Turner, by Allan J. Hamilton Parsing the Turing Test: (...) Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer, edited by Robert Epstein, Gary Roberts, and Grace Beber, by Gregory Chaitin Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, by Larry Dossey The Seer in Ancient Greece, by Michael Attyah Flower MichaelGrosso Astrology off the Beaten Track: A Scientifi c Study of Planets and Personality, by Suzel Fuzeau-Braesch Robert Marks Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity, by D. Felton, by Daniel Ogden Life and Mind: In Search of the Physical Basis, edited by Savely Savva, by Beverly Rubik Parapsychology and the Skeptics: A Scientifi c Argument for the Existence of ESP, by Chris Carter, by Michael Schmicker Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot, by Bruce Leininger, Andrea Leininger, and Ken Gross, by Charles T. Tart Further Books of Note Journal Review. (shrink)

C.H. Waddington’s concepts of ‘chreods’ (canalized paths of development) and ‘homeorhesis’ (the tendency to return to a path), each associated with ‘morphogenetic fields’, were conceived by him as a contribution to complexity theory. Subsequent developments in complexity theory have largely ignored Waddington’s work and efforts to advance it. Waddington explained the development of the concept of chreod as the influence on his work of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, notably, the concept of concrescence as a self-causing process. Processes were recognized (...) as having their own dynamics, rather than being explicable through their components or external agents. Whitehead recognized the tendency to think only in terms of such ‘substances’ as a bias of European thought, claiming in his own philosophy ‘to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought.’ Significantly, the theoretical biologist who comes closest to advancing Waddington’s research program, also marginalized, is Mae-Wan Ho. Noting this bias, and embracing Whitehead’s and Waddington’s efforts to free biology from assumptions dominating Western thought to advance an ontology of creative causal processes, I will show how later developments of complexity theory, most importantly, Goodwin’s work on oscillations, temporality and morphogenesis, Vitiello’s dissipative quantum brain dynamics, Salthe’s work on hierarchy theory, biosemiotics inspired by Peirce and von Uexküll, Robert Rosen’s work on anticipatory systems, together with category theory and biomathics, can augment while being augmented by Waddington’s work, while further advancing Mae-Wan Ho’s radical research program with its quest to understand the reality of consciousness. (shrink)

The central issue here concerns whether Being as explored by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time is constituted spatiotemporally. As such this project has two interlinked objectives. One objective is to supply conceptually plausible answers to Heidegger’s unanswered questions regarding the temporality of Being, which he raised at the very end of Being and Time. In response I argue that each individual human being is constituted as a Space-Time-Event-Motion (STEM) containment-field embodied entity. Heidegger situates Dasein (human existence) in a temporal (...) stream moving towards the nothingness of death but all the while separating being and time as two distinct phenomena rather than coexistent. I demonstrate why this was a crucial error in Heidegger’s thinking. The second objective deals with the sense of authentic being developed by Heidegger. The spatiotemporal nature of one’s life for Heidegger is understood from the standpoint of Being-in-the-world, as an engaged participant, coexistent with the world, so that contextually it is through this engagement in recognition of this facticity or thrownness that one comes to recognise one’s own authentic self. Somewhat problematic is the coexistent phenomenological recognition that one does not live in isolation and as such one may question what of the contingent, constraining and influencing factors that shape one’s sense of self particularly against the backdrop of self-other relations. This project is situated methodologically within Process Philosophy, and it is from this perspective that draws attention to the role of human agency in which individuals are spatiotemporally construed in terms of Space-Time-Event-Motion (STEM) entities. (shrink)

Enactivism has the potential to provide a sense of teleology in purpose-directed action, but without violating the principles of efficient causation. Action can be distinguished from mere reaction by virtue of the fact that some systems are self-organizing. Self-organization in the brain is reflected in neural plasticity, and also in the primacy of motivational processes that initiate the release of neurotransmitters necessary for mental and conscious functions, and which guide selective attention processes. But in order to flesh out the enactivist (...) approach in a way that is plausible and not merely an epiphenomenon, it is necessary to confront the problem of causal closure in a serious way. Atoms and molecules in the brain do not violate the normal causal principles that govern them in other contexts. The theory of self-organizing dynamical systems must be developed in a way that is compatible with causal closure rather than contradicting it. (shrink)

The content of this paper is primarily the product of an attempt to understand consciousness by working through the Gestell - conventionalised epistemology, at least some of several foundational concepts. This paper indirectly addresses the ancient question: “How is objective reference – or intentionality, possible? How is it possible for one thing to direct its thoughts upon another thing?” As such, I have adopted a holistic methodology; one in which I develop a framework based on a form of process philosophy (...) and descriptive emergentism. Many of the problems associated within the philosophy of mind arise because of a failure to understand the interrelations among the concepts we employ when we talk about consciousness and perception. These concepts are generally associated with certain structural features of reality. Hence, the paper advances through a series of attempts at defining the concept of time, moving through to some of the central figures, their thoughts and arguments and problems associated within the philosophy of time. Given the intertwined nature of the associated concepts, I have expanded on these to a level of conceptual integration. (shrink)

Classical (Bayesian) probability (CP) theory has led to an influential research tradition for modeling cognitive processes. Cognitive scientists have been trained to work with CP principles for so long that it is hard even to imagine alternative ways to formalize probabilities. However, in physics, quantum probability (QP) theory has been the dominant probabilistic approach for nearly 100 years. Could QP theory provide us with any advantages in cognitive modeling as well? Note first that both CP and QP theory share the (...) fundamental assumption that it is possible to model cognition on the basis of formal, probabilistic principles. But why consider a QP approach? The answers are that (1) there are many well-established empirical findings (e.g., from the influential Tversky, Kahneman research tradition) that are hard to reconcile with CP principles; and (2) these same findings have natural and straightforward explanations with quantum principles. In QP theory, probabilistic assessment is often strongly context- and order-dependent, individual states can be superposition states (that are impossible to associate with specific values), and composite systems can be entangled (they cannot be decomposed into their subsystems). All these characteristics appear perplexing from a classical perspective. However, our thesis is that they provide a more accurate and powerful account of certain cognitive processes. We first introduce QP theory and illustrate its application with psychological examples. We then review empirical findings that motivate the use of quantum theory in cognitive theory, but also discuss ways in which QP and CP theories converge. Finally, we consider the implications of a QP theory approach to cognition for human rationality. (shrink)

A number of researchers today make an appeal to quantum physics when trying to develop a satisfactory account of the mind, an appeal still felt to be controversial by many. Often these "quantum approaches" try to explain some well-known features of conscious experience (or mental processes more generally), thus using quantum physics to enrich the explanatory framework or explanans used in consciousness studies and cognitive science. This paper considers the less studied question of whether quantum physical intuitions could help us (...) to draw attention to new or neglected aspects of the mind in introspection, and in this way change our view about what needs explanation in the first place. Although prima facie implausible, it is suggested that this could happen, for example, if there were analogies between quantum processes and mental processes (e.g., the process of thinking). The naive idea is that such analogies would help us to see mental processes and conscious experience in a new way. It has indeed been proposed long ago that such analogies exist, and this paper first focuses at some length on David Bohm's formulation of them from 1951. It then briefly considers these analogies in relation to Smolensky's more recent analogies between cognitive science and physics, and Pylkko's aconceptual view of the mind. Finally, Bohm's early analogies will be briefly considered in relation to the analogies between quantum processes and the mind he proposed in his later work. -/- [This article is a modified version of an article that was first published in the anthology Being and Brain: At the Boundary between Science, Philosophy, Language and Arts, ed. by G. Globus, K. Pribram and G. Vitiello, Advances in Consciousness Research 58, John Benjamins, Amsterdam 2004, pp. 165-195.]. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that consciousness or, more generally, mental activity is in some way correlated to the behavior of the material brain. Since quantum theory is the most fundamental theory of matter that is currently available, it is a legitimate question to ask whether quantum theory can help us to understand consciousness. Several approaches answering this question affirmatively, proposed in recent decades, will be surveyed. It will be pointed out that they make different epistemological assumptions, refer to different neurophysiological (...) levels of description, and use quantum theory in different ways. For each of the approaches discussed, problematic and promising features will be equally highlighted. (shrink)

Quantum approaches to consciousness are sometimes said to be motivated simply by the idea that quantum theory is a mystery and consciousness is a mystery, so perhaps the two are related. That opinion betrays a profound misunderstanding of the nature of quantum mechanics, which consists fundamentally of a pragmatic scientific solution to the problem of the connection between mind and matter.

We review the dissipative quantum model of the brain and present recent developments related to the role of entanglement, quantum noise and chaos in the model.

¿Cómo se nos presenta, fenomenológicamente la realidad humana? Es la que vemos diariamente en nuestra vida personal y social. Estamos hechos de materia, formamos parte del universo evolutivo. Además, está formada en nosotros una vida psíquica: la sensación, un sistema de percepciones, una conciencia integrada, una condición de sujeto psicológico; producimos conocimiento, emociones, motivaciones; pero, sobre todo, tenemos una mente que discurre racionalmente y nos instala en un mundo de emociones humanas; esta razón emocional está en la base de la (...) búsqueda de la verdad del universo, del sentido de la vida y de la responsabilidad moral, en la vida personal y social. Nuestra realidad humana es, pues, una realidad personal. Somos personas. Ahora bien, ¿cómo explica hoy la ciencia, la neurología, el hecho de que nuestra realidad humana posea estas propiedades que nos hacen personas? Esto debería poder explicarse desde el mundo físico-biológico. Ahora bien, en concreto, ¿cómo la ciencia hace posible explicar que la evolución nos haya producido a nosotros en nuestra condición de personas? Es decir, ¿cuál es el soporte físico que hace inteligible la ontología psico-bio-física que produce evolutivamente nuestra experiencia personal fenomenológica? Esta es, en último término, todavía hoy la cuestión fundamental de las ciencias humanas. Lo que la ciencia, a saber, la neurología, debe explicar es obvio: el hecho de que haya emergido la sensibilidad-conciencia, nuestra condición de sujetos psíquicos, el conocimiento y la razón emocional; de tal manera que, una vez emergida la razón emocional, lleve por sí misma a constituir la actividad racional y las emociones propias de la persona humana encaminada a construir el sentido de su vida. Estas son las cuestiones que abordamos en este artículo. (shrink)

Quantum mechanical theories of consciousness are contrasted to classical ones. A key difference is that the quantum laws are fundamentally psychophysical and provide an explanation of the causal effect of conscious effort on neural processes, while the laws of classical physics, being purely physical, cannot. The quantum approach provides causal explanations, deduced from the laws of physics, of correlations found in psychology and in neuropsychology.

This article studies the quantum effect of the brain neuronal system on both normal and abnormal conscious states. It develops Plasma Brain Dynamics (PBD) to obtain a set of kinetic quantum-plasma Wigner-Poisson equations. The model is established under typical electrostatic and collision-free conditions in both the absence and presence of an external magnetic field. The quantum perturbation is solved analytically by employing a backward-mapping approach to the motion of electrons. Results expose that the quantum perturbation turns out to be zero (...) at normal conscious states; but no more than 11% of the classical perturbation under assumed abnormal situations like a sudden head trauma, mood disorder, etc. The introduction of the magnetic field does not influence the results. (shrink)

EEG signals are records of nonlinear solitary waves in human brains. The waves have several types (e.g., α, β, γ, θ, δ) in response to different levels of consciousness. They are classified into two groups: Group-1 consists of complex storm-like waves (α, β, and γ); Group-2 is composed of simple quasilinear waves (θ and δ). In order to elucidate the mechanism of EEG wave formation and propagation, this paper extends the Vlasov-Maxwell equations of Plasma Brain Dynamics (PBD) to a set (...) of two-fluid, self-similar, nonlinear solitary wave equations. Numerical simulations are performed for different EEG signals. Main results include: (1) The excitation and propagation of the EEG wave packets are dependent of electric and magnetic fields, brain aqua-ions, electron and ion temperatures, masses, and their initial fluid speeds; (2) Group-1 complex waves contain three ingredients: the high-frequency ion-acoustic (IA) mode, the intermediate-frequency lower-hybrid (LH) mode, and, the low-frequency ion-cyclotron (IC) mode; (3) Group-2 simple waves fall within the IA band, featured by one or a combination of the three envelopes: sinusoidal, sawtooth, and spiky/bipolar. The study proposes an alternative model to Quantum Brain Dynamics (QBD) by suggesting that the formation and propagation of the nonlinear solitary EEG waves in the brain have the same mechanism as that of the waves in space plasmas. (shrink)

Examining the role of dispositions (potentials and propensities) in both physics and psychology reveals that they are commonly derivative dispositions, so called because they derive from other dispositions. Furthermore, when they act, they produce further propensities. Together, therefore, they appear to form discrete degrees within a structure of multiple generative levels. It is then constructively hypothesized that minds and physical nature are themselves discrete degrees within some more universal structure. This gives rise to an effective dualism of mind and nature, (...) but one according to which they are still constantly related by causal connections. I suggest a few of the unified principles of operation of this more complicated but universal structure. (shrink)

The brain constructs within itself an understanding of its surround which constitutes its own world. This is described as its Double in the frame of the dissipative quantum model of brain, where the perception-action arc in the Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception finds its formal description. In the dialog with the Double, the continuous attempt to reach the equilibrium shows that the real goal pursued by the brain activity is the aesthetical experience, the most harmonious “to-be-in-the-world” reached through reciprocal actions, the (...) aesthetical dimension characterized by the “pleasure” of the perception. Aesthetical pleasure unavoidably implies disclosure, to manifest “signs”, artistic communication. An interpersonal, collective level of consciousness then arises, a larger stage where the actors are mutually dependent. The coherent structure of the brain background state manifests itself in the auto-similarity properties of fractal structures. These are observed to occur also in a large number of natural phenomena and systems. The conception of Nature divided in separated domains is replaced by the vision of Nature unified by laws of form implied by the underlying quantum dynamics of the coherent vacuum, an integrated ecological vision. (shrink)