Download or read book How Can Physics Underlie the Mind written by George Ellis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Physics underlies all complexity, including our own existence: how is this possible? How can our own lives emerge from interactions of electrons, protons, and neutrons? This book considers the interaction of physical and non-physical causation in complex systems such as living beings, and in particular in the human brain, relating this to the emergence of higher levels of complexity with real causal powers. In particular it explores the idea of top-down causation, which is the key effect allowing the emergence of true complexity and also enables the causal efficacy of non-physical entities, including the value of money, social conventions, and ethical choices.
Download or read book Sixteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting The On Recent Developments In Theoretical And Experimental General Relativity Astrophysics And Relativistic Field Theories Proceedings Of The Mg16 Meeting On General Relativity In 4 Volumes written by Remo Ruffini and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 4880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proceedings of MG16 give a broad view of all aspects of gravitational physics and astrophysics, from mathematical issues to recent observations and experiments. The scientific program of the meeting included 46 plenary presentations, 3 public lectures, 5 round tables and 81 parallel sessions arranged during the intense six-day online meeting. All talks were recorded and are available on the ICRANet YouTube channel at the following link: www.icranet.org/video_mg16.These proceedings are a representative sample of the very many contributions made at the meeting. They contain 383 papers, among which 14 come from the plenary sessions.The material represented in these proceedings cover the following topics: accretion, active galactic nuclei, alternative theories of gravity, black holes (theory, observations and experiments), binaries, boson stars, cosmic microwave background, cosmic strings, dark energy and large scale structure, dark matter, education, exact solutions, early universe, fundamental interactions and stellar evolution, fast transients, gravitational waves, high energy physics, history of relativity, neutron stars, precision tests, quantum gravity, strong fields, and white dwarf; all of them represented by a large number of contributions.The online e-proceedings are published in an open access format.
Download or read book Measuring the Immeasurable Mind written by Matthew Owen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Measuring the Immeasurable Mind: Where Contemporary Neuroscience Meets the Aristotelian Tradition, Matthew Owen argues that despite its nonphysical character, it is possible to empirically detect and measure consciousness. Toward the end of the previous century, the neuroscience of consciousness set its roots and sprouted within a materialist milieu that reduced the mind to matter. Several decades later, dualism is being dusted off and reconsidered. Although some may see this revival as a threat to consciousness science aimed at measuring the conscious mind, Owen argues that measuring consciousness, along with the medical benefits of such measurements, is not ruled out by consciousness being nonphysical. Owen proposes the Mind-Body Powers model of neural correlates of consciousness, which is informed by Aristotelian causation and a substance dualist view of human nature inspired by Thomas Aquinas, who often followed Aristotle. In addition to explaining why there are neural correlates of consciousness, the model provides a philosophical foundation for empirically discerning and quantifying consciousness. En route to presenting and applying the Mind-Body Powers model to neurobiology, Owen rebuts longstanding objections to dualism related to the mind-body problem. With scholarly precision and readable clarity, Owen applies an oft forgotten yet richly developed historical vantage point to contemporary cognitive neuroscience.
Download or read book Beyond Evolutionary Psychology written by George Ellis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a compelling unifying theory of which aspects of the brain are innate and which are not.
Download or read book Robotics AI and Humanity written by Joachim von Braun and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-12 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book examines recent advances in how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have elicited widespread debate over their benefits and drawbacks for humanity. The emergent technologies have for instance implications within medicine and health care, employment, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, and armed conflict. While there has been considerable attention devoted to robotics/AI applications in each of these domains, a fuller picture of their connections and the possible consequences for our shared humanity seems needed. This volume covers multidisciplinary research, examines current research frontiers in AI/robotics and likely impacts on societal well-being, human – robot relationships, as well as the opportunities and risks for sustainable development and peace. The attendant ethical and religious dimensions of these technologies are addressed and implications for regulatory policies on the use and future development of AI/robotics technologies are elaborated.
Download or read book Sir John s Vision written by Paul Davies and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2018-08-13 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2017, the year marking the 105th anniversary of the birth of Sir John Templeton, a group of scientists, scholars, and advisors who knew him personally gathered in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. Their purpose: to discuss how the Foundation that bears his name could best extend his philanthropic vision into the twenty-first century. This volume is a result of that meeting—a collection of thirteen essays written by experts in fields that most fascinated Sir John. The contributors assess the Foundation’s fidelity to its founder’s intent, chart promising avenues for future grantmaking, and champion Sir John’s contrarian mission of unlocking life’s deepest mysteries. The members of the John Templeton Foundation are the custodians of Sir John’s vision—bold in its aspiration; humble in its approach—charged with using the tools of science to advance the frontiers of the spirit. May the essays collected here serve as inspiration as we carry that vision forward.
Download or read book Top Down Causation and Emergence written by Jan Voosholz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-06 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the latest research, conducted by leading philosophers and scientists from various fields, on the topic of top-down causation. The chapters combine to form a unique, interdisciplinary perspective, drawing upon George Ellis's extensive research and novel perspectives on topics including downwards causation, weak and strong emergence, mental causation, biological relativity, effective field theory and levels in nature. The collection also serves as a Festschrift in honour of George Ellis' 80th birthday. The extensive and interdisciplinary scope of this book makes it vital reading for anyone interested in the work of George Ellis and current research on the topics of causation and emergence.
Download or read book Information Consciousness Reality written by James B. Glattfelder and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book chronicles the rise of a new scientific paradigm offering novel insights into the age-old enigmas of existence. Over 300 years ago, the human mind discovered the machine code of reality: mathematics. By utilizing abstract thought systems, humans began to decode the workings of the cosmos. From this understanding, the current scientific paradigm emerged, ultimately discovering the gift of technology. Today, however, our island of knowledge is surrounded by ever longer shores of ignorance. Science appears to have hit a dead end when confronted with the nature of reality and consciousness. In this fascinating and accessible volume, James Glattfelder explores a radical paradigm shift uncovering the ontology of reality. It is found to be information-theoretic and participatory, yielding a computational and programmable universe.
Download or read book The Territories of Human Reason written by Alister E. McGrath and published by Ian Ramsey Centre Studies in S. This book was released on 2019 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our understanding of human rationality has changed significantly since the beginning of the century, with growing emphasis being placed on multiple rationalities, each adapted to the specific tasks of communities of practice. We may think of the world as an ontological unity-but we use a plurality of methods to investigate and represent this world. This development has called into question both the appeal to a universal rationality, characteristic of the Enlightenment, and also the simple 'modern-postmodern' binary. The Territories of Human Reason is the first major study to explore the emergence of multiple situated rationalities. It focuses on the relation of the natural sciences and Christian theology, but its approach can easily be extended to other disciplines. It provides a robust intellectual framework for discussion of transdisciplinarity, which has become a major theme in many parts of the academic world. Alister E. McGrath offers a major reappraisal of what it means to be 'rational' which will have significant impact on older discussions of this theme. He sets out to explore the consequences of the seemingly inexorable move away from the notion of a single universal rationality towards a plurality of cultural and domain-specific methodologies and rationalities. What does this mean for the natural sciences? For the philosophy of science? For Christian theology? And for the interdisciplinary field of science and religion? How can a single individual hold together scientific and religious ideas, when these arise from quite different rational approaches? This ground-breaking volume sets out to engage these questions and will provoke intense discussion and debate.
Download or read book From Electrons to Elephants and Elections written by Shyam Wuppuluri and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-08 with total page 886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly interdisciplinary book, covering more than six fields, from philosophy and sciences all the way up to the humanities and with contributions from eminent authors, addresses the interplay between content and context, reductionism and holism and their meeting point: the notion of emergence. Much of today’s science is reductionist (bottom-up); in other words, behaviour on one level is explained by reducing it to components on a lower level. Chemistry is reduced to atoms, ecosystems are explained in terms of DNA and proteins, etc. This approach fails quickly since we can’t cannot extrapolate to the properties of atoms solely from Schrödinger's equation, nor figure out protein folding from an amino acid sequence or obtain the phenotype of an organism from its genotype. An alternative approach to this is holism (top-down). Consider an ecosystem or an organism as a whole: seek patterns on the same scale. Model a galaxy not as 400 billion-point masses (stars) but as an object in its own right with its own properties (spiral, elliptic). Or a hurricane as a structured form of moist air and water vapour. Reductionism is largely about content, whereas holistic models are more attuned to context. Reductionism (content) and holism (context) are not opposing philosophies — in fact, they work best in tandem. Join us on a journey to understand the multifaceted dialectic concerning this duo and how they shape the foundations of sciences and humanities, our thoughts and, the very nature of reality itself.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Emergence written by Sophie Gibb and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emergence is often described as the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts: interactions among the components of a system lead to distinctive novel properties. It has been invoked to describe the flocking of birds, the phases of matter and human consciousness, along with many other phenomena. Since the nineteenth century, the notion of emergence has been widely applied in philosophy, particularly in contemporary philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and metaphysics. It has more recently become central to scientists’ understanding of phenomena across physics, chemistry, complexity and systems theory, biology and the social sciences. The Routledge Handbook of Emergence is an outstanding reference source and exploration of the concept of emergence, and is the first collection of its kind. Thirty-two chapters by an international team of contributors are organised into four parts: Foundations of emergence Emergence and mind Emergence and physics Emergence and the special sciences Within these sections important topics and problems in emergence are explained, including the British Emergentists; weak vs. strong emergence; emergence and downward causation; dependence, complexity and mechanisms; mental causation, consciousness and dualism; quantum mechanics, soft matter and chemistry; and evolution, cognitive science and social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and metaphysics, The Routledge Handbook of Emergence will also be of interest to those studying foundational issues in biology, chemistry, physics and psychology.
Download or read book Untying the Gordian Knot written by Timothy E. Eastman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context, Timothy E. Eastman proposes a new creative synthesis, the Logoi framework—which is radically inclusive and incorporates both actuality and potentiality—to show how the fundamental notions of process, logic, and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context and quantum logical distinctions, can resolve a baker’s dozen of age-old philosophic problems. Further, Eastman leverages a century of advances in quantum physics and the Relational Realism interpretation pioneered by Michael Epperson and Elias Zafiris and augmented by the independent research of Ruth Kastner and Hans Primas to resolve long-standing issues in understanding quantum physics. Adding to this, Eastman makes use of advances in information and complex systems, semiotics, and process philosophy to show how multiple levels of context, combined with relations—including potential relations—both local and local-global, can provide a grounding for causation, emergence, and physical law. Finally, the Logoi framework goes beyond standard ways of knowing—that of context independence (science) and context focus (arts, humanities)—to demonstrate the inevitable role of ultimate context (meaning, spiritual dimension) as part of a transformative ecological vision, which is urgently needed in these times of human and environmental crises.
Download or read book Wandering Towards a Goal written by Anthony Aguirre and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of prize-winning essays addresses the controversial question of how meaning and goals can emerge in a physical world governed by mathematical laws. What are the prerequisites for a system to have goals? What makes a physical process into a signal? Does eliminating the homunculus solve the problem? The three first-prize winners, Larissa Albantakis, Carlo Rovelli and Jochen Szangolies tackle exactly these challenges, while many other aspects (agency, the role of the observer, causality versus teleology, ghosts in the machine etc.) feature in the other award winning contributions. All contributions are accessible to non-specialists. These seventeen stimulating and often entertaining essays are enhanced versions of the prize-winning entries to the FQXi essay competition in 2017.The Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.
Download or read book Three Views on Christianity and Science written by Zondervan, and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to relating Christianity to modern Western culture, perhaps no topic is more controversial than the relationship between Christianity and science. Outside the church, the myth of a backwards, anti-science Christianity is very common in popular culture and can poison the well before a fruitful dialogue can begin. Within the church, opposing viewpoints on the relation between Christianity and science often lead to division. Three Views on Christianity and Science addresses both types of conflict. Featuring leading evangelical scholars, this book presents three primary options for the compatibility of Christianity and science and models constructive dialogue on the surrounding controversial issues. The highlighted contributors and their views are: Michael Ruse, representing the Independence View - When functioning correctly, science and Christian theology operate independently of each other, seeking answers to different questions through different means. Alister McGrath, representing the Dialogue View - Though the natural sciences and Christian philosophy and theology function differently, they can and should inform each other. Bruce L. Gordon, representing the Constrained Integration View - Science, philosophy, and theology all contribute to our understanding of reality. Their interactions constrain each other and together present an optimally coherent and integrated picture of reality. By engaging with the viewpoints of the contributors, readers will come away with a deeper understanding of the compatibility of science and Christianity, as well as of the positions of those who disagree with them. Scholars, students, pastors, and interested laypeople will be able to make use of this material in research, assignments, sermons and lessons, evangelism, and apologetics. The Counterpoints series presents a comparison and critique of scholarly views on topics important to Christians that are both fair-minded and respectful of the biblical text. Each volume is a one-stop reference that allows readers to evaluate the different positions on a specific issue and form their own, educated opinion.
Download or read book Quantum Reality written by Jim Baggott and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory. It is also completely mad. Although the theory quite obviously works, it leaves us chasing ghosts and phantoms; particles that are waves and waves that are particles; cats that are at once both alive and dead; and lots of seemingly spooky goings-on. But if we're prepared to be a little more specific about what we mean when we talk about 'reality' and a little more circumspect in the way we think a scientific theory might represent such a reality, then all the mystery goes away. This shows that the choice we face is actually a philosophical one. Here, Jim Baggott provides a quick but comprehensive introduction to quantum mechanics for the general reader, and explains what makes this theory so very different from the rest. He also explores the processes involved in developing scientific theories and explains how these lead to different philosophical positions, essential if we are to understand the nature of the great debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. Moving forwards, Baggott then provides a comprehensive guide to attempts to determine what the theory actually means, from the Copenhagen interpretation to many worlds and the multiverse. Richard Feynman once declared that 'nobody understands quantum mechanics'. This book will tell you why.
Download or read book Living Religion written by James W. Jones and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it reasonable to live a religiously oriented life, or is such a life the height of irrationality? Has neuroscience shown that religious experiences are akin to delusions, or might neuroscience actually support the validity of such experiences? In Living Religion James W. Jones offers a new approach to understanding religion after the Decade of the Brain. The modern tendency to separate theory from practice gives rise to a number of dilemmas for those who think seriously about religion. Claims about God, the world, and the nature and destiny of the human spirit have been ripped from their context in religious practice and treated as doctrinal abstractions to be justified or refuted in isolation from the living religious life that is their natural home. Jones argues that trends in contemporary psychology, especially an emphasis on embodiment and relationality, can help the thoughtful religious person return theory to practice, thereby opening up new avenues of religious knowing and new ways of supporting the commitment to a religiously lived life. This embodied-relational model offers new ways of understanding our capacity to transform and transcend our ordinary awareness and shows that it can be meaningful and reasonable to speak of a "spiritual sense." The brain's complexity, integration, and openness, and the many ways embodiment influences our understanding of ourselves and the world, all significantly impact our thinking about religious understanding. When linked to contemporary neuroscientific theories, the long-standing tradition of a spiritual sense is brought up to date and deployed in support of the argument of this book that reason is on the side of those who choose a religiously lived life.
Download or read book Emergence in Context written by Robert C. Bishop and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Science, philosophy of science, and metaphysics have long been concerned with the question of how novel things emerge. How can order come out of disorder? This book introduces a new account, contextual emergence, seeking to answer such questions."--Back cover.
