How Can Physics Underlie The Mind
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How Can Physics Underlie The Mind
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Author : George Ellis
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 2016-05-31
How Can Physics Underlie The Mind written by George Ellis and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-05-31 with Science categories.
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.
Levels Of Organization In The Biological Sciences
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Author : Daniel S. Brooks
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2021-08-24
Levels Of Organization In The Biological Sciences written by Daniel S. Brooks and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-08-24 with Technology & Engineering categories.
Scientific philosophers examine the nature and significance of levels of organization, a core structural principle in the biological sciences. This volume examines the idea of levels of organization as a distinct object of investigation, considering its merits as a core organizational principle for the scientific image of the natural world. It approaches levels of organization--roughly, the idea that the natural world is segregated into part-whole relationships of increasing spatiotemporal scale and complexity--in terms of its roles in scientific reasoning as a dynamic, open-ended idea capable of performing multiple overlapping functions in distinct empirical settings. The contributors--scientific philosophers with longstanding ties to the biological sciences--discuss topics including the philosophical and scientific contexts for an inquiry into levels; whether the concept can actually deliver on its organizational promises; the role of levels in the development and evolution of complex systems; conditional independence and downward causation; and the extension of the concept into the sociocultural realm. Taken together, the contributions embrace the diverse usages of the term as aspects of the big picture of levels of organization. Contributors Jan Baedke, Robert W. Batterman, Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, Markus I. Eronen, Carl Gillett, Sara Green, James Griesemer, Alan C. Love, Angela Potochnik, Thomas Reydon, Ilya Tëmkin, Jon Umerez, William C. Wimsatt, James Woodward
A 21st Century Debate On Science And Religion
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Author : Shiva Khaili
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Release Date : 2017-08-21
A 21st Century Debate On Science And Religion written by Shiva Khaili and has been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-08-21 with Religion categories.
The progress of modern science and technology has led to remarkable insights into the nature of the universe and of human life. These insights have challenged and transformed former traditional worldviews and narratives. This book explores and addresses the challenges that arise at the interface of science and religion in the 21st century. How does science affect the way that religion is perceived? Do modern scientific findings confirm or invalidate the perspective of faith? How does science lead religious persons to revise the way they understand their faith and its practices? Is a mutually respectful and mutually beneficial dialogue possible between science and faith? Drawing from many disciplines, psychology, theology, philosophy, history, cognitive science, education, this book considers the crucial questions of how science and religion can help shape our worldviews and ways of life today.
Free Agents
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Author : Kevin J. Mitchell
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2025-03-25
Free Agents written by Kevin J. Mitchell and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2025-03-25 with Computers categories.
An evolutionary case for the existence of free will Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose. Traversing billions of years of evolution, Mitchell tells the remarkable story of how living beings capable of choice arose from lifeless matter. He explains how the emergence of nervous systems provided a means to learn about the world, granting sentient animals the capacity to model, predict, and simulate. Mitchell reveals how these faculties reached their peak in humans with our abilities to imagine and to be introspective, to reason in the moment, and to shape our possible futures through the exercise of our individual agency. Mitchell’s argument has important implications—for how we understand decision making, for how our individual agency can be enhanced or infringed, for how we think about collective agency in the face of global crises, and for how we consider the limitations and future of artificial intelligence. An astonishing journey of discovery, Free Agents offers a new framework for understanding how, across a billion years of Earth history, life evolved the power to choose, and why it matters.
Living Religion
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Author : James W. Jones
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2019-03-01
Living Religion written by James W. Jones and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-03-01 with Religion categories.
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.
Three Views On Christianity And Science
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Author : Zondervan,
language : en
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
Release Date : 2021-01-12
Three Views On Christianity And Science written by Zondervan, and has been published by Zondervan Academic this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-01-12 with Religion categories.
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.
Toward A Process Approach In Psychology
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Author : Paul van Geert
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2022-07-28
Toward A Process Approach In Psychology written by Paul van Geert and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-07-28 with Psychology categories.
Offers an entirely new way of thinking about how psychology works and how it constructs knowledge, using a process-based approach.
Natural Neuroscience
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Author : Nachum Ulanovsky
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2025-04-15
Natural Neuroscience written by Nachum Ulanovsky and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2025-04-15 with Science categories.
A new approach to brain research that emphasizes studying the brain under naturalistic conditions. Natural neuroscience departs from the classical reductionist approach, which emphasizes control at the expense of natural behaviors, by proposing a shift toward real-world relevance, natural behaviors, and ecological validity. In Natural Neuroscience, Nachum Ulanovsky presents the conceptual, empirical, and technological underpinnings that enabled this new field. Natural neuroscience researchers posit that when studying any brain region in any animal, whether standard mammalian species such as rodents and primates or nonstandard species, it is crucial to pursue the animal’s natural behaviors and to consider the natural problems it needs to solve. By preventing rich natural behaviors, says Ulanovsky, we miss key aspects of brain function—and we may not even know what we miss. The author surveys recent studies that have begun to move in this direction across multiple subfields of neuroscience, including sensory, cognitive, social, and behavioral neuroscience. He discusses technological advances that are allowing the pursuit of more naturalistic experiments, including methods for recording neural activity in freely behaving, freely moving animals (e.g., wired and wireless electrophysiology and imaging); methods for manipulating neural activity in freely moving animals (e.g., wired and wireless optogenetics); and methods for quantifying the details of behavior. He makes connections across the four major scientific disciplines that focus on understanding behavior—neuroscience, behavioral ecology, ethology, and psychology—bringing them closer together, and closer to real life.
A Phenomenological Revision Of E E Harris S Dialectical Holism
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Author : James Schofield
language : en
Publisher: Springer Nature
Release Date : 2021-10-12
A Phenomenological Revision Of E E Harris S Dialectical Holism written by James Schofield and has been published by Springer Nature this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-10-12 with Philosophy categories.
The purpose of this work is to critically assess Errol E. Harris’s process philosophy in the face of contemporary research in the special sciences. Harris devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now remained excluded from mainstream discussions. This book’s contention is that Harris’s work reveals as yet unnoticed connections between theories in numerous scientific disciplines ranging from psychology to cosmology and that an examination of certain theories within these disciplines may serve to strengthen his original arguments. This work maintains that the resulting metaphysics frames a transdisciplinary paradigm shift and provides a viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness.
The Human Animal
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Author : Markus Gabriel
language : en
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Release Date : 2024-11-13
The Human Animal written by Markus Gabriel and has been published by John Wiley & Sons this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-11-13 with Philosophy categories.
The climate crisis has forced us to recognize that we are not separate from nature but are part of the natural world on which we depend: human beings are animals and we must understand much better our place in nature and our impact on our environment if we are to avoid our own annihilation as a species. And yet we feel nevertheless that we do not entirely fit into nature, that we stand apart from other animals in some way – in what way, exactly? Markus Gabriel argues that what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans are minded living beings who seek to understand the world and themselves and who possess ethical insight into moral contexts. Mind is the capacity to lead one’s life in the light of a conception of who or what one is. The undeniable difference between us and other animals defines the human condition and places a special responsibility on us to consider our actions in the context of other living beings and our shared habitat. It also calls on us to cultivate an ethics of not-knowing: to recognize that, however much we may seek to understand the world, we will never completely master it. Our grasp of reality, mediated by our animal minds, will always be limited: much is and will remain alien to us, lending itself only to speculation – and to remember this is to stand us in better stead for carving out an existence among the environmental crisis that looms before us all.