1,948 research outputs found
Can Science Explain Consciousness?
For diverse reasons, the problem of phenomenal consciousness is persistently challenging. Mental terms are characteristically ambiguous, researchers have philosophical biases, secondary qualities are excluded from objective description, and philosophers love to argue. Adhering to a regime of efficient causes and third-person descriptions, science as it has been defined has no place for subjectivity or teleology. A solution to the âhard problemâ of consciousness will require a radical approach: to take the point of view of the cognitive system itself. To facilitate this approach, a concept of agency is introduced along with a different understanding of intentionality. Following this approach reveals that the autopoietic cognitive system constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, which underlie perceptual completion effects and âfilling inââand, by implication, phenomenology in general. It creates phenomenality much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that it assigns meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history that is the source of valuation upon which meaning depends. Phenomenality is a virtual representation to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self) tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub- agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, but serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from that of unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least psychologically bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter, and perhaps hope for a broader definition of science
Clifford Algebra: A Case for Geometric and Ontological Unification
Robert Battermanâs ontological insights (2002, 2004, 2005) are apt: Nature abhors singularities. âSo should we,â responds the physicist. However, the epistemic assessments of Batterman concerning the matter prove to be less clear, for in the same vein he write that singularities play an essential role in certain classes of physical theories referring to certain types of critical phenomena. I devise a procedure (âmethodological fundamentalismâ) which exhibits how singularities, at least in principle, may be avoided within the same classes of formalisms discussed by Batterman. I show that we need not accept some divergence between explanation and reduction (Batterman 2002), or between epistemological and ontological fundamentalism (Batterman 2004, 2005).
Though I remain sympathetic to the âprinciple of charityâ (Frisch (2005)), which appears to favor a pluralist outlook, I nevertheless call into question some of the forms such pluralist implications take in Robert Battermanâs conclusions. It is difficult to reconcile some of the pluralist assessments that he and some of his contemporaries advocate with what appears to be a countervailing trend in a burgeoning research tradition known as Clifford (or geometric) algebra.
In my critical chapters (2 and 3) I use some of the demonstrated formal unity of Clifford algebra to argue that Batterman (2002) equivocates a physical theoryâs ontology with its purely mathematical content. Carefully distinguishing the two, and employing Clifford algebraic methods reveals a symmetry between reduction and explanation that Batterman overlooks. I refine this point by indicating that geometric algebraic methods are an active area of research in computational fluid dynamics, and applied in modeling the behavior of droplet-formation appear to instantiate a âmethodologically fundamentalâ approach.
I argue in my introductory and concluding chapters that the model of inter-theoretic reduction and explanation offered by Fritz Rohrlich (1988, 1994) provides the best framework for accommodating the burgeoning pluralism in philosophical studies of physics, with the presumed claims of formal unification demonstrated by physicists choices of mathematical formalisms such as Clifford algebra. I show how Battermanâs insights can be reconstructed in Rohrlichâs framework, preserving Battermanâs important philosophical work, minus what I consider are his incorrect conclusions
A Whiteheadian Innervation of the Soma: A New Vision for the Peripheral Nervous System
This essay draws attention to two problems in neuroscienceâs set of assumptions. These self-defeating assumptions include: 1) the assumption that what the nervous system, especially the brain, does is synthesize experience, while also assuming philosophical realism, and 2) the problem of biological signal transduction. In the latter, neuroscientists and philosophers of biology have left unaddressed the issue that the signal differences between the inside and outside of the organismic boundary are of distinct ontological types; and yet no concern has been expressed regarding how it is possible that an organismâs inner states could reflect the experiential content flowing from outside of the organismâs boundary. To resolve this problem, I propose that the process philosophy of Whitehead be implemented to adjust our understanding of what body is and how the peripheral nervous system draws in experience through the senses. Some discussion will surround the enteric nervous system, regarding the evolutionary past of organisms, the thought that enteric nervous system probably played the role of the brain in our evolutionary ancestors, and how Whiteheadâs philosophy of organism can help bring some understanding to this anti-Cartesian idea
How the Brain Makes Up the Mind: a heuristic approach to the hard problem of consciousness
A solution to the âhard problemâ requires taking the point of view of the organism and its sub- agents. The organism constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that are assigned meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history. Phenomenality is a virtual representation, made to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self), which is tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub-agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal and serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least informally bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter
Dynamics of Current, Charge and Mass
Electricity plays a special role in our lives and life. Equations of electron
dynamics are nearly exact and apply from nuclear particles to stars. These
Maxwell equations include a special term the displacement current (of vacuum).
Displacement current allows electrical signals to propagate through space.
Displacement current guarantees that current is exactly conserved from inside
atoms to between stars, as long as current is defined as Maxwell did, as the
entire source of the curl of the magnetic field. We show how the Bohm
formulation of quantum mechanics allows easy definition of current. We show how
conservation of current can be derived without mention of the polarization or
dielectric properties of matter. Matter does not behave the way physicists of
the 1800's thought it does with a single dielectric constant, a real positive
number independent of everything. Charge moves in enormously complicated ways
that cannot be described in that way, when studied on time scales important
today for electronic technology and molecular biology. Life occurs in ionic
solutions in which charge moves in response to forces not mentioned or
described in the Maxwell equations, like convection and diffusion. Classical
derivations of conservation of current involve classical treatments of
dielectrics and polarization in nearly every textbook. Because real dielectrics
do not behave in a classical way, classical derivations of conservation of
current are often distrusted or even ignored. We show that current is conserved
exactly in any material no matter how complex the dielectric, polarization or
conduction currents are. We believe models, simulations, and computations
should conserve current on all scales, as accurately as possible, because
physics conserves current that way. We believe models will be much more
successful if they conserve current at every level of resolution, the way
physics does.Comment: Version 4 slight reformattin
MINDFUL INQUIRY - A DEWEYAN ASSESSMENT OF MINDFULNESS AND EDUCATION
Mindfulness-based interventions are becoming an increasingly popular means for helpingstudents deal with the multidimensional challenges they face in contemporary educational settings. While potentially helpful, an uncritical employment of mindfulness in education can paradoxically function to reify the very neoliberal social conditions leading to the need for mindfulness in the first place. I assess this trend in educational theory and practice through John Deweyâs pragmatic philosophy. I show that the potential for both mindfulness and Deweyâs theory of mind and inquiry to support critical, sustainable social change is truncated by an uncritical retaining of the modern paradigm of mind that defines mind and cognition as private mental events internal to individual subjects. Following Dewey, I critique this view of mind as dubious according to the ontological assumptions underlying this paradigm. By presenting an original reading of Deweyâs theory of mind, life, and inquiry based on an autopoietic process ontology and the life-mind continuity thesis, I show that the sciences of mind are currently in the midst of a revolutionary period of science, shifting from a paradigm rooted in the substance metaphysical tradition to a new, transdisciplinary paradigm animated by process metaphysics and radically different theories of mind, life, and cognition, heuristically captured by the life- mind continuity thesis. On this view, life and mind are of a piece; where there is life there is mind. Showing that Dewey developed one of the first and most complete theories of this thesis, I integrate Deweyâs theories of mind and inquiry with the contemporary mindfulness movement and discuss how they can work together to enable a critical, socially engaged yet compassionate and uniqueness-respecting framework for a somatic-based holistic social inquiry in education. I call this mindful inquiry
Naturalism and Process Ontology for Rhetorical Theory and Methodology: Reconsidering the Ideological Tautology
Rhetorical Theory and Criticism primarily features modes of close reading that reconstructs the meaning of a text by constructing meaning through contingent textual moments within a theoretical perspective, typically ideological criticism. The dominant mode of ideological critique projects ideology as an anterior and universal cause; this projection strips individual and group agency from within various systems by totalizing them under one system. I strive to answer how we can preserve descriptive acuity while opening and exploiting contingent gaps to make scholarship more efficacious for social justice. Chapter one explores the inevitability of infinite regress in response to problems of vagueness endemic to the philosophical enterprise. Chapter two explores Bergsonâs Retrospective Illusion: strict modes of ontological necessity in a transcendental reasoning pattern produce tautological ontologies in which an effect becomes projected backwards as universal but, ultimately, illusory cause. Chapter three maps out Bergsonâs solution to the âRetrospective Illusionâ and names it the âProspective Illusion.â In short, chains of sufficient reasoning are projected out towards tendencies in becoming such that universals are always in construction and never fully actual. Ontologies founded upon spatial necessity are replaced by a process ontology closely attuned to scientific process that folds space and time topologically into tendential becoming. Chapter four applies both illusions to rhetorical theory in its ideological and new materialist modes to argue for the usefulness of both models in breaking rhetorical theory out of its tacit methodological reliance upon reconstructive close reading and by re-evaluating some of rhetorical theoryâs ontological assumptions. The project concludes with prospective directions in methodology
Observership, 'knowing' and semiosis
This article asks how future semiotic research, particularly with a biosemiotic orientation, will incorporate a theory of observership. The article take its cue from Sebeok's (1986, 1991a, 1991b) comments on John Archibald Wheeler's conception of the 'participatory universe' and attempts to explicate the relevance of Wheeler's (1994, 1998) philosophy of science for semiotics. The article argues that the quantum view of observership aligns with that of semiotics in that both envisage observation as a field of modification. The article seeks to contribute to recent key debates in the field on 'knowing' sciences on relation and cybersemiotics It develops some of the themes foreshadowed towards the end of an earlier article outlining a future orientated observership in contrast to a vis a tergo perspective
Pierre Duhemâs philosophy and history of science
LEITE (FĂĄbio Rodrigo) â STOFFEL (Jean-François), Introduction (pp. 3-6). BARRA (Eduardo Salles de O.) â SANTOS (Ricardo Batista dos), Duhemâs analysis of Newtonian method and the logical priority of physics over metaphysics (pp. 7-19). BORDONI (Stefano), The French roots of Duhemâs early historiography and epistemology (pp. 20-35). CHIAPPIN (JosĂ© R. N.) â LARANJEIRAS (CĂĄssio Costa), Duhemâs critical analysis of mechaÂniÂcism and his defense of a formal conception of theoretical phyÂsics (pp. 36-53). GUEGUEN (Marie) â PSILLOS (Stathis), Anti-Âscepticism and epistemic humility in Pierre Duhemâs philosophy of science (pp. 54-72). LISTON (Michael), Duhem : images of science, historical continuity, and the first crisis in physics (pp. 73-84). MAIOCCHI (Roberto), Duhem in pre-war Italian philosÂophy : the reasons of an absence (pp. 85-92). HERNĂNDEZ MĂRQUEZ (VĂctor Manuel), Was Pierre Duhem an «esprit de finesse» ? (pp. 93-107). NEEDHAM (Paul), Was Duhem justified in not distinguishing between physical and chemical atomism ? (pp. 108-111). OLGUIN (Roberto Estrada), «Bon sens» and «noĂ»s» (pp. 112-126). OLIVEIRA (Amelia J.), Duhemâs legacy for the change in the historiography of science : An analysis based on Kuhnâs writings (pp. 127-139). PRĂNCIPE (JoĂŁo), PoincarĂ© and Duhem : Resonances in their first epistemological reflecÂtions (pp. 140-156). MONDRAGON (DamiĂĄn Islas), Book review of «Pierre Duhem : entre fĂsica y metafĂsica» (pp. 157-159). STOFFEL (Jean-François), Book review of P. Duhem : «La thĂ©orie physique : son objet, sa structure» / edit. by S. Roux (pp. 160-162). STOFFEL (Jean-François), Book review of St. Bordoni : «When historiography met epistemology» (pp. 163-165)
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