Special Issue on the Third Workshop on Biological Mentality

The Third Workshop on Biological Mentality was held from September 23, 2019 to March 2, 2020 as a series of twenty-one Monday online conferencing sessions, each consisting of a talk followed by a Q&A discussion. Like the two previous workshops [1, 2], the objective of this workshop was to seek a deeper level of understanding the physical foundations of biological mentality (whether conscious or nonconscious)

Physical requirements for models of consciousness

Consciousness presents a series of characteristics that have been observed through- out the years: unity, continuity, richness and robustness are some of them. It manifests itself in regions of the brain capable of processing a huge quantity of integrated information with a level of neural activity close to criticality. We argue that the physics of consciousness cannot be exclusively based on classical physics. Consciousness unity cannot be explained classically as the classical properties are always Humean like a mosaic. One needs an entangled quantum system that can at least satisfy part of the functions of a quantum computer to allow to generate an inner aspect with the unity of consciousness and to couple with a classical system that gives it simultaneous access to preprocessed information at the neural level and to produce events that generate neural firings

Does the Causal Exclusion Argument Hold in a Probabilistic Setting? Assessing the Efficacy of Mental Causation in an Indeterministic World

My thesis examines Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument (CEA) against the existence of mental causation of physical effects, which I ultimately argue is unsound. I generalise the CEA into probabilistic terms as I assume that we live in a probabilistic world. This is because orthodox interpretations of Quantum Mechanics are in principle probabilistic. I argue that the CEA, at least in its probabilistic form, is unsound because the analogue version of the causal closure premise is false. If the world is probabilistic then this opens the door for mental causes to `top up’ (or lower) the probabilities of further physical events occurring. Thus the mental can be causally efficacious. Secondly, I put forward a positive argument in favour of mental causation based on the natural kindhood of mental properties. Each mental state has a corresponding brain state, both of which could be conceptualised as a kind. I will argue that mental kinds are more natural (albeit imperfectly so) than their corresponding brain states and therefore that it is the mental rather than brain states which are the better candidates to feature in scientific laws. So, mental states have causal efficacy. This branch of the argument can apply to worlds whether they’re deterministic or probabilistic. Thus, even if the reader does not share my assumption that the world is probabilistic, or doesn't agree with my rejection of causal closure, there are still some reasons to doubt the soundness of even the original deterministic CEA

Physical requirements for models of consciousness

Consciousness presents a series of characteristics that have been observed through- out the years: unity, continuity, richness and robustness are some of them. It manifests itself in regions of the brain capable of processing a huge quantity of integrated information with a level of neural activity close to criticality. We argue that the physics of consciousness cannot be exclusively based on classical physics. Consciousness unity cannot be explained classically as the classical properties are always Humean like a mosaic. One needs an entangled quantum system that can at least satisfy part of the functions of a quantum computer to allow to generate an inner aspect with the unity of consciousness and to couple with a classical system that gives it simultaneous access to preprocessed information at the neural level and to produce events that generate neural firings

The architecture of the extended mind: towards a critical urban ecology

This thesis is concerned with the difficulties that the discipline of architecture has encountered in thinking about and articulating ecological questions in recent years. I argue that it is precisely because the problems posed by the environmental question have so many personal, political and social dimensions, and are so radically trans-disciplinary, that architectural discourse and its metropolitan mediations is well positioned to reflect upon, articulate and stage as a new modern project, this multi-disciplinary and socio-ecological complexity. The content of this thesis therefore crosses a number of different fields within the arts and sciences. I scrutinise a series of contemporary and historical moments in the development of systems thinking – or what Alfred North Whitehead described as “the philosophy of organism” – with particular reference to a socio-political re-conception of architecture, urbanism and the wider environment today. I describe a network of relationships which traces the surprisingly dynamic histories of a series of concepts – including nature, matter, organism, ecology, network, mind, emergence, system and dialectics – as they unfold across a wide range of disciplines, including architecture, cybernetics, Marxist theory, ecology and the cognitive sciences. Ultimately, this thesis suggests that critical urban ecology – the architectural investigation of ecological aesthetics and urban political ecology – will be a key field of both theoretical investigation and practical design activism in the coming years, as the deep contradictions of capitalism unfold at an ever more intensified global scale

Deliberation and Reason

This book is about the thinking in which we engage when we reflectively decide what to do, and when we reflectively reach conclusions as to the correct answers to questions. Some philosophers separate our choices of action from our adoptions of belief, on the ground that we have choices as to what to do, but no choice as to what to believe. I treat the two together when considering processes of deliberation, but separately when considering the rationality of conclusions. The main objective is to identify a way of looking at ourselves and at our deliberations that is adequate to our lives. It must accommodate both our conception of ourselves as free, rational and self-directed subjects, and our feeling that we deliberate freely. It must also identify a place for us that will feel like home, doing justice to our status as subjects, within the world as we relate to it when we practise the natural sciences. The central claims are not about how we are, but about how we should look at ourselves. A key task is to show that this limited ambition, which is forced on us by the need to avoid metaphysical implausibility, nonetheless allows us to develop a position that has sufficient strength to do its work. The aim is to show something that is all too easily taken for granted. This is that we can limit ourselves to a strictly naturalistic ontology, while still having access to a generous idiom that allows us to speak of ourselves as free in the exercise of our rationality