Introduction—What These Papers Are About

Bio Systems, 2001

Quantum and Consciousness Revisited, 2024

This paper analyzes how conflicts of perspective are resolved in the field of the human sciences. Examples of such conflicts are the duality between the actor and spectator standpoints, or the duality of participancy between a form of social life and a socio-anthropological study of it. This type of duality look irreducible, because the conflicting positions express incompatible interests. Yet, the claim of “incommensurability” is excessive. There exists a level of mental activity at which dialogue and resolution are possible. Reaching this level only implies that one comes back to a state of undetermination between situations and interests, whose best model is a superposition of states in generalized quantum theory. Some applications of this strategy of going back below the point of quantum-like “state reduction”, from the psychology of perception to the history of civilization, are presented.

2000

The problem of understanding quantum mechanics is in large measure the problem of finding appropriate ways of thinking about the spatial and temporal aspects of the physical world. The standard, substantival, set-theoretic conception of space is inconsistent with quantum mechanics, and so is the doctrine of local realism, the principle of local causality, and the mathematical physicist's golden calf, determinism. The said problem is made intractable by our obtruding onto the physical world a theoretical framework that is more detailed than the physical world. This framework portraits space and time as infinitely and intrinsically differentiated, whereas the physical world is only finitely differentiated spacewise and timewise, namely to the extent that spatiotemporal relations and distinctions are warranted by facts. This has the following consequences: (i) The contingent properties of the physical world, including the times at which they are possessed, are indefinite and extrinsic. (ii) We cannot think of reality as being built "from the bottom up", out of locally instantiated physical properties. Instead we must conceive of the physical world as being built "from the top down": By entering into a multitude of spatial relations with itself, "existence itself" takes on both the aspect of a spatially differentiated world and the aspect of a multiplicity of formless relata, the fundamental particles. At the root of our interpretational difficulties is the "cookie cutter paradigm", according to which the world's synchronic multiplicity is founded on the introduction of surfaces that carve up space in the manner of three-dimensional cookie cutters. The neurophysiological underpinnings of this insidious notion are discussed. "I feel that the real joke that the eternal inventor of enigmas has presented us with has absolutely not been understood as yet." Albert Einstein [1, p. 411]

Abastrcts: Journal of Philosophical Investigations (Current Issue. Volume 11, Issue 20, summer 2017, Page 1-325) Deapartment of Philosophy University of Tabriz Tabriz city Iran

journal of Philosophical Investigations at university of Tabriz, 2017

full text of journal of Philosophical Investigations 2017/ No.21. Year 11 at university of Tabriz-Iran.pdf http://philosophy.tabrizu.ac.ir/

The authors undertake a thought experiment the purpose of which is to explore possibilities for understanding moral principles in analogy with cosmic order. The experiment is based on three proposals, which are described in detail: an ontological, a neurological, and a moral proposal. The ontological proposal accepts from the phenomena of quantum physics that there is a nonempirical domain of physical reality that consists not of material things but of what is philosophically conceptualized as a realm of nonmaterial forms. This realm of forms is the realm of potentiality in physical reality that quantum physics posits as an indivisible Wholeness-the One. It is the ultimate reality because everything empirical is the actualization of its forms. The neurological proposal is the hypothesis that the brain is sensitive to the potentiality waves in the cosmic field, as ordinary measuring instruments in physics are sensitive to potentiality waves at the quantum level, so that the cosmic field can communicate with the human brain. The third proposal assumes that the communication with the cosmic field can translate into moral ideas and actions. Even though the three proposals underlying the thought experiment are highly speculative, they lead to definite implications that make sense in their own right and can be applied in a useful way. From the order of reality some simple rules of conduct follow that are identical with traditional moral rules but have the character of rules of wellness, leading to new aspects of Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia and Kant's concept of the highest good. In analogy with the structure of physical reality, where all empirical phenomena are actualizations of nonempirical forms, it is suggested that the structure of morality, Lothar Schäfer is Edgar Wertheim Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701; e-mail [email protected]. Diogo Valadas Ponte is a clinical psychologist whose practice is in Barcelos, Zygon too, is that of a tacit, nonempirical form that actualizes in explicit principles and moral acts through our consciousness. The tacit form is thought to exist in the realm of cosmic potentiality, together with all the other forms that the empirical world actualizes. It can appear spontaneously in our consciousness when needed, offering its guidance to our judgment and free will. Because it does not appear in the form of commandments accompanied by threats, the actions of the tacit moral form define a higher level of morality, similar to that offered by some aspects of the Christian teaching, where one acts not out of fear but on the desire to do things right.

2006

What must be admitted is that the definite images of traditional psychology form but the very smallest part of our minds as they actually live. The traditional psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows around it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this hallo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it, --or rather that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it an image of that thing newly taken and freshly understood. William James (1890, p. 255).

Proceedings of IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Conference - SMC, 1993