Related papers: Mysteries of Visual Experience
The Mind-Body Problem, which constitutes the starting point for a large part of the speculations about consciousness and conscious experience, can be re-stated in an equivalent way, using the `brain duplication' argument described in this…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…
Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible - i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically…
The tremendous advances of research into artificial intelligence as well as neuroscience made over the last two to three decades have given further support to a renewed interest into philosophical discussions of the mind-body problem.…
The human mind is constituted by inner, subjective, private, first-person conscious experiences that cannot be measured with physical devices or observed from an external, objective, public, third-person perspective. The qualitative,…
In order to describe natural phenomena, science develops sophisticated models that use mathematical and formal languages which seem, and often are, very far from common experience. When a phenomenon is not accessible to our senses, its…
Physics is so successful today in understanding the nature of matter. What can it say about mind ? Is it possible to have a unified theory of matter and mind within the framework of modern science ? Is Consciousness an accident or is it a…
The hard problem of consciousness is the question how subjective experience arises from brain matter. I suggest exploring the possibility that quantum physics could be part of the answer. The simultaneous unity and complexity of subjective…
This is a comment on both Gruber et al (2022) and Bunamano and Rovelli (2022), which discuss the relation between physical time and human time. I claim here, contrary to many views discussed there, that there is no foundational conflict…
The way science is currently practiced shows conclusions but hides how they were reached. Researchers work privately, polish their results, publish a finished paper, and defend it. Errors are punished by retraction rather than corrected by…
In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply…
Consciousness is the process by which one attributes `meaning' to the world. Considering F$\phi$llesdal's definition of `meaning' as the joint product of all `evidence' that is available to those who `communicate', we conclude that science…
The "measurement problem" of quantum mechanics, and the "hard problem" of cognitive science are the most profound open problems of the two research fields, and certainly among the deepest of all unsettled conundrums in contemporary science…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
Modern science developed within a culture of Judeo-Christian theism, and science and theism have generally supported each other. However, there are certainly areas in both science and religion that puzzle me. Here I outline some puzzles…
Brain science and artificial intelligence have made great progress toward the understanding and engineering of the human mind. The progress has accelerated significantly since the turn of the century thanks to new methods for probing the…
At any time, there are areas of science where we are standing at the frontier of knowledge, and can wonder whether we have reached a fundamental limit to human understanding. What is ultimately possible in physics? I will argue here that it…
We show here that what we call visual space of consciousness, the space of what we see, is a specific space different from the purely physical one and that its properties imply that it cannot be reduced to or deduced from physical laws.…
A suite of impressive scientific discoveries have been driven by recent advances in artificial intelligence. These almost all result from training flexible algorithms to solve difficult optimization problems specified in advance by teams of…