Related papers: The "Hard Problem" of Life
Basic problems in complex systems are surveyed in connection with Life. As a key issue for complex systems, complementarity between syntax/rule/parts and semantics/behavior/whole is stressed. To address the issue, a constructive approach…
Understanding of the phenomena of vision and thought require clarification of the general mechanism of perception. So far, philosophical inquiries and scientific investigations have not been able to address clearly the mysteries surrounding…
Many real life optimization problems contain both hard and soft constraints, as well as qualitative conditional preferences. However, there is no single formalism to specify all three kinds of information. We therefore propose a framework,…
The quantum-mechanical description of the world, including human observers, makes substantial use of entanglement. In order to understand this, we need to adopt concepts of truth, probability and time which are unfamiliar in modern…
In this pedestrian approach I give my personal point of view on the various problems posed by dark matter in the universe. After a brief historical overview I discuss the various solutions stemming from high energy particle physics, and the…
Fechner's law and its modern generalizations can be regarded as manifestations of alternative forms of arithmetic, coexisting at stimulus and sensation levels. The world of sensations may be thus described by a generalization of the…
It is generally agreed that decoherence theory is, if not a complete answer, at least a great step forward towards a solution of the quantum measurement problem. It is shown here however that in the cases in which a sentient being is…
The way that people make choices or exhibit preferences can be strongly affected by the set of available alternatives, often called the choice set. Furthermore, there are usually heterogeneous preferences, either at an individual level…
This paper examines the processes involved in attempting to capture the subtlest aspects of nature by the scientific method and argues on this basis that nature is fundamentally elusive and may resist grasping by the methods of science. If…
Are minds subject to laws of physics? Are the laws of physics computable? Are conscious thought processes computable? Currently there is little agreement as to what are the right answers to these questions. Penrose goes one step further and…
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…
The link between the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation and the hard problem of consciousness is investigated. We highlight that beables of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation are not themselves qualia, but are intimately related to qualia. It…
For complex life to evolve, a sophisticated nervous system for handling its complexities was fundamental. The demand resulted in the emergence of brain's computational facility, the neuronal network. This facet of the brain is attested…
When we try to search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence, we have to follow some guidelines. The first step is to clarify what is to be meant by "Life" and "intelligence", i.e. an attempt to define these words. The word "definition"…
The concept of information has emerged as a language in its own right, bridging several disciplines that analyze natural phenomena and man-made systems. Integrated information has been introduced as a metric to quantify the amount of…
Free will is an old philosophical enigma that has been recently revived by neuropsychology. We restrict ourselves to the problem that determinism seems to allow only an illusion of freedom but random decissions do not contain any freedom…
We view the mind-body problem in terms of the two interconnected problems of phenomenal consciousness and mental causation, namely, how subjective conscious experience can arise from physical neurological processes and how conscious mental…
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.…
Free will is sometimes summarised in the philosophical literature as the subjective impression felt by an individual that he or she is the ultimate source or cause of his or her own choices. The two most common arguments for denying the…
Complexity remains one of the central challenges in science and technology. Although several approaches at defining and/or quantifying complexity have been proposed, at some point each of them seems to run into intrinsic limitations or…