Related papers: The Closure of the Physical, Consciousness and Sci…
The way we view the reality of nature, including ourselves, depend on consciousness.It also defines the identity of the person, since we know people in terms of their experiences. In general, consciousness defines human existence in this…
The search for a scientific theory of consciousness should result in theories that are falsifiable. However, here we show that falsification is especially problematic for theories of consciousness. We formally describe the standard…
The hard problem in consciousness is the problem of understanding how physical processes in the brain could give rise to subjective conscious experience. In this paper, I suggest that in order to understand the relationship between…
The most dramatic developments in theoretical physics in the next millennium are likely to come when we make progress on so far unresolved foundational questions. In this essay I consider two of the deepest problems confronting us, the…
The causal closure of physics is usually discussed in a context free way. Here I discuss it in the context of engineering systems and biology, where strong emergence takes place due to a combination of upwards emergence and downwards…
Measurements play a crucial role in doing physics: Their results provide the basis on which we adopt or reject physical theories. In this note, we examine the effect of subjecting measurements themselves to our experience. We require that…
The effects of the experiment itself upon the obtained results and, especially, the influence of a large number of experiments are extensively discussed in the literature. We show that the important factor that stands at the basis of these…
However, the observations encompassed by classical physics excludes the observer from the physical reality, yet the deep-down understandung of nature --{\it the quantum theory}-- can not avoid the intrusion of observer into the measurement…
In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the concept of "physical" embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
This essay discusses the idea that a Theory of Everything would not be complete without a theory of consciousness as one of its parts, and the suggestion that new physics may be needed to describe consciousness. I argue that the motivations…
Closure problems are omnipresent when simulating multiscale systems, where some quantities and processes cannot be fully prescribed despite their effects on the simulation's accuracy. Recently, scientific machine learning approaches have…
Measurement outcomes provide data for a physical theory. Unless they are objective they support no objective scientific knowledge. So the outcome of a quantum measurement must be an objective physical fact. But recent arguments purport to…
Modern physics is founded on two mainstays: mathematical modelling and empirical verification. These two assumptions are prerequisite for the objectivity of scientific discourse. Here we show, however, that they are contradictory, leading…
We show that the modern quantum mechanics, and particularly the theory of decoherence, allows formulating a sort of a physical metatheory of consciousness. Particularly, the analysis of the necessary conditions for the occurrence of…
Science is a crowning glory of the human spirit and its applications remain our best hope for social progress. But there are limitations to current science and perhaps to any science. The general mind-body problem is known to be intractable…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
We show that the modern quantum mechanics, and particularly the theory of decoherence, allows for formulating a sort of a physical metatheory of consciousness. Particularly, the analysis of the necessary conditions for the occurrence of…
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…
The ancient mind/body problem continues to be one of deepest mysteries of science and of the human spirit. Despite major advances in many fields, there is still no plausible link between subjective experience (qualia) and its realization in…