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The idea of a moving present or `now' seems to form part of our most basic beliefs about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. I show in this article that presentism, the doctrine…

We consider Brans-Dicke theory with a self-interacting potential in Einstein conformal frame. We introduce a class of solutions in which an accelerating expansion is possible in a spatially flat universe for positive and large values of the…

This document is the Special Issue of the First International Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe (EDU 2008). Please refer to the preface and introduction for more details on the contributions. Keywords:…

Learning structured representations of visual scenes is currently a major bottleneck to bridging perception with reasoning. While there has been exciting progress with slot-based models, which learn to segment scenes into sets of objects,…

As early indicated by Charles Darwin, languages behave and change very much like living species. They display high diversity, differentiate in space and time, emerge and disappear. A large body of literature has explored the role of…

A stream of conscious experience is extremely contextual; it is impacted by sensory stimuli, drives and emotions, and the web of associations that link, directly or indirectly, the subject of experience to other elements of the individual's…

The evolution of the human mind through natural selection mandates that our conscious experiences are causally potent in order to leave a tangible impact upon the surrounding physical world. Any attempt to construct a functional theory of…

It is increasingly evident that there is more to biological evolution than natural selection; moreover, the concept of evolution is not limited to biology. We propose an integrative framework for characterizing how entities evolve, in which…

We adapt an information theory analysis of interacting cognitive biological and social modules to the problem of the global neuronal workspace, the current standard neuroscience picture of consciousness. Tunable punctuation emerges in a…

Theories of consciousness depend on data, and it needs to be appropriate data, without overwhelming confounding factors. The reports of Minimal Phenomenal Experience (MPE) in [Metzinger 2024] relate to consciousness in a state purer than…

At the core of our uniquely human cognitive abilities is the capacity to see things from different perspectives, or to place them in a new context. We propose that this was made possible by two cognitive transitions. First, the large brain…

There are many philosophies and theories on what creativity is and how it works, but one popular idea is that of variations on a theme and intersection of concepts. This literature review explores philosophical proposals of how creativity…

A fundamental question in the conjunction of information theory, biophysics, bioinformatics and thermodynamics relates to the principles and processes that guide the development of natural intelligence in natural environments where…

Macroevolutionary dynamics often display sudden, explosive surges, where systems remain relatively stable for extended periods before experiencing dramatic acceleration that frequently exceeds traditional exponential growth. This pattern is…

It is proposed that both human creativity and human consciousness are (unintended) consequences of the human brain's extraordinary energy efficiency. The topics of creativity and consciousness are treated separately, though have a common…

The broad concept of emergence is instrumental in various of the most challenging open scientific questions -- yet, few quantitative theories of what constitutes emergent phenomena have been proposed. This article introduces a formal theory…

I examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, "perceptronium", with distinctive information processing abilities. I explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other…

I argue that Einstein overlooked an important aspect of the relativity of time in never quite realizing his quest to embody Mach's principle in his theory of gravity. As a step towards that goal, I broaden the Strong Equivalence Principle…

We analyze different aspects of our quantum modeling approach of human concepts, and more specifically focus on the quantum effects of contextuality, interference, entanglement and emergence, illustrating how each of them makes its…

Despite major advances in climate science over the last 30 years, persistent uncertainties in projections of future climate change remain. Climate projections are produced with increasingly complex models which attempt to represent key…