Progress in biophysics and molecular biology
August 1, 2024
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
121 citations
A landscape of explanations for consciousness is presented, ranging from physicalist to nonphysicalist theories. Categories include materialism theories, non-reductive physicalism, quantum theories, integrated information theory, panpsychisms, monisms, dualisms, idealisms, and others. Each theory is described from its adherents' perspective, with minimal critique and no adjudication. The implications of these theories are assessed regarding meaning, purpose, and value; AI consciousness; virtual immortality; and survival beyond death. The author suggests that this landscape offers perspective.
Progress in biophysics and molecular biology
December 1, 2015
Patrick M Whitehead
13 citations
A philosophical argument that biology and phenomenology can collaborate to study the body, despite their traditional divide between the corporeal body (Körper) and the lived body (Leib). The paper identifies two obstacles: Husserl's anti-naturalism, which rejects biological accounts of the body, and the parallelism problem, which treats Körper and Leib as separate entities. Drawing on Kurt Goldstein's biological work and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological references to it, the author argues that Husserl's anti-naturalism is no longer necessary and that Körper and Leib are not two bodies but two ways of recognizing one body. This dissolves the parallelism problem and supports interdisciplinary collaboration.
Progress in biophysics and molecular biology
December 1, 2017
Søren Brier
7 citations
Charles S. Peirce's process philosophy proposes a non-theistic, agapistic evolution from nothingness, drawing on Eastern traditions like Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism, as well as American transcendentalists. This triadic semiotic process theory is argued to better accommodate the quantum field view and the emergence of consciousness than mechanistic or information-based approaches. Peirce sees the universe as a reasoning process evolving from pure potentiality to a fully ordered Summon Bonum. The paper compares this with John Archibald Wheeler's "It from bit" cosmogony, which leads to an info-computational view lacking a phenomenological foundation. David Chalmers' double-aspect interpretation attempts to add phenomenology but fails to integrate meaning and rationality. Alex Hankey's work addresses Husserl's criteria for consciousness but cannot explain the connection between core consciousness and the physical world.
Progress in biophysics and molecular biology
December 1, 2017
Brian J Ford
Eastern traditions view life holistically, emphasizing health and healing as expressions of a spiritual principle, while Western reductionist science models living processes as digital computer systems. The argument here is that cognition, response, and decision-making in living cells go beyond such modeling. Microscopic studies of shell-building amoebae and the alga Antithamnion reveal a level of cellular intelligence unrecognized by science and not amenable to computer analysis.