This is a volume of thoughtful essays by a group of scientific leaders from physics, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, the philosophy of science, artificial intelligence, and brain psychology. It addresses fundamental issues such as, in the words of one of the contributors (Nobel Prize-winner Herbert A. Simon). ”How a mind resides in a brain.” The essays are set in the framework of the evolving scientific concept of complex adaptive systems, the basis for which is laid in an impressive essay (...) by another Nobelist, physicist Murray Gell-Mann. The various chapters include studies of the neurobiology of mental representation, the brain architecture that bears on the organization of human memory, a connectionist approach to emotions and neuro-modulation, the possible neurobiological bases of consciousness, the new scientific understanding of human unconsciousness processes, and even the possibility of formulating a parallel distributed process computer simulation of daydreaming and nightdreaming. Scientists in the fields of brain biology, artificial intelligence, and psychology, as well as educators interested in the links of mind and brain, will find stimulating material for potential research and teaching in each chapter. (shrink)

This article examines how minimal genome research mobilizes philosophical concepts such as minimality and essentiality. Following a historical approach the article aims to uncover what function this terminology plays and which problems are raised by them. Specifically, four historical moments are examined, linked to the work of Harold J. Morowitz, Mitsuhiro Itaya, Eugene Koonin and Arcady Mushegian, and J. Craig Venter. What this survey shows is a historical shift away from historical questions about life or descriptive questions about specific (...) organisms towards questions that explore biological possibilities: what are possible forms of minimal genomes, regardless of whether they exist in nature? Moreover, it highlights a fundamental ambiguity at work in minimal genome research between a universality claim and a standardization claim: does a minimal genome refer to the minimal gene set for any organism whatsoever? Or does it refer rather to a gene set that will provide stable, robust and predictable behaviour, suited for biotechnological applications? Two diagnoses are proposed for this ambiguity: a philosophical diagnosis of how minimal genome research either misunderstands the ontology of biological entities or philosophically misarticulates scientific practice. Secondly, a historical diagnosis that suggests that this ambiguity is part of a broader shift towards technoscience. (shrink)

Moje zainteresowanie pracami i dziełem Michaiła Bachtina oraz Eugena Rosenstocka-Huessy bierze swój początek z odkrycia, ze obaj myśliciele zgodnie twierdzili, iż religijna moc języka oraz mowy wyrasta z różnorodnych kryzysów życiowych. Theoria przez nich stworzona zbudowana jest na gruncie praxis i czerpie swą siłę ze zderzenia doświadczeń duchowych i intelektualnych obu filozofów z rewolucyjnym wrzeniem otaczającej ich współczesności. Wykład niniejszy to próba nawiązania dialogu z osobami podzielającymi podobne zainteresowania i troski. Pisząc go kierowałem się także pragnieniem zaabsorbowania uwagi moich słuchaczy (...) przedstawione w nim istoty metalingwistyki głoszonej przez „nieortodoksyjnego" prawosławnego teoretyka literatury i filozofa języka, Michaiła Bachtina, oraz znaczeniem metanomiki opracowanej przez „rewolucyjnie konserwatywnego" chrześcijańskiego myśliciela mowy i filozofa społecznego, Eugena Rosenstocka-Huessy. Zamiarem moim jest przedstawienie roli, jaką społeczno-religijne modele filozofii i socjologii oparte na mowie i języku mogą^ odegrać w dążeniach do zaprowadzenia pokojowego współistnienia na całej naszej planecie. Ten właśnie obszar zainteresowań został określony przez Williama Jamesa, amerykańskiego filozofa pragmatyzmu, mianem „moralnego równoważnika wojny”. Przywołując na pamięć ogromną rzeszę myślicieli, których prace odnoszą się bezpośrednio do wyznaczonego tu obszaru – a w pewnych przypadkach noszą znamiona dzieła prekursorskiego – nie możemy poprzestać na wymienieniu tylko nazwiska Williama Jamesa. Inne wielkie postaci to: Charles Sanders Pierce, George Herbert Mead, a także myśliciele podejmujący zagadnienia, które później stały się treścią filozofii Rosenstocka-Huessy, tj. Giovanni Battista Vico, J. G. Hamann, Comte de Saint-Simon oraz Giuseppe Ferrari. (shrink)

Celebrating the remarkable career of jurist Harold J. Berman, the essays in this volume demonstrate that Berman's contributions to Russian studies, international trade law, legal history, philosophy of law, and law and religion have firmly established him as part of the tradition of our greatest American jurists.

When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--indeed, so great that the sum far transcends the parts and represents something utterly new and different--we call that phenomenon emergence. When the chemicals diffusing in the primordial waters came together to form the first living cell, that was emergence. When the activities of the neurons in the brain result in mind, that too is emergence. In The Emergence of Everything, one of the leading scientists involved in the study of (...) complexity, Harold J. Morowitz, takes us on a sweeping tour of the universe, a tour with 28 stops, each one highlighting a particularly important moment of emergence. For instance, Morowitz illuminates the emergence of the stars, the birth of the elements and of the periodic table, and the appearance of solar systems and planets. We look at the emergence of living cells, animals, vertebrates, reptiles, and mammals, leading to the great apes and the appearance of humanity. He also examines tool making, the evolution of language, the invention of agriculture and technology, and the birth of cities. And as he offers these insights into the evolutionary unfolding of our universe, our solar system, and life itself, Morowitz also seeks out the nature of God in the emergent universe, the God posited by Spinoza, Bruno, and Einstein, a God Morowitz argues we can know through a study of the laws of nature. Written by one of our wisest scientists, The Emergence of Everything offers a fascinating new way to look at the universe and the natural world, and it makes an important contribution to the dialogue between science and religion. (shrink)

The two parts of this article constitute a single chapter in H.J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition.

This chapter contains section titled: Upbringing English Works, Dutch Sources The Fable Last Work and Legacy.

Cartesian mind body dualism and modern versions of this viewpoint posit a mind thermodynamically unrelated to the body but informationally interactive. The relation between information and entropy developed by Leon Brillouin demonstrates that any information about the state of a system has entropic consequences. It is therefore impossible to dissociate the mind's information from the body's entropy. Knowledge of that state of the system without an energetically significant measurement would lead to a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.