It is widely accepted in science that the universe is a closed deterministic system in which everything can, ultimately, be explained by purely physical...

For the last five years philosopher Galen Strawson has provoked a mixture of shock and scepticism with his carefully argued case that physicalism entails panpsychism. In this book Strawson provides the fullest and most careful statement of his position to date, throwing down the gauntlet to his critics — including Peter Carruthers, Frank Jackson, David Rosenthal and J.J.C. Smart — by inviting them to respond in print. The book concludes with Strawson's response to his commentators. Galen Strawson’s books include Mental (...) Reality, The Self? and Freedom and Belief. (shrink)

It is widely accepted in science that the universe is a closed deterministic system in which everything can, ultimately, be explained by purely physical causation. And yet we all experience ourselves as having the freedom to choose between alternatives presented to us — ‘we’ are in the driving seat. The puzzling status of volition is explored in this issue by a distinguished body of scientists and philosophers.

Transpersonal psychology first emerged as an academic discipline in the 1960s and has subsequently broadened into a range of transpersonal studies. Jorge Ferrer (2002) has called for a 'revisioning' of transpersonal theory, dethroning inner experience from its dominant role in defining and validating spiritual reality. In the current paradigm he detects a lingering Cartesianism, which subtly entrenches the very subject-object divide that transpersonalists seek to overcome. This paper outlines the development and current shape of the transpersonal movement, compares Ferrer's epistemology (...) with the heterophenomenology of Daniel Dennett, and speculates on the integration of the latter into transpersonal theory. (shrink)

God In Us is a radical representation of the Christian faith for the 21st century. Following the example of the Old Testament prophets and the first-century Christians it overturns received ideas about God. God is not an invisible person 'out there' somewhere, but lives in the human heart and mind as 'the sum of all our values and ideals' guiding and inspiring our lives. This new updated edition includes a foreword by Bishop John Shelby Spong and an afterword from the (...) author. (shrink)

It was in 1980 that John Searle first opened the door of his Chinese Room, purporting to show that the conscious mind cannot, in principle, work like a digital computer. Searle, who speaks no Chinese, stipulated that locked in this fictitious space he had a supply of different Chinese symbols, together with instructions for using them . When Chinese characters were passed in to him, he would consult the instructions and pass out more symbols. Neither input nor output would mean (...) anything to him, but it would look to the outsider as though he were answering in Chinese the questions in Chinese that were being passed into him. That, claimed Searle, is exactly the situation with the notorious Turing test for computer intelligence . Only from the outside does the computer appear understand the questions and answers. Inside, all is a formal shuffling of meaningless symbols. John Preston and Mark Bishop, ed., Views into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence, Oxford University Press, 2002, 410pp, ?50 ISBN 0198250576. (shrink)

Report on the 11th Mind & Brain Symposium at King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry.

The author of this paper was managing editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies from its launch in 1994 until this year. As he steps down from the post, he reflects on the role of the editor, who has by turns to encourage, support, cajole, and even threaten, the team of contributors and reviewers, whose servant and master he is. What follows may be taken both as an apologia for his time in office, addressed to the consciousness community, and a (...) word of caution and advice addressed to his successor. (shrink)

How does the conscious mind relate to the physical body? Two common views from the past offered the stark choice between dualism which said mind and body were quite separate and physicalism which said that the mind was in fact 'nothing but' the physical brain. Both these views are now widely rejected. 'Emergence' theory offers a compromise: the mind ‘emerges’ from the physical body but the whole person, mind and body, is more than the sum of the physical parts. In (...) _The Emergence of Consciousness_ philosopher Robert Van Gulick gives a clear and masterly overview and comparison of the current ‘emergent’ and ‘reductive’ approaches. Other contributors discuss more detailed aspects of the subject. The editor's own chapter argues for the radical proposal that even God is an ‘emergent property’. (shrink)

Treating conscious states as emergent properties of brain states has religious implications. Emergence claims the neutral ground between substance dualism and reductive physicalism . This neutrality makes possible a theory of human experience that is religious, yet lies wholly within the natural order and open to scientific investigation. One attempt to explain the soul as an emergent property of brain states is studied and found wanting, because of a dogmatic assumption that God is ‘beyond all material form’. Reflection on the (...) central Christian claim that Jesus Christ was human and divine suggests the alternative view that God and the soul are both emergent properties. Unlike the philosopher's or physicist's remote and isolated ‘first cause’, this God is immediate and personal and social. (shrink)

We have already seen what happens in a typical experiment in quantum physics. When an observation is recorded say on a phosphor screen or photographic plate quantum entities (like photons or electrons) will appear as particles in precise positions. But their observed distribution is predicted by Schroedinger's wave function, and in appropriate conditions they exhibit Airy's wave associated ring pattern. This suggests that while unobserved they were behaving as waves which can spread out in more than one direction at once (...) but once they are observed, they have just a single position, a characteristic of a particle. The act of observation "collapses the wave function" and an actual state precipitates, as it were, out of the cloud of previously possible states. This is what scandalized Einstein: that the chance event of an observation should not merely uncover but actually create the reality of the universe. But the question arises: what is so special about a device such as a light sensitive plate, that its interception of a quantum entity should count as an observation and so "create" actuality in this way? (shrink)

It is a sad duty to report the death of Joseph Goguen (1941-2006) on July 3rd, shortly after a three-day Festschrift Symposium, organized by colleagues from across the world, to mark his 65th birthday and to celebrate his retirement from the University of California at San Diego.

When, in my invitation to commentators, I told them I should write a brief editorial 'reflection', I little realised how shockingly accurate a reflection of JCS and its character -- both its strengths and limitations -- their own brief articles would provide. The disgraceful gender imbalance I mentioned in my introduction; what the commentaries also show is how confined we are to scientific materialism as a basic working paradigm. I knew it of course, and certain correspondents chide me for it (...) regularly, but I confess this exercise brought it home with a fresh force. (shrink)

What is it for you to be conscious? To be conscious now, for instance, of the room you are in? Theories on offer divide into just two categories, labelled by Ted Honderich as devout physicalism and spiritualism. The first reduces consciousness to no more than the physical, while the second takes it out of space and into mystery. But none of the proposed solutions has worked convincingly, and the reason, according to Honderich, lies in the persistent and resilient human belief (...) that consciousness really is different. Hence his new theory of Radical Externalism, set out here and then criticised by eleven other leading philosophers, whose verdicts are in turn subjected to a full response by Honderich himself. Does the problem of consciousness survive this latest theory? Does the theory survive such sharp discussion? It is for the reader to judge, but one thing is certain — it is time for a change. (shrink)

In September 1981 the prestigious scientific journal Nature carried an unsigned editorial (subsequently acknowledged to be by the journal's senior editor, John Maddox) titled 'A book for burning?' (Maddox, 1981). It reviewed and damned Rupert Sheldrake's then recently published book A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Causative Formation (Sheldrake, 1981) and raised a storm of controversy whose fall-out is still very much with us. Up to this time Sheldrake was a well-respected up-and-coming plant physiologist and the recipient of (...) academic honours including a fellowship at his Cambridge college. The furore that grew out of the assault in Nature put an end to his academic career and made him persona non grata in the scientific community. Over twenty years later this journal still runs the risk of ostracism by publishing his work. What can explain this deep and lasting antagonism? (shrink)