Leibniz' Bedeutung für die Entwicklung der amerikanischen Philosophie ist bisher wenig erforscht worden. In diesem Aufsatz untersuche ich den Beitrag zweier amerikanischer Idealisten der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts zur Leibniz-Forschung. Der erstere, Frederic Henry Hedge, ein enger Mitarbeiter Emersons und eine zentrale Figur der transcendentalist movement, legte die erste Übersetzung der Monadologie ins Englische vor und schrieb die erste wichtige wissenschaftliche Abhandlung über Leibniz in einer amerikanischen Zeitschrift. Der zweite, H. A. P. Torrey, von prägendem Einfluß auf die (...) Gedanken John Deweys, schrieb eine Reihe kritischer Essays zur Théodicée, die Auswirkungen auf Deweys Buch über Leibniz hatten. In diesem Aufsatz gebe ich eine Überblick der Arbeiten von Hedge und Torrey, bewerte ihre Arbeiten zu Leibniz und untersuche einige Aspekte ihres Einflusses auf das amerikanische Denken. Ich folgere, daß Leibniz' Einfluß auf die amerikanische Philosophie größer ist als allgemein angenommen und schlage weitere Forschungsmöglichkeiten vor. (shrink)

Owen revisited Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9447-7 Authors Henry A. McGhie, The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Established religions integrate a society's everyday secular realities with humankind's numinous experience of the holy. Powerful emotions nourish the cultural expression of the archetypes propelling the “ritual dances” of art, sport, and technocracy. During sacred moments such as mother‐infant or adult bonding, neuroendocrine triggers activate lifelong ties. The cultural canon of the left cortex contrasts with the intuitive right. Brainstem “switches” alternate the left's cool, extraverted, sympathetic drive for control with the right's “warm” attachment behavior and dreaming sleep. Psychic trauma (...) damages flexibility with resultant alexithymic blindness to emotions and archetypes. Substance abuse and narcissistic overemphasis on control ensue. (shrink)

This book explains, in simple but accurate terms, how orthodox quantum mechanics works. The author, a distinguished theoretical physicist, shows how this theory, realistically interpreted, assigns an important role to our conscious free choices. Stapp claims that mainstream biology and neuroscience, despite nearly a century of quantum physics, still stick essentially to failed classical precepts in which mental intentions have no effect upon our bodily actions. He shows how quantum mechanics provides a rational basis for a better understanding of this (...) connection, even allowing an explanation of certain phenomena currently held to be "paranormal". These ideas have major implications for our understanding of ourselves and our mental processes, and thus also for the meaningfulness of our lives. (shrink)

“The sins of the fathers are to be laid upon the children.”Just after midnight on March 21, 2003, a drunk stood on a footbridge over a motorway in a village in Surrey in southern England. After eight pints of beer, he was drunk enough to decide to drop a brick from the overpass into traffic to see if he could hit something; unfortunately, he was not so drunk that he missed. The brick crashed through the windshield on the driver's side (...) of a truck. It hit the driver, Michael Little, in the chest, triggering a fatal heart attack. He stayed conscious long enough to pull the truck safely to the side of the road, thereby perhaps saving other motorists; then he died. The crime was widely publicized, as was the driver's role in preventing any further accidents. (shrink)

Quantum theory is essentially a rationally coherent theory of the interaction of mind and matter, and it allows our conscious thoughts to play a causally efficacious and necessary role in brain dynamics. It therefore provides a natural basis, created by scientists, for the science of consciousness. As an illustration it is explained how the interaction of brain and consciousness can speed up brain processing, and thereby enhance the survival prospects of conscious organisms, as compared to similar organisms that lack consciousness. (...) As a second illustration it is explained how, within the quantum framework, the consciously experienced ``I'' directs the actions of a human being. It is concluded that contemporary science already has an adequate framework for incorporating causally efficacious experiential events into the physical universe in a manner that: 1) puts the neural correlates of consciousness into the theory in a well defined way, 2) explains in principle how the effects of consciousness, per se, can enhance the survival prospects of organisms that possess it, 3) allows this survival effect to feed into phylogenetic development, and 4) explains how the consciously experienced ``I'' can direct human behaviour. (shrink)

The authors examine the scientific possibility and the legal and ethical implications of using DNA forensic technology, through partial matches to DNA from crime scenes, to turn into suspects the relatives of people whose DNA profiles are in forensic databases.

A total of 152 students were asked to respond to a series of causal conditional (“If P then Q”) inferences with major premises for which there was variable access to information contradicting the premises. Half the students were given 12.5 s for each inference, the other half were given 8.5 s. The percentage of accepted inferences was significantly lower when the time was shorter for the MP and MT inferences, but no effect was observed for the AC and DA inferences. (...) Results are interpreted as supporting the idea that inhibition of retrieved information contradicting the premise is necessary to explain reasoning with the MP and MT inferences under logical instructions (Markovits & Barrouillet, 2002). (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

[opening paragraph]: In his keynote paper David Chalmers defines ‘the hard problem’ by posing certain ‘Why’ questions about consciousness? Such questions must be posed within an appropriate setting. The way of science is to try to deduce the answer to many such questions from a few well defined assumptions. Much about nature can be explained in terms of the principles of classical mechanics. The assumptions, in this explanatory scheme, are that the world is composed exclusively of particles and fields governed (...) by specified mathematical laws that refer neither to any individual person, nor to anyone’s experiences. These physical laws are supposed to be such that particles and fields, acting in concert, can form causally efficacious real functional entities such as driveshafts and propellers. Similarly, surges of electrical and mechanical activity in appropriately designed material substrates, composed of particles and fields acting in concert, could implement, in the world of matter, complex functional structures and long sequences of logical operations. Thus it is conceivable that all of our behaviour, and all of the internal processing that occurs in our bodies and brains could be deduced, at least in principle, from the principles of classical mechanics and appropriate boundary conditions. -/- Contents: 1. Introduction: Philosophical Setting 2. Quantum Model of the Mind/Brain 3. Person and Self 4. Meeting Baars's Criteria for Consciousness 5. Qualia 6. Free-Will. (shrink)

A simple exactly solvable model is given of the dynamical coupling between a person’s classically described perceptions and that person’s quantum mechanically described brain. The model is based jointly upon von Neumann’s theory of measurements and the empirical findings of close connections between conscious intentions and synchronous oscillations in well separated parts of the brain. A quantum-Zeno-effect-based mechanism is described that allows conscious intentions to influence brain activity in a functionally appropriate way. The robustness of this mechanism in the face (...) of environmental decoherence effects is emphasized. (shrink)

How is mind related to matter? This ancient question in philosophy is rapidly becoming a core problem in science, perhaps the most important of all because it probes the essential nature of man himself. The origin of the problem is a conflict between the mechanical conception of human beings that arises from the precepts of classical physical theory and the very different idea that arises from our intuition: the former reduces each of us to an automaton, while the latter allows (...) our thoughts to guide our actions. The dominant contemporary approaches to the problem attempt to resolve this conflict by clinging to the classical concepts, and trying to explain away our misleading intuition. But a detailed argument given here shows why, in a scientific approach to this problem, it is necessary to use the more basic principles of quantum physics, which bring the observer into the dynamics, rather than to accept classical precepts that are profoundly incorrect precisely at the crucial point of the role of human consciousness in the dynamics of human brains. Adherence to the quantum principles yields a dynamical theory of the mind/brain/body system that is in close accord with our intuitive idea of what we are. In particular, the need for a self-observing quantum system to pose certain questions creates a causal opening that allows mind/brain dynamics to have three distinguishable but interlocked causal processes, one micro-local, one stochastic, and the third experiential. Passing to the classical limit in which the critical difference between zero and the finite actual value of Planck's constant is ignored not only eliminates the chemical processes that are absolutely crucial to the functioning of actual brains, it simultaneously blinds the resulting theoretical construct to the physical fine structure wherein the effect of mind on matter lies: the use of this limit in this context is totally unjustified from a physics perspective. (shrink)

_René Descartes proposed an interactive dualism that posits an interaction between the_ _mind of a human being and some of the matter located in his or her brain. Isaac Newton_ _subsequently formulated a physical theory based exclusively on the material/physical_ _part of Descartes’ ontology. Newton’s theory enforced the principle of the causal closure_ _of the physical, and the classical physics that grew out of it enforces this same principle._ _This classical theory purports to give, in principle, a complete deterministic account (...) of the_ _physically described properties of nature, expressed exclusively in terms of these_ _physically described properties themselves. Orthodox contemporary physical theory_ _violates this principle in two separate ways. First, it injects random elements into the_ _dynamics. Second, it allows, and also requires, abrupt probing actions that disrupt the_ _mechanistically described evolution of the physically described systems. These probing_ _actions are called Process 1 interventions by von Neumann. They are psycho-physical_ _events. Neither the content nor the timing of these events is determined either by any_ _known law, or by the afore-mentioned random elements. Orthodox quantum mechanics_ _considers these events to be instigated by choices made by conscious agents. In von_ _Neumann’s formulation of quantum theory each such intervention acts upon the state of_ _the brain of some conscious agent. Thus orthodox von Neumann contemporary physics_ _posits an interactive dualism similar to that of Descartes. But in this quantum version the_ _effects of the conscious choices upon our brains are controlled, in part, by the known_ _basic rules of quantum physics. This theoretically specified mind-brain connection allows_ _many basic psychological and neuropsychological findings associated with the apparent_ _physical effectiveness of our conscious volitional efforts to be explained in a causal and_ _practically useful way.. (shrink)

_ Theoretical Physics Group_ _ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory_ _ University of California_ _ Berkeley, California 94720_.

The purpose of this research is to find the correlation between job satisfaction and psychological well-being among employee. Job satisfaction is an outcome of employee’s feels and thoughts about appraisal of the job, which occur as a result of interaction with work environment, sort of job, and job performance. Psychological well-being is evaluation of a condition from individuals that have personal growth, self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, purpose in life and environmental mastery. Data was collected from 94 employee in (...) Jakarta. The result of data analysis shows that correlation between job satisfaction (M = 1,77, SD = 0,25) and psychological well-being (M = 3,75, SD = 0,05) is r (92) = 0,456, and p = 0,000 < 0,01. This result means, there is a positive correlation between job satisfaction and psychological well-being. In other words, for more employee feel satisfied about their job, for will be better their psychological well-being.  . (shrink)

Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behaviour generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. Thus, terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content (e.g. ‘feeling’, ‘knowing’ and ‘effort’) are not included as primary causal factors. This (...) theoretical restriction is motivated primarily by ideas about the natural world that have been known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than three-quarters of a century. Contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from classic physics on the important matter of how the consciousness of human agents enters into the structure of empirical phenomena. The new principles contradict the older idea that local mechanical processes alone can account for the structure of all observed empirical data. Contemporary physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the overall causal structure certain psychologically described choices made by human agents about how they will act. This key development in basic physical theory is applicable to neuroscience, and it provides neuroscientists and psychologists with an alternative conceptual framework for describing neural processes. Indeed, owing to certain structural features of ion channels critical to synaptic function, contemporary physical theory must in principle be used when analysing human brain dynamics. The new framework, unlike its classic-physics-based predecessor, is erected directly upon, and is compatible with, the prevailing principles of physics. It is able to represent more adequately than classic concepts the neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the growing number of empirical studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental effort to systematically alter brain function.. (shrink)

René Descartes proposed an interactive dualism that posits an interaction between the mind of a human being and some of the matter located in his or her brain. Isaac Newton subsequently formulated a physical theory based exclusively on the material/physical part of Descartes’ ontology. Newton’s theory enforced the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and the classical physics that grew out of it enforces this same principle. This classical theory purports to give, in principle, a complete deterministic account (...) of the physically described properties of nature, expressed exclusively in terms of these physically described properties themselves. Orthodox contemporary physical theory violates this principle in two separate ways. First, it injects random elements into the dynamics. Second, it allows, and also requires, abrupt probing actions that disrupt the mechanistically described evolution of the physically described systems. These probing actions are called Process 1 interventions by von Neumann. They are psycho-physical events. Neither the content nor the timing of these events is determined either by any known law, or by the afore-mentioned random elements. Orthodox quantum mechanics considers these events to be instigated by choices made by conscious agents. In von Neumann’s formulation of quantum theory each such intervention acts upon the state of the brain of some conscious agent. Thus orthodox von Neumann contemporary physics posits an interactive dualism similar to that of Descartes. But in this quantum version the effects of the conscious choices upon our brains are controlled, in part, by the known basic rules of quantum physics. This theoretically specified mind-brain connection allows many basic psychological and neuropsychological findings associated with the apparent physical effectiveness of our conscious volitional efforts to be explained in a causal and practically useful way.. (shrink)

Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules describing connections between our observations. Many physicist have regarded this renunciation of our effort describe nature herself as premature, and John von Neumann reformulated quantum theory as a theory of an evolving objective universe interacting with human consciousness. This interaction is associated both in Copenhagen quantum theory and in von Neumann quantum theory with a sudden change that brings the (...) objective physical state of a system in line with a subjectively felt psychical reality. The objective physical state is thereby converted from a material substrate to an informational and dispositional substrate that carries both the information incorporated into it by the psychical realities, and certain dispositions for the occurrence of future psychical realities. The present work examines and proposes solutions to two problems that have appeared to block the development of this conception of nature. The first problem is how to reconcile this theory with the principles of relativistic quantum field theory; the second problem is to understand whether, strictly within quantum theory, a person's mind can affect the activities of his brain, and if so how. Solving the first problem involves resolving a certain non-locality question. The proposed solution to the second problem is based on a postulated connection between effort, attention, and the quantum Zeno effect. This solution explains on the basic of quantum physics a large amount of heretofore unexplained data amassed by psychologists. (shrink)

His words effectively assert, within a scientific context, that the mental realities that comprise a person’s stream of conscious experiences can influence the state of that person’s physically described body. That claim neither follows naturally from, nor meshes rationally with, the basic physical theory that, in 1799, had prevailed in science for more than a century---since the 1687 publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia---and that would continue to prevail for an additional century, until its replacement during the twentieth century by quantum (...) theory. It is this later theory that, according to the precepts of contemporary physics, must in principle be used to describe the dynamics of the ions and other microelements that underlies the brain processes associated with the mental realties. Unlike its predecessor, quantum mechanics was specifically designed to deal with the complex relationship between the empirical aspects of science represented in our sensory experiences and the physically described properties represented in our physical theories. This incorporation of the mental allows quantum theory to provide a rationally coherent understanding of influence mind upon body identified in the epigraph. The aim of this presentation is to describe this quantummechanical understanding to an audience of neurologists. (shrink)

The hidden-variable theorems of Bell and followers depend upon an assumption, namely the hidden-variable assumption, that conflicts with the precepts of quantum philosophy. Hence from an orthodox quantum perspective those theorems entail no faster-than-light transfer of information. They merely reinforce the ban on hidden variables. The need for some sort of faster-than-light information transfer can be shown by using counterfactuals instead of hidden variables. Shimony’s criticism of that argument fails to take into account the distinction between no-faster-than-light connection in one (...) direction and that same condition in both directions. The argument can be cleanly formulated within the framework of a fixed past, open future interpretation of quantum theory, which neatly accommodates the critical assumptions that the experimenters are free to choose which experiments they will perform. The assumptions are compatible with the Tomonaga–Schwinger formulation of quantum field theory, and hence with orthodox quantum precepts, and with the relativistic requirement that no prediction pertaining to an outcome in one region can depend upon a free choice made in a region spacelike-separated from the first. (shrink)

A generalization of Weinberg’s nonlinear quantum theory is used to model a reported violation of the predictions of orthodox quantum theory.

Quantum mechanics unites epistemology and ontology: it brings human knowledge explicitly into physical theory, and ties this knowledge into brain dynamics in a causally efficacious way. This development in science provides the basis for a natural resolution of the dualist functionalist controversy, which arises within the classical approach to the mind brain system from the fact that the phenomenal aspects are not derivable from the principles of classical mechanics. A conceptually simple causal quantum mechanical theory of the mind/brain is described, (...) and used to examine the necessity and function of consciousness in brain process. (shrink)

The principle of sufficient reason asserts that anything that happens does so for a reason: no definite state of affairs can come into being unless there is a sufficient reason why that particular thing should happen. This principle is usually attributed to Leibniz, although the first recorded Western philosopher to use it was Anaximander of Miletus. The demand that nature be rational, in the sense that it be compatible with the principle of sufficient reason, conflicts with a basic feature of (...) contemporary orthodox physical theory, namely the notion that nature’s response to the probing action of an observer is determined by pure chance, and hence on the basis of absolutely no reason at all. This appeal to pure chance can be deemed to have no rational fundamental place in reason-based Western science. It is argued here, on the basis of other basic principles of quantum physics, that in a world that conforms to the principle of sufficient reason, the usual quantum statistical rules will naturally emerge at the pragmatic level, in cases where the reason behind nature’s choice of response is unknown, but that the usual statistics can become biased when the reason for the choice is empirically identifiable. It is explained here that if the statistical laws of quantum mechanics were to be biased in this way then the basically forward-in-time unfolding of empirical reality described by orthodox quantum mechanics would generate the appearances of backward-time-effects of the kind that have been reported in the scientific literature. (shrink)

It is emphasized that a many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory exists only to the extent that the associated basis problem is solved. The core basis problem is that the robust enduring states specified by environmental decoherence effects are essentially Gaussian wave packets that form continua of non-orthogonal states. Hence they are not a discrete set of orthogonal basis states to which finite probabilities can be assigned by the usual rules. The natural way to get an orthogonal basis without going outside (...) the Schroedinger dynamics is to use the eigenstates of the reduced density matrix, and this idea is the basis of some recent attempts by many-worlds proponents to solve the basis problem. But these eigenstates do not enjoy the locality and quasi-classicality properties of the states defined by environmental decoherence effects, and hence are not satisfactory preferred basis states. This core problem is obscured by approaches that treat the universe as a quantum computer, but it needs to be addressed and resolved before a many-worlds-type interpretation can be said to exist. (shrink)

The model of the world proposed by Whitehead provides a natural theoretical framework in which to imbed quantum theory. This model accords with the ontological ideas of Heisenberg, and also with Einstein's view that physical theories should refer nominally to the objective physical situation, rather than our knowledge of that system. Whitehead imposed on his model the relativistic requirement that what happens in any given spacetime region be determined only by what has happened in its absolute past, i.e., in the (...) backward light-cone drawn from that region. This requirement must be modified, for it is inconsistent with the implications of quantum theory expressed by a generalized version of Bell's theorem. Revamping the causal spacetime structure of the Whitehead-Heisenberg ontology to bring it into accord with the generalized Bell's theorem creates the possibility of a nonlocal causal covariant theory that accords with the statistical prediction of quantum theory. (shrink)

Quantum mechanical theories of consciousness are contrasted to classical ones. A key difference is that the quantum laws are fundamentally psychophysical and provide an explanation of the causal effect of conscious effort on neural processes, while the laws of classical physics, being purely physical, cannot. The quantum approach provides causal explanations, deduced from the laws of physics, of correlations found in psychology and in neuropsychology.

David Mermin suggests that my recent proof pertaining to quan tum nonlocality is undermined by an essential ambiguity pertaining to the meaning of counterfactual statements in quantum physics The ambiguity he cites arise from his imposition of a certain criterion for the meaningfulness of such counterfactual statements That criterion con ates the meaning of a counterfactual statement with the details of a proof of its validity in such a way as to make the meaning of such a statement dependent upon (...) the context in which it occurs That dependence violates the normal demand in logic that the meaning of a statement be de ned by the words in the statement itself not by the context in which the statement occurs My proof conforms to that normal requirement I describe the context independent meaning within my proof of the counterfactual statements in question.. (shrink)