The use of the term 'mind' in the title of the book can be misleading. One of the most striking differences between physics and biology arises only in this context.
Mind in Nature: the Interface of
The Evolution of Mind
Can Evolution be
Accounted for Solely in Terms of
Mechanical Causation? by L. Charles Birch
From Potentiality to Realization in Evolutiony by
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Emergence in Evolution
Response to Birch and Dobzhansky) by Ann Plamondon
The Process Theory of
It is because of the existence of this mechanism that I am not troubled by the suggestions of people like Chomsky that man has one. Even plants, in a more rudimentary way, make some kind of selection of the circumstances under which they will develop. The mind of the buffalo, on the other hand, is the mind of a plainsman who faces his enemies and accuses them.
Thus the development of the mind must involve not only the formation of a goal, but also the development of alternative goals and the ability to choose the appropriate goal under particular circumstances. The relevance of all this is that there is no doubt that reactions in living systems are largely about the specificity of the components rather than the mass or energy of the components. His next step, however, is to expand the use of the word 'mind' to cover the whole range of.
Earlier in this article I briefly discussed the nature of the evolutionary processes that led from the simpler situations to the more complex ones.
Some Whiteheadian Comments by John Cobb, and
Such judgments seem to require an ontological dualism of the human and the natural that is incompatible with the Whiteheadian process. Philosophical explanations call for a more precise explanation of the feeling characteristic that enables the emergence of consciousness. That requires that there is not only a concentration of information of the kind that the nervous system in the brain provides, but also of memory.
This account of the physiological-psychological grounds of. consciousness is concerned only with one of the many astonishing stages of evolutionary development. The theory of evolution must account for the interaction between short-term goal-directed behavior of animals and the survival value of certain traits. The action is meaningful, that is, it corresponds to the actual felt need of the moment.
So for the ethologist the question is: "To what extent is the behavior of the animal goal-directed and what is the relationship between this behavior and the rest?".
Cobb, Jr
Mind and Order
The Implicate or Enfolded Order: A New Order for Physics by David Bohm
It is clear that Cartesian coordinates represent a way of thinking about order that is radically different from that of the ancient Greeks. Of course, in the above example, if we wish, the implied order can be explained as the result of the distribution of ink particles, which can ultimately be understood in terms of the usual explicated order of space and time. But ultimately this autonomy is limited because the fundamental order is holonomy, i.e. the law of wholeness.
So one may suggest that even in the mind the explicit order arises from the implied, and that the basic movement is that in which the content of each of these constantly passes into the other. All this means that the flow of hologing is the implicit source of all forms, both physical and mental. It is clear that in this regard living organisms must be considered as special manifestations of what is ultimately rounded up in the inner depths of holomobination.
In a sense, then, we could say that life energy more typically reveals the deepest order of cave motion than inanimate matter.
Three Counter Strategies to Reductionism in Science by Francis
David Ray Griffin teaches Philosophy of Religion at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate School and is Executive Director of the Center for Process Studies.
Zucker
Temporal Order and
Spatial Order: Their Differences and Relations by Milic Capek
Free Will in a Hierarchic Context by Arthur Koestler, Responses
The indeterminacy of the micro level cannot be transferred, via a shortcut, to the macro level. Thus the canon defines the rules of the game, the strategy sets the actual course of the game. The turning of learning into routine is accompanied by a dimming of the lights of awareness.
So one hand, under the control of the right hemisphere which is driven by an electrode, and the other hand,. The rules of chess define the permissible moves; strategy determines the choice of the actual move. It's an old mystery, but it seems to take on new life in the context of the open-ended hierarchy.
Bernhard Rensch ist am Biologischen Institut der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Westdeutschland.
Some Whiteheadian Comments by John B. Cobb, Jr
The holons now appear as the effects of the past in the new agent event, but this new agent event transcends the holons as the present always transcends the past. Where no new or higher-order individual entity appears, the freedom of the whole is still to be found only in its individual parts, although they may be strengthened by their participation in the whole. In Zucker's third strategy to counter reductionism, attention is drawn to the nature of the individuals who study science.
In his early writing, Whitehead defined nature in terms of the public sphere, that which is given to the knower through sensory experience. For both thinkers, the physical is characterized by dominant inheritance from the past, the mental by the appropriation of the new (above, p. 41). Zucker's proposal for mathematical formulations of implied order indicates that the basic concept is open to a Whiteheadian pluralistic and realist interpretation.
One of Whitehead's great appeals was that his unification of the objective and subjective worlds in principle overcomes the dualism of fact and value and of the natural sciences and the humanities.
The Primacy of Mind
Arguments for
Panpsychistic Identism by Bernhard Rensch and Response by Charles
Hartshorne
Introduction
Definitions and Methods
Sometimes, mainly introduced by psychoanalysts, the word mental is used to denote unconscious brain processes. But this contradicts the meaning of "mental", which always means "conscious". The wrong use of. The term identity will be used in my lecture in the sense of an actual identification of mind and matter.
If we accepted that the properties of the physiological and psychological sides were not the same, we would again be dealing with a kind of dualism, at least what Kim (1966) called "dualistic materialism." It is certainly desirable to use the principle of prudence (economy) corresponding to Occam's razor: "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem". However, its value sometimes seems to be overestimated (Smart 1966; Hinton 1970). The simplicity of the components of an explanation cannot be considered an argument for truth (the economy argument), because there are many cases in which the initial explanations turned out to be too simple.
Critique of Psychophysical Parallelism and Interactionism Although recent epistemological literature shows an increase of
Parallelism
Biological analyzes of brain processes lead to the conclusion that they are causal events like all physiological processes. It is therefore highly probable -- and at least demonstrable for single sections by electrophysiological methods -- that an action directed by the human brain, which is elicited by a sensation, is a sequence without gaps. There these excitations give off further excitations which - probably mediated by fibers of the associative regions - go to the motor center of the right hand and from there to the muscles of the right hand, where they cause.
The statement we have to make here with a continuous process, without a temporary gap between. But this means that the psychic phenomena were only epiphenomena, apparently not necessary for the described action. When we are used to grasping the candlestick every night, corresponding sensations and thoughts may be totally lacking.
The same is the case when we go up familiar stairs, play a familiar tune on the piano, and so on.
Interactionism
- Different Versions of Identism
- Support for Identism Based Upon the Relation of Brain Processed and Conscious Phenomena
- Arguments Supporting the Panpsychistic Version of Identism Kant (1787) assumed that something extramental exists, but in his time
In part I of Proposition XXIX he only mentioned that everything is determined by the necessity of the 'divine nature' (for correspondence with modern panpsychistic identity, see Rensch 1972). But all forms of identity, including the. panpsychistic version, which in my opinion is more justified, allows a physiological, chemical and physical analysis of the relevant brain processes and can lead to a 'physical' picture of the world, provided one agrees that 'matter' is not only characterized should not be by energy or mass, spin, charge and spatial and temporal properties, but also by the protopsychic nature of these properties. But, despite all progress, our knowledge of the connections of physiological brain processes to. conscious phenomena are still quite limited and not yet sufficient to reach a definitive decision for a dualistic or an identical opinion, especially interactionism or factual identity.
This psychophysically functioning brain substance is composed of the same atoms, ions and elementary particles that are found outside living beings. After birth, the brain cells in question are nourished by the food of the growing child. Then, assuming that events depend only on their temporal predecessors, data independence will be preserved.
Rensch cites experiments in which electrical stimulation of the cortex, without an observable time interval, caused psychic phenomena.
Panpsychism and Science by Sewall Wright
The essential identity of the code in the most diverse organisms is strong evidence for a single origin of life on Earth. We conclude that the evolution of the mind must have been as extensive as the evolution of the body. Respect for the choices of entities at all levels of the hierarchy sets limits to the freedom of each.
These are the facts of science, and its realm is essentially the content of the mind. According to Child's theory, there is complete continuity of the cell's reaction with its environment. One can most easily imagine the process as a matter of freedom. traceable in the factor here called individual adaptability.
However, this is a subjective interpretation and can have no place in the objective scientific analysis of the.
Physics and Psychics: The Place of Mind in Nature by Charles
I will argue in my own way for the ultimacy of the psychic account of nature. Individual purposes are indeed implicit in the scheme all along, and what is explained is not the purpose as such, but only how over many generations there has been a slow increase in the variety and complexity of the purposes. There is mind on both sides of the relationship, but mind at very different levels.
Is it not in a class with the idea that our planet is in the middle of the. Lower beings feel but hardly know or think, and if we speak of them as conscious, as Wright does, we are stretching the sense of the word. These doctrines are based on attributing to sense perception an adequacy for direct disclosure of the secrets of nature which we now know it does not have.
There is no part of nature that we know or can know that is wholly lacking in any of the four aspects mentioned.
