Michael Silberstein

We agree with critics that enactive, sensorimotor, and ecological accounts of conscious experience do not in and of themselves fully deflate the hard problem of consciousness. As we noted in our earlier work, even if an extended account of cognition and intentionality allows us to be rid of qualia by deflating the dualism between intentionality and phenomenal experience, the heart of the hard problem, namely subjectivity, still remains. We argue that in order to resolve or deflate the hard problem the hypothesis of extended consciousness needs to be understood as an expression of neutral monism and can quite naturally be understood that way.

We propose a new path integral based interpretation of quantum field theory. In our interpretation, QFT is the continuous approximation of a more fundamental, discrete graph theory whereby the transition amplitude Z is not viewed as a sum over all paths in configuration space, but measures the symmetry of the differential operator and source vector of the discrete graphical action. We propose that the differential operator and source vector of theory X are related via a self-consistency criterion based on the identity that underwrites divergence-free sources in classical field theory, i.e., the boundary of a boundary principle. In this approach, the SCC ensures the source vector is divergence-free and resides in the row space of the differential operator. Accordingly, the differential operator will necessarily have a non-trivial eigenvector with eigenvalue zero, so the SCC is the origin of gauge invariance. Factors of infinity associated with gauge groups of infinite volume are excluded in our approach, since Z is restricted to the row space of the differential operator and source vector. We show it is possible that the underlying theory X, despite being discrete, is the basis for exact Poincaré invariance. Using this formalism, we obtain the two-source transition amplitude over a -dimensional graph with N vertices fundamental to the scalar Gaussian theory and interpret it in the context of the twin-slit experiment to provide a unified account of the Aharonov-Bohm effect and quantum non-separability that illustrates our ontic structural realist alternative to problematic particle and field ontologies. Our account also explains the need for regularization and renormalization, explains gauge invariance and largely discharges the problems of inequivalent representations and Haag’s theorem. This view suggests corrections to general relativity via modifications to its graphical counterpart, Regge calculus. We conclude by presenting the results of our modified Regge calculus approach to Einsteinde Sitter cosmology where we produced a fit to the Union2 Compilation data for type Ia supernovae rivaling that of the concordance model, but without having to invoke dark energy or accelerated expansion.

Nonreductive physicalism is the conjunction of the following three statements. Firstly, mental properties are real. Secondly, mental properties are neither reducible to nor identifiable with physical properties, and thirdly, mental properties are causally efficacious with respect to physical properties. Nonreductive physicalists hold these assumptions to be true not only for mental properties but all special science and macrophysical properties. I will defend the following three theses: first, if certain widely held assumptions are true e.g., no downward causation, microdetermination or, the doctrine that motivates these assumptions is true namely, microphysical determinism then nonreductive physicalism must fail i.e., the three statements can not jointly be true. Therefore, we must accept that reductionism, epiphenomenalism or eliminativism is unavoidable not only for mental properties, but for all but the most basic physical properties. Second, certain quantum mechanical phenomena show that in fact all the trouble making assumptions are false. Thirdly, a true picture of the physical world not only opens up the possibility of mental causation and higher-order causation in general, but also offers an empirical example of a kind of "emergentism" or holism that could provide us with a model for explaining the nature of the mental and its causal role.

Several articles have recently appeared arguing that there really are no viable alternatives to mechanistic explanation in the biological sciences (Kaplan and Bechtel; Kaplan and Craver). We argue that mechanistic explanation is defined by localization and decomposition. We argue further that systems neuroscience contains explanations that violate both localization and decomposition. We conclude that the mechanistic model of explanation needs to either stretch to now include explanations wherein localization or decomposition fail or acknowledge that there are counterexamples to mechanistic explanation in the biological sciences

We provide a taxonomy of the two most important debates in the philosophy of the cognitive and neural sciences. The first debate is over methodological individualism: is the object of the cognitive and neural sciences the brain, the whole animal, or the animal--environment system? The second is over explanatory style: should explanation in cognitive and neural science be reductionist-mechanistic, inter-level mechanistic, or dynamical? After setting out the debates, we discuss the ways in which they are interconnected. Finally, we make some recommendations that we hope will help philosophers interested in the cognitive and neural sciences to avoid dead ends

In the first part of the paper I argue that neither physicalism nor standard forms of dualism can provide an explanatory framework for consciousness or cognition - neither account can existence of conscious experience nor its relationship to cognition and the brain. Physicalism and fundamentalism fail to provide an explanatory framework for consciousness because they both share, at least with respect to the physical universe, the same misguided commitment to part/whole reductionism and microreductive accounts of explanation. In addition to their lack of explanatory power, both physicalism and fundamentalism have well known absurd and troubling metaphysical consequences such as eliminativism and epiphenomenalism. In the second section of the paper I advocate a position I call radical emergence, arguing that microphysics provides strong empirical evidence for emergence. I show that emergence provides a viable alternative for explaining consciousness and cognition - an alternative that has none of the awkward metaphysical consequences of either physicalism or fundamentalism

We use a new, distinctly “geometrical” interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics (NRQM) to argue for the fundamentality of the 4D blockworld ontology. We argue for a geometrical interpretation whose fundamental ontology is one of spacetime relations as opposed to constructive entities whose time-dependent behavior is governed by dynamical laws. Our view rests on two formal results: Kaiser (1981 & 1990), Bohr & Ulfbeck (1995) and Anandan, (2003) showed independently that the Heisenberg commutation relations of NRQM follow from the relativity of simultaneity (RoS) per the Poincaré Lie algebra. And, Bohr, Ulfbeck & Mottelson (2004a & 2004b) showed that the density matrix for a particular NRQM experimental outcome may be obtained from the spacetime symmetry group of the experimental configuration. This shows how the blockworld view is not only consistent with NRQM, not only an implication of our geometrical interpretation of NRQM, but it is necessary in a non-trivial way for explaining quantum interference and “non-locality” from the spacetime perspective. Together the formal results imply that contrary to accepted wisdom, NRQM, the measurement problem and so-called quantum non-locality do not provide reasons to abandon the 4D blockworld implication of RoS. But rather, the deep non-commutative structure of the quantum and the deep structure of spacetime as given by the Minkowski interpretation of special relativity (STR) are deeply unified in a 4D spacetime regime that lies between Galilean spacetime (G4) and Minkowski spacetime (M4). Taken together the aforementioned formal results allow us to model NRQM phenomena such as interference without the need for realism about 3N Hilbert space, establishing that the world is really 4D and that configuration space is nothing more than a calculational device. Our new geometrical interpretation of NRQM provides a geometric account of quantum entanglement and so-called non-locality free of conflict with STR and free of interpretative mystery. In section 2 we discuss the various tensions between STR and NRQM with respect to the dimensionality of the world. Section 3 is devoted to an explication of the Kaiser et al. results and their philosophical implications. Likewise, the Bohr et al. results and their implications are the subject of section 4. In section 5, we present our geometric interpretation of quantum entanglement and “non-locality.”.

We introduce the Relational Blockworld (RBW) as a paradigm for deflating the mysteries associated with quantum non-separability/non-locality and the measurement problem. We begin by describing how the relativity of simultaneity implies the blockworld, which has an explanatory potential subsuming both dynamical and relational explanations. It is then shown how the canonical commutation relations fundamental to non-relativistic quantum mechanics follow from the relativity of simultaneity. Therefore, quantum mechanics has at its disposal the full explanatory power of the blockworld. Quantum mechanics exploits this expanded explanatory capability since event distributions among detectors per the density matrix follow from spacetime relations (symmetry group) alone. Thus, the event distributions of non-relativistic quantum mechanics follow from a blockworld wherein spacetime relations are fundamental. Per RBW "quantum mysteries" are deflated and the implications for consciousness and the perception of temporal flow and absolute becoming are explored. We conclude that given RBW, consciousness is no less fundamental than any "physical" feature of the world such as brain states. Further, active consciousness is needed to explain the illusion that it is a dynamical world and consciousness in its most fundamental state is relational and non-local.

This will be an admittedly opinionated review that gives with one hand and takes with the other. Let me be clear though from the outset that there is much to admire and agree with here. Perhaps, the biggest complaint is the failure of the author to engage with other highly relevant literature in philosophy of science and metaphysics that would yield her natural allies or would provide natural foils that ought to be named and engaged. On the allies side, there are many people now writing in the vein of emergence that have made many of the same claims and used many of the same case studies to bolster their claims as Thalos. Surely, this requires a response on her part given that “emergence” is one of her primary foils. Rather than discussing those people’s work, she chooses to focus on a particular brand of emergence as a foil and thereby throws out the baby with the bathwater. Thalos also fails to engage the huge and highly relevant literature on the causal (or d ..

I will argue that emergence is an empirically plausible and unique philosophical/ scientific framework for bridging the ontological gap and the explanatory gap with respect to phenomenal consciousness. On my view the ontological gap is the gap between fundamental ingredients/parts of reality that are not conscious and beings/wholes that are conscious. The explanatory gap is the current lack of a philosophical/scientific theory that explains how non-conscious parts can become conscious wholes. Both gaps are of course conceptual as well as empirical in nature. Section I will be devoted to these issues as well as providing other general criteria for an account of consciousness. In section II, different types of emergence will be defined in the context of a more general taxonomy of reduction and emergence. Emergentism about consciousness becomes much more plausible when we see that the ancient ‘atomism’ that drives physicalism on one end, and fundamental property dualism on the other, is probably false. Backing up this claim will be the primary burden of section III. In section IV I will conjecture that phenomenal consciousness is mereologically and perhaps nomologically emergent from neurochemical/ quantum processes, just as many other properties are so emergent. In section V I defend my view of emergence against the objections that: it cannot bridge the explanatory/ontological gap between matter and consciousness and it cannot account for the causal efficacy of consciousness in itself. Finally, in section VI, there is speculation about where all of this might take us in the future

We survey and clarify some recent appearances of the term ‘emergence’. We distinguish epistemological emergence, which is merely a limitation of descriptive apparatus, from ontological emergence, which should involve causal features of a whole system not reducible to the properties of its parts, thus implying the failure of part/whole reductionism and of mereological supervenience for that system. Are there actually any plausible cases of the latter among the numerous and various mentions of ‘emergence’ in the recent literature? Quantum mechanics seems to offer one, in the Bell properties of entangled particles, but other apparently promising candidates, such as non‐linear dynamical systems investigated by complexity studies and chaos theory, seem on careful analysis to display only epistemological emergence. We examine the consequences for physicalism of admitting ontological emergence in the micro‐physical.

We propose a path integral over graphs approach to quantum gravity and unification that requires a modification and reinterpretation of both general relativity and quantum field theory via their graphical instantiations, Regge calculus and lattice gauge theory, respectively. As we outline below, the spacetime metric and the matter and gauge field gradients on the graph are co-determining, so there is no “background spacetime” connoting existence independent of matter-energy-momentum, and the graphical action can be characterized geometrically via graphical boundary operators.

We introduce a new interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) called Relational Blockworld (RBW). We motivate the interpretation by outlining two results due to Kaiser, Bohr, Ulfeck, Mottelson, and Anandan, independently. First, the canonical commutation relations for position and momentum can be obtained from boost and translation operators,respectively, in a spacetime where the relativity of simultaneity holds. Second, the QM density operator can be obtained from the spacetime symmetry group of the experimental configuration exclusively. We show how QM, obtained from relativistic quantum field theory per RBW, explains the twin-slit experiment and conclude by resolving the standard conceptual problems of QM, i.e., the measurement problem, entanglement and non-locality.

Similar problems keep reappearing in both the discussion about the “hard” problem of consciousness and in fundamental issues in quantum theory. We argue that the similarities are due to common problems within the conceptual foundations of both fields. In quantum physics, the state reduction marks the “coming into being” of a new aspect of reality for which no causal explanation is available. Likewise, the self-referential nature of consciousness constitutes a “coming into being” of a new quality which goes beyond a fully causal account of reality. Both subjects require a categorical scheme which is significantly richer then the one used in addressing factual aspects of reality alone. While parts of this categorical scheme are realized in the formalism of quantum theory, they are seldom applied in the context of consciousness. We show what the structural limitations of a classical categorical framework are, how a richer framework can be developed, and how it can be applied to both quantum physics and consciousness

Several articles have recently appeared arguing that there really are no viable alternatives to mechanistic explanation in the biological sciences. This claim is meant to hold both in principle and in practice. The basic claim is that any explanation of a particular feature of a biological system, including dynamical explanations, must ultimately be grounded in mechanistic explanation. There are several variations on this theme, some stronger and some weaker. In order to avoid equivocation and miscommunication, in section 1 we will argue that mechanistic explanation is defined by localization and decomposition. In section 2 we will argue that systems neuroscience contains explanations that violate both localization and decomposition on any non-trivial construal of these concepts. Therefore, in section 3 we conclude the mechanistic model of explanation either needs to stretch to now include explanations wherein localization or decomposition fail, or acknowledge that there are counter-examples to mechanistic explanation in the biological sciences. We will also consider consequences and possible replies on the part of the mechanist in section 3.

We will formulate two Bell arguments. Together they show that if the probabilities given by quantum mechanics are approximately correct, then the properties exhibited by certain physical systems must be nontrivially dependent on thetypes of measurements performedand eithernonlocally connected orholistically related to distant events. Although a number of related arguments have appeared since John Bell's original paper (1964), they tend to be either highly technical or to lack full generality. The following arguments depend on the weakest of premises, and the structure of the arguments is simpler than most (without any loss of rigor or generality). The technical simplicity is due in part to a novel version of the generalized Bell inequality. The arguments are self contained and presuppose no knowledge of quantum mechanics. We will also offer a Dutch Book argument for measurement type dependence.