A new movement within Cognitive Psychology, known as 4E Cognition, views thought and behavior as embodied, embedded, enactive & extended. Each of these four strands has a rich (and ongoing) philosophical history. Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Bahktin, Vygotsky and others have drawn attention to the role of action and interaction in (in)forming our experience. … read more »
Physics being the study of the fundamental properties of Nature, as the name implies, metaphysics investigates the nature of Nature, the what-must-therefore-be-the-case of those discoverable physical properties. For centuries, either explicitly or implicitly, metaphysics created the background and organizing principles for scientific research.… read more »
The starting point of this roundtable discussion is Joseph LeDoux’s book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. LeDoux’s research on how the brain detects and responds to danger helped jumpstart and define the modern science of emotion.… read more »
What principles of order underlie the ascent of complexity, from the simplest particles of physics heralding the birth of the universe, through biological forms, to the achievements of civilization? Has a recurrent theme of combination and integration led to multiple fundamental levels from quarks to culture?… read more »
Is science nearing an answer to the question of how and why consciousness and self-consciousness come about? In attempting to resolve the mystery of sentience, what roles do physics, psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience play? How do various philosophical and religious traditions contribute to our inquiries into this obvious and everyday universal experience?… read more »
What is mind? Is it a property attributable to biological functionality alone, and, in particular, arising from the morphology of the mammalian brain and/or the influence of that animal’s body? How far down the evolutionary scale can we apply terms like cognition, consciousness, and intelligence?… read more »
We follow up our inquiry into beginnings by posing complementary questions about endings: why are we curious about endings, whether that of the cosmos or our own? What can we discover from each other’s curiosity about endings? What are the organizational properties necessary to call something an ending?… read more »
Why are we curious about beginnings, whether that of the cosmos or our own? What can we discover from each other’s curiosity about beginnings? What are the organizational properties necessary to call something a beginning? Might similar processes apply to both individual consciousness and the universe at large?… read more »