Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order [Hardcover]

This accessible and easy-to-follow book offers a new approach to consciousness. The authors eclectic style combines new physics-based insights with those of analytical philosophy, phenomenology, cognitive science and neuroscience. He proposes a view in which the mechanistic framework of classical physics and neuroscience is complemented by a more holistic underlying framework in which conscious experience finds its place more naturally.

Quantum theory predicts experimental results brilliantly but simultaneously raises difficult conceptual issues. Paradoxes such as Schr?dingers cat, the EPR paradox, or the nonlocality demanded by Bells inequalities have hampered philosophers in their attempts to include quantum theory when discussing the relation between mind and matter. Pylkk?nen proposes that Bohms alternative interpretation of quantum theory resolves these paradoxes and thus enables one to base new philosophical theories upon quantum physics. He uses Bohms concepts of implicate order , active information and soma-significance as tools to tackle several well-known problems in the philosophy of mind. These include mental causation, the hard problem of consciousness, time consciousness, and virtual reality. Pylkk?nens eclectic approach combines new physics-based insights with those of analytical philosophy, phenomenology, cognitive science and neuroscience and he proposes a view in which the mechanistic framework of classical physics and neuroscience is complemented by a more holistic underlying framework in which conscious experience finds its place more naturally.

From the reviews:

This is an excellent addition to Springers (equally excellent) Frontiers Collection. & I can highly recommend it to philosophers (of mind), philosophl£B