Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
September 1, 2024
John S Torday
Symbiogenesis has been systematically exploited to understand consciousness as the aggregate of our physiology. The Symbiogenic mechanism for assimilation of factors in the environment formulates the continuum from inside the cell to the Cosmos, both consciousness and cosmology complying with the Laws of Nature. Since Symbiogenesis is 'constructive', whereas eliminating what threatens us is...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
August 1, 2024
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
121 citations
Diverse explanations or theories of consciousness are arrayed on a roughly physicalist-to-nonphysicalist landscape of essences and mechanisms. Categories: Materialism Theories (philosophical, neurobiological, electromagnetic field, computational and informational, homeostatic and affective, embodied and enactive, relational, representational, language, phylogenetic evolution); Non-Reductive...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
November 1, 2022
J. Torday
We have systematically misconstrued the nature of consciousness by overlooking our own physiology as that awareness. The following is a way to rectify this error through a deep understanding of what life 'means' in order to further advance our knowledge of who and what we are. The evolution of consciousness from the cell membrane to physiology is revealed by the effect of microgravity on...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2017
Søren Brier
7 citations
Charles S. Peirce developed a process philosophy featuring a non-theistic agapistic evolution from nothingness. It is an Eastern inspired alternative to the Western mechanical ontology of classical science also inspired by the American transcendentalists. Advaitism and Buddhism are the two most important Eastern philosophical traditions that encompass scientific knowledge and the idea of...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2017
Brian J Ford
Traditions of Eastern thought conceptualised life in a holistic sense, emphasising the processes of maintaining health and conquering sickness as manifestations of an essentially spiritual principle that was of overriding importance in the conduct of living. Western science, which drove the overriding and partial eclipse of Eastern traditions, became founded on a reductionist quest for ultimate...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2017
Søren Brier
In recent articles in this journal I have discussed why a traditional physicalist and mechanist, as well as an info-computationalist, view of science cannot fulfil the goal of building a transdisciplinary science across Snow's two cultures. There seems to be no path proceeding from mechanistic physicalism to views that encompass phenomenological theories of experiential consciousness and...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2017
Yukio-Pegio Gunji, Mai Minoura, Kei Kojima et al.
How can we link challenging issues related to consciousness and/or qualia with natural science? The introduction of endo-perspective, instead of exo-perspective, as proposed by Matsuno, Rössler, and Gunji, is considered one of the most promising candidate approaches. Here, we distinguish the endo-from the exo-perspective in terms of whether the external is or is not directly operated. In the...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2017
Inês Hipólito, Jorge Martins
There are two fundamental models to understanding the phenomenon of natural life. One is the computational model, which is based on the symbolic thinking paradigm. The other is the biological organism model. The common difficulty attributed to these paradigms is that their reductive tools allow the phenomenological aspects of experience to remain hidden behind yes/no responses (behavioral...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2017
Menas C Kafatos, Goro C Kato
Questions about the nature of reality, whether Consciousness is the fundamental reality in the universe, and what is Consciousness itself, have no answer in systems that assume an external reality independent of Consciousness. Ultimately, the ontological foundation of such systems is the absolute division of subject and object. We advocate instead what we consider to be an approach that is in...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2015
Patrick M Whitehead
13 citations
This paper examines two related problems that stand in the way of the development of an interdisciplinary project that spans biology and phenomenology. To be sure, each of these disciplines is interested in the body, but there are two ways through which the body may be understood. Biology examines the corporeal or living body (Kӧrper); phenomenology examines the body of lived experience (Leib)....
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2015
H H Pattee
As a broad academic discipline phenomenology may be summarized as the study from a first person point of view of what appears to subjective human conscious experience. As a historical philosophical movement phenomenology was often motivated by the belief that subjective human experience is the proper foundation of all philosophy. I explore phenomena from a broader evolutionary and physical...
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
December 1, 2015
Katherine Peil Kauffman
When phenomenal experience is examined through the lens of physics, several conundrums come to light including: Specificity of mind-body interactions, feelings of free will in a deterministic universe, and the relativity of subjective perception. The new biology of "emotion" can shed direct light upon these issues, via a broadened categorical definition that includes both affective feelings and...