Talk by Kenneth Augustyn on October 17

[Seminar Mind-Matter Relation 2018]

Dear participants and speakers,

We hope this email finds you well! The next talk in our seminar series takes place on Wednesday, October 17:

Kenneth Augustyn (Department of Physics, Michigan Technological University)
"In Search of a Physical Foundation for Biological Mentality"
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
17:30-19:00 CEST, Login from 17:00 CEST.
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Abstract: I am not happy with any of the many mind-matter theories out there, and I'm trying to broaden the search space for a better theory that would satisfy the highlighted text below plus be experimentally falsifiable. I offer some first steps in that direction.
"Selection for physical reproductive fitness may have resulted in the appearance of organisms that are in fact conscious, but there is no physical explanation of why this is so - nor any other kind of explanation that we know of.  To make facts of this kind intelligible, a postmaterialistic theory would have to offer a unified explanation of how the physical and the mental characteristics of organisms developed together, and it would have to do so not just by adding a clause to the effect that the mental comes along with the physical as a bonus." (Mind & Cosmos, Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Thomas Nagel, p.45)

Shortly after this talk, we will have Michael Silberstein speaking on Monday, October 22.

We are very much looking forward to the talk and to seeing many of you again!

With best wishes,
Robin & Johannes