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Gennaro Auletta (born August 19, 1957 in Naples, Italy) is an Italian philosopher of science actively involved in scientific research. He is an internationally acknowledged expert in quantum mechanics and in the foundation and interpretation of this discipline. His main interests in quantum information led him to focus his further research on the way in which biological and cognitive systems deal with information. He is also active in the field of the dialogue between science, philosophy and theology, and has been the Vice-Director of the international conference on Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories, held at the Pontifical Gregorian University on March 2009.
Auletta graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome where he took his PhD and completed his post-doctoral research work. He is an Aggregate Professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University where, from 2003 to 2012, held the position of Scientific Director of the Specialization in Science and Philosophy. He is also Associated Professor at the University of Cassino (Italy). From 2003 to 2010, Auletta has been the Scientific Coordinator of the STOQ Project (“Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest”, a project under the patronage of the Pontifical Council for Culture involving seven Roman Pontifical Universities and supported by the John Templeton Foundation).
Since 2009, Auletta is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and of the International Society for Science and Religion.
One of the main results of Auletta’s original research on the foundations and interpretation of quantum mechanics is the publication (together with Giorgio Parisi and Mauro Fortunato) of a handbook of Quantum Mechanics, [1] (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Auletta has stressed that there are three basic forms of dealing with information: processing, sharing, selecting. This pathway of research eventually led him to consider quantum information as a fruitful approach for studying the way in which biological and cognitive systems deal with information at all scales. He has now published a book on Cognitive Biology, [2] (Oxford University Press, 2011), in which an attempt is made to show the consistence of such an approach with the recent impressive achievements in life sciences, within the perspective of a thorough reflection on the current paradigm dominating biological disciplines. In particular, Auletta is interested in the relevance of notions like information control, functional equivalence class, formal constraints and top-down causation as to the organisms’ capability of dealing with a challenging environment at the ontogenetic and epigenetic levels, eventually leading to the emergence of new biological functionalities at the phylogenetic level. Top-down causation mechanisms via information control may be considered as the way in which initial and random perturbations disturbing the homeostasis of an organism are subsequently framed in the organism’s network of formal constraints thus giving raise to a process of fine-tuning that ends up in an eventual stable form able to realize a new adaptive fit with certain environmental conditions and challenges. Such process of top-down fine-tuning bridging between randomicity and fitness may be at the basis of the emergence of new functionalities at the phylogenetic scale. Top-down causation via information control may also be enquired in developmental and epigenetic processes (as well as in regeneration processes) when the organism is forced to deal with unpredicted, uncontrollable and in principle noxious environmental stimuli. Finally, information control may be assumed to play a fundamental role also in the ontogenetic action of the organism on the environment (e.g. from chemotaxis up to niche construction as well as to planned actions). Accordingly, his efforts are aimed at both developing a theoretical framework and designing possible experiments and research projects based on the latter standpoints. Recently, he has published a book on the mechanization of inferences, Mechanical Logic in Three-Dimensional Space, (Pan Stanford Pub., Singapore, 2013). [3] Here a reduction of logic to combinatorics is provided. In particular, a logical 3D space is built as a substrate of the logical algebra. Arithmetic operations on propositions allow a new logical calculus.
Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts.
An interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to explain how the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics might correspond to experienced reality. Although quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and extremely precise tests in an extraordinarily broad range of experiments, there exist a number of contending schools of thought over their interpretation. These views on interpretation differ on such fundamental questions as whether quantum mechanics is deterministic or stochastic, which elements of quantum mechanics can be considered real, and what the nature of measurement is, among other matters.
A planarian is one of the many flatworms of the traditional class Turbellaria. It usually describes free-living flatworms of the order Tricladida (triclads), although this common name is also used for a wide number of free-living platyhelminthes. Planaria are common to many parts of the world, living in both saltwater and freshwater ponds and rivers. Some species are terrestrial and are found under logs, in or on the soil, and on plants in humid areas.
In the mathematical study of logic and the physical analysis of quantum foundations, quantum logic is a set of rules for manipulation of propositions inspired by the structure of quantum theory. The field takes as its starting point an observation of Garrett Birkhoff and John von Neumann, that the structure of experimental tests in classical mechanics forms a Boolean algebra, but the structure of experimental tests in quantum mechanics forms a much more complicated structure.
The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted. The contribution must be in the form of a monograph, co-authored or single-authored, and published in English during the previous six years. The award is in memory of the influential Hungarian philosopher of science and mathematics Imre Lakatos, whose tenure as Professor of Logic at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) was cut short by his early and unexpected death. While administered by an international management committee organised from the LSE, it is independent of the LSE Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method, with many of the committee's members being academics from other institutions. The value of the award, which has been endowed by the Latsis Foundation, is £10,000, and to take it up a successful candidate must visit the LSE and deliver a public lecture.
Michał Kazimierz Heller is a Polish professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff.
Nancey Murphy is an American philosopher and theologian who is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University in 1973, the Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987.
Niall Shanks was an English philosopher and critic of intelligent design.
Daniel Kolak is a Croatian-American philosopher who works primarily in philosophy of mind, personal identity, cognitive science, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. He is professor of philosophy at the William Paterson University of New Jersey and an Affiliate of the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS). Kolak is the founder of the philosophical therapy known as cognitive dynamics.
The branches of science, also referred to as sciences, scientific fields or scientific disciplines, are commonly divided into three major groups:
Jeremy Nicholas Butterfield FBA is a philosopher at the University of Cambridge, noted particularly for his work on philosophical aspects of quantum theory, relativity theory and classical mechanics.
An index list of articles about the philosophy of science.
Natural computing, also called natural computation, is a terminology introduced to encompass three classes of methods: 1) those that take inspiration from nature for the development of novel problem-solving techniques; 2) those that are based on the use of computers to synthesize natural phenomena; and 3) those that employ natural materials to compute. The main fields of research that compose these three branches are artificial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, fractal geometry, artificial life, DNA computing, and quantum computing, among others.
Categorical quantum mechanics is the study of quantum foundations and quantum information using paradigms from mathematics and computer science, notably monoidal category theory. The primitive objects of study are physical processes, and the different ways that these can be composed. It was pioneered in 2004 by Samson Abramsky and Bob Coecke. Categorical quantum mechanics is entry 18M40 in MSC2020.
Quantum cognition is an emerging field which applies the mathematical formalism of quantum theory to model cognitive phenomena such as information processing by the human brain, language, decision making, human memory, concepts and conceptual reasoning, human judgment, and perception. The field clearly distinguishes itself from the quantum mind as it is not reliant on the hypothesis that there is something micro-physical quantum-mechanical about the brain. Quantum cognition is based on the quantum-like paradigm or generalized quantum paradigm or quantum structure paradigm that information processing by complex systems such as the brain, taking into account contextual dependence of information and probabilistic reasoning, can be mathematically described in the framework of quantum information and quantum probability theory.
Jeffrey Bub is a physicist and philosopher of physics, and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy, the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
The internal measurement refers to the quantum measurement realized by the endo-observer. Quantum measurement represents the action of a measuring device on the measured system. When the measuring device is a part of measured system, the measurement proceeds internally in relation to the whole system. This theory was introduced by Koichiro Matsuno and developed by Yukio-Pegio Gunji. They further expanded the original ideas of Robert Rosen and Howard Pattee on the quantum measurement in living systems viewed as natural internal observers that belong to the same scale of the observed objects. According to Matsuno, the internal measurement is accompanied by the redistribution of probabilities that leave them entangled in accordance with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics by Everett. However, this form of quantum entanglement does not survive in the external measurement in which the mapping to real numbers takes place and the result is revealed in the classical time-space as the Copenhagen interpretation suggests. This means that the internal measurement concept unifies the alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Cognitive biology is an emerging science that regards natural cognition as a biological function. It is based on the theoretical assumption that every organism—whether a single cell or multicellular—is continually engaged in systematic acts of cognition coupled with intentional behaviors, i.e., a sensory-motor coupling. That is to say, if an organism can sense stimuli in its environment and respond accordingly, it is cognitive. Any explanation of how natural cognition may manifest in an organism is constrained by the biological conditions in which its genes survive from one generation to the next. And since by Darwinian theory the species of every organism is evolving from a common root, three further elements of cognitive biology are required: (i) the study of cognition in one species of organism is useful, through contrast and comparison, to the study of another species’ cognitive abilities; (ii) it is useful to proceed from organisms with simpler to those with more complex cognitive systems, and (iii) the greater the number and variety of species studied in this regard, the more we understand the nature of cognition.
Jan Faye is a Danish philosopher of science and metaphysics. He is currently associate professor in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. Faye has contributed to a number of areas in philosophy including explanation, interpretation, philosophy of the humanities and the natural sciences, evolutionary naturalism, philosophy of Niels Bohr, and topics concerning time, causation, and backward causation (Retrocausality).
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