Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning

This book investigates the metaphysical position of dual-aspect monism, with particular emphasis on the concept of meaning as a fundamental feature of the fabric of reality.

Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning investigates the metaphysical position of dual-aspect monism, with particular emphasis on the concept of meaning as a fundamental feature of the fabric of reality. As an alternative to other positions - mainly dualism, physicalism, idealism - that have been proposed to understand consciousness and its place in nature, the decompositional version of dual-aspect monism considers the mental and the physical as two aspects of one underlying undivided reality that is psychophysically neutral. Inspired by analogies with modern physics and driven by its conceptual problems, Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Gustav Jung, Arthur Eddington, John Wheeler, David Bohm, and Basil Hiley are the originators of the approaches studied. A radically novel common theme in their approaches is the constitutive role of meaning and its deep structure, relating the mental and the physical to a psychophysically neutral base.The authors reconstruct the formal structure of these approaches, and compare their conceptual emphases as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses. They also address a number of challenging themes for current and future interdisciplinary research, both theoretical and empirical, that arise from the presented frameworks of thinking.

Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, metaphysics, and the history of 20th-century philosophy and physics.

Autorentext

Harald Atmanspacher is an emeritus member of the Turing Center of ETH Zürich and a faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute Zürich. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Mind and Matter and serves as the President of the Society for Mind-Matter Research. Selected publications include Recasting Reality: Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science (with H. Primas, 2009), The Pauli-Jung Conjecture and Its Impact Today (with C.A. Fuchs, 2014), and his review of Quantum Approaches to Consciousness in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (last update 2020).

Dean Rickles is Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he is also a director of the Sydney Centre for Time. He is the author of many books, including Covered with Deep Mist: The Development of Quantum Gravity (2020) and A Brief History of String Theory: From Dual Models to M-Theory (2016). He is co-editor, with Elaine Landry, of the Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics and Physics book series.

Klappentext

Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning investigates the metaphysical position of dual-aspect monism, with particular emphasis on the concept of meaning as a fundamental feature of the fabric of reality. As an alternative to other positions - mainly dualism, physicalism, idealism - that have been proposed to understand consciousness and its place in nature, the decompositional version of dual-aspect monism considers the mental and the physical as two aspects of one underlying undivided reality that is psychophysically neutral. Inspired by analogies with modern physics and driven by its conceptual problems, Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Gustav Jung, Arthur Eddington, John Wheeler, David Bohm, and Basil Hiley are the originators of the approaches studied. A radically novel common theme in their approaches is the constitutive role of meaning and its deep structure, relating the mental and the physical to a psychophysically neutral base.The authors reconstruct the formal structure of these approaches, and compare their conceptual emphases as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses. They also address a number of challenging themes for current and future interdisciplinary research, both theoretical and empirical, that arise from the presented frameworks of thinking. Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, metaphysics, and the history of 20th-century philosophy and physics.

Inhalt

Introduction

Part 1: Monism and Meaning

1. Historical Background to Dual-Aspect Monism

2. Varieties of Meaning

Part 2: Three Approaches to Dual-Aspect Monism

3. Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung

4. Arthur Eddington and John Wheeler

5. David Bohm and Basil Hiley

Part 3: Discussion and Perspectives

6. Comparative Discussion

7. Ideas for Future Research

8. Outlook: After Physicalism