Cognitive Physical Science

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/2263/16599

Cognitive Physical Science: A new frontier of physical science

A brief introduction (revised 6.9.10)

Werner H. Gries (Hon. Prof.) and Johan B. Malherbe (Prof. and Head) Dept. of Physics, University of Pretoria

Ever more evidence emerges which suggests that the development of physical science (physics and chemistry in combination with mathematics) and its conceptualisations cannot be really understood without an understanding of the underlying neural processes in man’s brain. The Department of Physics at the University of Pretoria (South Africa) has (as of 2010) an eight-year history of support for the study of what physical science can learn from findings of the cognitive and human sciences (evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, developmental science, anthropology, linguistic, philosophy, and others).

One of us (Gries) has developed a (conceptual) Parallel-Systems Mind Model which can explain many features of human thinking, and which can serve as a basic framework for further investigations at this new frontier of science, which we have chosen to call “Cognitive Physical Science”. In the context just described, the term ‘ cognitive’ is to be understood in a wider sense than merely pertaining to the “faculty for knowing or perceiving things” (Oxford Dictionary). Rather, it is to be understood as pertaining to the influence that relevant findings of the cognitive sciences are likely to have on the findings of physical science as far as the relationship to the reality of nature (i.e. the What Is) is concerned, but also on the introduction of physical science into traditional cultures.

The Parallel-Systems Mind Model is presented and applied in a (first) essay on “Traditional thinking, physical science, and the brain”, made available in a new Collection "Cognitive Physical Science" at the Research Repository of the University of Pretoria, also known as UPSpace, and accessible under http://repository.up.ac.za/ . Further essays are in preparation for this Collection. These essays are subject to alterations at the authors’ discretions. Passages from these essays may be quoted with full reference to the source and date of excerpting.

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

Consciousness from a classical physical-science perspective based on a new paradigm
(The Author, 2019-02) Gries, Werner Hugo; University of Pretoria. Dept. of Physics; Gries, Werner Hugo
Quantum physics has a long history of interest in consciousness, stemming from the conviction, seeded by famous names, that consciousness is "fundamental to nature" and is, thus, somehow contributory also to quantum events. One of the more recent ideas (by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose) is that the brain is a quantum computer and that a particular component of neurons acts as a quantum object responsible for the emergence of consciousness. In the 2017 New Scientist monograph Your Conscious Mind the present scientific vision is summarised as "We still don't know whether it [consciousness] is real or an illusion". And it is speculated "that physicists will [one day perhaps] identify consciousness as a distinct kind of matter". This odd suggestion calls for physicists to bring systematic classical thinking back to the subject of consciousness. In the past, such thinking, based on the well-tested Ansatz approach, has failed miserably for consciousness, because of a self-reassuring mainstream orthodox paradigm about the function of consciousness, viz. that consciousness, assisted by the "unconscious" state, is in charge of Man's reasoning and behaviour. The new approach pursued here is the opposite thereof, viz. it is based on the new unorthodox paradigm that the nonconscious (not unconscious) state of mind is in charge of human reasoning and behaviour, and that what a person's mind becomes conscious of has previously been entirely worked out and put into action in the nonconscious state. On this basis, the author has derived a purely classical self-compatible description of the nature and function of consciousness. The key proposition is that general consciousness derives from self-consciousness, which in turn is posited to be a mental sensation of organism-wide wake state feedback from local cellular metabolism. The details have been written up here in a first short form. In a postscript it is also shown how the age-old problem of 'free will' is solved in terms of the new vision of consciousness.
How the Least Effort Principle governs human reasoning and behaviour
(The Author, 2016-11) Gries, Werner Hugo; University of Pretoria. Dept. of Physics
Understanding Mind
(The Author, 2016-11) Gries, Werner Hugo; University of Pretoria. Dept. of Physics
A physicist's model of mind
(The Author, 2015-10) Gries, Werner Hugo; University of Pretoria. Dept. of Physics
Understanding reasoning and behaviour in terms of a modular mental structure
(The Author, 2014-12) Gries, Werner Hugo; University of Pretoria. Dept. of Physics
Traditional thinking, physical science, and the brain : an essay about a “Parallel-Systems Mind Model”
(The Author, 2011-05-20T14:27:51Z) Gries, Werner Hugo; University of Pretoria. Dept. of Physics

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