[Fis] Explaining Experience in Nature (event)

The Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering

Prof. Michael Friedman, The Positivist Agenda (The Foundations of
Logic and Apprehension)

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 4:15 pm - 5:45 pm at
Cordura Hall - Center for the Study of Language and Information
Stanford University, Palo Alto

Registration:
        http://iase-fla1.eventbrite.com/

Is the manifest existence of experience in the world to be mastered
only by poets and priests, or is its mystery one that science can
disclose?

Before 1950 the answer was clear, experience lay at the foundation
of scientific consideration. But the challenge of it seemed
unsurmountable.

In 1928, the philosopher of science, Rudolf Carnap, wrote:

"The question is this: provided that to all or some types of
psychological processes there correspond simultaneous processes in
the central nervous system, what connects the processes in question
with one another? Very little has been done toward a solution to the
correlation problem of the psychophysical relation, but, even if this
problem were solved (i.e., if we could infer the characteristics of a
brain process from the characteristics of a psychological process,
and vice versa), nothing would have been achieved to further the
solution of the essence problem (i.e., the psychophysical problem).
For this problem is not concerned with the correlation, but with the
essential relation; that is, with that which "essentially" or
"fundamentally" leads from one process to the other or which brings
forth both from a common root.

...there still remain, in the main, three hypotheses: mutual
influence, parallelism, and identity in the sense of the two aspect
theory...

Three contradicting and unsatisfactory answers and no possibility of
finding or even imagining an empirical fact that could here make the
difference: a more hopeless situation can hardly be imagined..."

Rudolf Carnap, P. 37-38. The Logical Structure of the World. 1928.

Since 1928 a lot of work has been done in neuroscience on what Carnap
calls the �correlation problem.� We have identified behavior in the
nervous system that corresponds to certain psychological processes.
But, as Carnap anticipated, no progress has been made on the
essential problem.

In workshops and seminars the Institute for Advanced Science &
Engineering aims to bring together leading theorists, logicians and
computer scientists, with empirical research in biology and physics
to ask some of the harder questions regarding the foundations of
logic and apprehension, with the ultimate goal of addressing what is,
perhaps, the last remaining really hard problem in science and moving
toward a demonstrable explanation of experience in nature.

This series of lecture/discussions is a prelude to our workshop in
December. Speakers from multiple disciplines are invited to present
in the context the Institute's theme, "Explaining Experience in
Nature." The format of this series of lectures/debates consists of a
40 minute lecture followed by a led discussion and debate.

Professor Michael Friedman, a leading scholar of the history of
logical positivism, gives our inaugural talk on the positivist
agenda. He is Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities at
Stanford University and is the author of Reconsidering Logical
Positivism published in 1999 by Cambridge University Press. For more
information about Professor Friedman see his Stanford University
profile.

Steven Ericsson-Zenith, Chairman.

Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
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