Mind, Life and Matter in the Hyperverse

(2010) Gabriel Vacariu and Mihai Vacariu, Mind, Life and Matter in the Hyperverse, University of Bucharest Press

Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 9

1. The hyperverse versus the “unicorn-world” …………….. 15

1.1 The oldest paradigm of human thinking: the unicornworld

……………………………………………………………….. 15

1.2 The Epistemologically Different Worlds (EDWs) …… 16

2. The “I” as an epistemological world ………………………… 31

2.1 The physical human subject ………………………………….. 31

2.2 Llinas’ view regarding the brain, the body and theexternal world …………………………………………………….. 43

2.3 The human subjectivity or the “I” as an EW …………… 55

2.4 The principle of “correspondence” within the EDWs perspective …………………………………………………………. 67

2.5 Frith’s approach to the mind-body problem and the

EDWs perspective ……………………………………………….. 73

3. The surrealistic “extension of the mind” ………………….. 90

3.1 Clark’s robots and the EDWs ……………………………….. 90

3.2 Clark’s strong “embodied cognition” …………………….. 108

3.3 One attack against Clark’s position: the “coupling-constitution fallacy” …………………………………………….. 118

3.4 Gestures and thoughts ………………………………………….. 124

3.5 Noë’s “sensorimotor dependencies” and Clark’s “hybrid” model …………………………………………………… 130

4. Representations, “emulators”, and Descartes’ ghost … 144

4.1 Grush’s new Cartesian framework ………………………… 144

4.2 Wheeler and the “Cartesian psychology” ……………….. 156

5. “Mental mechanisms” and the phantoms of levels ……… 164

5.1 Bechtel’s notion of “mechanism” ………………………….. 164

5.2 Decomposability and localization of the mechanisms . 179

5.3 “What is it like to be a cell?” ………………………………… 199

5.4 What fMRI “decomposition” and “localization” are good for? ……………………………………………………………. 214

5.5 The self, its “freedom” and “dignity” …………………….. 220

6. “Molecules and cells” versus cognition and life ………….. 223

6.1 Bickle’s “molecular and cellular cognition” approach . 223

6.2 Cells and life in Kauffman’s theory of complexity ….. 239

7. Matter in the hyperverse …………………………………………… 260

7.1 Particles vs. fields (waves) ……………………………………. 263

7.2 Gravity and Newton vs. Einstein …………………………… 277

7.3 Other problematic notions from physics …………………. 283

7.4 The hyperspace versus the hyperverse ……………………. 302

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………… 314

Reference …………………………………………………………………….. 321

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