V&C Seminar // "Contextual Emergence of Mental States from Neurodynamics”
Event details
| Date | 18.03.2015 |
| Hour | 15:00 |
| Speaker | Harald Atmanspacher, ETH Zurich |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Abstract: The concept of contextual emergence has been proposed as a non-reductive, yet well-defined relation between different levels of description of physical and other systems. I will illustrate it for the transition from mechanical to thermodynamical properties such as temperature. Stability conditions are shown to be crucial for a rigorous implementation of contingent contexts that are required to understand temperature as an emergent property.
Are such stability conditions meaningful for situations beyond physics as well? As an affirmative example from cognitive neuroscience I will address the relation between neurobiological and mental levels of description. The crucial point here is the identification of a particular class of stable partitions of the neurobiological phase space, so-called generating partitions, which can be constructed from empirical data. They are coextensive with dynamically stable emergent mental states, which entails that mental and neural dynamics are compatible in the sense of topologically equivalence.
Are such stability conditions meaningful for situations beyond physics as well? As an affirmative example from cognitive neuroscience I will address the relation between neurobiological and mental levels of description. The crucial point here is the identification of a particular class of stable partitions of the neurobiological phase space, so-called generating partitions, which can be constructed from empirical data. They are coextensive with dynamically stable emergent mental states, which entails that mental and neural dynamics are compatible in the sense of topologically equivalence.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- Prof. Michael Herzog, LPSY