Events

After an introduction to Bohm’s physics, we will explore the relations between Russellian monism, William James’s radical empiricism and Bohm’s implicate order; some traditional and recent (e.g., Johanna Seibt’s) work on process philosophy and how it connects with Bohm’s ideas; the idea of quantum properties of matter as potentialities in Bohm’s early thought; the influence of Hegel on Bohm’s ideas about fragmentation and wholeness; and whether Bohm’s notion of active information is a candidate for a unifying notion of information.

David Bohm made very important contributions to a range of different areas in Physics. Amongst these, his work on quantum theory is possibly the most relevant to Pari discussions. In this talk I will attempt to outline Bohm’s ontological interpretation of quantum theory, which has since been developed by Basil Hiley amongst others. I will also discuss Bohm’s development of the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper which lead to John Bell’s work and our current understanding of entanglement.

Willam James’s Radical Empiricism and cognate views going under the general title of Neutral Monism encompass a picture of reality with many attractive features. It presents a straightforward and intuitively attractive solution to the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness. It endorses a view of perception and cognition which puts us in direct contact with the world, indeed, in direct contact with the fundamental nature of reality, where mind does not mirror nature so much as inhabit it. Yet it avoids any facile solutions to the problem of philosophical skepticism. It supports the idea that the world can be scientifically described in terms of structural relations without lapsing into implausible scientistic reductionisms. But it is a truly radical vision of reality raising many immediately apparent objections (many of which date back to James’s original statement of the view). In this presentation, I aim to sketch out a version of Neutral Monism, canvas its virtues and try to at least deflect the main objections.


Samuli Isotalo will present two ways of doing metaphysics in their general outlines, but do so from the perspective of process metaphysics. Thelma Nylund will argue that Johanna Seibt rejects successfully several traditional ontological presuppositions and that understanding entities as the more or less indeterminate, yet concrete individuals of general process theory, provides philosophers with novel tools for ontological inquiry. 

One year before his 1952 ‘hidden variables’ paper David Bohm presented a physical-ontological interpretation of standard (‘Copenhagen’) interpretation of quantum theory in his 1951 646-page textbook.  He proposed that properties of quantum particles such as electrons ought to be seen as ‘opposing potentialities.’  They are ‘potentialities’ in the sense they typically do not exist in a well-defined sense before measurement and ‘opposing’ in the sense that if one measures, say, position accurately, one cannot measure momentum accurately at the same time in the same experimental situation (‘complementarity’).  Bohm’s discussion is philosophically intriguing—for one thing he suggests that we cannot derive the macroscopic world (which we need to actualize the potentialities of quantum particles) from quantum theory.  And yet the behaviour of the macroscopic, classical level can only be understood in terms of a quantum theory of its component molecules.

Among the many well-known philosophical influences on the physics and philosophy of science of David Bohm—ranging from Marxism to Krishnamurti—one important influence has remained almost completely unknown: the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one of the most important systematic philosophers in the history of Western philosophy and a prominent figure in philosophical idealism. This is indeed an unfortunate historical state of affairs, since Hegel was in fact Bohm’s strongest philosophical influence throughout his mature intellectual life, particularly in his abhorrence of fragmentation and his affection for wholeness, which is prominently reflected in both his physics and his philosophy of science. Moreover, speaking of Bohm as a person, his worldview can also be seen as strongly influenced by specific social propensities and psychological determinants from his early emotional and intellectual development, for which Hegel’s philosophy later served as a rational catalyst. Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, these determinants were strikingly similar to those that led the young Hegel to engage with the concepts of fragmentation and wholeness throughout his philosophical life

In this session we will explore the following questions: Is there one all-encompassing concept of information or are there several different concepts of information? Do different disciplines have different notions of information? Is there a unifying notion of information? Can a unifying concept of information help us solve important disciplinary and interdisciplinary problems?

Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Cambridge and the Director of the Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre. She has carried out research on life in prison for over 30 years. Her projects have included suicide and self-harm in prisons, close supervision centres for difficult prisoners, incentives and earned privileges, staff-prisoner relationships, the location and building of trust in high security prisons, the work of prison officers, and conceptualizing and measuring the moral quality of prison life, including comparisons between public and private sector prisons.