For example take The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, which is just about as good book as I know that eschews equations: it uses an analogy that the speed of all objects is c (i.e. the speed of light in a vacuum) in spacetime. This is quite a nice analogy, but unfortunately it can also be misleading too (I say this from experience of seeing this analogy tortured). It is far better to actually learn about the concepts underlying the analogy, which you can’t do without some equations.
I would say it is far better to brush up on your maths skills and tackle a book like The Theoretical Mininium by Leonard Susskind or The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose which are written for the non-expert, but don’t eschew using mathematical equations. Or even try a good, but fairly light, introductory book aimed at students of the subject like Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David Griffiths or A First Course in General Relativity by Bernard Schutz.
Beyond those, anything by Richard Feynman is good, and a book that helped me understand cosmology, but I wouldn’t recommend unless there is a more recent edition about (due to the discoveries in cosmology since) is The Big Bang by Joseph Silk.
Thanks for all the recommendations, and you guys (and gals) are correct, I did not specify which branch of physics I’m interested in, the thing is, I’m not entirely sure.
Since I would like to branch out some of Galen Strawson’s conclusions found in for example, his essay “Real Materialism”, my main interests concern issues which are related to particles being “physical” in any relevant sense of the term, which seems to be the case given Strawson’s broad definition of the term, I’ll find out more about which branch is relevant as I proceed.
Is Strawson the one that argues that consciousness can’t emerge from unconscious material and since everything is made of the same material the universe is conscious?
Brian Green’s Elegant Universe would be good, it’ll give you a view to relativity (which imposes limits on information transfer i.e. causality) and the current view on QM as fields interacting. You might find The Lightness of Being by Frank Wilczek a good read as well.
You’ve likely already done this but if not may want to give Steve Pinker and/or Daniel Dennett a read as well to see their evolutionary view on the mind.
Well, Galen Strawson’s view is that experience is a fundamental feature of the universe, and hence a natural phenomenon, that is to say that if you were to rearrange particles in a certain way, you should be able to get experience out of everything. Another thing is how vivid such experience can be, within the tradition it is called pansychism, it’s not that he says chairs or tables are conscious. The argument is that if you don’t agree consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, then it comes as “radical emergence” and hence is somewhat “miraculous”. It’s an interesting argument, not that I am doing it much justice as of now.
I’m familiar with both Pinker and Dennett, but I have to read more works by them, especially Dennett, since Strawson particularly disagrees with his philosophical views.
And yet it sold shirtloads. A Brief history of time is widely considered to be an Emperor’s New Book, one often bought but seldom finished. See this NY Time piece on how such beasts were flushed out.
All that means is that the second hand copies of Hawkins are likely to be in very good, if not mint condition. And always worth riffling through if you see one in a store.
We do know about consciousness, it can be argued that it is the thing we know that we are most certain about, the experience you are having as you are reading these words cannot be doubted as a portion of experience, and you cannot deny that this is an experience, as are many, many other things. We don’t have a good scientific explanation for consciousness, that does not mean we don’t know what it is. That’s the point of his argument, that he considers people like Dennett to be PhysicSalists, not physicalists because neural correlates do not explain the phenomenon of experience in an adequate way. It would be hard to deny they play a role, but a whole portion is missing, something that is quite likely beyond human cognition, as was recognized already by Locke, Hume, Priestley, Russell, Chomsky, etc.
That’s how Strawson proceeds to say that consciousness is a fundamental property of things, even though there is a lot more to say about it, but that would need a different thread.
Most people working in the science of cognition and neurophysiology today hypothesize that consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon, or rather, and entire set of interrelated phenomena, resulting from a really complex data processing and pattern recognition system. The “phenomenon of experience”, i.e. the gestalt of your personal experience is neither a single or simple phenomenon and by definition cannot be objectively viewed, but there is zero evidence that it is somehow connected to some kind of fundamental property of the universe or universal field.
I am obviously not qualified to debate this, but just so people can play along I did find this review of Strawson’s bookthat explains it a bit, although that author finds it lacking.
If you actually rigorously define consciousness, then it becomes fairly easy to say whether any given object or system is conscious… but the problem is that people seldom define it rigorously, and when they do, their definitions seldom agree with each other.
Regarding Metaphysics and epistemology, some issues are a matter of what is most likely. Specifically Strawson describes himself as an “Agnostic Materialist”.
If you are interested in why he argue what he does, then I would suggest you take a look at his book “Mental Reality” (which I think is a masterpiece) and/or Consciousness: Does Physicalism Entail Pansychism?" and read the first or last essay. Even if you disagree his arguments are quite meticulously argued.
Other than that, the argument takes too long to elaborate, because certain concepts are defined in a way than does not entail “common sense” (everyday use of words in ordinary everyday talk) understanding of some terms.
Since plenty of people have started talking about consciousness, I’ll guess I’m the one missing the boat - in what sense are theories of consciousness physics? I’ve read Pinker’s How the Mind Works and Dennet’s Consciousness Explained, and I wouldn’t classify either of them as physics in the least.
I’ll take a read when I get a chance (though I have a large stack of other journals and books that also beg my attention) but my prior experience with epistemologists trying to explain consciousness as something more than an emergent property of a large, self-modifying neural network is that they try to “logic wrestle” their way to a pre-defined conclusion by engaging in semantic arguments that bear no relationship to observable reality. Not that they are alone in this regard; Penrose (among others) attempts to do the same by trying to rationalize how consciousness must be a quantum mechanical effect by creating neurological mechanisms no one has ever observed and that don’t actually resolve fundamental questions about cognition.
Even his popular stuff gets quite challenging. The Emperors New Mind, for me, was essentially: Yep, yep, yep, knew that, hrrrm, hrrrm, OK you’ve lost me, back again, no completely gone.
Anyway, he recently did a doc for the BBC about MC Escher which was just lovely, about symmetries and all that. If you can find it, I think you’d like it.
They aren’t, but they are “physical” for lack of a better word. I mean, can you think of an introductory physics book that would even hazard to touch on experiencing?