George Ellis (Cape Town) will take part in a two-day workshop at the CST on the 4th and 5th of June (starting from 9:30 (s.t.)) in order to discuss his book "How Can Physics Underlie the Mind: Top Down Causation in the Human Context" with commentators from various disciplines. In his book, Ellis distinguishes between different forms of causality, such as the physical adn the non-physical. One of the books’s main theses is as follows: the key to understanding complex systems – such as that oft he human organism – lies in top-down causation, which allows, for instance, that social conventions and individual decisions have causal consequences in the physical world.
Ellis will hold a discussion of the book’s ideas at the CST with Bueno (Miami), Barbara Drossel (Darmstadt), Alkistis Elliot-Graves (Helsinki), Simon Friederich (Groningen), Richard Healey (Arizona), Manfred Laubichler (Arizona), Thomas Luu (Bonn/Jülich), Sach Mukherjee (Bonn) und Stefan Schiller (Freiburg). The event is organised by CST directors Prof. Markus Gabriel and Prof. Ulf-G. Meißner, as well as the CST science manager Jan Voosholz.
The workshop language is English. All interested are welcome. Please email us (voosholz@uni-bonn.de) to confirm attendance.
