Rowman & Littlefield Publishers The Human World in the Physical Universe: Consciousness, Free Will, and Evolution (Philosophy and the Global Context)

About the Author Nicholas Maxwell has devoted much of his working life to arguing that we need to bring about a revolution in academia so that it seeks and promotes wisdom and does not just acquire knowledge. He has published eight books on this theme, including How Universities Can Help Create a Wiser World (2014) and In Praise of Natural Philosophy (2017). For 30 years he taught philosophy of science at University College London, where he is now Emeritus Reader. For more about his work, see www.ucl.ac.uk/from-knowledge-to-wisdom. Product Description How is it possible for the world as we experience it to exist embedded in the physical universe? How can there be sensory qualities, consciousness, freedom, science and art, friendship, love, justice-all that which gives meaning and value to life-if the world really is more or less as modern science tells us it is? This is the problem that is tackled by this book. The solution proposed is that physics describes only a selected aspect of all that exists-that aspect which determines the way events unfold. Sensory qualities, inner experiences, consciousness, meaning and value, all these exist but lie beyond the scope of physics, and of that part of science that can be reduced to physics. Furthermore, these human features of the world are to be explained and understood, not scientifically, but "personalistically," a kind of understanding distinct from, and not reducible to, science. This view that the world is riddled with what may be called "double comprehensibility" leads to a proposed solution to the philosophical mind/body problem, and to the problem of free will; it leads to a reinterpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution, and to an account of the evolution of consciousness and free will. After a discussion of the location of consciousness in the brain, the book concludes with a proposal as to how academic inquiry might be changed so that it becomes a kind of inquiry rationally designed to help humanity create a more civilized human world in the physical universe. Review ...a bald summary of this interesting and passionately-argued book does insufficient justice to the subtlety of many of the detailed arguments it contains.--Mind: A Quarterly Review of PhilosophyA solid work of original thinking.--CHOICEMaxwell has not only succeeded in bringing together the various different subjects that make up the human world/physical universe problem in a single volume, he has done so in a comprehensive, lucid and above all readable way.--Trends In Cognitive Sciences