The Center Leo Apostel

in collaboration with the Doctoral Program of the VUB invites
everyone to the 42nd of its interdisciplinary seminars in the
Foundations series. In this series CLEA invites scholars that are
actively engaged in the research on the foundations of a particular
discipline. Their lectures will always be directed to an
interdisciplinary audience, and the discussions aim at confronting
the foundations of the different disciplines.


                    MIND, QUANTA AND DIGITAL MACHINES
                    *********************************

                          by Dr. Bruno Marchal
                          ********************

Research fellow at IRIDIA (Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires
et de Developpements en Intelligence Artificielle), the AI lab of the
Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Thursday, November 4, at 5 p.m. in room B211 (building B, 3rd floor)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Oefenplein

About the lecture
-----------------
Dr. Marchal presents a hypothetico-deductive argument showing the
incompatibility between the computationalist hypothesis in the
cognitive sciences (the thesis that "we" are machine in a sense which
will be made precise) and a very weak form of materialism (the thesis
that there is a "substantial" universe). The given argument is
partially constructive, meaning that it shows how one should deduce,
in principle, physics from a kind of computational "psychology". This
entails that computationalism is empirically refutable. The talk will
be divided into two parts. In a first part the argument itself is
described in the form of a thought experiment. In a second part the
constructive aspect of the argument is illustrated by showing how to
extract a logic of possible observations from the logic of
provability by self-referentially correct machines. He concludes the
talk with the comparison between this observation logic and both
quantum logic and some no-collapse interpretations of quantum
mechanics such as the many-worlds and "many-minds" interpretations.

About the speaker
-----------------
Bruno Marchal was born in Koln (Germany) in 1955. From 1973 to 1977
he finished his Candidatures and Licences in the Mathematical
Sciences at Brussels Free University (ULB). From 1977 till 1991 he
was teaching Mathematics in High School and Institutes. He also
worked in the private society PLANT GENETIC SYSTEMS (Ghent/Brussels).
>From 1991 till 1995 he worked at IRIDIA (ULB) and wrote his PhD
thesis. During 1995-97 he worked at the "Universite de Lille" France
from which he earned a DEA in computer science. In 1998 he received
his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the French university of Lille for
his thesis, entitled "Calculabilite, Physique et Cognitio"", for
which he was also awarded the "prix 'Le Monde' de la recherche
universitaire". A popular version of the thesis will be published by
GRASSET.

The presentation with questions will last about an hour. Afterwards,
an hour or more is reserved for an in-depth, group discussion of the
topic. More info at the CLEA office: phone 02-644 26 77 or via the
Web-page: http://pcp.vub.ac.be/CLEA/