Lecture by Paavo Pylkkänen

Lecture by Paavo Pylkkänen

16 SEPTEMBER 2026, 3pm - 4pm

Academic Conference Center (AKC), Husova 4a, Prague 1

Philosophy of mind usually assumes a broadly classical picture of the physical, and then struggles to fit intentionality, mental causation and consciousness into it. In his talk, Paavo Pylkkänen asks what changes if we start instead from an ontological interpretation of quantum theory. In Bohm and Hiley’s pilot wave theory, an electron is a particle guided by a wave carrying 'active information', which literally in-forms the particle’s energy rather than pushing it mechanically. Recent work argues that this notion resolves key problems of the Bohm theory, making the proposal a live option (Pylkkänen, forthcoming).
The Bohmian electron then serves as a prototype for a whole class of systems in which a subtle informational aspect guides a manifest material process; human beings belong to that class. Paavo Pylkkänen suggest this supports an interactive dual aspect monism: one underlying energy with two radically different aspects that can nevertheless influence each other (Pylkkänen 2025). He closes on its bearing on intentionality, mental causation, and the hard problem, which Chalmers (1996) himself approached through a double-aspect theory of information.

Paavo Pylkkänen is a Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy at Department of Philosophy, History and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki. He is a philosopher working toward a scientific metaphysics, in other words a general world view which reflects our best (natural) sciences. Physics is particularly important in this endeavour, and within physics the attempts to provide ontological accounts. Among these he finds the efforts of David Bohm most promising, and has studied these, e.g. in his 2007 book Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Springer). A major challenge for scientific metaphysics is how to find a place for conscious experience in the (natural) scientific account of the world and thus consciousness (and philosophy of mind/cognitive science) is a central interest, besides philosophy of physics.

This lecture has been funded by a grant from the Programme Johannes Amos Comenius under the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008711.

The lecture is followed from 4pm by a talk, called "Unifying power as a quantitative criterion for fundamental physical theories", by Avril Styrman.