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.