Fabio Scardigli – författare

In this small book, theoretical physicist Gerard ''t Hooft (Nobel prize 1999), philosopher Emanuele Severino (Lincei Academician), and theologian Piero Coda (Pontifical Lateran University) confront one another on a topic that lies at the roots of quantum mechanics and at the origin of Western thought: Determinism and Free Will. "God does not play dice" said Einstein, a tenacious determinist. Quantum Mechanics and its clash with General Relativity have reanimated ancient dilemmas about chance and necessity: Is Nature deterministic? Is Man free? The “free-will theorem” by Conway and Kochen, and the deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by ''t Hooft, revive such philosophical questions in modern Physics. Is Becoming real? Is the Elementary Event a product of the Case? The cyclopean clash between Heraclitus and Parmenides has entered a new episode, as evidenced by the essays in this volume.

This book centers around a dialogue between Roger Penrose and Emanuele Severino about one of most intriguing topics of our times, the comparison of artificial intelligence and natural intelligence, as well as its extension to the notions of human and machine consciousness.

Although from completely different points of view, all the authors seem to converge on the idea that it is almost impossible to have real "intelligence" without a form of "consciousness". In fact, consciousness, often conceived as an enigmatic "mirror" of reality (but is it really a mirror?), is a phenomenon under intense investigation by science and technology, particularly in recent decades. Where does this phenomenon originate from (in humans, and perhaps alsoin animals)? Is it reproducible on some "device"? Do we have a theory of consciousness today? Will we arrive to build thinking or conscious machines, as machine learning, or cognitive computing, seem to promise?