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Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Sophia-Iberia in Europe

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The Sophia-Iberia in Europe Project endeavours to increase integration and understanding of the long philosophical and theological traditions in Spain and Portugal in the stream of European and international thought.

Discover an area open to free multidisciplinary participation in scientific and philosophic reflection on human evolution oriented towards recent metaphysical issues.

Sophia-Iberia is managed by the Cátedra Ciencia, Tecnología y Religión of the Universidad Pontificia Comillas of Madrid.

Learn more about the project
Download the Sophía-Iberia information leaflet

Sophia-Iberia's Second Academic Seminar

The second seminar of Sophia-Iberia will be held at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Aula Magna, Alberto Aguilera 25) in Madrid on December 13-15, 2010. The theme, sessions and invited speakers of the seminar are as follows:

Life, evolution and complexity

Life may be a natural consequence of the physical process of planetary formation or it may be something random, unique or very rare in the universe. Through the process of evolution life tends to become more complex and form advanced interdependent ecosystems. The human brain is said to be the most complex structure in the universe. Through interdisciplinary discussions between world leading researchers the understanding of life evolution and complexity will be discussed from different perspectives. It is the purpose of this scientific seminar to produce new ideas and move our understanding of life evolution and complexity to a higher level.

Session I: The Physical Mind

  • Prof. Steen Rasmussen, Department for Physics & Chemistry
    University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
  • Prof. Lluis Oviedo, Professor of Theological Anthropology
    University Pontifical Antonianum, Rome, Italy

Session II: The Neural Mind

  • Prof. Giorgio Innocenti, Department of Neuroscience
    Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
  • Prof. Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Philosophy Department
    University of California, Santa Cruz, California.

Session III: The Quantum Mind

Session IV: The Neural Mind

Final Debate: Holistic approach in Biology and Neuroscience

Download the detailed programme

More about the Second Academic Seminar

If you are interested in participating in the Sophia Iberia Academic Seminar on "Life, evolution and complexity" please send a few words about your background and your contact information to following mail: sophiaiberia@upcomillas.es

Sophia-Iberia's First Academic Seminar

The scientific explanation of the emergence of Reason

Human evolution has its roots in matter, the universe and life, but the decisive moment when the human species emerged within the framework of the evolutionary process is the appearance of human reason. The chosen theme is "Evolutionary genesis, ontology and functional nature of reason". What is reason? How does rational knowledge function in the human mind? What are the evolutionary causes which have led to the emergence of the rational mind? How can a scientific explanation of reason be constructed?

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SESSIONS OF THE FIRST ACADEMIC SEMINAR

Results of the First Academic Seminar

Sophia-Iberia's Academic Conference and Workshop

Sophia-Iberia began with an international Academic Conference in September 2007 in coordination with a web-based workshop on the same theme.

Academic Conference

KENOSIS

Towards a New Theology of Science

The world can be explained without God in "atheism", but it is also possible to construct a "theist" explanation. The "possible" God has created a world with an ambivalent, enigmatic structure, which does not "impose" his own divine presence on human rational knowledge. He has chosen to conceal Himself in creation, an "emptiness, nothingness (kenosis) of His divine presence"...

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MATHEMATICAL RATIONALITY AND REALITY

Metaphysical and Theological Consequences

Is formal mathematics a precise and objective instrument in order to express with objectivity our knowledge of the real world? The reduction of deductive reasoning to formal rules is a challenge which underlies the mechanicist ideal. On asking meta-rationally for the permanence of global rationality, we verify that the consistency of the systems and the exclusion of mutual contradiction in their co-existence, is a meta-rational value, with metaphysical and theological consequences ...

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BUDDHISM: SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION

The conception that Buddhism has of the world could be considered as the Buddhist Philosophy of Nature. This Buddhist conception is one of the principal links of Buddhism with science. Buddhism has a dynamic conception of reality. This manifests itself in the peculiar doctrine of dharmas...

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DANIEL DENNETT, MEMES AND RELIGION

Reasons for the historical persistence of religion

In the work which appeared in 2006 titled Breaking the Spell Daniel C. Dennett again explained his ideas on memes and the theory of memes, by applying it to the study of religion from the perspective of evolutionary biology. His conclusions establish that religion is a meme and that its persistence in history is explained by the replicating processes of memetic structures. However, are there reasons of philosophical or scientific rationality for men having persisted in religion? Dennett does not go into a deep rational analysis of religion. He simply states that it has a memetic structure and he considers that this is a sufficient basis to "break the spell".

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DAWKINS: THE GOD DELUSION

The criticism of religion which has become a polemic without limits

Apart from his contributions to Theoretical Biology, Dawkins became famous for his work in the scientific divulgation of Darwinism and as a critic of religion. It is very difficult to address an evaluation of the thought of Richard Dawkins without becoming polemic. However, Dawkins himself offers ideas which are polemic in themselves due to their content and form for public consideration .

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THE UNIVERSE IN A SINGLE ATOM

The Dalai Lama on science and religion

The recent book of the Dalai Lama constitutes an original form of memories in which, based on his personal encounters with an interminable number of top rank scientists, he reflects on the image of the universe, on life and on man in science from the point of view of the Buddhist religion. The Dalai Lama offers us his point of view evaluating the great progress of science, and showing us the frequent coincidences with Buddhist doctrine and also the points of disagreement .

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CONSCIOUSNESS AS EMERGENT UNITY

A theory of the mind should be consistent with our personal experience of consciousness and free-will and tackle two different sides of the problem: the nature of the psychic subject and its physical support. Orch-OR provides with an interesting framework for the study of the physical support of consciousness. It could, by means of the indetermination of quantum mechanics, avoid determinism as necessary for free-will. In addition, quantum entanglement is a very attractive quality when considering the unity of the conscious experience. However, quantum mechanics are not sufficient to explain the physical substrate of subjectivity in its own.

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EVOLUTION vs. CREATION

Discussion in Russian Orthodox Church

In Russia mass media have recently covered widely the story of a fifteen-year-old girl from St. Petersburg who refused to study biology at school, saying her world outlook is in contradiction to the one Darwin theory of evolution is based on. On August 1, 2006 the girl's father initiated legal action against the Ministry of Education of Russian Federation, demanding to exclude from school textbooks that contain the Darwinian hypothesis. The suit has aroused wide response all over the country. What is the reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church?

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FORMAL SCIENCES AIDED MIND

Formal Sciences - as the anthropic product of human reason

There is an inevitable dilemma in our lived reality. We may predict the course of certain events, discover how things are, know the reasons for their existence. At the same time, we see that an understanding is not given once and for all. It causes us to reflect not only on the subject of our knowledge, but also upon ways of proceeding, and perhaps to be more attentive to the ways of our own thinking, and to formalise them.

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