Paavo Pylkkänen
Vice Dean & Head of Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki
Paavo Pylkkänen, Ph.D., is Vice Dean of Research of the Faculty of Arts and Head of Department of Philosophy, History and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki where he has previously worked as Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy and the Director of the Philosophy Undergraduate Program. He is also Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (currently on leave) at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, where he initiated a Consciousness Studies Program.
His main research areas are philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics and their intersection. The central problem in philosophy of mind is how to understand the place of mind – and especially conscious experience – in the physical world. Pylkkanen has explored whether this problem can be approached in a new way in the framework of the new holistic and dynamic worldview that is emerging from quantum theory and relativity. He has in particular been inspired by the physicists David Bohm and Basil Hiley’s interpretation of quantum theory and has collaborated with both of them.