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. Additional insightful essays by Mauro D'Ariano, Federico Faggin, Ines Testoni, Giuseppe Vitiello and an introduction of Fabio Scardigli complete the book and illuminate different aspects of the debate. 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 also in 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? These questions and other related issues are discussed in the pages of this work, which provides stimulating reading to both specialists and general readers. The Chapter "Hard Problem and Free Will: An Information-Theoretical Approach" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Quantum dynamics underlies macroscopic systems exhibiting some kind of ordering, such as superconductors, ferromagnets and crystals. Even large scale structures in the Universe and ordering in biological systems appear to be the manifestation of microscopic dynamics ruling their elementary components. The scope of this book is to answer questions such as: how it happens that the mesoscopic/macroscopic scale and stability characterizing those systems are dynamically generated out of the microscopic scale of fluctuating quantum components; how quantum particles coexist and interact with classically behaving macroscopic objects, e.g. vortices, magnetic domains and other topological defects. The quantum origin of topological defects and their interaction with quanta is a crucial issue for the understanding of symmetry breaking phase transitions and structure formation in a wide range of systems from condensed matter to cosmology. Deliberately not discussing other important problems, primarily renormalization problems, this book provides answers to such questions in a unitary, self-consistent physical and mathematical framework, which makes it unique in the panorama of existing texts on a similar subject. Crystals, ferromagnets and superconductors appear to be macroscopic quantum systems, i.e. their macroscopic properties cannot be explained without recourse to the underlying quantum dynamics. Recognizing that quantum field dynamics is not confined to the microscopic world is one of the achievements of this book, also marking its difference from other texts. The combined use of algebraic methods, and operator and functional formalism constitutes another distinctive, valuable feature.

Quantum dynamics underlies macroscopic systems exhibiting some kind of ordering, such as superconductors, ferromagnets and crystals. Even large scale structures in the Universe and ordering in biological systems appear to be the manifestation of microscopic dynamics ruling their elementary components. The scope of this book is to answer questions such as: how it happens that the mesoscopic/macroscopic scale and stability characterizing those systems are dynamically generated out of the microscopic scale of fluctuating quantum components; how quantum particles coexist and interact with classically behaving macroscopic objects, e.g. vortices, magnetic domains and other topological defects. The quantum origin of topological defects and their interaction with quanta is a crucial issue for the understanding of symmetry breaking phase transitions and structure formation in a wide range of systems from condensed matter to cosmology. Deliberately not discussing other important problems, primarily renormalization problems, this book provides answers to such questions in a unitary, self-consistent physical and mathematical framework, which makes it unique in the panorama of existing texts on a similar subject. Crystals, ferromagnets and superconductors appear to be macroscopic quantum systems, i.e. their macroscopic properties cannot be explained without recourse to the underlying quantum dynamics. Recognizing that quantum field dynamics is not confined to the microscopic world is one of the achievements of this book, also marking its difference from other texts. The combined use of algebraic methods, and operator and functional formalism constitutes another distinctive, valuable feature.