Paavo Pylkkänen

Paavo Pylkkänen (born 1959) is a Finnish philosopher of mind. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Skövde and a university lecturer in theoretical philosophy at the University of Helsinki. He is known for his work on mind-body studies, building on David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics, in particular Bohm's view of the cosmos as an enfolding and unfolding whole including mind and matter.

Work Pylkkänen's areas of specialization are the mind-body problem, the basis of cognitive science, philosophy of physics, the philosophy of David Bohm and the foundations of quantum theory.

Since 1996 he has been employed at the University of Skövde in Skövde, Sweden, where he initiated a consciousness studies program combining philosophy and cognitive neuroscience. He is currently a temporary university lecturer in theoretical philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, at University of Helsinki, where he has regularly worked since 2008.

Pylkkänen has worked and published together with theoretical physicist Basil Hiley, a close co-worker of David Bohm over three decades. Hiley and Pylkkänen together addressed the question of the relation between mind and matter by the hypothesis of an active information within the conceptual framework of the de Broglie–Bohm theory. Pylkkänen's work Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (2007) builds upon David Bohm's ontological interpretation of quantum theory, in which quantum processes are understood as a holomovement in terms of implicate and explicate orders.