At the end of last year, FQXi launched an exciting new partnership with the Fetzer Franklin Fund to investigate the question of how agency arises in the physical world. This far-reaching topic brings together ideas from physics, information theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and other fields. After a competitive selection process, we're happy to announce the 24 projects that will be funded through our seventh Large Grant program.
The total amount given out in this round is $2M, which will be used to fund projects over the next two years. Here are some of the fascinating questions being tackled by our grantees:
1. Can consciousness be modelled mathematically?
2. Would a quantum spacetime be agent-dependent? Or would agency depend on a quantum spacetime?
3. Why do our choices seem to be able to impact the future, but not the past? How is agency related to time's arrow?
4. Do humans have free will? And, if so, could machines have free will?
5. What would a quantum agent, itself existing in superposition, see?
We again congratulate our new grantees. We also thank everyone who applied, especially those who were invited to submit full proposals; we appreciate that these took a great deal of time and resources to prepare. Our mission at FQXi has always been to push boundaries, and to try to focus the attention and effort of the scientific community on (what we consider to be) super-interesting areas of research that for one reason or another have gone less explored than they deserve. We received many more excellent proposals than we were able to fund in this round, but we do hope to offer more grants in the future, and as always we encourage people to apply for those.
We should also mention that our collaboration with the Fetzer Franklin Fund has already supported the co-themed essay contest, "What Is Fundamental?," which produced some outstanding submissions. You can still read and enjoy all the entries on our site.