Quantum Consciousness

[pixelero]

At a recent conference, "Brakke Grond" in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, January 16-18, 2014, there was a Brainstorm Session on "Microtubules and the Big Consciousness Debate". It seems there have been some new research results that apparently confirm a controversial theory of consciousness published by Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff in Physics of Life Reviews some 20 years ago.

A report at elsevier.com says:

The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates [Penrose and Hameroff's] theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. "This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

The topic I'd like to suggest for debate is: Do these new findings support the mystical view that non-living matter/energy can be conscious?

I suspect that consciousness will continue to be recognized only in biological organisms, despite the apparent quantum effects in the brain. These effects, as far as I can tell, have only been observed by brains, not crystals or trees... so far.

[Divine Insight]

Let me ask you this. How is the pure mystical model going to work? When you can explain that to me, I will shut up.

It works at least as well as Quantum Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics postulates that there exist "waves of probability" that behave as described mathematically by the equations of Edwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg.

No one has ever seen a "wave of probability" nor been able to explain why they exist or why they behave the way they do. But the model of Quantum Mechanics still WORKS.

It's the same way here. The Mystical Model postulates that the stuff the world is made of us capable of having an experience and becoming aware of itself. And if we allow for this postulate then this explains why material things like brains can have an experience or become aware. So the model WORKS.

It doesn't need to "explain" how the stuff of the universe can have an experience or become aware, just like Quantum Mechanics doesn't needs to explain why waves of probability exist or what makes them work.

So how is Quantum Mechanics any different from the Mystical Model? It doesn't explain anything either. It just postulates that waves of probability exist. Period.

You don't need to explain a postulate. All you need to do is postulate that it must be the case.

Meanwhile, I claim that the performance of a finely tuned automobile, for example, is an emergent property that none of its individual parts has to the slightest degree. You can see this for yourself by visiting any auto junkyard. Have you ever seen a crankshaft, an axle housing, or even a lone tire win a race at Indianapolis? I claim that the "mystical entity" lurks in the complex and precisely correct connections of the parts, not in the parts themselves.

I disagree.

The crankshafts, axle housings, lone tires, etc, are doing precisely the SAME thing sitting in the junkyard, as a working race car is doing at Indianapolis.

They are ALL just obeying the standard laws of physics that all atoms obey.

There is no difference here. You are creating a "subjective" difference by creating larger contexts and pushing those onto these physical objects and events.

There is no "emergent property" associated with an Indianapolis race car.

That whole concept is a bogus concept. The race car isn't doing anything other than obeying the primal laws of physics just like atoms do. Nothing "new" has emerged.

You don't need any "new" laws of physics to describe what the race car is doing that don't already apply to atoms. And therefore it's actually incorrect, bogus, and even dishonest, to claim that some "New Property" has emerged.

That whole concept is baloney. It's just a meaningless abstract idea made up by men. It has no basis in reality.

In fact, if it did have any basis then some "NEW LAW OF PHYSICS" would need to also emerge with it.

Can you please tell me what "NEW LAW OF PHYSICS" has emerged with this Indianapolis race car of yours that doesn't already apply to the atoms the race car is made of?

[JohnPaul]

[Replying to post 21 by Divine Insight]

Divine Insight wrote:

You don't need any "new" laws of physics to describe what the race car is doing that don't already apply to atoms. And therefore it's actually incorrect, bogus, and even dishonest, to claim that some "New Property" has emerged.

As long as you are making up your own definitions, I can't dispute the superficial correctness of your logic, but it is no better than St. Thomas Aquinas' proof of the existence of God by arbitrarily giving the name "God" to his First Cause, without the slightest logical support for it.

I didn't claim that a "New Property" had emerged. I claimed that an Emergent Property had emerged, using the usual definition of that, and not your completely new and far-fetched definition as something completely outside the physical laws of the universe. What is your justification for your definition?

[Divine Insight]

What is your justification for your definition?

Awareness is my justification.

Are atoms aware? Is matter/energy aware?

If the answer to this question is no, then how can we be aware if we are just atoms doing our thing?

Something TOTALLY NEW would have had to have emerged. A whole brand new property of the universe - AWARENESS. The ability to be aware of something.

This is a property that based on a purely secular materialistic model atoms (or matter/energy) did not originally have.

This is why I am suggesting that if we simply accept as a premise that they did innately have this property then there is no problem.

But without that premise in place, then how does matter/energy magically become able to be aware? That's a property that wasn't innate to the stuff of the universe according to the pure secular materialistic worldview.

This all seems pretty straight-forward to me.

[JohnPaul]

[Replying to post 23 by Divine Insight]

Divine Insight:

This is why I am suggesting that if we simply accept as a premise that they did innately have this property then there is no problem.

But without that premise in place, then how does matter/energy magically become able to be aware? That's a property that wasn't innate to the stuff of the universe according to the pure secular materialistic worldview.

This all seems pretty straight-forward to me.

No problem??? Your premise that inanimate matter can be inherently aware in itself is a far bigger problem than awareness and consciousness itself. I am willing to admit the possibility of some unknown mystical force at work in the universe, but this goes much too far. You will have to give an extensive explanation of how this might be possible before I can even consider it. Sorry.

[Divine Insight]

No problem??? Your premise that inanimate matter can be inherently aware in itself is a far bigger problem than awareness and consciousness itself. I am willing to admit the possibility of some unknown mystical force at work in the universe, but this goes much too far. You will have to give an extensive explanation of how this might be possible before I can even consider it. Sorry.

I'm not asking you to consider it. I'm merely saying that it's a workable model.

I also don't claim to be able to explain it. In fact, I personally feel that it's utterly absurd that humans keep demanding explanations for everything.

Where is it written that there needs to be an explanation for everything that humans can comprehend?

[JohnPaul]

No problem??? Your premise that inanimate matter can be inherently aware in itself is a far bigger problem than awareness and consciousness itself. I am willing to admit the possibility of some unknown mystical force at work in the universe, but this goes much too far. You will have to give an extensive explanation of how this might be possible before I can even consider it. Sorry.

I'm not asking you to consider it. I'm merely saying that it's a workable model.

I also don't claim to be able to explain it. In fact, I personally feel that it's utterly absurd that humans keep demanding explanations for everything.

Where is it written that there needs to be an explanation for everything that humans can comprehend?

Unless you are a Biblical prophet carrying stone tablets written by God and God is still growling on the mountaintop behind you, you bloody well better explain it before you expound it unto us mere mortals.

[Divine Insight]

Unless you are a Biblical prophet carrying stone tablets written by God and God is still growling on the mountaintop behind you, you bloody well better explain it before you expound it unto us mere mortals.

Why?

If you think that science has an explanation for reality then you've been duped.

Show me someone who has an explanation for reality?

The scientific community has done a very good job of pulling the wool over everyone's head if they have have convinced people that they have an explanation for what's actually going on.

They most certainly do not.

I've been a scientist my entire life, and if there is anything I've learned over the years is that science has no answers at all to the deepest questions. And just because it has answers to the superficial questions doesn't mean diddly squat.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because science can describe superficial things this means that it somehow miraculously has the power to explain everything. That would be a grave mistake to make for sure.

[JohnPaul]

Unless you are a Biblical prophet carrying stone tablets written by God and God is still growling on the mountaintop behind you, you bloody well better explain it before you expound it unto us mere mortals.

Why?

If you think that science has an explanation for reality then you've been duped.

Show me someone who has an explanation for reality?

The scientific community has done a very good job of pulling the wool over everyone's head if they have have convinced people that they have an explanation for what's actually going on.

They most certainly do not.

I've been a scientist my entire life, and if there is anything I've learned over the years is that science has no answers at all to the deepest questions. And just because it has answers to the superficial questions doesn't mean diddly squat.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because science can describe superficial things this means that it somehow miraculously has the power to explain everything. That would be a grave mistake to make for sure.

Science has a long way to go to explain everything, but it has made tremendous progress over the past couple of centuries and is trying very hard. You sound like you have given up.

I just finished reading a post in another thread by another person in this forum who is firmly convinced that science is a vast worldwide conspiracy over the past century to deceive us all that Relativity is real and not a deliberate fairytale, as he claims. Perhaps you and he should get together. He has a lot of other juicy conspiracy theories, if nothing else. Oh, well. Good night.

[JohnPaul]

[Replying to post 27 by Divine Insight]

Divine Insight wrote:

Why?

I have been thinking about your question overnight, and I now agree there may be good reasons for not giving a scientific explanation for your claims of inanimate awareness. For example, you could bottle tap water and peddle it as a self-aware directed cure for impotency. Or mount a rock on a pedestal, start a cult around it, and persuade all the young girls that your Holy Self-aware Rock wants them to have sex with you.

[Divine Insight]

Science has a long way to go to explain everything, but it has made tremendous progress over the past couple of centuries and is trying very hard. You sound like you have given up.

My point is that everything that science has "explained" thus far is superficial. And this includes things that seem to be as profound as evolution, or the fact that universe itself evolved, or that there was an apparent Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. Or even the time dilation discovered by Albert Einstein. Or the curvature of a fabric of spacetime describe be General Relativity. Even what we have discovered in Quantum Mechanics is basically 'superficial knowledge'.

What do I mean by "superficial knowledge"?

Well, all of these explanations are nothing more than descriptions of what we observe to be happening around us. It's also true that they are almost always descriptions that are based on quantitative relationships (i.e. mathematical relationships).

And there's the irony right there. What is a mathematical (or quantitative) relationship? Well, it's nothing more than an observation that our universe appears to behave in ways that can be described in this way. In other words, it's a discovery that our universe is basically controlled by it's own quantitative nature.

Fine. That certainly "explains" why the universe behaves the way it does.

However, why does the universe have this type of behavior in the first place?

Science has NO CLUE.

As a matter of fact, science doesn't even have a clue why all these fundamental quantitative variables have their quantitative values.

In other words, all that science has done is observe what's happening around us and explain it all in terms of its own quantitative relationships. But science has no clue why the universe behaves this way to begin with. Nor does it have a clue why any of the fundamental quantitative constants have the values they have.

In other words, science as explained NOTHING as to why the universe is the way it is. All it's done is that given the unexplained premise that the universe behaves quantitatively we then then explain why it is indeed behaving the way it is.

That is a totally "superficial" explanation.

To think that this line of reasoning can ever culminate in an explanation of all of reality is, quite frankly, extremely naive.

Moreover, just look at Quantum Mechanics. The mathematical quantitative observation there is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that clearly states that we can NEVER know what is going on below a certain quantitative value known as the Planck's Constant.

In short, Quantum Mechanics is a scientific mathematical theory that tells us that this kind of "superficial" quantitative analysis of our universe MUST eventually reach a DEAD END.

The most powerful theory in all of modern science today, predicts that this approach to analyzing everything in terms of mathematical quantitative relationships must meet with demise at the quantum level.

Therefore, science itself has predicted its own demise in terms of being able to explain things by merely observing their quantitative behaviors.

So science itself has predicted this.

So my conclusions are scientific.

I simply accept the ultimate prediction of science itself, whereas you don't even seem to realize that this prediction even exists. It's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics, or what Neils Bohr refers to as "The Principle of Complementarity"

So the scientific method of explaining everything in terms of quantitative relationships may not even be remotely suited for investigations into the true nature of reality.

I just finished reading a post in another thread by another person in this forum who is firmly convinced that science is a vast worldwide conspiracy over the past century to deceive us all that Relativity is real and not a deliberate fairytale, as he claims. Perhaps you and he should get together. He has a lot of other juicy conspiracy theories, if nothing else. Oh, well. Good night.

Oh please.

Come on JohnPaul. I'm not rejecting anything that science has discovered thus far. I totally accept biological evolution. I have no problem believing that we evolved from primates, or even slime mold. I totally accept the evolution of the universe and how the elements were formed in the guts of stars. I have no problem believing and accepting all quantitative observations that show that our universe began as a big bang some 14 billion years go.

I believe we went to the moon, etc., etc,. etc.

I believe in Special Relativity.

I believe in General Relativity.

I believe in Quantum Mechanics.

No way would I support that science is a fraudulent conspiracy.

I'm not claiming that science is a fraud.

I'm just pointing out that it does indeed have limitations.

And that in fact, science itself predicts what these limitations must be via the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

I fully accept all of science.

You seem to be the one who either doesn't accept, or doesn't fully understand, the implications of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and how this relates to the scientific method of trying to explain all of reality using quantitative observations.

This is a DEAD END of the method of explaining things using quantitative observations.

So I'm just accepting what science itself has already predicted.

There is no scientific reason for me to continue to cling to the idea that observations based upon quantitative relationships are going to continue to pan out forever.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, or the "Principle of Complementarity" is a death sentence to the scientific method of explaining things via quantitative relationships.

And that is a truth of modern science today.

I just speak the truth.

Isn't that what we are all supposed to ultimately be interested in?