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The Physics of Consciousness
Here's some questions to mull in front of the screen: Why are we here? Where have the Gods all gone?
Harvard entomologist James Wilson wrote in the late l970's that no species, including the human one, has any real purpose beyond the imperatives created by its particular genetic history.
Individual species, he wrote, may have tremendous potential for material and mental progress, but at the core they lack any direction beyond that in which their genetic and molecular architecture steer them.
Wilson believes the human mind is constructed in a way that locks it onto this pre-ordained track and forces it to make choices on a purely biological basis.
His notion is part of one of the oldest feuds in philosophy, science and the humanities - is there really free will, or are conscience and consciousness merely byproducts of electricity, impulses, genes and molecules?
The essence of Wilson's argument is that the brain exists because it promises the survival and multiplication of the genes that direct its assembly. The human mind, then, is a device for survival and reproduction, with reason just one of the techniques used to achieve that goal. All other functions of human consciousness - creativity, anger, exploration, adventure - exist either in support of this goal, or are inconsequential.
Despite all the advances in biological science and genetics, physical reality remains mysterious - even to physicists - because of what Wilson called the "extreme improbability" that it was constructed to be understood by the human mind.
"We can reverse that insight," wrote Wilson, "to note with still greater force that the intellect was not constructed to understand atoms or even to understand itself but to promote the survival of humans, and the genes of humans."
The reflective person thus knows that his life is in some incomprehensible manner guided through biological ontogeny, a more or less fixed order of life stages. With all the drive, wit, love, pride, anger, hope and anxiety that characterize the species, he will in the end be certain of only one thing: helping to perpetuate the cycle that created him. Almost everything else is up in the air, one theory as good as another.
This is heavy stuff, increasingly brought into focus by technological and scientific revolutions - artificial intelligence, nano-technology, genetic research - that might tell us whether Wilson is on-target.
If he's right, the dilemma is enormous: we have no particular place to go as a species. We lack a common or universal goal beyond our pre-determined biological nature.
In the next century, it's possible that humankind can conquer technology, stabilize politics, solve the ongoing crises in energy, poverty and materials, avert nuclear and other war, and begin to control reproduction. That would bring the world a stable eco-system for the first time.
But what then?
If this dilemma holds any interest for you, try reading "The Physics of Consciousness, The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life," by Evan Harris Walker, physicist and director of the Walker Cancer Institute.
For more than a thousand years, writes Walker in this complex and haunting book, philosophers, scientists and theologians have battled furiously to explain the phenomenon of human consciousness, believed to be unique among the world's species.
What is it? Where does it come from? What is its purpose?
The answer, says Walker, is in quantum and Newtonian physics. Using "Bell's Theorem" - the notion that one particle can instantly influence the behavior of another, Walker unveils his notions of the intricacies of electron tunneling in the brain.
He also undertakes a mystical, profoundly geeky meditation on spirituality, consciousness and quantum physics, three disciplines not traditionally linked to one another.
"We want to ask, is there a God? Does my life have meaning and purpose? Science, we are told, says that even to ask about God is beyond its scope." But this, Walker argues, is not true. Either there is no such thing as God, or science - which embodies our ability to reason - must be able to frame the question and provide us with the answers.
Walker takes us on an amazing journey into what he calls the "engines of the mind," from membranes of nerve cells which maintain electric fields, to the synapse, the junction between neurons, the site of what he calls "quantum choice" a major intersection of human consciousness.
Quantum physics and mechanics create a mechanical picture of consciousness, Walker says, "consciousness arising out of the very observer-dependent processes that go on in the brain as they do in the laboratories of physicists, in the hearts of atoms, and in the cores of stars." With an observer in the brain, this consciousness selects the things that happen in the external world.
Out of this arises a picture of what the fabric of reality is.
Walker's highly personal search for the meaning of life began half a century ago when the woman he loved died of leukemia. He set out find out what human beings really are and what, if anything, remains when the tissues of the brain and body have ceased their functions. Surprisingly, he looked to physics, not religion or spirituality for some answers, and ended up wedding science to original notions of God.
"A universe that has only matter cannot have consciousness and cannot have will," he concludes. "The picture painted to explain the material world, orderly but without God, has failed to work." Einstein, writes Walker, could see "the print of God's hand" on creation exteding to the edges of the cosmos, but he failed to see us there, he failed to see the implications of mind for physics, and he failed to see anything but the shadow of God." Walker sees all those things.
Warning: This isn't an easy book to read. It's dense, painful and centered heavily around Zen meditations and physics as the key to life, meaning and consciousness. But Walker asks a few of the biggest questions that there are, and shows us how in the right hands and sensibilities, quantum physics can relate very powerfully to much more than science.
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
Sheep
I'd be careful using that word in a derogatory sense. If Jesus were alive today, that's what he'd call you.
"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want." Psalm 23:1
Not trying to start a fight, just pointing out an ironic derogatory remark.
Funny link 1, funny link 2
from funny link 2
"The sheep that are My own hear and are listening to My voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never lose it or perish throughout the ages. And no one is able to snatch them out of My hand. My Father, Who has given them to Me, is greater and mightier than all; and no one is able to snatch [them] out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are One. " John 10 : 25-30
+&x
Intelligence, reasoning, consciousness and imagination - some of the things that separate us humans (to one degree or another) from our animal brethren here on earth - are, I believe, a toolkit of mutations that has proven (so far) to be superbly effective at insuring our survival.
Where other animals tend to specialize, in terms of diet, climate and whatnot, humans are built to adapt and infest all the nooks and crannys of the globe. An earlier species of human (neanderthal) got squeezed out by us due to the fact that they were strict vegetarians, with large teeth for grinding things up. We have molars for grinding AND incisors for tearing (meat). We also have no compunctions about pouncing on a fly-and-maggot-ridden kill or carrion and carting it off to the wife and kids.
All animals specialize and we are no different. Thing is, we specialize in NOT specializing! I think this led to the consciousness 'mutation' due to the development of our imagination (forebrain) which was constantly working out scenarios involving potential threats and possible tactics to overcome them. Eskimos had to 'figure out' how to not freeze and get fish from beneath the ice. Elsewhere, tribesmen had to 'figure out' how get screeching monkeys down from the trees and into their stomachs. Meanwhile, lions, tigers and bears were everywhere. Paranoia is nothing new. It's what got us here!
What we have now, with cities, literature, religions and whatnot, are like the creamy head on a pint of Guinness. So thick and rich we can draw a smiley face on it, which we do, and call it God, which is fine, because one of the side-effects of consciousness, imagination and self-awareness is the awareness of Death and Oblivion. It is root to the very nature of self-awareness to want to 'keep going', beneath which is also the drive to 'keep the race going', which is why some folks commit suicide and/or sacrifice themselves for their brothers. The notion of God helps us focus on the 'keep going' part rather than the Death and Oblivion part. For some, the notion of God lets them relenquish their hold on the Death and Oblivion fixation for the first time, which is why there is such a feeling of release and exhaltation upon becoming 'saved' or 'enlightened'.
Hopefully, our imaginative forebrain won't create a paranoid delusion that inspires us to do ourselves in completely. The fore-brains of cultists who believe that commiting suicide will magically take them to a waiting spaceship hiding behind a comet have worked against them. They have come to view the world as such an overwhelmingly threatening and evil place that an absurd fantasy seemed like 'the only way out'. Oh well. I guess we should thank them for sacrificing themselves, as their over-active and over-paranoid forebrains were a bad mutation for the race as a whole. The happy medium lies somewhere between the farmer who says "Yep. That thar cow is dead." and the fringe-science-conspiracy-addict who says, "It was done by Aliens! There going to invade! We have to prepare!" One of those two will go home, eat, and have a good night's sleep, while the other is likely to electrocute himself while rigging his compound with an electric fence. Even if the aliens *do* invade, a good night's sleep and a full belly will go a long way to save your hide!
Interesting stuff.
Keep Going!
**>>BELCH
Learn to read first, and then post. "It turned out" that neither universe nor humans behave in deterministic Newtonian fashion.
Nonsense. 'It turned out' that things going at close to the speed of light don't behave in a Newtonian manner. 'It turned out' that things at an incredibly small scale or incredibly high energy level don't behave in a Newtonian manner. Since I know of no human being who is travelling close to the speed of light, infintesimally small, or possessing of incredible energy, none of these can be applied to human beings. On the macro scale, Newtonian physics still applies perfectly.
You are talking efficiency, I am talking justice. From a utilitarian point of view you are
correct, just the same as it makes utilitarian sense to kill severely malformed children at
birth. From a morality point of view, however, there is that big problem of choice.
You are basically asserting that any choice which is not random is not a choice. This is incorrect. If I have a choice to vacation in Florida or in Montana, I will put a lot of thought into both options, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a decision based on that. If you 'rewound' reality to before I made the choice, I would make the same decision because I would still be the same person, and would thus approach it in the same way, with the same concerns, and collecting the same information. Does this mean I didn't make a choice? Of course not. I merely had a reason for choosing the way I did. I different person in the same situation would likely choose differently.
From a moral standpoint, deterministic psychology merely says that we must act according to who we are. I find this a much firmer ground to base an ethical system on than the proposition that our choices are essentially die rolls. If that is the case, and human behavior is actually inherently unpredictable (read: random), than how can we hold anyone responsible for anything?
"I'm sorry, your honor, but I only killed him because that's what the random quantum fluctuations in my neurons made me do. In the same circumstances, I could do something entirely different."
Now that's a pretty good defense.
Eric Christian Berg
Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness: An Introduction
Mari Jibu & Kunio Yasue
Karl Pribram was consulted on this one, I believe. Interesting concepts on how important water - simple water (!) - is to consciousness. More non-locality stuff - it's everywhere.
As an aside, associate of mine (and Pribram's) once told me "DNA is a holographic quantum information decoder". Wierd stuff. But it makes the universe a big cool place.
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I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
He?... He?!... HE???
How do y'a know it's a he? Did you see "him"?
Oh wait, looks like you're one of those Christian fellows who worship the One True God. Sucker! You could've gone with any other religion, but you had to be a Christian. Well I guess it's a good thing you believe in him so strongly, or else you'd be headed for Hell, eh? (along with the rest of us).
How can you fall for that shit man? I mean, come on, we're at the end of the 20th century and there are still millions of people running around praising The One True God, and raising their children with those beliefs (ad infinitum...) And then of course, there's always the folks who go their entire life without a second thought about it's meaning and then at the very last minute, on the brink of death, they convert! Hey, I wonder if that could be some kind of built-in self-preservation instinct? Nah... I'm probably just crazy or something.
Your God is dead. Welcome to Reality, where things aren't always so nice and romantic. Maybe you should've taken the blue pill.
Or in the transactional interpretation, at the moment of observation, a signal is sent backwards in time (since an electron travelling foward in time is quantum mechanically identical to a positron moving backwards in time and vice versa) to the moment of the decision, interacting with the system an that point and causing one choice to have been selected at that moment. Net result : there is always (and has always) either been an alive cat or a dead cat. Sorry, that's probably not the clearest of explanations is it?
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God is my Palm Pilot.
...it is ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe. As such, it is patently stupid for any scientist to reject the possibility that this did, indeed, happen in the case of THIS Universe.
Following that it would be patently stupid (PS) to not think that we could do the same. Following that it would be PS to not do it. So get hacking.
+&x
A lot of people on sci.physics don't buy that Raub "poll" (it gets dredged up periodically). No one has ever been able to track down the actual data or find a citation to it other than a cryptic "unpublished" reference by Tipler, it was cited as being conducted several years after Feynman's death, etc.
"Universes made only of matter cannot have consciousness..."
If we include energy as included in matter, then that describes the current universe (composed of matter/energy).
And hence it's false since (I dunno about the rest of you but) I'm conscious.
I think this guy is just afraid of living without an exteriorly imposed purpose and a chance at resurrection. Deal with it, big guy. Not everyone panics as the EXIT approaches.
Perhaps a better book review system is needed, so that every book that appears doesn't say 'Oh my God! This book changed my life!!!'. Ok, that was a little hyperbole. I would prefer to see a selection of books reviewed and rated relative to one another. It gives a better reference point than just one review in isolation. I am assuming that the people who submit reviews have done at least a little reading in the field of the book that they are reviewing, and can thus give some kind of a meaningful feedback on how the book stands up to similar works in its field. Of course if you don't trust the reviewer, you can always ignore the recomendations.
--locust
Then I studied physics. The strongest evidence Iknow for God is the nature of the physical universe. It's not rational evidence: it's emotional, because what is important about the order is not it's existence, but its beauty and (most of all) elegance. I found (and find) the cycles of increasingly useful approximations (Aristotle to Newton, Newton to Einstein, Einstein to Quantum) awesome to behold. And cannot conceive how they could be in the abscense of a creating will.
Ultimately, the existence of will is simpler than physics. As such, if there is one thing uncreated, it seems to me that it must be a will, not the myriad laws of physics, in all their elegant complexit.
So, through this rather tortuous and illogical path, I came to believe in a personal God. How I came to believe that Jesus personified him is another story. The point is that my religion does not stand in opposition to my knowledge of physics (I majored in Physics as an undergrad), but is supported by it. I think the whole "reason vs. religion" debate is nothing but a straw man, just waiting for wide-spread good sense to knock it down.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
While most (including myself) would tend to agree, keep in mind that there are those who don't. Descartes, for instance, believed he had found proof (i.e. scientific fact) that God existed. In his Meditations, he uses his certain knowledge that he himself exists to show that there must also exist a perfect God. Dewey Larson, in his book "Beyond Space and Time," believed he had established the existance of a non-material sector and beings that would exist there (although not necessarily God specifically).
You can take that or leave it, the point being that you don't absolutely HAVE to rely on a leap of faith to posit a God.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
Reminds me of the book _The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ by a psychologist by the name os Julian Joyce (I believe). Absolutely fascinating information, simply fascinating. If you are interested in consciousness science, and are looking to read the book reviewed, try your hand at _The Origins of Consciousness..._ very good read!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I can't be certain that's the guy, but yeah, that's the theory I'm referring to.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Dennet's book is good, but he doesn't delve beyond a certain level. This may sound arrogant, but I don't give a fuck: I had already figured out the truth of what Dennett says before he published that book (with help from stuff I read by Susan Blackmoore). If you truly felt that he fulfilled the promise of the title, then you need to re-read it, it must have left you in a state of confusion.
a t.html
Dennet avoids the more troubling implications of consciousness by deftly censoring the lines of reasoning that he allows himself to follow. His muliple minds model is correct - there is no cartesian theatre - but this still begs the question: what kinds of physical processes give rise to the thoughts one perceives ?
Following that path leads to surprising results,
http://www.melloworld.com/Reciprocality/r4/addm
which I'm sure you'll find ridiculous. If you dislike my conclusions then tell me what's wrong with my reasoning rather than just telling me I'm wrong because you dislike the conclusion.
You think you're scientific, but I suspect you're just anti-spiritual. The difference is: science is interested in truth, and takes nothing for granted. Anti-spiritualists are those who take the abscence of any form of spiritual reality as a matter of faith which cannot be questioned.
Any evidence disputing this faith is assumed wrong, since it leads to a conclusion they have already discarded. The anti-spiritualist mentality comes from the mistaken belief that you already has a basic understanding of everything.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
As for Penrose, maybe you'd prefer less vituperation and more arguments about why Penrose is wrong. (I think he is too, but that doesn't make his book handwaving drivel, just mistaken.)
Don't count on it. The fools will simply proclaim that the artificial consciousness is just 'faking it', and that it cannot be real consciousness -- nevermind the referrential incoherence of such a distinction, or the fact that it essentially amounts to an argument from ignorance.
Most people believe what they want to believe -- and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
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Victor Danilchenko
As others pointed out, you are assuming that the universe is deterministic. But other than that.. why should you believe your own thoughts to be true even if the universe is not materialistic?
Focusing on "conciousness", whatever that is, seems a bad approach to understanding brains. We still don't know how the lizard-brain works, and a big fraction of the human brain (vision, hearing, motor control, short-term planning) is basically the same as the lizards. We know that lizards and lower mammals can operate without much, if any, cortex, and that the cortex basically back-seat-drives the more primitive portions of the brain. The higher mammals seem to have most of the human emotions, although not the verbal or planning skills. So we probably need to understand the lower levels first, the ones that are generally not considered "conscious". Introspection won't help here.
Trying to figure out the higher functions alone hasn't been particularly successful. (There have been big successes in understanding specific domains, like chess and symbolic integration, but those results don't generalize.) Top-down AIs attempt to do so in the 1980s is sometimes called the "great beached whale of computer science". (Visit the Knowledge Systems Lab at Stanford's computer science department, where a quiet roomful of empty cubicles gathers dust. That crowd thought they were going to change the world in the 1980s.)
There's a long Man Is Special thread in philosophy. Aristotle thought that Man Is Special because man can do arithmetic, but that's a bit dated. The idea keeps coming around, mostly because of species egotism. It's probably bogus; humans have at least 60% DNA compatibility with the apes. Humans are an upgraded ape - get used to it.
As a physics issue, it may turn out that some mechanism like quantum computing allows biological brains to have more compute power than we'd expect from the size of the brain. Finding out whether that's going on, and if it is, how it works, is a real issue, and it's not philosophy.
Slashdot's audience includes a lot of brilliant, but not-fully-formed young minds, young minds who with the proper guidance and background in scientific knowledge could go on to tackle Important Problems like human consciousness. Instead of providing solid knowledge, Slashdot peddles sensationalistic, second-hand ignorance that anyone with 101-level knowledge of the subject could recognize as nonsense. I think it's criminal to take such a precious audience and mislead them so horribly.
Katz rarely knows what he's talking about. When he does, it's like the proverbial stopped clock that's right twice a day. Slashdot shouldn't be giving that stopped clock the time of day.
whuppy enjoys smelling like diesel fuel
I haven't read Emperor, but Penrose's concepts are further explored at Stuart Hameroff's website . It explains a helluva lot without invoking any God(dess) which, to me, is much more convincing than any theory that does.
How do you implement free will with material that cannot, by our best understanding, "choose" how to behave? It is important to note here that quantum laws do not allow choice. Randomness, yes, but not choice.
Again, the problem is cleared up merely by defining your terms. Simply, what does the 'free' in free will mean? Here's what Webster has to say:
2 a: not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being : choosing or capable of choosing for itself
So, basically, what it boils down to is that free will merely refers to the ability of an entity to make decisions not based on simple reaction to stimuli or due to external forces, but based on its own nature and consciousness. To choose is to select an option freely after consideration. Thus, a person being bound to act according to their nature is not 'not free', because free refers to a lack of external coercion.
Thus, we do not think a person has freedom to choose when someone has a gun to their head, but we rarely consider their own beliefs and values as denying them free will. In fact, their beliefs and values are what make their free will possible, they are the standard by which considerations of options are possible and a decision is made.
Eric Christian Berg
quick rundown on the mechanism I've understood as the bridge between quantum (small) weirdness and consciousness (large), which is generally insanely improbable: wave functions can exist for an unusually long time at high heats in certain structures. microtubules, which form a lot of the cytoskeleton seem to be one of those structures. really strangely, quantum phenomena inside the microtubules are supposed to change the shape of the microtubules. the two types of cells which react most dramatically to changes in the shape of the microtubules are neurons and the little understood glia (glia make up most of the mass of the brain, I think) so if quantum phenomena can alter, even occasionally, synaptic phenomena, a plausible explanation for a dualistic interpretation of the universe exists, in which there is more to the world than matter. can't be proven, but hasn't been very well disproven yet, given the neuroscience and complex quantum behavior are still in their infancy.
... and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
LOL. I'll have to remember that next time I talk to someone with religious views. Seriously though we can't even decide on a definition of consciousness, let alone prove it. We should probably start on humans before trying to tell whether a machine is conscious :)
Where religion can go wrong (and at times has), is when religion inspires adherents to 'keep religion going' rather than simply 'keep going'. Mimetics, I believe, deals with ideas as 'living entities' that seek to further their own existence much as the rest of us do. Religious thinking can lead to obsessive/paranoid thinking, though it by no means does so neccessarily. We have witch trials, ethnic cleansing and the Inquisition to illustrate this. We also have charities, fellowship and goodwill to express the benefits of religious thinking.
That's why, I believe, religion must never be suppressed, but must also never be allowed to rule. Without religion, men can become cold and calculating to excess. When it rules, people are forgotten, and palaces and pyramids are erected at their expense.
Such is life.
**>>BELCH
Well, just for some food for thought. Remember the double slit experiment in quantumn mechanics? Remember how an electron is aware of the path it takes to choose one slit or the other before it takes that trip? Maybe that awareness is consciousness.
I contend that if YOU are really making a choice here (instaed of following some random principle) you would do exactly the same thing. In fact free will seems to require at least some minor form of predictability.
You're ignoring one extremely important point. And I think a few people have been trying to hit it but have been missing a bit. It's the point of indecision. In fuzzy logic (a fairly well accepted analogue to the brain) this could be expressed as 0.5 on the measurement of "Do I save them or me?"
This is where the unpredictability lies. The individual is on the fence, so to speak. Not even (s)he can guess what her outcome will be until it happens. Nor can you guarantee that even when you know the outcome of the previous trial.
Intriguing thought though.
Cheers,
DQuinn
os.system("perl -e 'print \"My first Python Script.\"'")
On the macro scale, Newtonian physics still applies perfectly.
Since we were talking about humans, do you want to apply Newtonian physics to human thoughts, human morality and human free will?? Must be, since we sure didn't discuss the problems of human bodies. Be my guest, it should be fun to watch.
You are basically asserting that any choice which is not random is not a choice.
Nope, that is not my position. My statement is that any choice that is completely predetermined is not a choice (and no, I don't have any problems with partially determined choices). Besides, since we are throwing the word "random" around quite a bit, please consider for a moment what exactly does it signify.
If that is the case, and human behavior is actually inherently unpredictable (read: random), than how can we hold anyone responsible for anything?
Because people act by making more or less free choices and are thus accountable for their choices. Again, I invite you to think on the meaning of the word "random".
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
and he said that the author spent most of the chapters trying to sell his Zen Buddhist meets physics stuf, and only addresses physics in the last chapter. He also uses as a primary reference for the last chapter a paper that he himself wrote back in the 1970's on the subject.
In other words, physics this book ain't.
Mr. X
Yogurt
Tim Mitchell
Mooselessness at tim.pitas.com
That particular logic is for athiests, who believe that there exists nothing outside of a given finite set of beings, and yet also insist there is no supreme being. I'm merely trying to point out that there is a falacy there - you can't have an unbounded, finite, linear set. If, by athiesm, you determine that the set if finite and linear, it must also then be bounded. And, if it's bounded, it has a furthest extent.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
i would have just read it.
I personally don't flame Katz, but next time how about a review instead of the details
That's not true (or at least, Dennett doesn't say it). Dennett is an eliminativist about qualia (the "raw feels" of consciousness, above and beyond their content), but definitely not about consciousness itself. Dennett is too subtle to try to tear away an inexplicable "consciousness" in favour of an equally inexplicable "mind". Because you're not helping by just saying "mind". Is "mind" something that a mobile made of beer cans could have? Because a mobile made of beer cans could certainly represent a Universal TUring Machine.
Dennett is a _reductionist_ about consciousness -- he thinks that consciousness _just_is_ the processing of certain kinds of information in a certain kind of way (where "information" is equally murkily defined, but that's someone else's problem). This isn't the same as saying there's no such thing.
And the reply to his suggestion that consciousness is just information processing is -- well, it certainly doesn't feel that way.
It presents a very compelling theory of how the mind works.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
As Orson Scott Card (semi-seriously?) pointed out, "God did it" is always the simplest explanation. (By virtue of removing the question from further inquiry...)
The question of Time. Why did God, if he exists, create it? An old man let me in on this secret of the ages. Simple. God created time so that everything wouldn't happen at once.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
As I see it, there are two basic problems with invoking QM (and Heisenberg) to establish that "free will" is scientifically consistent. First of all, the evidence (at least that of which I am aware) that QM effects play a significant role in the brain is pretty pathetic. Second, even if they were important, all it would establish is that our bahavior is at least partially random, and that the relative probabilities of different actions can be described deterministically. Frankly, I don't see how this helps free will any, at least relative to a strictly deterministic view.
Personally, I don't see any problem with free will being consistent with either. Scientific laws are descriptive, not proscriptive. Nobody will throw you in jail for violating a scientific law. Rather, they describe what will happen. If my sister tells you I like lobster, and will order it whenever I am at a particular resturant, she would be right. She is not, however, forcing me to choose lobster. I will order it, and furthermore will do so of my own free will.
How powerful should such a computer be? A human brain has some 100 billion neurons, each with about 1000 inputs, capable of doing about 100 calculations / second. This means a total of about 1e16 floating point calculations / second, and about 1e15 bytes of storage. My Pentium3 does 5e8 floating point additions or multiplications per second, and has 1e10 bytes of storage capacity, which means a human brain has, roughly, a data processing capacity between 100 thousand to 10 million Pentium3 computers. Assuming Moore's law keeps up, we will have human brain equivalent home computers in thirty years or so.
Until we can experiment with a powerful enough computer, all we can do is play with conjectures and hypotheses. Not very productive, and leads to a lot of flaming. Philosophy is essential, but not sufficient, for progress
The European civilization fell in this same trap regarding physical sciences. Aristotle was undoubtedly one of the greatest European philosphers. But he made the mistake of believing philosophy alone could explain everything. He elaborated very logical conjectures on what should be the behavior of physical objects. His conjectures were so logical that nobody disputed them. Nobody ever tried to put them to experimental proof. European science stood still for nearly two thousand years.
Then came Galileo. He started doing practical experiments on the way objects moved. Galileo started measuring things. And humanity never stopped evolving after that.
There are profound moral implications on this. Slavery existed as long as Aristotelism reigned supreme. Not because Aristotle ever said that slavery was morally good, but because there was no other option. Slavery exited for thousands of years and did not end because of any philosophical or moral conclusions.
Slavery ended with the Industrial Revolution. Slavery became obsolete when the steam engine made machine produced energy cheaper than human produced. By "cheaper" I do not mean costing less money, but costing less resources. You may not have an "owner", but if you have to work endlessly to produce enough for the barest subsistence, you are a slave.
To conclude, when people of different persuasions start arguing and cannot arrive to a mutual agreement, it's time to get some factual, quantitative, hard data. In the next decades we will have ways of testing many different conjectures on human consciousness, and I'm sure of one thing: it doesn't matter if consciousness is unique to humans, or if animals have it too, or if we can create machines having it - it will be fun to find out.
troll, ...They lived in mountains, sometimes stole human maidens, and could transform themselves and prophesy...
Either there is no such thing as God, or science - which embodies our ability to reason - must be able to frame the question and provide us with the answers.
Kant covered the problems with this statement pretty thoroughly in the 18th century, from the preface of The Critique of Pure Reason:
Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as pre-scribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.
I turned off after this slipshod statement. The book sounds like drivel; The Dancing Wu-Li Masters with footnotes.
illegitimii non ingravare
Jesus despises skeptical thinking, and therefore He despises skeptical thinkers. Blind, unquestioning devotion is the only way to salvation. Skeptical thinking is a tool of Satan, and will likely cause you to be slaughtered and tossed into the Lake of Fire to be tortured for all eternity. You'll burn perpetually with other enemies of Christ such as Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, the kid who blocked the tanks in Tianamen Square, and Mahatma Gandhi, all of whom thought "outside the box" and none of whom accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
You'd best watch what you do, what you say, and what you think if you wish to avoid suffering eternal pain!
God isn't dead. He's in your head, right where he aught to be.
Duty now,
Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)
Bowie J. Poag
I'm sorry, but learning ANY kind of abstract communication requires a conciousness. So does self-awareness, for that matter. Awareness of self as an entity is a fundamental requirement for the development of philosophy, art and the concept of personal needs and desires beyond survival and instinct.
The ability to communicate does not in any way require that conciousness exists. When my dog gets hungry, he comes & lets me know. In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (link to overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon) Julian Jaynes says that conciousness is a relatively recent development in human evolution, appearing as recently as 3,000 years ago. Before the development of conciousness humans had a "bicameral mind", where humans were guided by the voices in their heads (we call it schizophrenia today). The bicameral mind can be seen in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and the oldest books of the Bible. The transition to conciousness is seen in the later biblical books.
II What is consciousness?
"It is not to be confused with reactivity. It is not involved in a host of perceptual phenomena. It is not involved in the performance of skills and often hinders their execution. It need not be involved in speaking, writing, listening or reading. It does not copy down experience, as most people think. Consciousness is not at all involved in signal learning and need not be involved in the learning of skills and solutions, which can go on without any consciousness whatever. It is not necessary for making simple judgments or in simple thinking. It is not the seat of reason and indeed some of the most difficult instances of creative reasoning go on without any attending consciousness. And it has no location except an imaginary one" ( Jaynes, J., 1976, The origin of consciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind. pp46-47).
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
The Ape Language debate is a fascinating one, and makes for some fun reading.
Most linguists do dispute the claims that apes have language. At the same time most also grant that apes can use words and phrases and are using symbols to communicate.
The main bone of contention, as you pointed out, is grammer. (The ability to grasp only "the lowest level concepts" is to be expected, these are apes after all!) The work that Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and her team have done with the bonobo Kanzi appears to demonstrate that apes can handle rudimentary grammer. Kanzi can grasp the meanings of sentences that use the same words but different word orders. A trivial example is the sentence pair, "Kanzi come tickle Sue" vs "Sue come tickle Kanzi". (Further examples can be found in Kanzi, The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin.) Similar work has been done with dolphins.
Steve M
The possibility that quantum effects pay a part in consciousness cannot be discounted so easily.
Neurons are amplifiers, they fire above a certain threshold, so input just below the threshold and input just above the threshold result in different outcomes. This makes brains subject to quantum effects (unlike computers incidentally).
Whether those quantum effects are important is unknown.
Given nature's tendancy to make the most out of whatever resources it has, I would say it is far more likely that quantum computation possibilities are exploited rather than ignored. Given two organisms, one that exploits quantum effects to improve it's processing power, and one that doesn't - the determinstic one would have an evolutionary disadvantage and die out.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
If it's random, then there is not choice involved.
... We both walk by an ice-cream place and I decide to buy myself one. The seller says "Which one?" I say "Um... cherry, please". Is my choice random? Well, yes, to some extent. It is random to you since you cannot predict it. It is still a choice? Sure is.
Randomness is a very complicated non-trivial concept. But in any case, let me give you an example. Let's say that I don't have much of a preference in ice-cream: I eat vanilla, and strawberry, and chocholate, and
Sorry, but the physical universe is not bound by our notions of ethics, justice, and accountability.
As I pointed out in another post, I am not talking about the way our universe works. My point is that people who accept that there is no free will should face up to several inescapable consequences from this statement. This discussion is not about physics, but about philosophy, theology and morality.
Ideas of "punishment" and "justice" miss the mark. A killer is a threat to others, therefore we cage him. If we can rehabilitate him such that he is no longer a threat, then we can release him. The question of whether he is "accountable" is not meaningful
You are putting forward a utilitarian viewpoint. This is certainly a feasible viewpoint, but there are some problems with it. Any textbook on Criminal Law should introduce you very interesting discussion revolving around these issues.
Consider a guy caught for shoplifting. He serves his, say, year in jail. You look at him after a year, and he is not reformed at all. Do you advocate keeping in jail until he reforms? Life sentence for shoplifting?
I helped send a mentally ill man to prison just a few days ago, because he was stalking my housemate.... [snip] Was he "accountable" for his actions? The question seems irrelevent, and possibly meaningless.
No, not at all. The answer would determine whether he should go to jail, or to a mental hospital.
For example, let's say that he has a brain tumor which affects his brain. If you consider him accountable for his actions, he should go to jail and serve his term. If he is NOT accountable, he should be free to go as soon as an operation removes the tumor and he is certified as psychologically normal. See the difference?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Reminds me of a quotation that I heard on some PBS science show - I jotted down to use in the Intro of my Master's thesis, but lost the scrap of paper that I wrote it on. Does anyone know who said this (I seem to recall it was a geophysics person, but could be wrong)?:
"It may be that some systems that are so complex that the only usefully predictive model of that system is the system itself."
Which, as a former ecosystem modeller, I came to believe to some degree!
Don't read Atlas Shrugged. The only thing wrong with Rand's logic is that her axioms are not axiomatic. (In other words, her assumptions are just that, assumptions)
Just to take the short route with this argument...
Rand's primary axiom: Existence exists.
Or, in other words: All that exists, exists.
Seems pretty self-evident to me. Further, the only way to argue against it is to refer to either concrete evidence or logical argument. To refer to reality for concrete evidence is to accept the postulate as true, otherwise there would be no value in concrete evidence. From a logical standpoint, there really isn't any basis to argue, since it is very obviously a logical truth.
So, assertions aside, do you have any real argument to back up your claim?
Eric Christian Berg
These days, religion is either dismissed entirely or declared "irrelevant/unknowable." Yet no matter how much technology we develop, we still understand the core issues of life no better than our ancient ancestors.
-cwk.
Doodz! Must cite Godel: A perfect map of the universe (That is, an all-encompassing unified-theory type theory) would have to contain itself (and it's effects upon said universe) implying an infinite-regression/involution/exvolution(?) type thing. (That is, infinity. Infinite information, which no theory can contain blah blah) So the fuzzy edge of "reality" is exposed (In fact, I'm pretty firm on the theory that there's more fuzzy edge than otherwise. It's an island dreamworld...). Look at General Semantics for a long babble about the existence of this fuzzy edge. Or, if you tire of baby talk, look at Zen "philosophy" and Zen Consciousness-alteration techniques. Science may "work", but let's not take it too seriously. There are better ways to masterbate. And fuck for that matter.
Don't know about the other poster, but I've read mere christianity, and to be blunt, it sucks. I'm sure its all well and good for bolstering the intellectual egos of those who agree with him already, but as an atheist, I can tell you that it fails miserably in "proving" xtianity to those who don't believe already. Lewis tends to give a woefully lacking proof and then move on to another topic resting on it. Makes it quite frustrating if you are honestly trying to follow his logic.
As for spirituality vs materialism, some would define spirituality as believing in an idea beyond the material, not neccessarily a reality beyond the material. And I wouldn't tell other people if they're buddists or not. It tends to irritate them.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
These questions have been so often repeated, rephrased and turned around that I do not believe anything new can come of them.
The best possible book about the mysteries of consciousness is, IMHO, The Mind's I by Doug Hofstdater and Daniel Dennet. I do not want to dwell upon how great that book is, so I will merely say that I find it equal, if not superior, to GEB.
On the other hand, I think any attempt to explain the mysteries of consciousness by using quantum mechanics is not misguided, but simply misses the point completely.
Also try this text for an idea of the amount of nonsense that can be said about the subject.
> > "If he's right, the dilemma is enormous: we have no particular place to go as a species.
> > We lack a common or universal goal beyond our pre-determined biological nature."
Hard_code:
> Well...duh... You must have missed Existentialism
And for those not into existentialism, he also missed Carl Sagan.
Had Katz written "If he's right, I [Katz] have an enormous dilemma", I'd have no beef. But he didn't. He projected his psychological needs onto all of us, and I'm calling him on it.
As Sagan might put it - the history of humanity is one of humblings. Jerusalem is not the center of the earth. The Earth is not at the center of the universe. The Sun is not at the center of the galaxy. And the galaxy isn't at the center of the universe either. To be sure, we're incredibly lucky - a universe not created for us managed to evolve us anyways. But it's a damn big universe, and it's not so surprising that somewhere, something like this happened - namely consciousness providing an evolutionary advantage and nature selecting big brains over big teeth and claws, and we're the result.
To assert anything beyond that smacks of hubris of the highest nature. Geocentrism, heliocentrism, the notion that the Milky Way was the entire universe, the notion of the "ascent" of man as the pinnacle of evolution - we've made these mistakes so many times before, must we really make them again, merely to satisfy Jon Katz' need for "a purpose to the species beyond biology?"
The lack of any common or universal goal is a feature, not a bug. Our consciousness enables us to transcend the limitations of our biology. Individuals can choose, for instance, to risk their lives going to the moon, or Mars, or beyond, rather than rutting mindlessly to spawn the next generation. They can dedicate their lives generating marvelous works of art - whether in paint, song, or code.
In short - we can do anything we choose to do - individually, and maybe even collectively - because we have no purpose, not in spite of the fact that we have no purpose.
I think that the author is Julian Jaynes. Excellent book, and way ahead of its time, or maybe an excellent product of a cool time.
I'm sorry, but learning ANY kind of abstract communication requires a conciousness.
I'm not so sure. Bees use abstract communication, the waggle dance, to communicate the direction and size of food sources and new nest sites. Humans have built model bees and have been able to communicate with bees using this 'language'.
Despite this, very few of the scientists that study bees, nor most of the general public (yours truly included) would argue that bees demonstrate conciousness.
Steve M
No, physics is about predicting certain kinds of observables from other observables. It allows us to go from observable ball in the air ro observable ball falls to ground.
Functions are an exact mapping between two sets of events as such it makes sense they are used.
The point being that these things like particles and waves may be intuitevly helpful but are irrelevant to the correctness of the theory. As long as it was mathematically equivalent (it predicted the same observables from the same input) we could use a theory modeled on grapes. Therefore it really isn't kosher to use these concepts as if they were definite statements about the world rather than helpful definitions.
P.S. If your going to resort to personal insults at least have the balls to post as something other than an anonymous coward.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
I found this very informative, and me without my moderator points..
Sigs are awesome huh?
Ayn Rand's idiotic 'objectivist morality' is nothing more then a bunch of easy to think about BS for the intellectually immature who can't deal the real world.
Don't read Atlas Shrugged. The only thing wrong with Rand's logic is that her axioms are not axiomatic. (In other words, her assumptions are just that, assumptions)
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Suppose a sufficiently sophisticated system explained the brain, it's behavior, everything I ever did; take the extreme materialist view, Newtonian or quantum, it really doesn't matter. With a sufficiently accurate description, you can explain everything about the brain, the mind, it's phenomena, qualia, whatever.
It still fails to capture the fact that I experience it. If you can localize this "fact" in your theory, then you have either allowed an irreducible, inexplicable "something" into your theory, in which case it will fail as science, or you have described an automaton that may think it is aware, but is not. In other words, there is no way to tell the difference between your theory with an aware being and your theory with a really good Turing machine that has no true awareness.
The reason scientists don't like this view is that there *is* something irreducible about the fact that we think we are that unfortunately *is* both untestable and unverifiable. You just have to accept that you are studying complexity, and calling that consciousness. You can endlessly describe its form. You will show that a rock has little of this complexity, and that a human has much. You can show that certain aspects of this complexity are an evolutionary advantage, and the biological basis for much or even all of what we think, see, feel. But in the end, you cannot distinguish between things that are aware, and things that are not. The tools of science are just too dull and clumsy, and they are the very best that we have. An immature embrace of this fundamental limitation on what we can know is solipsism. Denial leads scientists and philosophers to conclude that the have identified consciousness, captured it, bottled it. But they have only described its features, not its existence. The attempt is as futile as experiments to detect the "ether" of space; it ends up being a crackpot's quest because you are trying to describe something that has no material reality (you ought to think carefully about what other kinds of reality there are). What a hell you live in if you are convinced that this awareness does not exist, that behind the firestorm of impressions, forms, qualia, platonic objects, that the fact you are aware of these things does not peek through the veil to remind you that your descriptions cannot enclose the fundamental fact that it is, that we are, and that no explanation for this is necessary.
This is not mysticism; far from it. It may be a deeply radical empiricism, or it may be the loftiest epistemology, the Goedel's theorem of the mind. But it's a truth that's been known by humans for as long as humans are what you would call conscious. It's always been here.
It's funny to me to see people make an ancient mistake while thinking it's a modern truth.
Actually, the essays (all, I think, previously published elsewhere) were written by many different contributors.
Great book. Hofstadter and Dennett clearly have their own opinion, but the book presents a variety of views on consciousness.
Whether you choose to save yourself or the children or whether a force of fate makes you is a meaningless question. Accept the outcome fully. All things are parts of the Tao, the universe looking back on itself. You cannot separate yourself from it to say that you make decisions separate from it - individualism is an illusion caused by the knots in your mind drawing your thoughts into circles. Even the smallest butterfly can change the weather in Tibet.
Read Allen Watts, especially talking Zen. And then live your life just as you would have if you had not read it.
Oddly, the author is using Bell's Theorem (which I'm pretty sure is really Bohm's Theorem.)
Isn't Bohm's Theorem the pilot wave theorem? Which although requiring non-local effects isn't the same thing as Bell's Inequality, which simply states that if a certain condition is true then non-local effects must have occured and causality is broken at the quantum level.
As for a good reference, try reading the book Schrodinger's Kittens by John Gribbin. It's got all the answers to what we're talking about, but unfortunately I don't have my copy here at work. Oh well.
Irony:
"Well I don't know you but I would guess no. Einstein was a relatively complex, intelligent scientist. You sound too much like one of those third-rate pseudo-scientists.
"You can always tell the difference because you are comfortable with unsubstantiated fallacy while Einstein honestly pursues pure brutal truth."
Your judgement is your own tablet from the mountaintop. Keep it real.
It's difficult to talk about, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Try reading some of David Chalmers' stuff. Dennett, as much as I respect him, has his head in the sand.
Another serious, and similar, fallacy is shown by Katz' words "is there really free will, or are conscience and consciousness merely byproducts of electricity, impulses, genes and molecules?".
The answer (of course ;-)) is yes, there is "free will" - although what this exactly means is quite different from what the average person, or even the average philosophers, thinks it means - and yes, predetermination of a sort exists, and consciousness _is_ a byproduct of "electricity, impulses, genes and molecules".
Taking this in reverse order, I take exception with the word "merely". The fact that consciousness can emerge from these low-order (but neither trivial nor to be despised) material phenomena is something inherently marvelous and consciousness is all the more precious and remarkable because of it. Postulating some sort of "mental plane", "etheric impulse" or other undifferentiated dei ex machina just trivializes and demeans this issue... any two-bit deity can whip up some sort of consciousness with second-hand spiritual goo, but making it emerge from quantum physics is _real_ skill.
Predetermination here seems to mean that it's somehow demeaning (also in the sense of "losing all meaning") to "lack a common or universal goal beyond our pre-determined biological nature". I disagree. The universe is self-consistent, as its mere existence proves. No abstract goals are necessary; any concrete goals are by definition built-in to the hardware platform.
Regarding free will, the definite argument is given by Raymond Smullyan's "The Tao is Silent", which I recommend to all and sundry... he shows that God, if he exists at all, must necessarily be identical to the universe itself; that God, whether he exists or not, is a Taoist; and that "Free Will" (which Smullyan calls "Free Won't") _is_ necessary but is not what one thinks.
Any recent book on linguistics should back me up on this. Pinker's The Language Instinct would be a good place to start.
My personal impressions:
- Consciousness is probably a quantity, not a quality. If that is the case, then of course apes are conscious, and so are chickens, octopi, trees, and cornflakes... It's just a matter of degree.
- If consciousness is a quality, then I have a hunch that it's intimately linked to language. Not simply the presence of language, but the nature of a particular species' language. The fact that apes have not been able to use human language may not be due to its sheer complexity, but rather to qualities which are only found in human language. (In particular, its connection to Turing Machines...)
Incidentally, didn't the reviewer mean to refer to "Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson", rather than James Wilson?
MSK
Do we have free will? Consciousness? {Fill in your favorite concept here]
The answer is: YES
Because those terms were invented to describe elements of the human experience.
The problem arises when people start assigning (they call it 'deducing', but it ain't) all sorts of imaginary properties to those terms -- e.g. "If my will is truly free, then I should be able to fly by exercise of my free will alone. Otherwise I am a slave to the determinism of physics."
This is *exactly* what most debates on free will or consciousness boil down to -- debating traits that have been assigned (and seem reasonable on cursory examination) to the definitions post facto on th4e basis of imagination. But the term Free Will (consciousness) was coined to describe an experience we have -- and I presume that none of us have had the experience of *sustained* flight (skydivers, hang-gliders and 7-year-old jumping off roofs with towels tied into Superman capes, etc. excluded) by will alone.
True, mankind has turned his will, through conventional means, to tackle the problem of flight, and licked it fairly nicely. But too many new age mystic mistake 'free will' with wishful thinking come to life -- and that's a honored tradition: monotheistic "gods" are often proposed to be able to do whatever they want (omnipotence) which ignores the point that such gods, being the infinitely wise beings they are purported to be, can only *want* to do one thing: "the best thing" (whatever that is)
Hardly satisfying (if you're the type inclined to play these reindeer games) but if anyone doesn't have free will, it's god (nor should S/He, since free will was coined to describe a human experience)
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
What, are you an idiot? You state that we are our mind and then say that the process in which we think prevents us from having free will. We are our brain. It's that simple.
You can break it down however the hell you want - but the fact still remains that *I* make decisions and act because I am my brain.
Having been brought up outside any religious, in particular Christian, tradition, I had no idea how hard it is for westerners to accept the Evoulution until I read this book.
I quote Carl Sagan on the back cover: "A breath of fresh air."
I disagree. There is no mysticism in Hofstadter's thinking.
We probably would agree on a lot of stuff once we sync our terminology, but one major thing just came up:
When you punish evil behavior, you are punishing evil people. Crime reflects a defect in character which will likely result in crime in the future, unless something is done to alter the criminal's nature.
and later on
They aren't evil, they just chose evil, and thus punishing them is unjust, it robs them of the chance to choose good in the future.
Nope. No way. Read any into textbook on Criminal Law and you'll see discussions on whether we should punish actions or people and why all contemporary criminal law punishes bad behavior, not the state of being a bad person. Think about mad people (who do not understand what they are doing) and sleepwalkers, think about preventive incarceration of "evil" people because they are likely to commit evil acts later, think about whether any criminal (e.g. caught for shoplifting) should ever be let out of jail until the judge is sure that his character has sufficiently changed.
And as to punishing people because they chose evil as opposed to because they are evil, I think that that's exactly what justice should be doing.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Once you give your money to me, money becomes much more meaningful.
I grant you that "Mere Christianity" doesn't prove Christianity to be true. That wasn't, however, Lewis' intent in writing it. The book is meant to define what Christianity is as opposed to what it is not. It describes Christianity in both a more concrete and more abstract way than any particular sect. To use Lewis' own metaphor, Christianity is a house with many rooms. In each room you find a different "version" of Christianity, but they share the same walls, and hallways. "Mere Christianity" is a description of these common elements.
My comment about the previous poster not being a Buddhist wasn't meant to be an insult, it is simply a matter of fact. When it comes to the material world, religions can be divided into 3 major camps. The first embraces the material world as the supreme reality (Pantheism). The second revolts against the material world and goes so far as to call it evil, or an illusion (Buddhism). The third recognizes that the material world is good and was created by a divine hand but also recognizes that there was a divine hand that made it and this divine hand made reasoning creatures in its own image (Christianity). By affirming materialism, the previous poster was saying himself that he is not a Buddhist. A Buddhist, by definition, is radically opposed to materialism.
Maybe if not for the fact that you were grown, not made. People make incredible deals about predicting life, because prediction is a virtue we reserve for the gods. Will you ever have a large enough computer to predict the behavior of atoms in your body? And if you did, would the immense size of it not require other subsystems to be developed for the sole purpose of predicting things like hardware failures in the original system? And what about the intricacies of those subsystems? Look at what you've done -you've grown your own subsystem, your own universe out of the one you were trying to predict. Ask yourself this question - can you look at yourself as others see you? Or is there always feedback in your trying to see what they see? So how could a machine exist that could look at this universe and truly understand it, if it were a part of the universe it was trying to look at? Godliness is true randomness, the ability to act out of the frame of this universe, as far as Western culture has always believed, but since we have definied randomness using the language and symbols of the system we live in, that definition is suspect.
lf.o
When I was a teenager I also became an atheist. I too looked into eastern mysticisms (I still enjoy Zen).
Then I went to college and studied physics (got a BS as well). I still have a profound sense of awe when contemplating the universe and everything in it, especially mind. The fact that we can use simple equations to describe the universe continues to astonish me.
And I'm still an atheist.
Now there are many things that I can't explain. But I feel no discomfort at that. I see no reason to invoke a god of any sort to tie up all the loose ends.
Why is the universe? Why is mind? Some people find questions like these terrifying. An infinite mental abyss they teeter on the edge of. I find the edge both facinating and excilerating and pity those that use a curtain of religion to it hide behind.
Steve M
The concept of consciousness is something that we fundamentally do not understand. We don't even seem to have begun being able to explain it.
It doesn't matter how complex the brain is, if it's a computer then it could be emulated on a 486 (or whatever) with a lot of magnetic tape (er.. revise Turing Machines). Of course, it might take aeons for anything to happen, but it would be conscious. Simultaneous processes could be time-sliced or run on multiple processors.
Or, the program could be run through by someone with pen and paper - but how would that system be self-aware?
The conclusion of many physicists is that some fundamental physical thing(s) is going on. Hence electron tunneling etc.
To me, no, but I'm a Christian and therefore that logic doesn't apply.
That's your logic!
That particular logic is for athiests, who believe that there exists nothing outside of a given finite set of beings, and yet also insist there is no supreme being. I'm merely trying to point out that there is a falacy there - you can't have an unbounded, finite, linear set.
You've lost me here. Even leaving aside the issue of linearity (what does it have to do with God or bounded sets?), I don't see your point.
For the sake of argument let's assume that universe is finite (although there is nothing in atheism that states that this must be so). I agree that it means that it is bounded. And yes, it has furthest extent. So what? How does the concept of a God arise from these statements?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
"That's great, son, but our society has been predetermined to punish people who do that. I'm predetermined to punish you. Don't hold it against me: I cannot be changed."
I just thought of that as an amusing reply and had to post it.
To toss in my $0.02, I agree with a lot of the responses to this.
I think it's wrong to imply that just because someone has no free will means that all their future actions are immutable. Assuming he was the only thing in existance and there were no outside influences, you *might* be able to make an argument like that. But the universe is a system with many other objects that tend to interact with and effect each other.
And if he couldn't be changed, there's a much better reason to lock him up than negative reinforcement: safety.
I have a feeling any possible replies to this will start to touch on whether prison or punishment is a valid or fair method of dealing with percieved negative behavior. That is beyond the scope of this post.
You call it a fork in time with wee positrons flying around influencing past events, I call it a probablility function :-)
IMHO it's the same thing. Random events don't fit well into a four-dimensional universe. Time travel and branching realities is just as good a theory as colapsing proability waves.
Some people just have to stretch reality to get that extra half-dimension. OTOH, some people just have to stretch reality to get rid of that extra half-dimension and kick in some peculiar bits of antimatter.
The fact of the matter is, we don't know what happened in the box. It's all idle speculation without some mathematical genius and a particle accelerator anyways.
Show me a theory which doesn't require an extra half dimension or extra particles, and I'll be convinced.
You call it a fork in time with wee positrons flying around influencing past events, I call it a probablility function :-)
IMHO it's the same thing. Random events don't fit well into a four-dimensional universe. Time travel and branching realities is just as good a theory as colapsing proability waves.
Some people just have to stretch reality to get that extra half-dimension. OTOH, some people just have to stretch reality to get rid of that extra half-dimension and kick in some peculiar bits of antimatter.
The fact of the matter is, we don't know what happened in the box. It's all idle speculation without some mathematical genius and a particle accelerator anyways. Alas I have neither.
Show me a theory which doesn't require an extra half dimension or extra particles, and I'll be convinced... or probably just confused. :-)
The question is moot, as the universe is not deterministic.
No, not on a quantum level. But a macroscopic system is made up from a vast number of microscopic quantum systems and statistically, the actions of all of these combine to give rise to classical, determinite behaviour. Whilst there is a chance of something non-classical happening on the macroscopic scale (such as you quantum tunnelling through your bedroom wall) the chance of this happening is so remote you'd have to wait far, far longer than the age of the universe for it to occur. So macroscopically, the universe is deterministic for all practical purposes.
This view is according to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which, while it has its critics (most notably Einstein), is accepted by the vast majority of Physicists, and is consistent with every test performed to date.
While the Copenhagen Interpretation is certainly consisten with every test to date, so are the other interpretations. My personal favourite is Feynmann and Wheeler's transactional interpretation, which removes the need for the role of a special observer from quantum mechanics. But that's just my opinion.
I fail to see where the author says that apes (etc) aren't conscious. I agree with what the author says to a certain extent, but I can't see why it shouldn't apply to apes up to a point.
:(
I'd like to read this book, but my student budget doesn't stretch to hardbacks
Don't conflate 'supreme' in the sense of 'the greatest that there is' with 'supreme' in the sense of 'the greatest that possibly could be, and therefore posseded of the following specific enumerated properties, including existance'.
Another interesting book by Fritjof Capra along these same lines is The Web of Life I believe it is a more recent work than The Tao of Physics I haven't finished reading it yet but so far it has been even more revealing than The Tao of physics
I agree with your post. Just would like to point a few things...
> Question: How can you use science to test whether there is a God or not?
You can't prove existance claims.
Asking science to "prove" God exists is irrelevent.
There is knowledge OUTSIDE the realm of science.
i.e. How do you setup an expirement to answer WHY ?
Cheers
What do you mean, "it turned out"? Nobody has ever actually performed this experiment, or anything even remotely like it. We don't have the ability to selectively erase memory, to start with. You imply scientific support for your opinions, when no such support exists.
The basic problem with free will (or absence of it) is accountability. Essentially, if there is no free will, then humans cannot be held accountable for their behavior (with all the nasty concepts for the concepts of justice, effort, etc.) Let's say that there is no free will because what you are determines (always! 100%!) what you do. Well, even leaving aside the question of why you are what you are (and who made you this way -- God?) there is still no accountability.
The actual structure of the universe is not dictated by human concepts of morality or "accountability": you cannot argue that free will must exist because you find the alternative disturbing. Besides, what could be more accountable than deterministic behavior? If I could accuse you of not only simply killing someone, but of being the sort of person who would ALWAYS kill someone under the right circumstances, that strikes me as all the more reason to put you in an electric chair.
"Your appeal is denied. I am goind to punish you for murder, because that is what I do. I can't help it, It's just my nature..." BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZORCH!
the statistical properties of the quantum systems ensure that those macroscopic systems will behave classically.
</snip>
You can't really mean this. If quantum mechanics had no observable macroscopic effects then you couldn't run an experiment to prove the theory.
If this makes no sense, go listen to some white noise. Not only is it a quantum phenomena, but it's also intrinsically random and can be directly sensed.
We're dancing around the Schrodinger's cat paradox here. The truth is, nobody has a real solution to that yet.
I thought his computability argument was wrong, but I wasn't sufficiently confident in my own reasoning to be sure. Do you have a citation for a refutation of his argument?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Read this book.
Not having read the book in question, I'll have to be circumspect, but I have read this review and hope I can offer something.
> Harvard entomologist James Wilson wrote in the late l970?s that no species, including the human one, has any real purpose
beyond the imperatives created by its particular genetic history.
This, and several other statements attributed to Wilson, are quite remarkable presumptions that belong to philosophy rather than a physical science. That in itself doesn't devalue it, but I wonder what is the survival value in posessing the intellectual capacity to make such a judgement? Is that capacity only an accidental by-product of the need for genetic survival, and if so why? Why are humans apparently the only beings with this absurd excess of intellect and ability, if its demonstrable survival value is its only purpose why isn't it commonplace among other species also driven by survival?
The purely materialistic viewpoint amounts to non-sequiteurs like "The truth is, there is no truth" or "It means that there is no meaning."
> In the next century, it?s possible that humankind can conquer technology, stabilize politics, solve the ongoing crises in
energy, poverty and materials, avert nuclear and other war, and begin to control reproduction. That would bring the world a
stable eco-system for the first time.
Heh, you are an optimist, Jon! If Man is sufficient unto himself and the only agent in control of his existence, then why isn't the world yet a Garden of Eden? What does he lack *today* to bring about a human millennium? More resources? More enlightenment? More technical skill? More wealth? What political or economic system has yet to be tried, what science or technology is still inadequate to bring about happiness and plenty? Ultimately, Man's intractable problem is moral, the will to live justly and charitably. Rather than do what is obviously right, we make excuses, and I doubt that any further amount of 'progress' can change that!
Anyway, on to the real subject...
> "We want to ask, is there a God? Does my life have meaning and purpose? Science, we are told, says that even to ask about
God is beyond its scope." But this, Walker argues, is not true. Either there is no such thing as God, or science - which
embodies our ability to reason - must be able to frame the question and provide us with the answers.
As a Christian I believe that science can indeed *point* to God but can't *prove* God in any way that satisfies its own standards (i.e. science can't disprove God, therefore the 'proof' can't be falsifiable). We can only come to a conclusion based on evidence sufficient to convince a reasonable person, and keep an intellectually honest appraisal for our motives (or presuppositions) to believe what we do, either way.
---------------------
---------------------
John 3:16 - God's Public License
What a hell you live in if you are convinced that this awareness does not exist, that behind the firestorm of impressions, forms, qualia, platonic objects, that the fact you are aware of these things does not peek through the veil to remind you that your descriptions cannot enclose the fundamental fact that it is, that we are, and that no explanation for this is necessary. I think you've got me all wrong. There is a certain phenomenon that occurs and hasn't been explained. It's been called qualia. I do not automatically agree with all of the garbage that's been said about it, I'm just using it since there's no other term for the phenomenon. Now, with that out of the way. If you're saying what I think you're saying, then I agree fully. If you contrast what I said against what I was replying to, I think you'll see it. In short. Something happens that is observable by the conscious mind that no one understands. Since it's not understood, there's no stating that it just because of X, which is very complex. It could because Y, which might be complex or simple. No one knows. All I want to know is, if you're not experiencing qualia, why do you go on?
---
[ approaching AI ]
It may also be that quantum effects on the microscopic level are magnified by the brain's nonlinearity and do play a role, leading to genuine non-determinism. Either way, the atoms in our brains behave the same way as atoms everywhere else; everything is influenced by, and connected to, its surroundings. Our brains are not some special conspiracy of atoms seeking to oppose the influence of the rest of the cosmos.
Given the uncertainity of determining guilt, or determining reformation, the minor nature of the crime, the deterrent nature of incarceration, the high cost of jailing people, and the possibility of reformation from sources outside of prison, giving the state the power to hold him indefintely is a greater evil than the possibility of recitivism. I did address this: "(except as his mental state may impact his rehabilitation or lack thereof)" Institutions for the "criminally insane" are for people with problems for which we have some understanding and treatment, whereas jails are for people with problems we find more diffuse and harder or impossible to treat. So he doesn't have a brain tumor. Maybe he's got a less obvious physical or biochemical defect. Maybe he was abused as a child. Maybe he "fell in with the wrong crowd" in his youth because he lived in a bad neighborhood. Whatever made him the way he is, he had no control over it, any more than I had control over the genetic and environmental causes that made me what I am today (for good or ill).As you're using it here, "accountability" is just a value judgement, partly based on the degree to which we understand human behavior and the things that influence it. Saying someone is or isn't accountable doesn't change what they did or what they will do.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
While I admire the pithy and correct minimalism of your "we are our brain" statement, it doesn't go very far towards explaining the nature of consciousness or illusion of free will, so I think I'll stick to my lengthier explanation.
Also, "We are our brain" would be true whether consciousness is some bizarre large scale quantum phenomena as the book (& Penrose) claim, or whether it's in fact architecuraly based sitting on top of the pyramid of conventional physics.
Maybe if you ever feel like taking up writing for a living you could write a book "The universe explained".... I'd suggest you make it a one-liner: "It's all superstrings".
______________________(
This doesn't imply God, though, or even a god. It shows that there is a wisest and a most powerful, for example, but it doesn't show that they are the same being. So supreme is misleading, and I don't see how this is an argument for religion or even spirituality.
Given that, and given that there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that we live in a foamy multiverse, and also given that the energy required to trigger the Inflation effect (which would create an entirely new Universe) requires energies we can acieve today (although not the energy density), it is ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe. As such, it is patently stupid for any scientist to reject the possibility that this did, indeed, happen in the case of THIS Universe.
Even granting this for the sake of argument, does this mean we should worship the scientist in the previous universe, who pushed the button that triggered the Inflation effect? He would, I guess, qualify as the Creator, but doesn't need to have any other attributes of God. thejeff
I cannot speak to the gentleman's overall intent, but some of the earlier chapters go into what can only be described as attempted proofs of god and that god's neccessity to resemble the xtain diety. These proofs are IMHO meant to form a foundation of his descriptions of xtainity as truth rather than mere opinion, and they are failures.
I will let someone who is buddist fight with you on that, but for someone who emphasises the many rooms within xtianity, you seem quite willing to build only one room for a religion not your own. Whatever your or my understanding of buddism may be, it is extremely poor form to challenge someone's religion rather than inquiring as to your perception of incongruity. (When for instance you had stated that you thought the world was intrinsicly good, I would be in poor form to say "then you aren't a xtian" rather than asking "isn't the fall of man and thus essential corruption of the material world a central point of xtianity? How do you reconcile that, and define your faith as xtian?")
My (cursory) readings in buddism seemed very open to a materialistic interpretation, so I see no problem at taking a Buddist at his word. But if you cannot, then question, rather than assert.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Another interesting book by Fritjof Capra along these same lines is The Web of Life. I believe it is a more recent work than The Tao of Physics. I haven't finished reading it yet but so far it has been even more revealing than The Tao of physics.
from your post:
>God is a matter of faith and science is a matter of fact.
from the review:
>Either there is no such thing as God, or science - which embodies our ability to reason - must be able to frame the question and provide us with the answers.
i think you're exactly right. to me, it seems incredibly counterintuitive to attempt to use science and reason to explain the supernatural. i feel that, by definition, they are outside of science and reason.
a quote from my favorite movie seems somewhat apt here:
"...it's all science and progress now. no place for three-legged cyclops in the south seas. no place for cucumber bushes, and oceans of wine..."
Beethoven's Ode to Joy or Hendrix's Bold As Love are no less magical for being "only" atmospheric vibrations. A rainbow is no less magical for being produced by the refraction of electromagnetic vibrations - produced by the fusion of hydrogen to helium 93 million miles away - through millions of water droplets suspended in air. (Mayhaps it's even more magic when understood this way.) The touch of a lovely woman is no less magic for being sense data processed though axons and dendrites and neurotransmitters.
What is magic is not so much these things themselves, but our subjective experience of them. Magic is what you feel. Perhaps we can describe that experience, that feeling, as atoms moving around our brains; but to describe and predict is not necessarily the same as to understand. In a fundamental way we cannot understand other people's subjective experience - and it's questionable to what extent we can understand our own.
And free will vs. determinism? The question is based on false premises, that there's some hard separation between "you" and "the universe". Let me recommend Raymond Smullyan's essay "Is God a Taoist?", in his book The Tao is Silent (also collected in The Mind's I, mentioned elsewhere in this thread).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So we are random then? ;)
The problem is that "Free Will" is a ambigious phrase. AI instead talks about levels of Autonomy: There are 3 levels, but that it essentally come down to is how hard it's to tie in low level envents in to what we do.
Therefore Humans have the most autonomy, but do not have free will by a classical defination, after all that difination is founded on dualism the idea that there are physical and mental states.
How can we have free will if your brain only made up of matter determed by genetics and random events, your higher fuctions can only be detrimined by your low fuctions, whether those fuctions are randomised as the go up is not the point.
Glynn
I don't mean to be critical of the moderators, but it would be nice if someone who doesn't buy the quantum explanation were bumped up a few points up. Until I reached this comment I thought I might have accidentally connected to the Stapp-Penrose-Sarfatti Unified Fanclub for the Advancement of Mental Illness.
There was recently something on public television that described these experiments and their flaws in some detail.
The critters were able to learn a small number of signs, but they did not use them in a way we would want to call language. They did not construct sentences. They never learned that the order of words is meaningful, as in subject transitive-verb object. Any "phrase" longer than two signs was simply repetition for emphasis. A strange observation was that they did not necessarily face towards their keeper while signing, or make it easy for the keeper to see what they were signing. This makes it seem unlikely that they were trying to communicate with this "language".
The apes were completely stuck at a level of language use much simpler than what a human infant gains quickly and easily. This supports the Chomsky-esque ideas that human brains are pre-wired to use language. It is not that we are generally intelligent, but that we are specifically able to learn and use language.
Why were there such wonderful announcements about the progress that was being made with the apes? Because the keepers in the studies noted down every single gesture that the chimps et al made, and tried to interpret every gesture as a sign. If you want it badly enough, you can convince yourself that a chimp picking his nose is really saying, "To be, or not to be?"
The point of the show was to address animal consciousness, i.e. is there any. They showed an interesting bit in which they proved that a chimp understands what a mirror is - he knows that the picture represents his own current state. They did this by carefully sticking a small sticker in the fur above the chimp's face. The chimp did not notice it until he happened to see himself in the mirror. When he saw his reflection, he pulled the sticker off. They contrasted this to a tribe of baboons that loved to steal mirrors from a garbage dump. A baboon would sit looking at himself in the mirror, and reach behind it to try touch this "other" baboon he saw.
Without a clear idea what we mean by consciousness, it is not fruitful to try to decide what other species are conscious. Instead of using abstract language as a criterion, I am suggest empathy. If I can think, "I am chimp just like all these other chimps, and they have ideas and feelings just like I do" then I am conscious.
I used to think that thought and consciousness were intimately tied to language use. But I realized that there are lots of things I think about and mental manipulations I can do that I don't have any words for.
How do I know you're not a bot? I dismiss your argument as entirely irrelevant until you can prove to me that you are a conscious human being.
Mojotoad
For one thing, there is nothing in modern neuroscience to warrant the claim that quantum physics plays a role in the abstract functions of the mind. In fact, neurons have shown so much oomph that the quantum physics aren't even necessary.
Secondly, classical evolution never says that every feature of a living being is there for a reason. What it _says_ is that the probability of a race surviving with a debilitating feature is low. This means that the human brain could well be useless, but as long as it doesn't harm us in any way, it will continue to be carried on to descendants.
Thirdly, if you're into pseudoscience, read "The Physics of Immortality". It's a book that attempts to prove the existence of God using physics, and encompasses the above debates. The book is really BS but is still enjoyable for those of us interested in wacky theories. (In a nuthsell, the book says that God will exist in the future when the universe collapses into a singularity; God will in fact perceive everything that happened before him, and he will resurrect everyone by emulating them in his giant mind.)
You are wrong to assume that everything can be traced back (or predicted to the future) as far as one wants.
Well, technically, that's right, we can't trace it back. That doesn't mean that it was non deterministic, only that we can't determine it.
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
God, if one exists, is an innately supernatural and immaterial being. He would have to be if he created the whole natural universe right?
If by 'supernatural', you mean 'outside', that's correct, I suppose, but we need to know what frame of reference you're using. Outside the solar system? Then maybe God is an extinct alien race that seeded our planet eons ago. Outside the galaxy? Outside the Universe? Well, it gets abstract enough from there to fit our usual unspoken notion of God as something/someone way beyond our comprehension who can do whatever he/she/it wants but who, for whatever reason, knowable or otherwise, is soley interested in the plight of the hairless apes of planet Earth! With a Being so Infinitely Powerful, no wonder wars are fought almost daily to pronounce exactly whose side God is on!
That this otherworldly completely super-natural (outside what we know as natural) being should then leave as the only clue to it's existence a book of colorful but highly debatable 'rules for conduct' (be it the Bible or the Koran), and then threaten all who disobey or disbelieve with some sort of extra-dimensional torture for eternity sounds remarkably 'natural', if not downright human!
Perhaps God, being super-natural, chooses to express him/her/it self this way so as to be 'knowable' to humans. That may be so, but it doesn't strike me as the kind of super-natural Being I care to share a beer with!
On the other hand, when a carpenter builds (creates) a house, he or she is still subject to certain laws involving both the carpenter and the house. If the stairs are not 'created' properly, and the carpenter stands on them, then he will suffer accordingly, with absolutely no quarter given whatsoever to the otherwise admirable fact that he 'created' the house.
Hell, we 'created' the atomic bomb. Does that mean it can't bite us in the ass?
Should carpenters who build religions be held unaccountable in respect to their creations?
**>>BELCH
One can believe in the absence of free will and still live with accountability. How?
The same way one make's love to their wife without thinking about the gross anatomy of the female reproduction system? Healthy sexual function often includes a healthy dose of blissfull ignorance, as it should.
A healthy day-to-day world view cannot have an absence of free will as a cornerstone. One can live within the illusion of accountablity for 99% of their lives and still philosophically believe in the absence of free-will during an entertaining debate.
Most of our lives are lived in ignorance of even the things we may believe in, not because of stupidity or laziness, but out of necessity. The human mind/consciousness was not designed for philisophical debate but for self preservation and genetic reproduction. Show me a man who lives every moment of their day pondering deep philosophy and I will show you a man doomed for the loony bin.
"There is nothing noble about embracing your philosophies"
science is how we become gods. That's where the proof comes in. We won't have proof of God until we become him.
+&x
"I'm pretty bright, therefore anything I don't understand must be God."
"I don't understand how quantum effects affect the synapses in the human brain."
"Therefore, God is the quantum effects affecting the synapses in the human brain."
Here are a few arguments against this kind of tripe:
1. The "observer" discussed in quantum physics is really shorthand for "something that is affected by the outcome of a certain event".* An observer may be something as simple as an atom of U-235, which may split if a nearby atom undergoes radioactive decay. If an atomic bomb is detonated and nobody is watching, does it make a sound?
2. What, in particular, makes the brain qualitatively different from a computer? Look at an individual neuron. A neuron has certain input ports, and certain output ports. It also has some amount of internal state. A particular output port will fire if a given combination of inputs and internal state is satisfied. This is no more mystical than your average Intel product.
3. The fact that Einstein believed something does not make it true. The same goes for Plato, Aristotle, and me.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
In fact we know (or at least believe we know) that this is not the case. Quantum Mechanics doesn't state that the universe isn't causal, only that we can't see what's happening.
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
One possible flaw in the logic that all of our actions are geared around survival, and that we are here to procreate and pass on our genes. Why then is it possible for a person to purposefully commit suicide? Is this person's genes so corrupt that they genetically know they should not be passed on? If we do not have free will to decide our own fate, why would a person choose to just stop living because things are hard on them financially, or emotionally? These are not things that are basic human needs for survival? Of course there is a flip side to argue that a person can have a chemical imbalance that affects their mental state- I also would argue that the theory of wiping a person's brain and memories would lead to the same result- therefore I want to take it one step further- you are in a building with your wife and a stranger that is more attractive than here-and the building is burning down. You would save your wife, however if your memory was wiped, you would probably choose differently- therefore how could this choice be "pre-programmed"?
As you obviously suspect:
Because "quantum" means "bullshit", and religion is full of bullshit, so if you get enough bullshit into your explanation of the brain, you might be able to get religion in too.
This give me a great idea for a novel:
Man shows no remorse when his C64 fizzles out. He continues to use his own computer to take up time in his meaningless life. While out one day with a friend he shoots a MAC and is quickly carted off to jail.
sfc
standing on the shoulders of giants,leaves me cold
sfc
standing on the shoulders of giants,leaves me cold
Go to
This quantum-mechanics-becomes-Zen ideological cadre has been around for quite a while, and it's shit smells precisely the same as it has all this time. I spent eight years working in and studying nuclear physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics, and the words of one of my favorite intro quantum professors still ring in my mind: "Whenever somebody tries to sell you Zen Buddhism with quantum mechanics, hold onto your wallet." I must admit that I didn't read all of your little review, but sadly I was in the community long enough to hear enough of this tripe to become jaded on sight. The rules are simple, Jon: a discussion of religion does not contribute to physics, and physics is not around to explain any concept of religion. The revolutions in physics have contributed greatly to theories of knowledge, perception, and observation; and there has been a lot of wonderful crossover into the world of philosophy. However, anything that pretends an explaination of "purpose" based in the descriptions of observation is "not easy to read" for the simple reason that... it's crap. You can't say it much nicer than that, but you can get (and I have gotten) much nastier about it on the wrong day of the week.
You don't expect Katz to have any opinions or views of his own do you? He posted this so that we could tell him what he really thinks (hmmm ... very Church of the Subgenius )
I think this depends on your definition of 'God'. So, here's my criteria he/she/it has to meet:
1) For me to consider a creature a God, it has to have created the universe or at least the earth.
2) Also, I would require it to be omnipotent.
As you pointed out, it is impossible to have a given set of beings and yet no supreme being (let's nog drag equality into it, shall we?), but, by my definition, it *is* possible to believe there is no God. I would agree with you however, that by your definition it is fact that there must be a God.
Just my atheist perspective.
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
Reading the review I was struck by the common fallacy that predetermination somehow demonstratesthe abscence of free will. I don't know whether this argument was made by the reviewer or the book itself but I think the argument is misleading.
So, as a thought experiment, imagine we placed you in a burning house with little children. You could either run out and save yourself or risk near certain death and try to save the children. Interesting moral dilema.
Now suppose we somehow (magically) erased all memory and effects of this expirience from your brain and placed you in the EXACT same situation. I contend that if YOU are really making a choice here (instaed of following some random principle) you would do exactly the same thing. In fact free will seems to require at least some minor form of predictability.
The standard analysis of why determinism prevents free will is that you can't choose to do something besides your fate. This sort of argument assumes that fate is something externally imposed that prevents you from doing things. Rather if we realize that you must fufil your fate *because* it is determined by who you are we run into no problem.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
>> spirituality, consciousness and quantum physics, three disciplines not traditionally linked to one another. ... unless you've read one of the other thousand books that attempt to link spiritualism, consciousness and quantum physics. This idea's been around almost as long as the A-bomb, and it's still just philosophical BS, scientifically speaking. Why can't people just accept that there are some mysteries we'll never understand? Chaos theory tells us that, without resorting to hypotheses of indeterminism. Quantum mechanics is just an algorithm for working out the probability of an ill-defined "event". You simply cannot take quantum mechanics, move to a flawed interpretation of it (and they all are), and then draw conclusions from *that* about the nature of reality. You may as well try and predict the weather next decade using Boyle's law.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
I have a hard time accepting this one quote, it seems a bit arrogant to me "human consciousness, believed to be unique among the world's species. " Now, if the obvious statement, that HUMAN conciousness is unique, well DUH. But I think it MEANS "human-like conciousness". I don't necessarily buy it, I've seen too complex a behaviour from numerous animals, the sign language capable gorilla, dolphins, whales just to name a few. go to http://www.gorilla.org/ for more info about koko the signing gorilla. Advanced behaviour like making up words for objects she didn't know (little green ball for a lime or something like that)
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Two-way communication is only slightly more complex, as the Turing machine can output to tape and use those values later. I don't see where the Turing machine could not emulate a computer.
"A universe that has only matter cannot have
consciousness and cannot have will," he concludes.
This sounds suspiciously like the primary preconception he had going in, which makes me wary of any of the arguments he presents to support it. Particularly given that he was driven to this quest for knowledge by a tragedy.
One of my problems with inquiries of this sort is that those who undertake them also fail to define their terms. I would be interested to know if the author ever bothered to define what he means by 'free will'. People bandy the term about, as if the meaning is well-known and apparent, but it isn't, and the closer you examine most conceptions of it, the more they fall apart as meaningless or absurd.
Further, the appeal to quantum physics as a means to attempt to bypass causality in human consciousness is hardly a new approach and suffers from numerous flaws that are rarely addressed, the least of which are that it operates at such a small scale as to not have any visible randomizing effect on systems on a macro-level, and that the variableness they introduce is utterly random, so that even if it did have a factor in human consciousness, the sort of 'freedom' it would introduce would be closer to die-rolling than what most people consider free will (in what vague terms they do understand it).
Eric Christian Berg
"A strange observation was that they did not necessarily face towards their keeper while signing"
I think I read somewhere that Koko the gorilla faces and makes eye contact mostly when asking a question.
Visit koko.org and you will see evidence of many things including creativity (koko and michael paint), ability to understand abstract concepts such as death; express emotion, even grieve (koko to this day still remembers her cat), ability to teach each other signs, even use certain words that they do not like as prejoratives etc.
As for the mirror situation, small children have to overcome this as well. Koko is able to look at herself in the mirror and understand that it is her, as well as that she is a gorilla.
"I am suggest empathy. If I can think, "I am chimp just like all these other chimps, and they have ideas and feelings just like I do" then I am conscious. "
The gorrilla's have shown empathy for each other as well as pets they have had. As for testing intelligence, Koko has scored anywhere between 70 - 86 on various IQ tests and near 50% on all of her child language comprehension tests.
"Any "phrase" longer than two signs was simply repetition for emphasis"
While koko often uses 2 word "phrases", she also uses 3-6 word phrases shown in most conversations on the site.
I think it's just a matter of levels of complexity.
"I used to think that thought and consciousness were intimately tied to language use. But I realized that there are lots of things I think about and mental manipulations I can do that I don't have any words for"
Huh? I can tell you my mental state including emotion and thought processes at any given time. I would, however, agree that there is often a language barrier because to convey your thoughts you have to do so in a common manner that both parties understand. You aren't magically able to know language, but your brain has that capacity. Language instinct, of course, is another thing altogether. It is interesting though, that apes such as koko and michael are able to create their own language and exchange information as well as words so that the can communicate better. Koko has also expressed that she wants to teach her child when she has one to speak gorilla hybrid american sign language as well.
Anyway, I would certainly say that there are many animals with consciousness, intelligence and emotion. There is nothing magically different about the human brain that others in this forum suggest.
So does this book overlap at all with Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind"?
If I remember correctly, that book was trying to state that something on the order of quantum gravity (i.e. some phenomena we don't understand yet) was responsible for conciousness.
That book was/is controversial, and this one probably will be also...
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
Physicists have determined that unconsciousness is caused by a blow to the head, or by intoxication.
Quantum Physics - the dreams stuff is made of.
"Reality, what a concept" - Geo. Carlin.
Personally, I'm not aware of this stuff you call 'consciousness' - can you measure it in anyway? Weigh it, diffuse it, taste it, describe it? Why, yes & no!
I never did quite 'get' Schrodinger's cat - something about the cat being neither dead or alive untill you 'look'?
But I may be hallucinating again...
Major Major Major Major
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
For more than a thousand years, writes Walker in this complex and haunting book, philosophers, scientists and theologians have battled furiously to explain the phenomenon of human consciousness, believed to be unique among the world's species.
Is it only me who thinks that assuming consciousness is a human-only trait is just a little bit arrogant? I see no evidence in any of my scientific training to suggest that consciousness is limited to the human experience - in fact having watched numerous stunning nature programs (thanks BBC :-) ) I'd say consciousness was a far more widespread condition than we give it credit for.
Given what we know about the development of life, and the success of the Darwinian model of evolution, I think that hypothesising that consciousness is this big prize that only humans are the recipient of is way off target. If we pursue this line of reasoning though, when did we recieve this 'prize'? Homo Erectus? Earlier? How much earlier? Leaving the trees? And just what is consciousness, that it is so unique to us?
Just because we fail to acheive a level of communication with the rest of the natural world around us which might let us in on the spread of consciousness around us does not imply that it is not there.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Zen, and Buddhism in general, is only concerned with destroying suffering. To accomplish this one should endeavor to do good, refrain from evil, and purify the mind. Good and evil in Zen and Buddhism? I don't think so. As I rcall, the central tenet of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by attachment to the outcome of things (desire) and that by removing this attachment suffering will not occur. Good and evil moral dilemmas aren't relevant.
With this one. It's very well established that the Great Apes are self-aware and capable of handling human-invented sign language for communication.
Self-aware, perhaps, but the language aspect has been highly overstated. Much of what I have read on the subject by actual language authorities state that much of what is reported as 'sign language' is merely demonstrative body language and that the apes have shown no ability to use grammer or to grasp all but the lowest level concepts (those which can be related directly to concrete perceptions).
If you want a little more background on quantum physics and how it (possibly) relates to some of the Eastern religions, try reading The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.
For a Darwinian/evolutionary approach to the human mind, consciousness, and morality, try The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.
I could write for pages about these two books, but since this is just a book review article...
Remember to buy from here.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Jon's review is interesting, and the book might be worth trying...but a *lot* of the comments here indicate, as I've noticed before, the narrow vision of slashdotters.
/.er suggest, is absurd (tell me that a cat, or dog, or dolphin, is not "conscious"): rather, I'd suggest that *every* living thing is both conscious and intellegent...but that, of course, it is quantitative and qualitative, not a false black/white dichotomy.
First, though, I would suggest that before you talk about "god and physics", Jon, that you define your terms. What half the world's population views as "God" (that being Judeo-Xian-Islamic half) has no relationship to what the other half considers extant. For example, as I understand the view of Buddhism, there *is* no Big Whatever In A Nighshirt, standing seperate and apart from It's creation; rather, that there is one consciousness, though, of which we are all the split ends.
Next, I might point out to y'all that Buddhism has had a serious influence on physics since the fifties, when it started being noted that the Buddhist view of the universe, from it being billions of years old, and not 6K, to the 8-fold path of quarks, was more like the RW than the JCI view, which, in fact, does lean very much towards determinism.
Going on, we might note that it isn't neurons, per se, that are affected by quantum phenomena, but rather the molecules that influence the actions of the neurons.
Furthermore, we can also observe that, although quantum effects *appear* non-deterministic, they *are* statistically probabilistic...and that, at the macro scale devolves to what we perceive as mechanistic, just as relativistic effects are so trivial at "normal" velocities, that Newtonian mechanics are a perfectly good description.
However...and this is a *major* caveat, all physics deals, in general, with *simple* cases, with few, and controlled inputs. When we get to something as seriously complex as consciousness, we are talking about something that is obviously affected by blood chemistry (y'all taken your antidepressants today?), by social environment (there's *no* peer pressure here, right?), and, hell, for all we know, electromagnetic fields and cosmic rays, playing games with the brain chemistry (e.g., brownian motion).
To suggest "an* answer to consciousness seems to me to be a massive overstatement/simplification. To suggest that *only* humans are conscious, which I think I saw a
Claiming Jesus Is The Answer to all questions, btw, is only true in the case of those who, I am constantly astounded to learn, can think well enough so as to tie their shoes in the morning, much less click a mouse and punch keys. Oh, and before you flame me, I suggest you read the argument FAQ (it's been on the Net since *long* before the Web - do a search, stupid).
mark
you to mark this as a troll.
You won't do it. Probably flamebait or offtopic, but iunder no circumstances make this a troll.
As long we are clear on that.
troll, ...They lived in mountains, sometimes stole human maidens, and could transform themselves and prophesy...
I haven't read Walker's book, but it sounds like it has a great deal in common with Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.
No. You are confusing materialism with believing in a deterministic Newtonian universe.
...
I certainly have not confused the two. The one (materialism), by definition, implies the other (determinism). This has nothing to do with Newtonian physics, so perhaps I shouldn't have used the examples I did. (And what does what is "generally accepted" have to do with what is true, anyway?)
The point is this: a strictly material universe is a causally closed system. That is, since matter is all that exists, the cause of every effect must be a material one. Whether matter behaves according to the laws of Newtonian physics or Quantum mechanics doesn't matter. Every material effect is the result of a material cause in such a system.
If fact, it is usually used to argue *against* materialism
Your point? I *am* arguing *against* materialism
So, the random path of a random atom at Big Bang caused you to make a fool out of yourself on Slashdot...
Certainly not. I, as a human being with a free will, made a conscious decision to express my thoughts about the true nature of reality: i.e. a universe that was created by a non-material, supernatural being who also has a free will.
If you want a "logical" argument for religion, though, we live in a finite Universe. Therefore, there is a finite number of concious beings within that Universe. Thus, on any given scale you care to use, there -is-, indeed, a being that you could call supreme, at least within that respect.
I don't see how that makes god exist. The 'supreme' being there could simply be the oldest living human, or the most intelligent or whatever. You could also say, using that argument that in any finite set, there is a 'supreme' being. So, on earth, In this country, On slashdot, etc. If everyone had an IQ from between 138-140, the people who's IQ was
Given that, and given that there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that we live in a foamy multiverse
There is no evidence to suggest that there is no Santa clause ether. So what?
given that the energy required to trigger the Inflation effect (which would create an entirely new Universe) requires energies we can acieve today (although not the energy density), it is ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe. As such, it is patently stupid for any scientist to reject the possibility that this did, indeed, happen in the case of THIS Universe.
I don't buy that.
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
This books sounds rather like Roger Penrose's "The Emporer's New Mind", minus the (provably wrong) computability claims.
I find it extremely hard to believe that anyone, especially a scientist(!), would try to look for a quantum explanation of consciousness unless, like Penrose, that was their initial goal - that they *wanted* to reject the more prosaic explanations.
Nature and evolution work on many different emergent levels. Quantum physics gives rise to chemistry which in turn begats physics and biology. Cellular biology begats neurology, which in turn should be the basis for any higher level abstractions of brain architecture such as the cortical minicolumns.
The rational place to look for explanations of consciousness is at the level of higher level brain architecture. Much can be learned about brain architecture from studying those with various types of brain damage, and phenomena such as "blind sight" indicate that consciousness is indeed a function that can be disrupted by architectural damage.
Personally I would assert that consciousness is simply put an inward looking sense - one which monitors some (but not all) of the brains own functioning, as opposed to external senses wich monitor externally derived stimulii. The experience of consciousness is explicable in the same way as other sensory "quales" - it's got to feel like *something*, and there's nothing more mysterious about the way it does feel to be conscious than the way green appears as a color.
Free will is really unrelated to consciousness, although easily confused with it. The real question is whether we can control nature, not whether we can consciously do so. The simple answer to this is "no", although that really depends on what you identify as "I". With "I" correctly identified as the center of narrative experience (i.e. the fabricated entity to which our internal narrative attributes our actions), then "I" is in control, but it's really just our neural circuitry executing according to the inescapable laws of physics (conventional physics at that, not another parallel quantum realm). We perceive ourselves to have free will simply because the entity we attribute it to ("I"/ourselves) is our internal causal *explanation* for our actions.
Free will works like this: Our neural circuitry, part born out of genetics, part out of experience, generates some motor action (perhaps as a result of some external stimulii, perhaps as a result of some internal one), and we see both the resultant action and the internal precursor signals (via consciousness feedback), and though associativity attribute the action to the precursor signals and hence the high level construct "I". We therefore percieve/believe that "I" *decided* to take the action, when in fact really the action was taken by our neural circuitry, and the causal association is a high level phenomenon that has arisen though evolution due to the benefit of being able to predict things by both subconsiously and consciously modelling causal relationships.
Given the myth of free will we could *try* to abdicate all responsibility and just do whatever we want, but the illusion is too strong to be overcome by intellectual beliefs, and almost all people will sensibly continue to live their lives according to the feeling that they're actively making decisions.
Ask people who've faced death (like war veterans) or really old people and they'll tell you, "forget about searching for truth, just be happy you're alive." It's interesting how in our own myopia, we've lost the reason why we're here--trusting the religion we call "science" to deliver "truth."
Almost all the discussion here narrowly centers around western conceptions of philosophy, religion, and science--open your MINDS people!!! Everyone claims to be so open minded, yet you become obsessed with the fingers pointing at the moon--FORGET ABOUT SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, RACE, LANGUAGE and the TRUTH will be self evident.
It boils down to EXPERIENCE. The point of Buddhism, Zen, and Taoism of to divest yourself from the constraints of "thought", "self", and separations, and experience the WHOLE thing, the way quantum physics proves it works--an endless ocean of energt, turning on/off--vibrating constantly.
So stop THINKING SO DAMN MUCH, you bunch of lifeless geeks, and LIVE IT UP....trust me, you'll be happier.
Whatever your or my understanding of buddism may be, it is extremely poor form to challenge someone's religion rather than inquiring as to your perception of incongruity
Point taken. However, I honestly did not mean my remarks as an attack. I think every one of us needs to constantly question his beliefs in an effort to reach the truth. As a Christian I am constantly questioning myself and the Catholic church so that I might have some chance at arriving at the truth. I think challenging beliefs is one of the most important things a person can do. How else can we come to understand anything?
When for instance you had stated that you thought the world was intrinsicly good, I would be in poor form to say "then you aren't a xtian" rather than asking "isn't the fall of man and thus essential corruption of the material world a central point of xtianity? How do you reconcile that, and define your faith as xtian?")
I wouldn't take exception to such an assertion, as long as it was said in earnest. I would disagree with it, however, just as the previous poster is allowed to disagree with my assertion that he is not a Buddhist.
I would reply that the fall of man by no means implies a corruption of the material world. The material world is not corrupt, according to Christianity. It is the human soul that was corrupted in the Fall and it is because of this that men pervert their use of the material world. Gold, for example, is not evil in any way. It is a creation of God. However men pervert its use by coveting it, stealing it, etc.
I don't suppose you even bothered to read the article, did you? If this was yet another "geeks" article, I would agree with you. Since this is a "pseudo-science book making astounding claims" -type article I think we'd be better off criticizing what is written here.
Coming soon: JonKatz on Worlds in Collision, Chariots of the Gods, and Physics of Immortality
Sigh. Whatever crap this book is spouting, it's so off base it's not even wrong.
/. a modicum of scientific credibility instead of being a vehicle for a disinformation-monger like Katz? Great but unformed minds read /., it's a crime to send them barking up the wrong tree.
Consciousness, whatever that is, is the result of neurons firing at each other. Are you with me so far?
Neurons interact by releasing neurotransmitters at one another. Billions of them at a time, per firing, per neuron, several times per second. Quantum effects are dwarfed at that scale.
Rob, why don't you try to give
whuppy enjoys smelling like diesel fuel
You can't deny that religion is metaphorically just a human morality program that often has a conveniently anthropocentric god handing down absolute truth as "king of the universe" because he knows all and we must follow. It's often exploited by those who understand that they can take advantage of this routine of accepting absolute truths without logical thought and without logical thought, it is just mind control in interest of those communicating those "absolute truths" and preserving humans in general. It also conveniently creates a concept to explain everything within the unknown.
This is why I take caution in your thought that there is nothing illogical or irrational about religion. You're spoon fed absolute truths. In your case, I think you're at least partially logically thinking. However, there are many who do not think this way. They do because god said or the man who is speaking for god said. Why must you worship an all powerful entity? Why must you ask him repentance (which, again is completely anthropocentric and subjective)?
You can't deny that god is largely emotional - and to many people, magically a way to fulfill those emotional needs and wants.
**Note, this is not a flame at all or to religion. I like many routines in this religious "program" -- I just think it often hinders logical thought, and allows humans to control the minds of others because they do not develop the ability to skeptically and logically think. Absolute fact is, in my opinion, stupid.
If you take such a configuration, then the entities within that configuration must be arrangable, by whatever criteria you choose, in a heirarchy, such that you differentiate between the entities.
Now, if you do this with any finite set, you are going to have extreme ends of the heirarchy. That's the nature of the beast. (This isn't necessarily true for infinite sets, although it's not impossible.) Now, if you define "supreme" as being "the most powerful being in the Universe, according to these criteria", then there will be at least one definable "supreme being".
There is NOTHING in religion which states or requires a "supreme being" to be a creator, all-powerful, all-knowing or all-seeing. Indeed, if you look at the Greek or Norse Gods, you see nothing even close. They're immortal and have amazing powers, but that's about their only real difference.
Conclusion: There is =nothing= unscientific or illogical about religion, in and of itself, by the sheer nature of the Universe. Any unscientific aspect, or illogical aspect, comes out of trying to take what -must-, mathematically, be true and extrapolating that into personalities of SPECIFIC entities you have no basis for believing in.
The =BIG= difference is in how specific you try to be, and on what basis you are making those specifications. If you have no information, you shouldn't guess. THAT is unscientific - claiming to know more than you do, by believing in something you have no basis for.
This is where I'll get a little more complex. IMHO, it is perfectly allowable for faith to go beyond what is known, in those cases where something concrete is necessary. In Christianity, for example, there is no basis in fact for believing any of the philosophy or morality that it defines. However, it is necessary to have more structure than to believe a single, extremely powerful being "exists". That is not enough to actually do anything with. A solitary fact is fairly useless. Therefore, it's necessary to associate other people's claims, concerning this being, with the being, in order to have enough to have anything useful.
This is the tricky part: It is NOT necessary, or a requirement, for a religion to be useful, in any sense of the word. All that's required is a belief in some kind of structure, with some kind of being (or beings) being at one end. That's all religion actually requires. And, in some cases, that's all the religion IS.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
For a thousand years, philosophers, scientists and Slashdotters have struggled over the nature of ultimate reality. Why is Katz here?
I feel superior to a Nazi. A religious person is maybe one step above a Nazi - perhaps a half step.
Sorry, I seem to have sparked an I hate God rant unintentionally. My apologies.
Science is dedicated to naturalism. A scientist cannot really say "God did it." This is not a natural cause of the given phenomenon, it is a supernatural one. The funny thing is, even if God did do something through direct divine intervention, science would be unable to give him credit for it.
Such is the controversy with biochemists advocating Intelligent Design over Evolution. They do this because they believe fundamental cellular structures and functions are too complex to simply evolve. Remove one little atom and they will fall apart or cease to function. Their conclusion is that someone must have made these structures. Of course they're in hot water because this hints towards science, which is supposed to purely natural, advocating a supernatural solution. Science can permit improbabilities but it cannot condone calling them miracles.
My point is that saying science has proved there isn't a God or saying God isn't needed is foolishness. Science is dedicated to proving things without including God. Its a given that he won't show up due to nature of the conclusions they must draw in order to be scientific. If, hypothetically, science was given absolute proof of God they still would not be able to conclude he exists! It is against the fundamental nature of modern science.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
a book out about the same time as "Godel Escher Bach" w/ Doug Hofstadter and Stanislaw Lem ?
But I may be hallucinating again...
Major Major Major Major
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Rand's primary axiom: Existence exists.
Hrm... I'm not much of logitition, but I would think that having only one axiom (especialy one so meaningless) Won't get you very far.
Explain how, from that single Axiom, Alturism Is bad and Greed and Selfishness are good. Without brining in any new 'Axiom'
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Jon Katz trys to sell subjectivism. Read Atlas Shrugged.
Why is it that discussions about subjects like this always cause the people who are having them to loose all sense of rationality? Is it because it is painful to realise that one can NEVER be sure of anything, and therefore one can never be sure that we interpret our own or other people's motives correctly? Try to look at it as a science/tech problem. Of course, theoretically, there is a chance that there is sth larger going on that we cannot possibly understand. In practice, however, our common sense and instincts seem to yield the desired results. We interact with other people just fine (barring a few exceptions) based on the assumptions we make about their and our motivations. The rational position therefore would be to accept this fact, to acquiesce to the idea that we're a bunch of molecules interacting with other bunches of molecules and to stop wasting our time with pondering `the beyond'. If there is a `beyond', we'll never learn of its existence anyway, so why bother getting all worked up about it? Man is a chemical process, just like any other -W.F. Hermans
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
So what is this guy saying? That there is a God? That there isn't? That he created everything and then just disappeared?
There is one important element that the author of this book seems to miss. God is a matter of faith and science is a matter of fact. Why would God have to conform to the laws of a science that he created? He doesn't. I agree that there is no scientific proof of God but I don't really think there has to be. I mean he's God. He want us humans to think for ourselves and have faith that he is there. That is when he shows himself, when we believe in him. I certainly wouldn't want to do anything for anyone if I had to prove that I exsist first, I think God must feel the same way.
The Anti-Blog
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
What does strike me as ironic (from the summary) is that someone going through such lengths to seek explanations of consciousness claims to be based in Zen, which teaches that many of the phenomena he seeks explanations for are simply illusions.
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious by mentioning (Sir) Roger Penrose's 'The Emperor's New Mind and Douglas Hofstadter's 'Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'.
Both are scientists of excellent pedigree, check out the links if you're interested. They study consciousness from a physical/mathematical viewpoint, and the interesting thing is that they reach quite different conclusions.
This page has several (technical!) articles on Penrose's ideas about consciousness.
These books are pretty old, though (ENM '89 and GEB '79). Could anyone recommend some more recent books along the same line?
Great games
Seriously, Rob, don't you care at all about /.'s credibility? What's next, Katz, The Secret Life of Plants?
whuppy enjoys smelling like diesel fuel
This I think falls far more closely into the realm of spiritual mysticism with a little bit of scientific humbug thrown in to acheive some sense of validity. Read "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" for another fine example of this sort of trash. I don't know enough about quantum mechanics execpt to know that it's pretty damn difficult to understand. I think it was Feynman who said that anybody who thinks quantum mechanics makes sense doesn't udnerstand it at all (I'm paraphrasing and I might even have the source wrong - sue me.) That of course makes it a wonderful vehicle for burying philosophical garbage under the guise of science. This sort of huxtorism has been with us for millenia - explain the unexplainable through spirituality. I suppose it's nice to see that human conciousness has managed to evolve spirituality to fit into a world that is finding less and less of a need for it.
True, if you read the Bible. But if churches sold this image they would have a shortage of followers, resulting in a severe cash flow problem.
Marcion of Sinope proposed, in the second century AD, the existence of two separate Gods: the mean son of a bitch of the Old Testament and the benevolent Jesus of the New Testament would be two entirely different persons. He was declared a heretic and excommunicated by the Church of Rome in July, 144 AD.
According to Marcion, the God Creator of the Old Testament fucked up and let a lot of defects in humans and in nature, that's why some people are evil, that's why there's disease and suffering. God Jesus came to correct that.
IMHO, Marcion had a much more coherent theory than the canonic truth of the Christian Church. Otherwise, how can you explain that a benevolent, omnipotent God would tolerate the existence of suffering?
troll, ...They lived in mountains, sometimes stole human maidens, and could transform themselves and prophesy...
With a quantum mechanical picture of physics there is definitely room for more beliefs.
What if sometimes whether an atomic nucleus decays now or a nanosecond earlier is not random in a chaotic way, but rather happens because the Creator thinks it would be good? - Or what if sometimes the exact time a dendrite fires in your brain could sometimes be not truly random, if you choose to invite it?
I certainly find it somehow comforting that in the end faith in the Creator sometimes guiding you can not be objected against on physical grounds.
Well, I don't want to project another's argument onto you, but I have generally heard "the fall" blamed not just for people's "evil" actions towards each other, but for the "evil" (suffering) of disease, natural disasters, SIDS, etc. If that is an acceptable xtain view, it seems to me to follow that the entire world was corrupted by the fall, given the destructive power of the earth, and since animals as well as people die in natural disasters, get cancer, etc.
Now clearly there is a difference between "good" and "benevolent" but it would seem that to be consistant with the world around us that Adam must have taken not only all humanity down with him, but all life on earth for the ride.
Just a thought.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Deconstructing Katz
Many messages here are talking about a functional description of consciousness -- that is, defining consciousness as having an idea in your mind which coresponds to yourself. This is not what philosophers are talking about when they talk about consciousness. (at least not since these issues were clarified by amongst others, Thomas Nagel)
What philosophers are talking about when they talk about consciousness is "the thing it is like to be you." That is, what it is like to see the color red, hear middle C, taste a piece of candy, touch a hot poker, etc. Essentally, there is no good reason that science can come up with as to why there would be experiences such as these.
It is important to understand that this really doesn't have anything to do with the functional aspects of seeing red or feeling pain, etc. Clearly there are well understood (in prinicple) reasons why you pull your hand back from a hot stove, but there's no explanation why it *feels* like that.
Robert Pirsing (of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" fame) dicusses that within the framework of his "Value Metaphysics" in the book "Lila". He mentions that the "essense" of the legal document, the poem, or the song stored in a computer's hard disk (of this discussion, even) can't be groked by focusing on the low-level, physical caracteristics of the media. Likewise, if you conclude that a Turing machine is all-mighty, you're still left clueless about the infinite amount/kind of programs that can be written for it, or about their effect. The effects are emergent, and you can study them only after they emerge. That means that even if you can explain how consciousness is supported by quantum effects, it's likely that trying to explain how conciousness emerges from quantum effects is a dead-end.
BTW, by the definitions of human consciousness given so far, one should conclude that Society is also conscious...
None of the many worlds theory, the transactional model or the pilot wave model require the observer which is elevated to such a pedestal in the Copenhagen Interpretation.
A world in which the observer isn't is one of which we can know nothing about. It's also an uninteresitng world, in that it can be subject to just about any "laws" or "effects". That is what quantum systems are in indeterminate states until they are observed means: we can't determine anything about systems we can't observe.
The relevant world is the one we're in. We are part of the world, so our effect on it must be accounted for in any sensible theory. Observation produces a quantum effect, so the observer is a required part of any explanation.
-- Juanco
"If he's right, the dilemma is enormous: we have no particular place to go as a species. We lack a common or universal goal beyond our pre-determined biological nature."
Well...duh...
You must have missed Existentialism.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
It would take someone like Jon Katz to include spoilers like the author's conclusions in a book review.
Jon, Take a break (and a shower, whew!)
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
These are really two sides of the same coin.
Whether you believe in "God" as a supreme being or simply in the idea of "a conscious universe" what difference does it make. Science is at it's core an effort to explain the secrets of existence so that Human consciousness can perceive it, and Religion is at it's core an effort to raise Human consciousness to the level where we can deal with these perceptions of the universe. It is no small coincidence that early scientists were among the religious elite and working under the auspices of their religious leaders. These early scientists appear to have understood best that to learn about the universe is really to learn about God's universe, and our place in the grand scheme.
Jon, you first of all have to learn to not try to dredge profundity where there is none -- such as this book. Yes, human brain is just a result of evolution; yes, there is no ultimate purpose; but to leap from that to 'there can be no consciousness in a pourely material Universe without god' is simply an idiotic appeal to personal incredulity of an uneducated religious fool who cannot conceive of themselves as not being special. It's just an appeal to personal incredulity, nothing more.
We don't feel as if our brain is just a tremendously complex biological 'computer' -- but neither do we feel that out bodies are a tremendously complex biological machine, and yet they are. You, Jon, along with the author of the book, have to face reality, instead of relying on uninformed wishful thinking (and it is quite obvious that the book's author is not very informed about philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, philosophical semantics, etc.)
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
Good point and one made in the review: where you come down in this discussion has more to do with whether you assume consciousness is deterministic or nondeterministic.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
I think it would be far easier to either prove or disprove the theory that consciousness is a macro phenomenon caused by "large" electrical pulses, etc. in the brain. And therefore more worthy of examination. At least to the point where someone goes, "Ah. No, sorry, you're wrong about that, here's why...".
The theory that consciousness arises from some quantum effect strikes me as being a bit like the "ether" theory for light. Theory that's a bit too complicated for a simple phenomena.
Of course, you might not view consciousness as a simple phenomena...
This idea is simply another link in the chain of hubristic claptrap that began in the late 60s. These so-called scientists have elevated science to the state of a religion by claiming that it will actually explain all the mysteries of the universe leaving the other religions and philosophies in the dust.
We saw this in Paul Davies' "God and the New Physics" (1984) in which he exclaims that physics is the only true way in which God will be "found".
We can use science to discover how the universe was made, but it is not going to explain the purpose for which it was made. By attempting to do so, we make science into a religion instead of a tool. And if this comment angers you, then count yourself as one of the faithful, because true believers will always attempt to defend their faith.
A hammer is a tool. I can use it to build a house or bash somebody's skull in. But if I worship it then I'm an idiot.
I do remember one anecdote, though: On one of the famous primate studies (probably Washoe), only one of the interpreters was actually a "native speaker" of sign language. She consistently saw far fewer intelligible "utterances" than her hearing counterparts saw, and ultimately concluded that the others were simply seeing signs that weren't there.But there are more subtle thoughts that can't be expressed in any language. This is essentially what computability theory is about, and it's really trippy. Read Godel, Escher, Bach .
Anyway, when I suggest that language (of a certain type) is necessary for consciousness, I don't necessarily mean language for communication. Consider this: Could you teach Koko to multiply two single digit numbers? Probably. Could you teach her to multiply two 10,000 digit numbers? No. She can handle the basic operations, but once you excede her memory capacity, she can't work it out on paper like a human can.
This may seem like a silly distinction to make, but it turns out that the ability to handle computations of arbitrary size is a really big deal in the context of computability theory. That's why I think that the connection between language and consciousness might be significant.
MSK
Up to now, I've been ambivalent about Katz's essays, but this really tips the scales against him. Katz thinks this is an important book? Judging from the review, Walker seems to be clutching to shaky science and a questionable grasp of dharma (as do many of the most confident /.ers on this thread, BTW). Oh, who will deliver us from the continual nonsense Fritjof Capra has borne?
"I'm sorry, but learning ANY kind of abstract communication requires a conciousness"
why would it? I can imagine neural network learning some kind of abstract communication yet you'd probably wold not say it is conscious...
"To me, this is a plausable indication of a conciousness"
how does this invalidate the point of the book? or how is it relevant at all? just because the human is not the only conscious being does not mean that the consciousness is not what he writes about (I have not read the book, just the review)
"but that doesn't stop me from believing that there are minds in this Universe infinitely more powerful than my own"
but what started you believing it? I can undestand if you'd say there MIGHT be some such being(s), but what makes you believe that it's so?
also, even if there is such a being, what does it have to do with religion? it is not necessary that it is some kind of god...
"Thus, on any given scale you care to use, there -is-, indeed, a being that you could call supreme, at least within that respect"
yes, but that does not mean this would be god. it would be simply alien being smarter then us, it might exist and it might not exist. or it might be one of us, if there are noaliens. does that mean that one of us would be god???
"...ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe"
lets' say we would be able to create new universe (by achieving the big bang conditions). would that mean we are gods? I don't think so. just like creating paper plane from piece of paper does not make us gods...
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
In his book "The First Three Minutes" Steven Weinberg describes all the subatomic goings-on of a theoretical birth of the universe. At the end of the book he goes nihilist/atheist, which suprised me somewhat.
There's a New Yorker cartoon I'm going to draw someday where a little kid is knealing at his/her bed saying bedtime prayers: "And God, you're my FAVORITE metaphor!"
So, if God is "real" or "just a metaphor", it would seem we need to ascribe all the majesty of science (our composite empirically defined understandings) to this real or metaphoric "being" called God. But hard-core Existentialism refutes such anthropomorphizing, even towards a metaphor god.
An existentialist, on the other hand, would incur the full weight of consciousness, and in no way externalize, i.e., no God. I guess existentialists truly leave open the "no reality" clause. (Au-haue!)
Now, if you want to be an absurdist existentialist (AE), you might tackle Meaninglessness hard and hold on for dear life. An AE would refute all perceived or "proven" patterns with either its statistical meaninglessness in the face of so much more non-pattern, or argue that pattern doesn't really lead to meaning of any sort.
I find hard-core AE to be a good intellectual workout. Sort of like doing number theory proofs when you're only an accountant. After all, when you look at modern theatre such as Simon Gray, Harold Pinter, E. O'Neal (sp?), Edward Albee, they all seem to be hard on the trail of meaninglessness. Hard meaninglessness work makes you, well, just plain more objective. It weeds out favoritisms and sentimentalities. (Flabby romantics usually break down and blubber after the first few windsprints.)
But why fool with meaninglessness? Why suffer through "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?"? Because reality demands that we get it right! Get it wrong with a car (a small subset of reality) and you've hit a tree at 70 mph, and you're probably dead. Get it wrong with the reality of meaning, well, let's not even think about it.
Having said all of that, I reject that the brain is a self-referential instantiator or whatever the gene priest called it. After a vigorous existential meaningless workout, I head over to Zen, which says Consciousness is the whole point. Higher and higher consciousness--by anything, anyhow. So with that in mind (ha!), the universe has created ways for it to perceive itself. That's the real genetic personality of the universe, if you ask me. Matter has organized itself into phenomena which perceive. And that realization gives me all the mandate I need to keep on fighting Microsoft! Or whatever.. . . . . . .
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
I like this guy already :)
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
I read and enjoyed ENM, and felt that it did a fairly good job of skirting around pseudoscience. There seems to be a terrible tendancy to invoke either Quantum Mechanics or Chaos Theory whenever we get to something that seems fuzzy or hard/imprecise to analyze.
I keep an open mind, but personally, I'm beginning to believe that consciousness isn't all it's cracked up to be. Some of the most interesting insights might be coming from current robotics work, where interlinked simple systems are starting to show complex behavior. This concept also shows up in some psychological theories.
Another nagging thought concerns dogs. These puppies have spent thousands of years evolving as companions for people - and they are remarkably well adapted, emotionally. With brains considered much less complex than the humans', and generally not considered conscious, they mirror our emotional responses to an amazing degree.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Who the hell is James Wilson? I'm pretty sure you mean E. O. Wilson, author of Sociobiology. And that's such a misleading and inaccurate summary of his thesis, I won't even go into it.
In response, I would say that a mechanistic understanding of human behavior is no barrier towards the search for enlightenment. Knowing what kind of animal you are is the first step to not whistling when you're pissing. Don't think with two minds when one is enough.
--
The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must cover
Yhtill forever. (R. W. Chambers, the King in Yellow)
The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must cover
Yhtill forever. (R. W. Chambers, the King in Yellow
I admit it. I cannot understand materialism. That is, I don't understand how people can possibly believe that matter is all that exists and that all of our actions are determined by strictly material causes.
The materialist believes that there is no such thing as the supernatural, whether it be God, or gods, or the Tao, or the Buddha. He thinks every effect in the universe can be explained by material causes. But let us (as C.S. Lewis does in his book "Miracles") take a look at the implications of such a belief.
If materialism is true, then everything that exists at this moment is the result of an extremely long chain of physical events spanning back to the big bang. Life came to exist on earth because a few water molecules accidentally got mixed up with some amino acids. Human beings came about because of random genetic mutations in apes that turned out to make the apes survive longer. I'm sure the details here are entirely inadequate, but you see the point. Darwinian evolution is a generally accepted theory on the development of human beings.
But what about our thoughts? If materialism is true, then the cause of every thought that you or I have can be traced back to the big bang. That is, it is only because one particular atom left the big bang at such and such a trajectory that I think anything at all. So all of my thoughts are simply the effects, or results, of the random motion of atoms in my brain. If materialism is true, then the universe is causally closed. That is, every effect in the universe can be shown mathematically to have been caused by a particular physical cause.
Yet can this be possible? If the thoughts in my head are simply the random movements of atoms, why should I believe my own thoughts to be true? Why should I trust my own thoughts? Would any one of us trust a computer that was programmed by throwing marbles randomly at the keyboard? Of course not!
The materialist shoots himself in the foot as soon as he argues for materialism. If materialism is true, then there can be no truth! The the very thought of materialism is simply the result of the random motion of atoms and cannot be said to be true. If a particular atom, or group of atoms had moved along a slightly different trajectory millions of years ago, the materialist would have an entirely different set of thoughts, and might not have thought of materialism at all.
I believe completely that evolution is a good theory. Lately there have been some interesting experiments in biology that are exploring "transposons", which seem to imply that evolution is not as random as was once believed. However, this work does not invalidate the idea that a selection process is at work.
Accepting this, it does seem very likely that the specific evolution of homo sapiens does reflect the necessity's of a collection-of-cells NOT getting eaten by another collection-of-cells =). Ergo, our cognitive abilitys reflect or map-to the needs of a physical entity in a physical world. Or to rephrase, quantum mechanics doesn't make sense because I'm way to BIG for an evolutionary process to selectively enhance or atrophy the sense-set I would require to interact with a quantum environment.
Yeah, I think I agree with him on the first bit =)
No matter where you go, there you are &:^)
Recommended for those who believe that complex adaptive behavior can be explained without stooping to quantum mumbo-jumbo.
During my checkered career, I managed to pick up a degree in philosophy. About 20 years ago, I came up with a theory of 'the soul' that I felt had the potential for real significance and verifiability
I'd have to spend weeks reviewing the notes I took over the years before I'd be willing to frame it again in today's terms, but it did contain a central element that Slashdotters are uniquely qualified to appreciate and explore.
I'd welcome your comments
I call it "The Output Problem":
Namely If the human brain is a processor of any sort, then there must exist a single central location where the output of the proceses we call 'conscious thought' is present
Extensive studies of lesions of all parts of the brain have not turned up no location where a lesion causes a loss of this 'output' -- i.e. a loss of the awareness of conscious thought -- though numerous spilt-brain and lesion studies have contributed interesting insight (That's why it would take me many weeks to review my medical notes) We have seen the effects of trauma, tumors, CVA/TIA (strokes/near-strokes), and surgical ablation (and electrical stimulation) of literally every square millimeter of the brain many thousands of times in the past century
Saying its the 'frontal cortex' would be like saying simply "CPU" or "ALU", since the frontal cortex consists of (on the order of) 10^9 neurons. Even on a computer chip there is relative handful of gates that constitute the total output. Blow those gates and the chip can't output. Concepts like "redundancy", "plasticity", and "holographic output" do not really explain anything here, since the underlying biological processes are slow enough that we would be able ot observe the loss and recovery of conscious thought over a period from hours to months. (Coma and unconscious states do not seem to be merely the loss of conscious thought -- or even closely related to it. They have other quite different, widespread physiologic effects)
When I was a naive teenager, I thought that if we could locate this 'output' we'd be on the road to exploring the soul. Now I think the issue may be a bit more complex, but I still think this is an important question that someone else might be able to use to gain serious insight and/or formulate a new theory
[BTW, I've yet to read a theorist who didn't 'pick and chose' their neurological cases (if they use them at all) with so carefully that it seems impossible that they didn't hear of of other cases that contradicted their theories outright. (Empiricism is such a bitch)]
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
the existence of will is simpler than physics
How can you have come to this conclusion from Quantum Mechanics? I would have exactly the opposite interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, i.e. our difficulty in ``understanding it'' (*) makes it more likely that we are the product of millions of years of evolution (practice at thinking about everyday things). The statment ``no one understands quantum mechanics'' is a statment about traditional philosophical ``understanding'' of theories and has *nothing* to do with scientific understanding of the theory, but it is exactly the failure of this tradional philosophical understanding that makes me not believe in ``design.'' Quantum Mechanics is not some great philosophical step. It is a rejecting of traditional human philosophical though in favor of the scientific method.. and that is why it works.
Tring to bring things a littlem ore ontopic: Why is it that people (like the author of this book) refuse to accept that they se want they want to see? What do I want to see?
I want to see a universe full of problems for me to answer. This means a universe where I am capable of addressing many problems, but without the strangaling intelectual safety of a god (including the idea that our current philosophies are the universal method of solving problems). This lack of intelectual safety is exactly what makes the universe beautiful to me.. and convinces me that their is progress to be made. I feal the unknown is wonderful because it is scary.. and can kill you.. and that will be the end. I can not imagine how anyone can be happy (especially in this age) beliving that the greatest days of our species were 200 years ago when
Now, is any of the above paragraph science? NO! Is it an objective argument for you to be an atheist? Not really. Is it an argument for the incompatibility between science and religion> Nope. It is a description of the emotions which motivate me. Yet, it is perfectly analogous to the kinds of arguemnts that theists make and that the book we are reviewing makes for the opposite of the above statments.
There is too much confusion in this world people.. try and seperate what you feal and what you want from what you know by objective reproducable experence. We will all make a little more intelectual progress.. and we will all be a little less likely to change the facts to fit the evidence.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
just blowing some karma to say the posts in this thread are truly high quality /.: vintage in the making. Goes to show that for all the noise, signal still gets through. Thanks to all for contributing.
A healthy day-to-day world view cannot have an absence of free will as a cornerstone. One can live within the illusion of accountablity for 99% of their lives and still philosophically believe in the absence of free-will during an entertaining debate.
The problem is when people tries to take ideas from entertaining debates and apply them to the real world. The "free will" thing is only one of the results.
Look, theres a really fun, scientific/spiritual/philosophical discussion about the true nature of free will tm. But it doesn't even spill over into my thoughts on accountability. My view of real life accountability is simple :
I sometimes find myself waiting a long period of time before taking an action. I, and most other people refer to this time as "making a decision". After an action I often find myself thinking about what might have happened, had I acted differently. This is called "regretting a decision." Now totally outside of the idea of "true free will", in a real life discussion of accountability, the presence of agonized decisions and regret is enough evidence of our ability (indeed there isn't much way arond it) to make decisions. The presence of a decision equals accountability at some level for that decision.
Not to stop anyone from enjoying their late night bull session, just don't think it has any effect on how a just society will run. And on the same subject, anyone who really finds themselves unmotivated because there isn't any "true" purpose to our existance needs to get out more. I have known all my life that there is nothing more in this world than the world, and it has never stopped me from caring about others, working for a better future or seeing a subjective "point" to it all.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
You need a big shot of insulin. Reduce your bloodsugar to about 30 mg/dl of blood and then you will border the world of abstraction and darkness. Conciousness can be measured in sugar molecules and their presence in the bloodstream.
Behold the central arguement among the logical positivists, that consciousness self-emerges when a certain level of computing complexity is attained. This book jumps from that well-spring. It reminds me of the arguement about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Since the only processors we know with consciousness are orders of magnitude more complex than anything we can make (or figure out how to program) yet, can we leave this question for now?
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
has no opinoins of his own, or if he does he doesn't express them. but he does (occasionally) mangae to get some decent discussions going on slashdot, even though 9/10ths of the posts are flames toward him.
What is it? Where does it come from? What is its purpose?
The answer, says Walker, is in quantum and Newtonian physics. Using "Bell's Theorem" - the notion that one particle can instantly influence the behavior of another, Walker unveils his notions of the intricacies of electron tunneling in the brain.
Will some quantum effects are obviously going to come into play at the smallest levels of the brain there's still plenty more we don't know at even the more macroscopic scales. In the last few years neuropsychologists have discovered the important role that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) plays in the brain.
Whereas traditionally it was thought that all communication between different neurons in the brain occured along the synapses between them through electrochemical processes they found that there was a totally different medium used for neuronal communication. Nitrous oxide can be released in the brain and diffuse outwords rather than travel along specific paths. Because it spreads out it can affect a large number of other neurons, making it an important part in the massive parallelism of the human brain.
If we are still learning about important processes like this, then its still probably too early to begin talking about what gives rise to conscioussness.
The human mind, then, is a device for survival and reproduction, with reason just one of the techniques used to achieve that goal. All other functions of human consciousness - creativity, anger, exploration, adventure - exist either in support of this goal, or are inconsequential.
I've read a lot of stuff on genetics and I agree with a lot of the arguments for biological determination/influence on behaviour. However purely genetic reasons don't explain the myriad of human actions. We are somwhat more than just a vehicle for our genes, obeying hard-wired genetic imperatives. Those imperatives exist, but we can act against them - hence celibacy for instance. If the only reason we have is to pass our genes on, then celibacy is the single act which is most against nature. But it happens.
Quantum physics and mechanics create a mechanical picture of consciousness, Walker says, "consciousness arising out of the very observer-dependent processes that go on in the brain as they do in the laboratories of physicists, in the hearts of atoms, and in the cores of stars." With an observer in the brain, this consciousness selects the things that happen in the external world.
This statement relies heavily on one particular view of what quantum mechanics implied, called the Copenhagen Interpretation. It says that quantum systems are in indeterminate states until they are observed - the so-called "collapse of the wave function". However the key word here is Interpretation. There are other ways of interpreting what quantum mechanics means and all of them give rise to the same observable phenomena, but explain them in different ways. None of the many worlds theory, the transactional model or the pilot wave model require the observer which is elevated to such a pedestal in the Copenhagen Interpretation.
"A universe that has only matter cannot have consciousness and cannot have will," he concludes. "The picture painted to explain the material world, orderly but without God, has failed to work." Einstein, writes Walker, could see "the print of God's hand" on creation exteding to the edges of the cosmos, but he failed to see us there, he failed to see the implications of mind for physics, and he failed to see anything but the shadow of God." Walker sees all those things.
Well, he's not afraid to make sweeping statements about, well pretty much all of the biggest questions mankind has. Call me cautious but I'm generally suspicious of people making such grandiose claims, even if they do have knowledge to back it up - which is kind of a novelty for these kind of books.
Due to many, many user complaints about the quality and content of the articles that Jon Katz has been writing, we here at Slashdot have decided to do what we believe is best for the /. community by announcing this will be Jon's last article for us.
We'd like to take a moment to thank Jon for all his efforts in the past, but it is time to move on. The recent uprising in troll activity can clearly be linked to his articles, and we need to get this problem under control.
We are currently in negotiations with Natalie Portman to get her to write a weekly technology opinion column for Slashdot.
thanks for your support, -hemos
I'm hemos., aka Jeff. Bates.. I help run this site, along with Rob. Malda.. I handle books, and generally posting storie
Hmm.. well. From a practical standpoint, to be fully conscious or aware is impossible. An infinite recursive series. Plus,your awareness of any event actually lags 1/2 a second or so behind the actuality.. but the brain fools you into thinking it happens 'right now'. A useful thing when your hand is burning or something, but most of what we call consciousness is (in the actual nuts and bolts of it) an illusion. Mostly subroutines.
Chalk one up for the Taoists and Buddhists.
Anybody interested should check out "The User Illusion" by Tor Norretranders (subtitle: cutting consciousness down to size)
He explores a lot of this territory without any particular axe to grind.. merely points out that we need to be aware of this illusion, and that freedom from the illusion of the 'I' means that we can understand that consciousness is a much larger something of which we are part.
What that something is, is subject to endless debate.. have fun!
"Since everything is apparition, perfect in being, having nothing to do with good or evil, acceptance or rejection,
To punish us.
Deconstructing Katz
I'm sorry, but learning ANY kind of abstract communication requires a conciousness. So does self-awareness, for that matter. Awareness of self as an entity is a fundamental requirement for the development of philosophy, art and the concept of personal needs and desires beyond survival and instinct.
Some species of dolphin and whale exhibit behaviour that could be described as an awareness of the abstract and self-awareness. To me, this is a plausable indication of a conciousness.
As for the argument that everything exists because it is essential for survival, well, I'm sure that that is true. But religion and faith are not synonymous with Creationism. (The Celtic religions didn't even HAVE a creation myth. Nor, really, do the Hindus, whos Universe exists forever.)
I feel saddened that prejudice against one specific sect of Christianity should spur so many otherwise brilliant scientists to behave like arrogant, spoiled children. I don't believe in the literal translation of Genesis, but that doesn't stop me from believing that there are minds in this Universe infinitely more powerful than my own.
If you want a "logical" argument for religion, though, we live in a finite Universe. Therefore, there is a finite number of concious beings within that Universe. Thus, on any given scale you care to use, there -is-, indeed, a being that you could call supreme, at least within that respect.
Given that, and given that there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that we live in a foamy multiverse, and also given that the energy required to trigger the Inflation effect (which would create an entirely new Universe) requires energies we can acieve today (although not the energy density), it is ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe. As such, it is patently stupid for any scientist to reject the possibility that this did, indeed, happen in the case of THIS Universe.
IMHO, if science provides a workable hypothesis, then for a scientist to ACCEPT that hypothesis AND reject that the hypothesis has already occured is much more farcical than any notion even the most extreme fundamentalist has ever proposed. Nature may abhor a vaccuum, but science abhors self-contradictions and paradoxical statements.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
coming soon, my new book, the physics of grits-pouring. thank you.
You're absolutely correct. It's just that Penrose et al can't stand the idea that we might be essentially deterministic, material beings no matter how unpredictable.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Reading the review I was struck by the common fallacy that predetermination somehow demonstrates the abscence of free will.
:-)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the discovery of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle essentially deal the death blow to scientific determinism, which would render the fallacy a moot point? Sure, the type of determinism ruled out by the uncertainty principle is very "low-level" determinism, but one would not expect "higher-level" determinism to be valid if it wasn't built on a valid "low-level" base.
Or do I just have no idea what I'm talking about?
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
If materialism is true, then everything that exists at this moment is the result of an extremely long chain of physical events spanning back to the big bang.
No. You are confusing materialism with believing in a deterministic Newtonian universe. This is basically a XIX-century argument against materialism and it wasn't very successful even then.
Since it is generally accepted that our universe is neither Newtonian, nor deterministic, your position is rather untenable.
If materialism is true, then the cause of every thought that you or I have can be traced back to the big bang.
See? You are doing it again. This is Newtonian determinism, not materialism.
why should I believe my own thoughts to be true? Why should I trust my own thoughts?
There is no good answer to that question which does not have anything to do with materialism or randomess. If fact, it is usually used to argue *against* materialism: why should I believe my senses that the physical universe exists? It's nothing but sensations is a purely spiritual/mental/non-material world and you cannot prove otherwise. And actually yes, you cannot, though you can make some good arguments why this is not likely to be the case.
So, the random path of a random atom at Big Bang caused you to make a fool out of yourself on Slashdot...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
But were your mind and your finger slipping together behind your back?
In this picture, there's no room for computation. I support it's one of the troll "science" books that have begun making the scene. A very similar book (quantum biology? whatever) was reviewed in /. recently.
:I
I don't think physicists are always very able to understand the issues such as symbol manip., representation, processing, information, etc. Too abstract for them I guess. Quantum this, quantum that. WTF? Why see quantum physics as the ultimate source of mysticism? It is not! It helps us to understand reality, by science, not by God.
These guys should sit down and read some of the true philosophy and science behind the study of consciousness.
Also, Jon Katz is only a quarter-way decent book-reviewer. Excellent use of language
--exa--
Why can't those kewl elite doodz do something useful like take Katz down for several hours and save us all the pontificating pain?
Absolutely. William Calvin's brilliant mosaic theory explains many of the phenomenal features of consciousness, especially why thinking and experiencing feels like it does (though not, of course, why we feel it at all). *Everybody* should read about it. If anyone is curious, the full text of his books How Brains Think and The Cerebral Code are available online at his web site.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I don't believe the hard problem is a problem at all. I've exchanged views with David Chalmer's on this, but needless to say he disagreed! ;-)
I think that the experience of consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon of creatures (or could be machines) that have a brain architecture that supports consciousness (the inward looking sense), as well as other higher order functions.
If you consider the "feel" of vision, what it comes down to is simply the spatial nature of the sense itself. We don't just register a description of a scene the way a zombie suposedly would, but rather directly access the scene itself as a 2-dimensional spatial composite of blobs of colour, texture, movement, etc. We directly see the spatial realtionships between objects - thoise that touch, those that don't, which are above/below others, which are bigger/smaller/etc. I assert that it is our internal representation of visual scenes, which directly preserves and represents the spatial qualities of the scence, that gives rise to the qualia of vision. Similarly hearing is a temporal rather than spatial sense, which is what gives it it's own qualia/feel. A bat may be blind, but it still has some sort of spatial awareness of it's surroundings though it's echolocation capabilities - but the phenomenal experience of the bat (for some reason a common concern of philosophers!) is going to be determined by the inherently temporal/sequential nature of the echolocation process.
So, given the above, I'd claim that the "feel" of any sense is determined purely by the inherent characteristics of the sense (e.g. spatial vs temporal), no more, no less. In a spatial representation two otherwise similar objects of different color (a property that's applies to the whole surface of the object) are going to appear the same other than having a differentiating surface "quality". That's all that color is - a surface differentiator. There is no absolute "greenness" quale... green objects just remind us of other similarly colored objects. We don't say that a shirt has a 3/4 level greeness, but rather that it is leaf green or ivy green. Given the continuum of greenness, a term such as "dark green" makes sense to us only because we can roughly place it on the spectrum and thereby visualize previously encountered occurrences of the color, or perhaps even synthesize the the color due to past experience with green objects, and the ability to apply the "dark" modifier.
The quale of vision thus derives from the spatial nature of vision. The quale of color derives from it's surface differentiator nature etc. These quales have nothing to do with being human, and everthing to to with representation and having the cortical ability to manipulate, compare, save and recall these representations.
The quale of consciousness is a result of it's inward looking and hence somewhat self-referential nature.
For those interested in Penrose's theories of the mine, here's an interesting article you may be interesting.
From Science Volume 287, Feb 4, 2000, p 791:
NEUROSCIENCE: Cold Numbers Unmake the Quantum Mind
Charles Seife
"Calculations show that collapsing wave functions in the scaffolding of the brain can't explain the mystery of consciousness."
"Sir Roger Penrose is incoherent, and Max Tegmark says he can prove it. According to Tegmark's calculations, the neurons in Penrose's brain are too warm to be performing quantum computations--a key requirement for Penrose's favorite theory of consciousness."
From farther down in the article...
"Combining data about the brain's temperature, the sizes of various proposed quantum objects, and disturbances caused by such things as nearby ions, Tegmark calculated how long microtubules and other possible quantum computers within the brain might remain in superposition before they decohere. His answer: The superpositions disappear in 10-13 to 10-20 seconds. Because the fastest neurons tend to operate on a time scale of 10-3 seconds or so, Tegmark concludes that whatever the brain's quantum nature is, it decoheres far too rapidly for the neurons to take advantage of it."
My wife bought the book last week - I have been looking over her sholders from time to time waiting.. I don't see how one can "understand" physics with just the mind. My approach is more by edging toward experience. I wrote a book on the subject at http://www.dyad.org/d06twy1.htm - to understand the physical universe you must understand that it is a multi-threaded process and that we see only one thread. but that doesn't make it one physical universe. Bill Savoie
But ultimately, we see what we want to see. So the idea is to choose to see the good and interpret things in terms of the best possible light, because based on the "law of reciprocity" we get back what we give out.
It may be that we do control physical reality at the quantum level with our thoughts, thus giving rise to the notion that prayers and meditations really work; are beneficial to ourselves and others. It's the findings of quantum physics that have opened the door to the merging of science and spirituality.
I'm not touching this topic with a 10',20',30',...
Ok I'm just not touching this topic as it is WAY to opinionated.
The purpouse of things may be found by discovering their functionality. Put yourself in God's position: - you are lonely - you are creator - you have no action around you So, you create Katz, Internet, and \. readers, and now you can have a great fun by reading speculation on matters of consciousness, purpouse of life, quantum etc. --------------- Does there any other reason (scientific?) to create Katz ?
Science is the study of cause and effect in this material world using the 5 senses. Since faith is not one of the five senses, and God is not part of the material world, you can't prove God exists/doesn't exist with science.
.
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
Zen has some big problems with the concept of a God, especially God as understood in the Western judeo-christian-islamic tradition. In general, defining God is a very hard thing to do. Something on the lines of "an omnipresent omniscient being who created the universe" (standard lay Christian understanding) doesn't cut it for various reasons, free will among them. Zen, when presented with such definition would of course say that there is no such thing.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Clearly not. You seem to be confusing materialism with determinism. Just because things have a material cause does not mean that everything happens in a strictly deterministic fashion. In fact we know (or at least believe we know) that this is not the case.
You also imply that materialism is incompatible with spirituality. Being a Buddhist, I have to disagree -- though it doesn't really mesh very well with most organized religion. I find it somewhat amusing that you mention C.S. Lewis. Now I liked "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" as much as the next guy, but why does every fundamentalist x-ian with an inferiority complex feel the need to trot out Lewis to try to validate their intellectual standing? Is there no other fundie with a modicum of respect in academia? Oh, I guess not...
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Great, another "Consciousness Physicist." I would suggest that you would be better off reading *anything* by William Calvin, or Daniel Dennett.
Describing the mechanical processing of the human brain, or calling on the holy name of a yet-to-be-formulated Grand Unified Theory does not entail a complete explanation. I'm glad some one here pointed out that Existentialism has been dealing with this, and that's been since the mid-19th century with this century's emphasis crossing more heavily with the issues of science, so this is hardly new stuff.
For those interested in the issues around Science, God, Metaphysics (in the sense of philosophy), I heartily recommend Wolfhart Pannenberg's works. His Metaphysics and the Idea of God deals heavily with the symbiotic relationship between theology and metaphysics without equating them. His Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith is a culmination of decades of work with theologians and scientists working together. His Theology and the Philosophy of Science is not currently in print, but is one of the best books I have ever read on this topic. Being a few years old, it's missing the deep crises presently occurring the in the philosophy of science. ...if you don't believe that, you're not reading enough.
Pannenberg is particularly enjoyable to those with a background in philosophy or theology. He is not easy reading by any stretch of the imagination. Europeans will be more familiar with him, while he may be somewhat undiscovered to many American readers. He's known for repackaging German Idealism toward a synthetic worldview: Science and God cannot conflict, neither can they continue to exist completely independent of each other. His sense of religion is rational and not a mystical cop-out when dealing with explanations.
It's far too easy for someone who's interested/knowledgeable in science and had some sort of religious experience/exposure to feel that they can push these ideas together well. Let's be dutiful to read works like the one mentioned in this article or like the one's that I mentioned, ...or... let's keep our mouths shut and make room for those who are actually putting well-tempered effort into this discussion.
Moderators: please ignore this posting as it has nothing to do with Legos, robots, or malevolent monopolist stooges.
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
In the case you have been asleep for the past 50 years, Francis Crick discovered, together with James Watson, the structure of the DNA molecule.
Perhaps being one of the greatest biologists of the 20th century will give him some authority on biology related subjects, but Crick doesn't rely on "authority" alone. His book is clearly written and presents the results of careful scientific research by many people on the subject of human consciousness.
I'm an avid reader on this subject and, among the many books I have read about human consciousness, I have no doubt that Crick's stands alone as the best.
troll, ...They lived in mountains, sometimes stole human maidens, and could transform themselves and prophesy...
*quantum physics is mysterious
*consciousness is mysterious
*therefore consciousness must rely on quantum effects
this fallacious reasoning was also used by Roger Penfield (The Emperor's New Mind)
Cognitive science has made a lot of progress on explaining consciousness. Read Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" or Steve Pinker's "How the Mind Works"
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
The brain is an immensely complicated instrument, but it seems to me that there is plenty enough complexity in the chemical-based neuron connections to eventually produce a good theory for how it works.
Why is this not sufficient? Why do many physicists feel that there "must" be a quantum component to it? Given that there is no quantum component to DNA (that we know of), which is the foundation of everything, I find it hard to believe that there would be one in the brain.
--
Seen on another bathroom wall:
"I fucked your mother"
In response:
"Go home, dad; you're drunk!"
-dmd
You are wrong to assume that everything can be traced back (or predicted to the future) as far as one wants.
:-)
Quantum theory tells us that we cannot measure the current state of a given system with arbitrary precision, but are limited eg. by Heisenbergs inequality. You cannot in principle obtain better knowledge about a given system. This obviously limits what one can find out about the past.
As a physicist, i have not the least problem with materialism
It may not be the aestetically most pleasing, but it is the one favoured by The razor.
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blah blah blah blah.
blah blah
blah
troll, ...They lived in mountains, sometimes stole human maidens, and could transform themselves and prophesy...
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
It's kind of sad that Jon has given up on being a serious journalist and has reduced himself to a third rate salesman for Fatbrain.
I hope the $.50 you make for each copy of this book that sells is worth whoring yourself out.
Go ahead and mod me down... you know it's true, though.
br4dh4x0r
"I think computer viruses should count as life. We've created life in our own image." - Stephen Hawking
Given that, and given that there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that we live in a foamy multiverse, and also given that the energy required to trigger the Inflation effect (which would create an entirely new Universe) requires energies we can acieve today (although not the energy density), it is ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe. As such, it is patently stupid for any scientist to reject the possibility that this did, indeed, happen in the case of THIS Universe.
Are you referring to Andrei Linde's theory of chaotic inflation in which there is some kind of infinite universe (multiverse?) in which chaotically local inflation occurs - i.e. a Big Bang type event from the perspective of those inside the new, inflated region? Or if not, what else. Just curious.
So, I think it's pretty ludicrous to ascribe consciousness and free will to quantum effects in the brain. As far as I know, individual neurons do behave deterministically; they fire if and only if their inputs exceed a certain threshold, and that threshold involves a macroscopic flow of charge. That means that the quantum effects will all wash out statistically. Now, does the determinism of individual neurons rule out free will? I don't know the answer to that. I suspect that it does not, because I certainly feel like I have free will; however, I confess that I cannot prove that rigorously. For a particularly lucid discussion of how free will might (or might not) emerge from deterministic systems, I recommend Douglas Hofstadter's books. Both Godel, Escher, Bach and Metamagical Themas have sections that talk about these issues. The Mind's I probably does too, but I haven't read that one (yet).
-r
Here's some questions to mull in front of the screen: Why is Katz here ? Why does he bother with his lightweight ill-researched pseudo-journalism ? More importantly why does anyone bother to read it ? Reading his incoherent ramblings is the literary equivalent of rubbernecking a fatal road accident.
Neurons interact by releasing neurotransmitters at one another. Billions of them at a time, per firing, per neuron, several times per second. Quantum effects are dwarfed at that scale.
Consciousness, literally, yes. But explain qualia. About 50% of the time, when someone says 'consciousness', they mean 'qualia'. Perhaps it is a macro-phenomenon, but there's no telling -- the very idea of qualia is absurd to our current understanding of physics, macro-phenomena or no.
I suspect that either there's a spicific evolutionary advantage to experiencing qualia, or there's some real purpose behind human (and possibly -- probably -- animal) life. I'm siding with the former, but I'm not closed to the latter.
---
[ approaching AI ]
Considering what we know now about deterministic, but chaotic systems, and how complex behaviour arises from simple rules, I don't think we need to resort to quantum theory at all.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
What you describe is a completely newtonian universe; it doesn't exist. At least, not with our current understanding of Quantum Mechanics. Even knowing the exact position and velocity of every atom in the universe at time T is not enough to know the state of the universe at time T+1 to the same degree of exactness. This effect gets amplified over greater time. It is not possible to trace your thoughts back to the state of the universe at the big bang.
As for not "trusting" your own thoughts because the chance of them coming about in this universe is slim, well, thats your problem.
And as for there being no "truth", so what? You are just reflecting your own need to attach religious significance to things, no more.
Consciousness is a complex, emergent phenomenon. Even if the universe was mechanistic, it would still exist. Humans would still percieve "truth", and that's all that matters.
(no sig)
"For a thousand of years..." Young man, I used to get instant bad marks for starting a homework with such a common place statement....
Ok so the answer to that was given by Sinistrus Domini Glaius of 15 via Aprilia, Herculanum MMCXVII, Roman Empire who unfortunately died some while ago and did not have time to get his work published. So I guess we will never now.
Anyways, who wants an answer to that.
Sigh... I've liked Jon's work in the past, but he really has lost it now.. Okay, time for Philsophy 101. Jon Katz to the principal's office for skipping please.
:)
... will in the end be certain of only one thing: helping to perpetuate the cycle that created him. Almost everything else is up in the air, one theory as good as another.
Here's some questions to mull in front of the screen: Why are we here? Where have the Gods all gone?
Perhaps they never existed in the first place.
Individual species, he wrote, may have tremendous potential for material and mental progress, but at the core they lack any direction beyond that in which their genetic and molecular architecture steer them.
Ahh, the fun old deterministic arguement. Not a proof, and no way to prove it. Besides that, it's been resolved as a problem with language, not with reality.
Wilson believes the human mind is constructed in a way that locks it onto this pre-ordained track and forces it to make choices on a purely biological basis. His notion is part of one of the oldest feuds in philosophy, science and the humanities - is there really free will, or are conscience and consciousness merely byproducts of electricity, impulses, genes and molecules?
Ahh.. I'm impressed. At least Jon knows this has been argued endlessly. Guess him and the author hadn't grasped the solution yet and were looking for better explanations.
All other functions of human consciousness - creativity, anger, exploration, adventure - exist either in support of this goal, or are inconsequential.
You forgot science and politics.
Yes, yes, we all know that part already. Let's skip down to the meat of this long winded article.
The reflective person
So you interpret the continuing growth of the sum of human knowledge as confirmation that life only exists to get it on? Well, as good a reason as any other I've heard.
If he's right, the dilemma is enormous: we have no particular place to go as a species. We lack a common or universal goal beyond our pre-determined biological nature.
And?
Lack of a clearly defined goal has not stopped our species before, Jon. No reason to think it might do so now. Perhaps the majority of the species will stop looking for things that simply don't exist. There is no "meaning of life". Monty Python excluded, of course.
That would bring the world a stable eco-system for the first time. But what then?
Well, I imagine I'd get a cola and reflect on it for about 3 minutes, then getting on with having a good time.
If this dilemma holds any interest for you, try reading "The Physics of Consciousness, The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life," by Evan Harris Walker, physicist and director of the Walker Cancer Institute.
So that's it? The book simply replaces religion with nothingness? It's basically an intro to existentalism then isn't it? Sheesh. What a long winded explanation for a book that could be summarized in 2 sentences.
The answer, says Walker, is in quantum and Newtonian physics. Using "Bell's Theorem" - the notion that one particle can instantly influence the behavior of another, Walker unveils his notions of the intricacies of electron tunneling in the brain.
Oh ho! So now we see what's going on.. Religion replaced by quantum physics! Woo Hoo! Einstein is rolling over in his grave.
"We want to ask, is there a God? Does my life have meaning and purpose? Science, we are told, says that even to ask about God is beyond its scope." But this, Walker argues, is not true. Either there is no such thing as God, or science - which embodies our ability to reason - must be able to frame the question and provide us with the answers.
Wrong.
Science can deal with facts, evidence, other phenomena. There is no evidence either for or against the existance of a deity. There is no solid evidence for or against existance of an afterlife. How can you frame a question if you don't have anything to question?
Walker takes us on an amazing journey into what he calls the "engines of the mind," from membranes of nerve cells which maintain electric fields, to the synapse, the junction between neurons, the site of what he calls "quantum choice" a major intersection of human consciousness. (Note: a bunch of other crap skipped)
Essentially, the rest of this says that he explains how neurons work, theorizes on how consciousness comes from that, then says that each consciousness lives in its own existance and is "god" of its universe. Where you actually meet another person can then be either where your universes intersect, or where you invent a person so you won't be so lonely (solipism).
Anyway, it sounds like a rehash of everything said before, only throwing quantum physics in to make it "fresh".
Sigh. It'd be nice if something original was created, just once in a while.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's expansion/exploitation/colonization of the entire Universe, to spread out genes far and wide.
But that is not the whole story anyway. The human mind and "spirit" has it's own goals that go beyond the basic needs of our biology and are not limited by them - see Laslo's hierarchy of needs... I know that I have a strong need not to be bored, for example, but it is difficult to connect this to my biological imperatives. And entities that we create will develop need of their own that are specially suited to their nature.
Actually, this idea that we have "no place to go" is the worst sort of arrogance - it's like that respected scientist that declared that there are no more big discoveries to be made, just work to polish and refine the existing body of knowledge (and this just before the discovery of Quantum Psysics) or the proposal at the last turn of the century that the US Patent Office be closed because "there are no more inventions to be made".
Poppycock!
--
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
Once you give your life to Jesus, life becomes much more meaningful.
-ac
Ok, back under my bridge...
Can quantum physics, Zen philosophy and subjective experience connect the dots between God, matter and the nature of life?
No.
This all actually sounds very facinating, however
it seems to me that the argument of "see all
this order and all this that can explain how that
works, there must be a God" is another example
of the law of fives.
For the uninitiated in Discordian philosophy,
I will try to explain it, (for more in depth
examples of it, see "The Illuminatus! trilogy"
and of course the Principia Discordia)
From the Pricipia:
===
The Law of Fives states simply that: ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES
OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5.
The Law of Fives is never wrong.
In the Erisian Archives is an old memo from Omar to Mal-2: "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I
look."
===
What is the point of such a silly law? Well
the point is that if you believe it, then
it will be true.
It is more properly called "bias". If you believe
there is a God to begin with, then all evidence
you find, will lead you back to the conclusion
that there is, in fact, a God. This is more a
product of the mind and its amazing pattern
matching abilities than anything else.
This is exactly why the answering of questions
like "is there a God" is beyond the scope of
science. Differnt people, with differnt bias, will
look at the factual "evidence" and come to
completely differnt conclusions.
Some will see amazing amounts of Complexity and
Order...they will conclude that the mind was
created by some supreme being. Others will
see the same things as amazing amounts of
disorder, and conclude that it all came together
by chance and just happend to do what it does.
Is there a God? Beats the hell out of me. I see
no hard evidence one way or the other. I seriously
think the universe works fine without one...but
then again, my bias is against the idea of a
God, since it doesn't fit in with my world view.
The law of fives is never wrong.
Hail Eris!
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Putting Katz's name with anything turns it into crap.
Apparently people haven't been paying attention to Blaise Pascal's maxim in the subject field.
"With an observer in the brain, this consciousness selects the things that happen in the external world."
I'm going to assume here (which is probably not a valid assumption) that most readers are familiar with the concepts of Wigner's Friend and Bell's Theorem, as well as the results of the Aspect experiment. If you're not, then do a little bit of research, because explaining them would require more time than I'm willing to spend at the moment, and more space than most people are willing to read.
Gedankenexperiment:
Similar to the Aspect experiment, with three vital exceptions:
1
Have one "conscious" observer at each detector. Rather than a computer correlating results, the observers exchange lab notebooks at the end of the experiment.
2
The photons leaving the source both pass through vertically oriented polarization filters to give us vertically polarized light, then their circular polarizations are determined at the detectors.
3
We verify that the momentum of the source does not change. Otherwise, the photons are not correlated in a way meaningful to conduct the experiment.
For simplicity's sake, we'll just use one data point. (bad experimental procedure, but the results should be the same for the purposes of the gedankenexperiment)
Observer A notices his photon is polarized clockwise. (or counterclockwise, it really doesn't matter) He should expect (due to Aspect) Observer B's results to be the same relative to direction of propagation(assuming the photons travel opposite directions).
Observer B, who is also conscious and therefore capable of independently collapsing the wavefunction, looks at her detector. According to Wigner's Friend, she hasn't exchanged notes to the wavefunction is still indeterminate to her, so her photon has a 50% chance of being polarized clockwise and a 50% chance of being polarized counterclockwise. She records her observation.
The two observers exchange notebooks. This is where things get hairy.
Possibility 1:
The notebooks must agree, indicating that only one observer is truly conscious and capable of collapsing the wavefunction. Implication: There is only room in the universe for one conscious entity. I'm not trying to encourage solipsism here, so on to the other possibilities.
Possibility 2:
The notebooks sometimes disagree.
The polarization is tied to the momentum of the photons, so this means that momentum is not conserved. Implication: Even basic physical laws like conservation of momentum do not apply in a universe with more than one conscious entity. (Make a long story short: Wigner's Friend is not true.)
Possibility 3:
Observer A reads what he expected to, and Observer B reads what she expected, regardless of
what each wrote.
OK. It's hard to find the exact wording for that, but the implication is straightforward: Two conscious entities may never communicate reality, they may only observe reality themselves. Fundamentally, this is like Possibility 1 except each observer has his/her own "reality." In fact, as far as the observers are concerned it is identical to Possibility 1.
Possibility 4:
Collapsing the wavefunction has nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness, so the notebooks agree. The notebooks will agree.
If the notebooks agree, we have possibilities 1, 3, and 4. 1 and 3 are virtually the same thing. (one consciousness per universe)
If the notebooks disagree, we either assume the experiment was in error, or scrap our most basic assumptions about the universe: Namely, that there are universal laws that MUST be followed.
I'm leaning away from #1 so we don't get into an argument about which one of us is conscious. (And why waste time arguing with people who aren't really conscious, anyway?)
Too much stuff makes sense in this world for #2 to hold.
If #3 is true, it's pointless for me to post this message (except to gratify my ego, but in a different sense than #1)
This leaves #4. Frankly, I think people read too much into the word "observation" when they discuss quantum mechanics. And while the Turing test seems a point to start from when defining intelligence, I have yet to see a definition of "consciousness" that is truly meaningful. To state that a little more clearly, every attempt at definition of consciousness I've ever seen revolves around awareness (especially self-awareness), but nothing anyone (aside from the supposedly conscious being) can observe.
I'm not saying consciousness is an illusion, just that it is an abstraction, and as such it has no physical meaning or implications.
(But Penrose explores a maze of fascinating concepts in math, physics, and other disciplines, in order to give the reader enough background that he can make his point. He's an engaging writer, and the book's worth it just for the ride, even if you think as I do that his conclusion is bunk.)
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
1. God did not create the physical universe, God is an emerging property of the physical universe. 2. The universe is eternal. (No big bang). 3. A mind that is truly free is free to create its own meaning. 4. In the words of T. H. Lawrence, "nothing is written." 5. She'll be coming 'round the mountain, when she comes. 6. All such assertions fail miserably to convey that which is, which can be experienced directly. "Know Thyself".