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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
...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
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.
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/
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.
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
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
It presents a very compelling theory of how the mind works.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
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/
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'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,
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
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
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".
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
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
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
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,
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); }
)
> else you'd be headed for Hell
Where does the bible say that ?
Right after the part where Jesus goes into the massage parlor and smashes all the TV sets with a 9-iron.
**>>BELCH
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.
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)
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); }
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
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
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.
Well I haven't read the book but I would guess no. Emperor's new mind was a relatively complex philisophical argument about conciousness. This book sounds too much like one of those psuedo-science books.
You can always tell the difference because the psuedo science books try to wow you with fancy physics (for instance flashy statements about how particles possess a dual nature rather then the simple fact that observables are predicted by a certain class of functions) while penrose's book actually tried to make you understand what was going on.
The quotes about how the author finally understands etc.. etc.. give it away. Penrose offered arguments and then possible explanations (maybe its quantum gravity) not tablets from the mountaintop.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
"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
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
Instead of reading nonsensical books like this one by Evan Walker or anything by Fred Alan Wolf, read Dan Dennett, John Searle, Dave Chalmers and finally Gregg Rosenberg (http://ai.uga.edu/~ghrosenb/toc.htm). We owe a debt to Searle for taking consciousness seriously as opposed to assuming it to be merely a computation. We are indebted to Dennett for clearly showing that there is no single place in the brain or a single point in time where consciousness can be said to occur. We are indebted to Chalmers for clearly showing us that consciousness is not supervenient on the physical and finally to Gregg Rosenberg for showing us that consciousness and causation are intimately connected and that we don't really understand either of them.
So, my recommendations if you're really interested in consciousness:
1. Dan Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 1991. Debunks many mysteries surrounding consciousness especially w.r.t. mind/brain confusion.
2. John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, 1992. Takes the computationalists to task for over simplifying the problem.
3. David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, 1995. "Consciousness is not logically supervenient on the physical." Or to put it in layman terms, even after you've accounted (in principle) for all particles and fields in the entire universe and for all time, consciousness is still not reducible to the physical. Conclusion: Take consciousness seriously and include it axiomatically to get a new natural (but not purely physical) description of the universe.
4. Gregg Rosenberg, http://ai.uga.edu/~ghrosenb/toc.htm, 1997. "Receptive aspect of causation is also not logically supervenient on the physical". Or in layman terms, the fundamental terms used in physics like mass, charge, etc. are a set of distinctions that are themselves never explained, just assumed. This set of primary distinctions are justified by us based on our own experience. However, it is experience itself that we seek to explain when we seek a science of consciousness. This is circular. Conclusion: Once consciousness itself is made axiomatically primary (see Chalmers above), connect the primary distinctions made in consciousness with the primary distinctions made in physics. You end up with a beautiful dual-aspect theory where consciousness is the interior aspect of causation and physics the exterior aspect.
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
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
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
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.
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)
I thought I might have accidentally connected to the Stapp-Penrose-Sarfatti Unified Fanclub for the Advancement of Mental Illness
ROTFLMAO! Has that asshole Sarfatti been winding you up too? If you've escaped that fate so far, just make sure you don't attempt to write to him or reply to one of his posts...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
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
Yes, but apparently Sagan did prefer a puff of smoke ;o)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
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.
s 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.
I remember hearing something once that if you look at the size of the brain (or was it ratio of size of brain to size of animal... I forget which) and compare it to the demonstrated intelligence, it seems to form a very accurate measure. If you look at this throughout the entire animal kindgom, it seems to hold true. But that, with this system, humans only achieve the #2 spot - dolphins are number one on this scale. It is interesting to wonder if the only reason that we humans made civilization was because of being on land and being able to manipulate objects, and that dolphins are the smarter ones...
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
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."
Or, the program could be run through by someone with pen and paper - but how would that system be self-aware?
:o).
Ah, the infamous "Chinese Room" argument of the damnable John Searle.
It's no good looking for consciousness at the physical level. Of course the consciousness of the Chinese Room doesn't exist in the pen, paper or even the individual doing the writing. Nor does your consciousness reside in the electrons zipping around inside your head.
Many people accept this but then make an intuitive leap in assuming the existence of something like a soul...a thing that is mystically immaterial but still fundamentally physical. However the true answer to the riddle is at once both simpler and more subtle than that.
Any system may be viewed at different levels of abstraction. Different sets of axioms and rules of logic are approprate at each level. To illustrate this: imagine a team of trained scientists, each mostly ignorant outside of their own specialty (not so uncommon really
The physicist looks at the brain and sees about 2kg of matter, a complex arrangement of interacting macromolecules directed by the laws of thermodynamics and, ultimately, quantum mechanics which is reponsible for all chemistry.
The molecular biologist looks at the brain and sees only electrochemical potentials and cell transport mechanisms fashioned out of phospholipid membranes and glycoproteins.
The neuroanatomist looks at the brain and sees only cell assemblies and neural pathways fashioned out of neurons connected via different types of synapse.
The cognitive neuroscientist looks at the brain and observes the spatiotemporal firing patterns which play over the neural cell assemblies, and correlates such activity in one brain region with activity in another.
These four perspectives examine four different levels of implementation, abstraction or organization. And then, as they say, "a miracle occurs" - because this is the end of the physical trail; there are no more physical phenomena to take into account. This is commonly referred to as the "explanatory gap": our failure to relate brain correlates of consciousness to our subjective experience of it, owing to our lack of any direct objective means of measuring the non-physical.
And yet, we know for a fact that the brain routinely represents higher levels of abstraction because we can form ideas about all sorts of unseen and intangible things and use language skills to discuss them. So there must be, ipso facto, further layers.
The next level of abstraction beyond firing patterns is what I'd refer to as the object content of those firing patterns. For example, one particular unique firing pattern in some location within one specific brain will represent the concept of a tree branch with all its attributes. You'll note, by the way, that this is a purely abstract informational representation of a tree branch. It has no physical existence and there are no woody, leafy "tree-branchy" properties to be found either here or in the supporting firing patterns or cell assemblies. But it can in principle be shown in the lab that this firing pattern occurs in this particular cortical location whenever the image is evoked in the mind of the subject and we would infer that this pattern intentionally represents that object.
Let's now make the reasonable supposition that all objects which the mind can contemplate must have such internal representations (this isn't proven of course but if anyone thinks it might not be true I'd be intrigued to hear why). Now guess which of all the objects present must be modelled by your brain in the most excruciating detail? None other than yourself. For you are also an object in your own environment.
The next level pertains to the semantic relationships between these mental objects, e.g. a chimp sitting on the tree branch. Yourself eating a banana. Or your attitude towards a simple object such as the chimp, or the banana. We can be certain that "higher" animals (particularly primates) can form representations at this level at least, because Gorillas and chimps taught to communicate with humans using sign language or symbols intentionally and routinely create meaningful, relevant sentences at this level of complexity.
At the next level beyond that, it gets more interesting because this is the level that deals with complex interrelationships. Concepts such as: that nonchalant-looking chimp's possible attitude toward you hogging the banana all to yourself. Or your attitude toward him as a potential threat. It's thought by many that primates were forced to develop this level of consciousness in order to be able to survive and compete within tightly bound social groups in a resource-limited environment. The ones with insufficient brain organization to be able to support such nested concepts would have been mercilessly excluded and exploited because you need this level of mental organization to be capable of social tricks like deception. This is a very fertile area of research for behavioural psychologists.
And finally we come to the level of abstraction that I think defines us as conscious humans. If your enjoyment of the banana is a first-order relationship, and your speculation about another's attitude toward your banana eating is second-order, then this third-order level of abstraction would allow you to have an attitude about his attitude. You might feel suspicious about his motives for spying on you. Or sympathetic about his hungry discomfort.
Remember that all these attributes - "suspicious", "motivation", "sympathetic" - pertain not to the brain itself but to these abstract models of individuals; even the attributes associated with the model of the self. Instinct provides a bias. Emotion adds colour and intensity. The model of the self is necessarily more detailed than the models of other individuals, and it enjoys a privileged status with regard to the body it inhabits because that's its particular job in your internal virtual reality. But in all other respects, it's just as separate and distinct from the physical brain as all the other models with which it shares the mental landscape.
The third-order abstraction, in supporting attitudes about attitudes, is what makes us conscious. In part, it's special because it allows us to form moral judgements about the hidden mental world of other individuals and no other animals seem to be capable of this. But primarily it's because it allows us to ponder our own mental and emotional states. In other words: self-reflection, a full awareness of self. This is the unique identifying feature of human consciousness as most people understand it.
Searle was barking up the wrong tree when he concocted the Chinese Room to "prove" that consciousness couldn't be present in an AI. If the system has enough degrees of freedom that a higher level of abstraction can model third-order relationships between objects, and given that one of the objects may be a token for the system itself, then the system as a whole can think about its own thoughts and is ipso facto conscious. What else would you call it?
The conclusion of many physicists is that some fundamental physical thing(s) is going on. Hence electron tunneling etc.
The problem with that is that fundamental physics is hard enough that its practioners need serious tunnel vision to get anywhere. The unfortunate corollary is that physicists (of that genre of whoch you speak) generally know very little about neurobiology or psychology. They can't even cope with the idea of multilayered levels of abstraction (maybe because they are so used to seeing everything directly in terms of fundamental particles and forces). Just about the only exception is the chaos guys with their theory of emergent complexity, and you won't hear them talking about quantum consciousness.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
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.
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Maybe - the problem is the definition of consciousness; saying who has it before we can agree on what it actually is might be considered premature.
Animals can indeed display much behaviour that is similar to humans. However though this may be proof of emotions and the mind at an animal level we do not need to invoke consciousness to explain this behaviour.
We only need to invoke the concept of consciousness to explain that odd feeling we have that we are experiencing things and controlling our actions. Animals might experience the same feeling of consciousness, but since we are unable to communicate with them we cannot tell. The only way we can tell other humans experience the feeling is because they say so. Describing consciousness without verbal language seems tricky.
The question is: is consciousness something "real" (for want of a better term), or just a meme we have evolved? (Because to not believe in consciousness makes bothering to eat, drink, procreate, etc., fairly pointless, and hence unlikely to promote the continuance of our genes.)
Which doesn't strike me as being a question anyone can answer, at least until we've got a GUTE and a hefty computing device to model it on. Which is a few years off, I fear.
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This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
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.
I'll be glad to see when technology and science can finally give us an answer to this question. After all, if an artificial consciousness can be created, it demonstrates the lack of any "spark" given to a biological being, of any "soul".
Heck emergent behavior currently being exhibited in neural nets kind of suggests that consciousness is just something that results from a complex set of elements that influence each other and change over time.
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"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
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
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.
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- 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.
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:
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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"
(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