Moreover, a non-deterministic Turing machine occupies the same level on the Chomsky hierarchy as a deterministic one--it is not fundamentally more powerful. Of course, where non-determinism helps us is that we are more limited than Turin machines. Since our brains are finite in spatial extent, they cannot have unlimited memory (the alternative to infinite spatial extent is infinite information density, but physics forbids that--see Bekenstein bound). We are mere linearly bounded automata. For LBAs, the non-deterministic versions _are_ more powerful than the deterministic ones, but still less powerful than Turing machines. Now, what people like Penrose are proposing is that some new non-computable physics lets us get beyond these limitations, because those poor bastards just can't swallow their bloated egos and accept that their minds have severe limitations in likely unknowable analogues of human brain halting problems.
You write "Or, to be a little fancier, can consciousness be computed on a Turing machine?"
In fact, one can trivially prove that consciousness is Turing-computable. By the Bekenstein bound, we can only have a finite number of distinguishable quantum states in a region of space with a finite surface area, thus information density is finite, thus physics does not allow arbitrary precision real numbers, which are necessary to construct a super-Turing machine, and thus physics prohibits super-Turing machines. Now, a Turing machine needs infinite tape (memory), and if we are to implement consciousness in an artifact of finite spatial extent (such as in a brain, or a computer), then in combination again with the finite information density limit due to the Bekenstein bound, we can't have infinite memory. And so, at best our brains, and any intelligent artifact we may build, can at best be mere non-deterministic linearly bounded automata.
You write "This is hard to dispute, given the seemingly important role of the conscious observer in the act of measurement." In fact, it is quite easy to dispute http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182
You write: "Consciousness is simply the ability to have a mental model of one's universe, with oneself as a separate entity within that model." You're on the right track. The mental model of oneself is a mental representation of body functions, and the regions of the brain responsible are well known, as are those for holding the memory- and sensory-derived model of the rest of the world. The neuroscientist Damasio some years back identified the regions of the brain responsible for integrating the two in a second-level representation, one of the interaction of the self and the rest of the world.
Not only do people use this nonsense of invoking QM to explain consciousness, but they even do the worse--invoke consciousness in their interpretation of QM. Thankfully a good refutation is not hard to find http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
First, your estimate of brain raw processing power is off by several orders of magnitude--each neuron has 7000 synapses, and each synapse has 100s of channels, and it is those channels that are analogous to transistors. You seriously need to reconsider your shit with this in mind.
I don't see why it is a "massive, unresolvable, inescapable problem". It's just how it is: free will is an illusion; consciousness is an emergent property from the regions of the brain identified by Damasio et al. So what if it's just a subjective illusion though? We do, after all, mostly live for the subjective experiences--at least most of us. So there's no problem here at all, or rather, it's only a problem if you needlessly over-intellectualize about it.
There's no reason to pick simulation as any more likely the situation than any of many other competing interpretations. Applying Ockham's razor (the validity of this action being to reduce overfitting, as justified by information theoretical considerations), this is simpler and makes more sense http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182
I understand what you're saying and I tend to feel your definition of free will is what we want it to be, but many philosophers define it as simply the inability to know your future. It is easy to see that this is compatible with even deterministic physics: if you're told your future or you calculate it, you can act to counteract the prediction--there's infinite recursion here you must carry out to predict your future. Of course, I find this way to define free will lacking, but it is in fact very common.
The thing about the hard problem of mind is that it's not a real problem. There is no such thing as "quality of what is it like". Jesus, these are pure subjective illusions. It's a category error to consider this "hard problem" as a problem that can be subject for rational discussion.
Subjectivity is not real by definition; ergo, your post is nonsensical and useless by definition--since it discusses a scientific issue, and consciousness in those terms is fully described by its neural correlates, and no more is necessary, or appropriate.
Fuck off. Mohrhoff refuted Stapp so well that Stapp must still be changing the bandages on his ass from the whip marks. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
I've been reading of this QM/mind shit since Henry Stapp's nonsense publications about it and its history is even older. As are the refutations http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
If you actually do want to learn something about the issue (and specifically why it is a non-issue), take a look here: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
Even otherwise brilliant scientists like Penrose are subject to ego (no limits to mental abilities), anthropocentric chauvinism (no limits to HUMAN mental abilities), and pure wishful thinking (magic unknown undiscovered non-computable physics will save the day).
Beyond this, Penrose is refuted by physics. The holographic principle and its near-corollary, the Bekensten bound, guarantees that one cannot build a physical artifact more powerful than a Turin machine (finite number of distinguishable quantum states in a region of finite surface area => there are no arbitrary-precision real numbers in physics in a finite space => no super-Turing machines possible). Indeed, restricting ourselves to artifacts with finite spatial extent, any physical object can at best have the power of a mere linarly bounded automata (though non-deterministic one, due to QM, which is more powerful than its deterministic counterpart, but still less powerful than a Turing machine). Unfortunately, our brain happens to be a physical artifact. The mind is a collection of thought patterns and these directly map to physics by their neural correlates. Penrose's case is just a sad example of wishful thinking, the inability to admit that our minds are too subject to (likely unknowable) limitations, our own analogues of the halting problem.
Since qualia are nonsensical inventions of the over-imaginative egos of philosophers whose feet are not planted on scientific ground, the relationship between normal humans and philosophical zombies is one of idempotency.
Slashdot Mirror
Particularly interesting? Not as much as an opposing view http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
It's an old fallacy, and the refutations are old as well http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
Moreover, a non-deterministic Turing machine occupies the same level on the Chomsky hierarchy as a deterministic one--it is not fundamentally more powerful. Of course, where non-determinism helps us is that we are more limited than Turin machines. Since our brains are finite in spatial extent, they cannot have unlimited memory (the alternative to infinite spatial extent is infinite information density, but physics forbids that--see Bekenstein bound). We are mere linearly bounded automata. For LBAs, the non-deterministic versions _are_ more powerful than the deterministic ones, but still less powerful than Turing machines. Now, what people like Penrose are proposing is that some new non-computable physics lets us get beyond these limitations, because those poor bastards just can't swallow their bloated egos and accept that their minds have severe limitations in likely unknowable analogues of human brain halting problems.
You write "Or, to be a little fancier, can consciousness be computed on a Turing machine?"
In fact, one can trivially prove that consciousness is Turing-computable. By the Bekenstein bound, we can only have a finite number of distinguishable quantum states in a region of space with a finite surface area, thus information density is finite, thus physics does not allow arbitrary precision real numbers, which are necessary to construct a super-Turing machine, and thus physics prohibits super-Turing machines. Now, a Turing machine needs infinite tape (memory), and if we are to implement consciousness in an artifact of finite spatial extent (such as in a brain, or a computer), then in combination again with the finite information density limit due to the Bekenstein bound, we can't have infinite memory. And so, at best our brains, and any intelligent artifact we may build, can at best be mere non-deterministic linearly bounded automata.
Penrose has been _formally_ refuted http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.36.260&rep=rep1&type=pdf
You write "This is hard to dispute, given the seemingly important role of the conscious observer in the act of measurement." In fact, it is quite easy to dispute http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182
Panpsychism. Utter garbage.
You write: "Consciousness is simply the ability to have a mental model of one's universe, with oneself as a separate entity within that model." You're on the right track. The mental model of oneself is a mental representation of body functions, and the regions of the brain responsible are well known, as are those for holding the memory- and sensory-derived model of the rest of the world. The neuroscientist Damasio some years back identified the regions of the brain responsible for integrating the two in a second-level representation, one of the interaction of the self and the rest of the world.
Not only do people use this nonsense of invoking QM to explain consciousness, but they even do the worse--invoke consciousness in their interpretation of QM. Thankfully a good refutation is not hard to find http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
First, your estimate of brain raw processing power is off by several orders of magnitude--each neuron has 7000 synapses, and each synapse has 100s of channels, and it is those channels that are analogous to transistors. You seriously need to reconsider your shit with this in mind.
Second, there is absolutely no reason to invoke QM to deal with consciousness, or the other way around: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
I don't see why it is a "massive, unresolvable, inescapable problem". It's just how it is: free will is an illusion; consciousness is an emergent property from the regions of the brain identified by Damasio et al. So what if it's just a subjective illusion though? We do, after all, mostly live for the subjective experiences--at least most of us. So there's no problem here at all, or rather, it's only a problem if you needlessly over-intellectualize about it.
There's no reason to pick simulation as any more likely the situation than any of many other competing interpretations. Applying Ockham's razor (the validity of this action being to reduce overfitting, as justified by information theoretical considerations), this is simpler and makes more sense http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182
I understand what you're saying and I tend to feel your definition of free will is what we want it to be, but many philosophers define it as simply the inability to know your future. It is easy to see that this is compatible with even deterministic physics: if you're told your future or you calculate it, you can act to counteract the prediction--there's infinite recursion here you must carry out to predict your future. Of course, I find this way to define free will lacking, but it is in fact very common.
The thing about the hard problem of mind is that it's not a real problem. There is no such thing as "quality of what is it like". Jesus, these are pure subjective illusions. It's a category error to consider this "hard problem" as a problem that can be subject for rational discussion.
Penrose's Shadows of the Mind argument fundamentally correct? How about fundamentally formally refuted! http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.36.260&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Subjectivity is not real by definition; ergo, your post is nonsensical and useless by definition--since it discusses a scientific issue, and consciousness in those terms is fully described by its neural correlates, and no more is necessary, or appropriate.
All models of reality we have are flawed. The point is that they can be useful nonetheless, as long as we keep track of the limitations.
Fuck off. Mohrhoff refuted Stapp so well that Stapp must still be changing the bandages on his ass from the whip marks. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
The only interpretation I've come across that doesn't leave me thinking something's amiss: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182
Read it carefully and think about it carefully, and it plainly makes sense. But then, I'm a software guy so what do I know...
I've been reading of this QM/mind shit since Henry Stapp's nonsense publications about it and its history is even older. As are the refutations http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
If you actually do want to learn something about the issue (and specifically why it is a non-issue), take a look here: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105097
The only thing one needs to read about Penrose's theory on non-computable mind is the _formal_ refutation of it http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.36.260&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Even otherwise brilliant scientists like Penrose are subject to ego (no limits to mental abilities), anthropocentric chauvinism (no limits to HUMAN mental abilities), and pure wishful thinking (magic unknown undiscovered non-computable physics will save the day).
Penrose's argument from Emperor's New Mind and the updated version in Shadows of the Mind has been formally refuted: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.36.260&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Beyond this, Penrose is refuted by physics. The holographic principle and its near-corollary, the Bekensten bound, guarantees that one cannot build a physical artifact more powerful than a Turin machine (finite number of distinguishable quantum states in a region of finite surface area => there are no arbitrary-precision real numbers in physics in a finite space => no super-Turing machines possible). Indeed, restricting ourselves to artifacts with finite spatial extent, any physical object can at best have the power of a mere linarly bounded automata (though non-deterministic one, due to QM, which is more powerful than its deterministic counterpart, but still less powerful than a Turing machine). Unfortunately, our brain happens to be a physical artifact. The mind is a collection of thought patterns and these directly map to physics by their neural correlates. Penrose's case is just a sad example of wishful thinking, the inability to admit that our minds are too subject to (likely unknowable) limitations, our own analogues of the halting problem.
Since qualia are nonsensical inventions of the over-imaginative egos of philosophers whose feet are not planted on scientific ground, the relationship between normal humans and philosophical zombies is one of idempotency.