I’m not going to say Penrose should stick to stuff he knows about; after all schrodingers hypothesis about life were prescient and chilling to read even today. But if some dudes gonna make theories about things he’s not an expert in, he better make sure it’s at least slightly warranted and a bit more rigorous.
The other issue is that confluence of two disparate fields Always attracts cooky theories like this because no expert in the individual field (at least the good ones) would feel qualified to comment about the other field they have limited knowledge about, so there’s a vanishingly small number of people who can mount a real defense against this. Fields like quantum consciousness, longevity research and crypto are further fueled by stoners who think they’ve figured out the universe because they had an acid trip. So it’s even more of a futile exercise to try and correct these people.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduc...
the physical/biological world is merely mechanic
our consciousness is based on physical phenomena
our consciousness is more complex than any computer/Turing machine
given that the theory feels like it is just a way not to have to change one of those belief.
The current zeitgeist appears to be denial that consciousness exists at all. I don't think this helps either.
If I had to take a punt I'd say that we can't find a solution because it's the substrate of everything, so by definition can't be measured by us.
I'm talking here about the hard problem of consciousness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
The only solutions which don't involve a fundamental reworking of physics basically end up denying that consciousness (as phenomenal experience) exists at all.
If there truly is something of “I feel it” factor that’s not just “physical” as you say it, then this can be disproven easily by seeing if a machine can attain consciousness. If that never happens then good for your theory. If it happens at some point then you’re wrong. Until then it seems like a fairly non scientific philosophical argument at best. I.e., it’s still worth having but let’s not try claiming your microtubules are tingling the quantum realm to make you think shall we?
Where?
This is "strong reductionism" which comes under the heading of "Rejection of the Problem" in the linked article. GP is essentially denying that the hard problem exists.
It seems like you're assuming the author intended to redefine the word, but I still don't see where that redefinition took place.
That's as far as I can parse this bit of sentence. Could you reword, please?
1. Consciousness is the activity of the brain in response to stimulae, or things that people report that they can experience. These are the only things which need to be explained.
2. We can measure these and explain them with reductive science.
3. Therefore we can explain consciousness.
But of course this is a redefinition of consciousness because it ignores phenomenology. And that also needs to be explained.
No, it isn't, and it doesn't.
1. Deliberate motor movements are caused by signals from the motor cortex.
2. Poets have written poems about phenomenological experience.
3. Therefore, phenomenological experience causes activity in the brain.
It's not a redefinition; just a challenge of your assumptions.
This gives them an unusual take on observers and consciousness.
While everyone else tend to be happy with "consciousness is a physical computation", they tend to need/want something more.
As far as I can make out David Deutsch started Quantum Computation to be able to have a quantum observer to probe the nature of quantum reality.
That's very surprising to me, because Deutsch is heavily in the Everett interpretation branch of possible quantum interpretations (pun intended).
So, he doesn't need any wave-function-collapse magic to explain quantum mechanics.
>>"Remember that quantum theorists have a strange dog in the race due to the whole wave-function-collapse by an observer thing."
That's very insightful.
He considers a working QC as basically an experimental confirmation of the many-worlds interpretation.
Something like: "So tell me, these amazing parallel computations - where exactly do you say that they are being computed again if not in the parallel worlds?"
There is a nice interview with him in Wired that touches this briefly:
https://www.wired.com/2007/02/the-father-of-quantum-computin...
Check his answer to:
"So what prompted you to start thinking about quantum computing?"
My take is that for him the QC started as a thought experiment to get a quantum observer to sidestep the whole wavefunction collapse by a classical observer problem.
>> That's very insightful.
Thanks.
That’s odd, arguably it’s the one thing we know exists.
> because it’s the substrate of everything
Recommend checking out Bernardo Kastrup (two PhDs, many books and videos on YouTube) who argues that mind is fundamental.
lesser kook.
They do it by changing the meaning of the word "consciousness" so that they can then show that this new thing they've defined doesn't exist. It's a remarkable strawman.
It's quite silly to deny consciousness though! It's similar to deny one's existence. So philosophy and psychology shines some light on these questions.
The phrase that applies here is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
If you're going to claim that consciousness is fully explainable as plain wet chemistry, you're going to have to provide more evidence than a sentence that starts with "Well, obviously..."
Conciousness is a function of the brain like digestion is a function of the stomach. Why not explain digestion with spooky quantum mechanics?
I think it is simpler than all that: quantum phenomena belong to our description of reality, as also does consciousness.
Assuming both are valid and explanatory, it should not be a surprise to see overlap. However, if one believes that one or both of these is false, the question is not to explain one using what we know of the other, but to disprove it using what we believe we know to be true.
Is consciousness required to explain quantum phenomena, or simply our only means?
Microtubules are highly prevalent, reconfigurable, dynamic structures.
Did you know that inside a cell there is over 20atm of pressure? That's some force. Even an abacus in every cell changes the game.
This is because every single synapse would itself additionally be placed and supported by a state-machine-based computational system local to it, tethered to every other state-machine-based computational system in the same neuron, including synapses at both the input and output side, and a much larger computational complex of systems within the body of the cell.
Computational systems built upon computational systems upon computational systems, all complexed together and communicating at multiple layers of the hierarchy with bi-directional feedback.