Personally I think consciousness, perception, and free will are a great unknown, and likely involve the makeup of the cosmos including quantum interactions.
If anyone knows of any science in this area I would appreciate references.
Scott Aaronson also published a essay in this area recently which tackles the issue of relationships free will and quantum physics from a pretty neat angle. It's the first attempt I've seen in this area that I sort of like (not to say I agree or disagree with it, I just like it). It's available for free online: http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf
1) be prepared to spend decades thinking about it. 2) become really, really good at maths. 3) get really, really good at physics. 4) get really, really good at computational neuroscience
and if you actually want an answer, you have two options:
1) wait for a genius to work it out 2) become the genius who works it out
Hacker news is not going to be able to help you on this one!
http://www.edge.org/memberbio/stuart_a_kauffman http://www.edge.org/conversation/five-problems-in-the-philos...
An updated critic on this ideas by Göran Wendin: http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/qcontrol13/wendin/pdf/Wen...
There is no science of consciousness because there is no science of subjectivity because science deals with objective reality, the world of objects. So we need to extend the scientific method to deal with subjects and I'm not aware of much progress in that area bar a few unknown figures in the world of cybernetic research.
I'd also say that there is an objectivity to subjective perception; for example, if two travelers in space find that the distance between themselves is shrinking, while either party may justly argue that it is the opposing side that is moving, and that we are standing still (or some other possible combination), we can still both make objective agreements on what the other party may subjectively see.
We can objectively know that the other party is equally clueless as us in determining our velocities.
I personally think there is an enormous benefit to science to understanding subjective perception. I imagine the problem of distributed AI's having different perceptions, and having to make sense of their different perceptions in order to solve problems.
I still maintain that there is an objective study to subjectivity, and that the few examples I talked about are of good relevance to our understanding of consciousness.
>Personally I think consciousness, perception, and free will are a great unknown, and likely involve the makeup of the cosmos including quantum interactions.
You're taking a whole slew of things we're ignorant about, waving your hands and saying,"They must be related to some great truth hidden in particle physics!" I find this kind of thinking bizarre.
It makes things seem obscure and that's where guys like Deepak Chopra come in.
I think your discounting of such questioning and speculation is bizarre.
Consciousness is either entirely made up of "particle physics" or it is made from something even further into the field of speculation. Why would speculating about a connection between particle physics and consciousness be remotely "bizarre"? It seems quite likely to me that quantum mechanics is at least in some way involved in consciousness, given that that quantum physics governs the behavior of the matter of our brains.
They are not great unknowns. They are kinda dull knowns and they get more known-er by the year. Nothing in the brain (or the "cosmos") requires quantum juju for our conscious experience.
There's lots written about perception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_detection_(nervous_syst... (and all of Hinton's biologically-inspired artificial neural network work)
And consciousness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Metzinger
And free will: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/programming_the_moist_robot/ and http://dilbert.com/fast/2012-03-18/
All you are is a three pound analog ASIC in your skull. If it gets squished, infiltrated, inflamed, or explodes, you cease to exist completely (save, any memories other people have of your behaviors or any output you left behind recording your brain state under various priors).
Oh great one, please tell me your all encompassing theory of consciousness and how existence came to be! Then we can all gather around the Altar of the Great Seiji and marvel at his linking to a couple of wikipedia articles! What a wondrous time to be alive and in your presence!
Likewise, looking at a brain from the outside, it's a squishy biological construct with some electrical stuff going on.
Viewed from the inside, though: what a difference!
I, too, am fascinated with what we may come to discover about ourselves, our minds, and our connections (both local and non-local) as we increase our quantum understanding.
Robert A. Burton's On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not and A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves may interest you. Not exactly in the realm of quantum theory, but if you're interested in understanding consciousness and perception, you really can't go wrong with reading up on neuroscience and related philosophy fields (mind, consciousness, being, etc.).
Beyond that, I think you're going to want to look for works on quantum physics with relation to neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Here's an article from 2005: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1458/1309...
Roger Penrose has a few works on the subject of quantum theory and human consciousness (as mentioned by a sibling comment), and Max Tegmark argues against him, suggesting neurons are too warm to perform quantum computations. However, Henry Stapp (one of the authors of the linked article above), while admitting that Tegmark's work poses a significant problem for Penrose's theories, says his own theories are unaffected.
Despite that, there are perception issues (e.g., precognition) which offer curiosities regarding backward causality in time, on which discussion occurs to ponder potential quantum effects. Here, you'd want to look into quantum mechanics/theory and human perception.
Sure it is. You just need to stick with meditation until you reach the jhana of the arising and passing away:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki...
That's the first time you get a glimpse of the fact that free will is an illusion, although you don't fully experience it until you hit enlightenment.