The Physics of Consciousness 359
| The Physics of Consciousness | |
| author | Evan Harris Walker |
| pages | 368 |
| publisher | Perseus Books |
| rating | 8/10 |
| reviewer | Jon Katz |
| ISBN | 0-7382-0234-7 |
| summary | A look at the quantum mind and the meaning of life |
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.
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
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 [ttsw.com], funny link 2 [fas.org]
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
Beautiful Mutants (Score:2)
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!
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:1)
Nonsense. 'It turned out' that things going at close to the speed of light don't behave in a Newtonian manner. 'It turned out' that things at an incredibly small scale or incredibly high energy level don't behave in a Newtonian manner. Since I know of no human being who is travelling close to the speed of light, infintesimally small, or possessing of incredible energy, none of these can be applied to human beings. On the macro scale, Newtonian physics still applies perfectly.
You are talking efficiency, I am talking justice. From a utilitarian point of view you are
correct, just the same as it makes utilitarian sense to kill severely malformed children at
birth. From a morality point of view, however, there is that big problem of choice.
You are basically asserting that any choice which is not random is not a choice. This is incorrect. If I have a choice to vacation in Florida or in Montana, I will put a lot of thought into both options, weigh the pros and cons, and come up with a decision based on that. If you 'rewound' reality to before I made the choice, I would make the same decision because I would still be the same person, and would thus approach it in the same way, with the same concerns, and collecting the same information. Does this mean I didn't make a choice? Of course not. I merely had a reason for choosing the way I did. I different person in the same situation would likely choose differently.
From a moral standpoint, deterministic psychology merely says that we must act according to who we are. I find this a much firmer ground to base an ethical system on than the proposition that our choices are essentially die rolls. If that is the case, and human behavior is actually inherently unpredictable (read: random), than how can we hold anyone responsible for anything?
"I'm sorry, your honor, but I only killed him because that's what the random quantum fluctuations in my neurons made me do. In the same circumstances, I could do something entirely different."
Now that's a pretty good defense.
Eric Christian Berg
Katz? Read this one. (Score:1)
Mari Jibu & Kunio Yasue
Karl Pribram was consulted on this one, I believe. Interesting concepts on how important water - simple water (!) - is to consciousness. More non-locality stuff - it's everywhere.
As an aside, associate of mine (and Pribram's) once told me "DNA is a holographic quantum information decoder". Wierd stuff. But it makes the universe a big cool place.
--
Re:Old joke time... (Score:1)
Or in the transactional interpretation, at the moment of observation, a signal is sent backwards in time (since an electron travelling foward in time is quantum mechanically identical to a positron moving backwards in time and vice versa) to the moment of the decision, interacting with the system an that point and causing one choice to have been selected at that moment. Net result : there is always (and has always) either been an alive cat or a dead cat. Sorry, that's probably not the clearest of explanations is it?
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:1)
--
Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
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.
Just once I'd like to see... (Score:2)
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
Nothing new (Score:3)
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.
--
Re:Missing one important element. . . (Score:1)
While most (including myself) would tend to agree, keep in mind that there are those who don't. Descartes, for instance, believed he had found proof (i.e. scientific fact) that God existed. In his Meditations, he uses his certain knowledge that he himself exists to show that there must also exist a perfect God. Dewey Larson, in his book "Beyond Space and Time," believed he had established the existance of a non-material sector and beings that would exist there (although not necessarily God specifically).
You can take that or leave it, the point being that you don't absolutely HAVE to rely on a leap of faith to posit a God.
Reminds me of a book The Origins of Consciousnes.. (Score:1)
Re:Chaoric inflation? (Score:2)
I have, read "The Physics of Consciousness" too. (Score:2)
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.
Re:What incoherent bullshit! (Score:1)
Don't count on it. The fools will simply proclaim that the artificial consciousness is just 'faking it', and that it cannot be real consciousness -- nevermind the referrential incoherence of such a distinction, or the fact that it essentially amounts to an argument from ignorance.
Most people believe what they want to believe -- and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
--
Conciousness on the brain, again (Score:2)
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.
Re:Beautiful Mutants (Score:1)
I think Desmond Morris said it best when he said all animals have one big trick that enables them to survive, and that our big trick is a whole bunch of small tricks.
Slashdot's Lack of Scientific Credibility (Score:1)
Slashdot's audience includes a lot of brilliant, but not-fully-formed young minds, young minds who with the proper guidance and background in scientific knowledge could go on to tackle Important Problems like human consciousness. Instead of providing solid knowledge, Slashdot peddles sensationalistic, second-hand ignorance that anyone with 101-level knowledge of the subject could recognize as nonsense. I think it's criminal to take such a precious audience and mislead them so horribly.
Katz rarely knows what he's talking about. When he does, it's like the proverbial stopped clock that's right twice a day. Slashdot shouldn't be giving that stopped clock the time of day.
Re:Sounds like Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" (Score:1)
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:1)
Again, the problem is cleared up merely by defining your terms. Simply, what does the 'free' in free will mean? Here's what Webster has to say:
2 a: not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being : choosing or capable of choosing for itself
So, basically, what it boils down to is that free will merely refers to the ability of an entity to make decisions not based on simple reaction to stimuli or due to external forces, but based on its own nature and consciousness. To choose is to select an option freely after consideration. Thus, a person being bound to act according to their nature is not 'not free', because free refers to a lack of external coercion.
Thus, we do not think a person has freedom to choose when someone has a gun to their head, but we rarely consider their own beliefs and values as denying them free will. In fact, their beliefs and values are what make their free will possible, they are the standard by which considerations of options are possible and a decision is made.
Eric Christian Berg
Re:What incoherent bullshit! (Score:1)
... and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
LOL. I'll have to remember that next time I talk to someone with religious views. Seriously though we can't even decide on a definition of consciousness, let alone prove it. We should probably start on humans before trying to tell whether a machine is conscious :)
NOTE: Where Religion Goes Wrong (Score:2)
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.
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:1)
You're ignoring one extremely important point. And I think a few people have been trying to hit it but have been missing a bit. It's the point of indecision. In fuzzy logic (a fairly well accepted analogue to the brain) this could be expressed as 0.5 on the measurement of "Do I save them or me?"
This is where the unpredictability lies. The individual is on the fence, so to speak. Not even (s)he can guess what her outcome will be until it happens. Nor can you guarantee that even when you know the outcome of the previous trial.
Intriguing thought though.
Cheers,
DQuinn
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:1)
Since we were talking about humans, do you want to apply Newtonian physics to human thoughts, human morality and human free will?? Must be, since we sure didn't discuss the problems of human bodies. Be my guest, it should be fun to watch.
You are basically asserting that any choice which is not random is not a choice.
Nope, that is not my position. My statement is that any choice that is completely predetermined is not a choice (and no, I don't have any problems with partially determined choices). Besides, since we are throwing the word "random" around quite a bit, please consider for a moment what exactly does it signify.
If that is the case, and human behavior is actually inherently unpredictable (read: random), than how can we hold anyone responsible for anything?
Because people act by making more or less free choices and are thus accountable for their choices. Again, I invite you to think on the meaning of the word "random".
Kaa
A friend of mine read this... (Score:1)
In other words, physics this book ain't.
Mr. X
Recent experiment about quantum p. & consciousness (Score:1)
Yogurt
Tim Mitchell
Mooselessness at tim.pitas.com [pitas.com]
Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
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.
If i would have wanted a synopisis of the book.... (Score:2)
i would have just read it.
I personally don't flame Katz, but next time how about a review instead of the details
Re:Beautiful Mutants (Score:2)
Read "Conciousness Explained" (Score:2)
It presents a very compelling theory of how the mind works.
Well one question has been answered. (Score:1)
Re:Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (Score:1)
Personally, I don't see any problem with free will being consistent with either. Scientific laws are descriptive, not proscriptive. Nobody will throw you in jail for violating a scientific law. Rather, they describe what will happen. If my sister tells you I like lobster, and will order it whenever I am at a particular resturant, she would be right. She is not, however, forcing me to choose lobster. I will order it, and furthermore will do so of my own free will.
Ape Language (Score:2)
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
One word: chaos (Score:2)
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.
Bis repetita placent (Score:2)
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 [barnesandnoble.com] 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 [eleves.ens.fr] for an idea of the amount of nonsense that can be said about the subject.
Re:Existentialism (Score:2)
> > "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.
Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
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
Re:Comparison with Penrose... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
Any recent book on linguistics should back me up on this. Pinker's The Language Instinct [amazon.com] 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?
Similar paths, different end points (Score:2)
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
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
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.
Re:Physicists should stick to physics (Score:2)
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".
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
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 [logophilia.com] 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).
Re:Missing one important element. . . (Score:2)
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?
Re:Missing one important element. . . (Score:2)
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
Sheep.
--
Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
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.
Old joke time... (Score:2)
"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
Re:One word: chaos (Score:2)
I don't understand why you think brains are subject to quantum effects, but digital circuits are not, since both produce outputs that are, in essence, step functions of their inputs (with the location of the step being the threshold for firing/not firing). Why is one subject to quantum effects and not the other? Furthermore, you seem to be confusing statistical fluctuations with "quantum effects". The mere fact that a statistical fluctuation can carry a neuron over (or under) its threshold does not mean that the system is behaving quantum mechanically; you would still see statistical effects even if electrons behaved clasically (i.e. like tiny ball bearings). In any case, for macroscopic systems these fluctuations are small, and so they have an effect only if you are poised on the cusp of the threshold. Contrast this with the randomness introduced by quantum mechanics, in which any superposition state can collapse into one a random eigenstate with finite probabality. To give an example, consider a hypothetical neuron. Let "off" (i.e. not firing) be represented by 0 and "on" (i.e. firing) be represented by 1, and let the neuron have a threshold of 0.5. Then consider an input of 0.25 (i.e. halfway to the threshold). Now, if these numbers represent potentials typical in a brain (say, a few millivolts), then statistical fluctuations will be far too small to bump that 0.25 all the way up to 0.5. Result, the neuron will not fire (output == 0) essentially 100% of the time.
Now, consider an analogous quantum system. There are two eigenstates |0> and |1>. An equal mixture of the two states: 1/sqrt(2) |0> + 1/sqrt(2) |1> will result in a superposition state that has equal probability of collapsing into either eigenstate. This is the analog of the threshold. Now, consider the analog of an input of 0.25. It would be something like sqrt(3)/2 |0> + 1/2 |1>. When observed, this state will collapse into |0> 3/4 of the time and into |1> 1/4 of the time. Notice that a state fairly distant from the "threshold" (if you can even call it that) still has a significant chance of going the "wrong" way. This is quantum mechanical behavior, and it is very different from that of garden-variety statistical fluctuations, and it is very unlikely to be relevant to how a brain works.
Having said all that, I'm not convinced that even mundane statistical fluctuations are essential to developing free will or consciousness. I think it is entirely possible for a collection of completely deterministic neurons to develop traits that we would recognize as consciousness. The argument is fairly involved, and I doubt I could do it justice here, so I will refer you to the books by Hofstadter that I mentioned earlier in the thread.
Finally, I think there is an important flaw in your argument for why brains probably exploit quantum effects. You focus on the perceived benefits of quantum brains, but you say nothing of the costs. This is like saying, "humans probably have wings because being able to fly would be a huge evolutionary advantage over being stuck on land." That is a true statement, but it ignores the detail that providing enough lift for a human to fly would take a huge amount of energy; our poor winged human would never be able to eat enough to keep himself airborne. Similarly, if quantum brains require a radically different design than the ones we actually have (and I suspect they do), then there could be any number of evolutionary drawbacks to quantum brains. For instance quantum neurons might be more delicate than the regular sort, or maybe they are not as space efficient. Basically, your argument only holds if there is a way to make regular brains do double duty as quantum brains, and I think that assumption is suspect.
-r
Re:objection Your Honor! (Score:2)
> 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.
Re:Similar paths, different end points (Score:2)
I pity people who feel superior for this reason. Your arrogance doesn't impress me. Some people actually feel a spiritual aspect to their lives, and if you don't, thats fine, but don't tell me that all religious people are hiding behind a curtain. The whole debate has been polarized (actually its not even a debate anymore, only a shouting match) by immturity on both sides, extreme right-wingers, and scientists.
I beleive that some form of evolution occurs, that the big bang is the best theory for how the universe started. I'm always fascinated by advancements in physics, and contine to try to learn about them. This doesn't mean that I don't believe in a god, and in fact I do. Your opinion has placed you squarely at one end of the spectrum.
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
This has been on my mind lately - I helped send a mentally ill man to prison just a few days ago, because he was stalking my housemate. (A Zenarchist [negia.net] as a witness for the state - whadda hoot. But it made for less trouble than dealing him myself.) Was he "accountable" for his actions? The question seems irrelevent, and possibly meaningless. The fact was that he was a threat; the goal was to remove the threat, not to punish his action.
Physicists should stick to physics (Score:4)
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.
Re:Physicists should stick to physics (Score:2)
Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
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.
Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
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.
Oh, yes - wasn't he with "The Mind's Eye" (Score:2)
But I may be hallucinating again...
Major Major Major Major
Missing one important element. . . (Score:2)
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.
Re:Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (Score:2)
missing the point (Score:2)
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.
Re:Comparison with Penrose... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Similar paths, different end points (Score:3)
The old problem with the emotional aspect of a statement being lost when it is rendered in text.
I don't feel superior. Nor was I trying to be arrogant. I can see how it could be read that way.
The point I was trying to make is that I do feel the awe, the immensity, the glory if you will of the universe. This is my spiritual side. But I am comfortable knowing that there is more out there than I can know; that I don't have all the answers. But I think that I would be unture to myself if I tried to rap things up by postulating a god to provide these answers.
Note that when I say 'I' above I mean it. This is a personal thing. In my original post I just wanted to show that even though we had similar experiences, we came to rather different conclusions. You are more than welcome to your beliefs. (I only have problems when others try to force their beliefs on me, but that's another story.)
But I do feel pity that others can't join me at the edge of that abyss. I think that it is the most intellectually invigorating place in the universe. I do think people 'dumb it down' when they use god as an explanition. And I want people to experience the awe that I do.
If this is arrogance then so be it. If this puts me at one end of the spectrum then I'm glad to be there.
Steve M
Re:Physicists should stick to physics (Score:2)
Perhaps some people perceive that they do not have free will simply because the entity they attribute will to ("the inescapable laws of physics") is their own internal explanation for their actions.
Your argument seems to ask us to presume that physical laws are the source of what we percieve as will. Given this presumption, it is not surprising that your conclusion is that we do not have free will.
Can you provide any physical evidence or rational argument to ground your premise? Maybe you could recommend a good book that covers this satisfactorily?
Why are these two possibilities assumed to be mutually exclusive? Must either I decide or my neural circuitry decides? Perhaps I lack a clear understanding of how we can divide the "I" from the "neural circuitry."
How? Millions of random mutations and the long steady beat of natural selection? I am not saying that this is not true, but there are still some aspects of the theory of evolution that could use some clarification. How do we *know* that all of our personalities, desires, abilities, loves, fears, hopes, and dreams are part of us because if our great-great-great-great...great grandparents did not have them they would have been unable to make babies. How do we know that there is not something else?
My point is that if you start with the assumption that we are entirely products of a materialist and deterministic universe, it is no surprise that you will come to the conclusion that we do not have free will. Back up a few steps and *convince* me that this is so.
I hope that this is in no way perceived as a flame. Thanks for a post worth responding to.
shilo
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
besides your fate."
Or more simply that one state necessarily follows from subsequent states.
Think of our brain as an operating system: At the very lowest level, we have a hardcoded BIOS that pushes us to eat, sleep, reproduce, and whatever else is necessary for the survival of our offspring and genes. On top of this low layer, are many many layers of abstraction, until, at the top, we have something called "consciousness". Now, just as a multitasking operating system _appears_ to be running all programs at once, we _appear_ to be conscious, when it is really just many complicated permutations of very base motives, the lowest of which is eventually molecules and atoms. We have emergent behavior.
Just because I flee from a fire doesn't prove I have "free will", it just proves I have a programmed will to survive. That is my base reaction. Now we have many other layers put on top of that by our intelligence, or socialization. For example, I might appear "altruistic" if I risked my life to save someone else's life. Sure this appears to be "free will"...but it is only "free will" in the sense that I have been socialized and reprogrammed to believe it is in my best interest to save that person.
It's all atoms and molecules. There's no magic here.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla [sourceforge.net]
Existentialism (Score:2)
Well...duh...
You must have missed Existentialism.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla [sourceforge.net]
ACK! Two in one week and a spoiler to boot. (Score:2)
Jon, Take a break (and a shower, whew!)
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Re:Similar paths, different end points (Score:2)
However: being closed minded doesn't mean you will try to force your beliefs on others, nor does it mean you can't be happy. It might be an "ignorance is bliss" kind of happy, but its still happiness. I know you didn't explicitly argue this, but it seemed this might be in the back of your mind.
I think pity is a pretty strong word...I'd feel sadness at best I think.
Anyway. Back to work.
Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
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 [amazon.com].
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.
Re:Read Chalmers (Score:2)
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.
James Wilson? (Score:2)
Who the hell is James Wilson? I'm pretty sure you mean E. O. Wilson [california.com], 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)
No! (Score:2)
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.
Re:Similar paths, different end points (Score:2)
Perhaps sadness is a better word...
And I think you're correct about the ignorance is bliss thing. Those were the people I was refering to.
Most people don't openly discuss their religion or spirituality, especially when discussing 'scientific' topics. Thus when one does encounter it, it is usually highly polarized, and no where near the part of the spectrum I reside.
So in a sense I'm guilty as charged. I made an argument about a specific subset of people, those both closed minded and religious, but phrased it in a general fashion (which was no doubt highly inflammatory to those of a religious nature). Thanks for pointing that out.
What I was really trying to say was that I feel sadness (and pity too I think) for people that shy away from the awe (and terror) of the universe and use religion to do so.
Steve M
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
Quite possibly this is all the result of many layers of emergent behavior but I fail to see how this would imply we were not concious.
Yes I agree running from fire does not prove conciousness. What I was arguing is that rather then expect a concious being to be random he SHOULD be predictable.
I make no claim of magic. Precisely the opposite I am claiming that the concepts of free will and conciousness are perfectly applicable to ere physical systems composed of atoms and molecules. There is no need to refer to spiritual devices for these conditions to hold.
Free will and the human brain (Score:2)
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.
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
WHat I am saying is that we should expect a conciouss neing to act in a predictable way. Yes, the universe is random so this predictable way is not exact but it is the predictability that gives us our free will.
If we acted at random...made choices in life by merely the flip of a coin we would behave less like a human and less conciouss.
As for accountability I fail to see why predictability would ruin accountability. Sure you may have done it because that is your nature. In fact you did it hence by definition it is your nature it may still be a wrong act and you can still be punished for it.
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
"There's no such thing as luck."
And in response
"Then I need better fate."
-cpd
Nice try, but he's completely up the spout (Score:2)
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.
Re:Physicists should stick to physics (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Uh, moderators? (Score:2)
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
Re:Physicists should stick to physics (Score:2)
The only caveat I'd interpose is that where you say...
I tend to agree with Daniel Dennett. He believes that those who imagine they experience consciousness differently than a suitably sensate machine-emulated human (a "zombie") could, are deluding themselves. He's not alone either; Kurthen, Grunwald and Elger of the University of Bonn argue in their 1998 paper Will there be a Neuroscientific Theory of Consciousness? that the whole idea of consciousness as we currently perceive it, is just a cultural construct that will eventually disappear as advances in cognitive neuroscientific understanding filter out to the world in general. In other words, the explanatory gap is really just a fiction created by the particularly weird way in which we view ourselves.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:I think Chaos theory explains a lot... (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Free will and Determinism (Score:2)
All events are unique. If the same event happened, it could not happen at the same time in the same place, exactly. Therefore, all events happen only once. This means there are no second chances, no undoing what has been done. Viewed from an outside viewpoint (or after the fact) no other event is possible. What happened, happened, and no amount of bickering changes it.
Free will is what you experience at the "now". Determinism is what you experience after the fact, or from an outside viewpoint (except that there are no outside viewpoints). Both exist, and the difference between them is semantic, not actual.
---
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (Score:2)
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?
Re:Read "Conciousness Explained" (Score:2)
<br><br>
The line of reasoning presented in the book shows by a series of thought experiments that the idea of there being some kind of ghost in the machine is a logical absurdity. Since there is no evidence for that ghost beyond the reader's own subjective (unreliable, irreproducible, untestable) experience, and since its existence would be logically absurd, and since human behaviour can be explained without it, then it isn't likely to exist at all.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Read also "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Old joke time... (Score:2)
Ummm, this was the title of Robin William's first comedy album.
"I wonder what chairs think about all day" oop, here comes another asshole!
--jim
Re:Nothing new (Score:2)
Well, absolutely, of course. But that doesn't invalidate an idea all by itself, whichever side of the fence you happen to stand. It's all about competing paradigms, innit? Meme competition. May the best idea win.
In any case, while the sheep argument might apply to most people I'm inclined to believe that Slashdot posters are on average much more intelligent than the average. These are the people who are leading the creation of that particular zeitgeist (and many others besides).
Unlike the bulk of the population, many of us here arrived at our particular belief systems by our own rational means rather than by the more common method of just swallowing the first thing we're told or succumbing to peer pressure. For example, you yourself are a Christian but you didn't get there by the traditional route although many still do. The same might be said of me.
The above is true regardless of which zeitgeist you were referring to. (I'm not sure if you meant logical positivist reductionism or New Age quantum mindism. It doesn't matter anyway.)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Another one... (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I'd absolutely agree (Score:2)
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.
Re:Consciousness - a human trait? (Score:2)
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...
---
Neurons too warm to perform quantum calculations.. (Score:2)
From Science [sciencemag.org] 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."
Re:Complexity is irrelevant (Score:2)
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
Re:I'd absolutely agree (Score:2)
Possibly, but not so much as you might think. Our own eyes and brains do a lot of jiggery-pokery to smooth out the pecular limitations of our vision for example so that subjectively those limitations don't tend to get noticed. In terms of the whole sensorium, Ernst Poppel noted that it takes on the order of 3 seconds to integrate roughly co-temporal stimuli into a unified experience, thus (as a side effect perhaps) smoothing out any artefacts caused by temporal misbehaviour of our sensory equipment. It's generally agreed that what you consciously see isn't the raw light hitting your retinae anyway; instead you see an internal 3D reconstruction from those two flat, distorted scenes.
A bat's brain is likely to be organized along similar principles...the bat doesn't "see sound"; instead the feedback from the sonar pulses is used once again to construct a sort of 3D model of the environment and *that* is likely what the bat experiences. Of course, I'm not saying that there won't be differences between the sensoria of bat and human! Only that those temporal characteristics of the senses which are not themselves used for conscious perception of the passage of time will be eliminated at a preconscious stage.
The quale of consciousness is a result of it's inward looking and hence somewhat self-referential nature.
I agree, though it can be difficult to get people to see why. Have a look at this clumsy attempt [slashdot.org] and let me know what you think. If you even get to see this...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Occams Razor (Score:2)
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.
--
Re:Consciousness - a human trait? (Score:2)
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.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Re:What incoherent bullshit! (Score:2)
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.
---
Quantum Mechanicms is not spooky black magic (Score:2)
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
Direct Response (Score:2)
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.
---
In a word: (Score:2)
No.
Sounds like he doesn't know the law of fives (Score:2)
it seems to me that the argument of "see all
this order and all this that can explain how that
works, there must be a God" is another example
of the law of fives.
For the uninitiated in Discordian philosophy,
I will try to explain it, (for more in depth
examples of it, see "The Illuminatus! trilogy"
and of course the Principia Discordia)
From the Pricipia:
===
The Law of Fives states simply that: ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES
OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5.
The Law of Fives is never wrong.
In the Erisian Archives is an old memo from Omar to Mal-2: "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I
look."
===
What is the point of such a silly law? Well
the point is that if you believe it, then
it will be true.
It is more properly called "bias". If you believe
there is a God to begin with, then all evidence
you find, will lead you back to the conclusion
that there is, in fact, a God. This is more a
product of the mind and its amazing pattern
matching abilities than anything else.
This is exactly why the answering of questions
like "is there a God" is beyond the scope of
science. Differnt people, with differnt bias, will
look at the factual "evidence" and come to
completely differnt conclusions.
Some will see amazing amounts of Complexity and
Order...they will conclude that the mind was
created by some supreme being. Others will
see the same things as amazing amounts of
disorder, and conclude that it all came together
by chance and just happend to do what it does.
Is there a God? Beats the hell out of me. I see
no hard evidence one way or the other. I seriously
think the universe works fine without one...but
then again, my bias is against the idea of a
God, since it doesn't fit in with my world view.
The law of fives is never wrong.
Hail Eris!
-Steve
Sounds like Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" (Score:2)
(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