On Consciousness

[Zeuzzz]

google "lucas penrose fallacy" and read up on it.

I just googled it, but I can't find anything in any sort of reputable published literature to back this up. Do you have a link? I'm sure Penrose does not have time to respond to every online critisism of his work, im pretty sure he sticks to the more established scientific methods of peer review and journal publications. And if it is published I expect he will have replied to it with a reposte.

Again, if you want to read that Penrose paper I linked to and comment on why its "crazy" then please do. If you dont even want to read it then please dont keep arguing from ignorance.

 

[rocketdodger]

Attack the messenger not the message, gotcha.

Some of the greatest advances in science have come from interdisciplinary models proposed by people that have combined two or more academic fields into one single discipline.




Subjective statement without scientific reasoning noted.




Failure to even look at the material I am talking about, whilst arguing against it, dually noted.

aka argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.

Good day to you

Brains are like parachutes. They only work when open.

LOl, did you even read the articles on the fallacy?

Let put it in language that might be easier for you: Penrose's arguments surrounding quantum consciousness are tantamount to someone arguing that a car engine can't function by internal combustion because there is no way little explosions could make the car teleport.

I know what his arguments entail -- that humans can reach conclusions that can't be arrived at using an algorithm guaranteed to halt, and that microtubules somehow allow neurons to make use of quantum computing.

I know why his arguments are invalid -- every human conclusion can be arrived at via an algorithm, just not necessarily one guaranteed to halt in all cases, and even if it wasn't, quantum computing doesn't do anything to escape computability.

So Penrose's argument is basically that a car needs to teleport to move, and that you can get a car to teleport by just giving it higher octane gasoline. We happen to know that no, cars can move by rolling, and no, even if they needed to teleport, it would require more than super-gasoline.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I have a difficulty with the word 'consciousness'.
You can be unconscious and experiencing dreams.
You can be asleep, not conscious of what's happening, but having some level of experiencing.
So, some of you know my theory: we are electricity and electricity is where we are:

http://maartenverguchtt.weebly.com/we-are-electricity-and-electricity-is-us.html

For the purpose of this thread, 1a below applies (from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/conscious)

No, I don't agree that we are electricity. Electricity can be present that is not conscious, and a conscious machine can, in principle, be made of non-electric substrates, like brass and steel, legos, tinkertoys, light, marbles, or hydraulics. If you think it can't, explain why.

con·scious (knshs)
adj.
1.
a. Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts. See Synonyms at aware.
b. Mentally perceptive or alert; awake: The patient remained fully conscious after the local anesthetic was administered.
2. Capable of thought, will, or perception: the development of conscious life on the planet.
3. Subjectively known or felt: conscious remorse.
4. Intentionally conceived or done; deliberate: a conscious insult; made a conscious effort to speak more clearly.
5. Inwardly attentive or sensible; mindful: was increasingly conscious of being watched.
6. Especially aware of or preoccupied with. Often used in combination: a cost-conscious approach to further development; a health-conscious diet.
n.
In psychoanalysis, the component of waking awareness perceptible by a person at any given instant; consciousness.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I have a difficulty with the word 'consciousness'.
You can be unconscious and experiencing dreams.
You can be asleep, not conscious of what's happening, but having some level of experiencing.

This is slightly off topic, but your post reminded me of a very interesting conversation between Neil De Grasse (badass) Tyson and Richard Dawkins. You can youtube the hour and a half long discusion by searching youtube for "the poetry of science"

Here is the text of the conversation, which ends with Tyson sharing an anecdote about dreams, altered states of consciousness and creativity:

Tyson: The language of the universe, which we call mathematics; maths has an unreasonable utility in the universe as we just invented it out of our heads. You don’t discover maths under a rock. Yet it empowers us to provide accurate predictions about the universe. And what results from this is that over time as a scientist, you learn to abandon your senses, as they can fool you into thinking something is true when its not. You use your tools to do the measuring and say ok, thats the reality. Then you make a mathematical model of that, which you can manipulate, logically (because maths is all about the logical extension of one point to another) and then you can make new discoveries about the world. No longer are you justified in saying “that idea in science is not true because it doesn’t make sense”. Forget your senses. Who cares about your senses. As you are growing up you are assembling a rule book for how nature works on the macroscopic world. The microscope takes you down smaller, the telescope takes you bigger, and each scale has its own laws of physics that manifest themselves in those regimes that you have no life experience in recognising. So its maths that allows you to take these incremental steps beyond the capacity of your senses, and perhaps even the capacity of your mind.

Dawkins: Yes good point. And I've noticed that at some point when you become so used to doing the mathematics it becomes kind of intuitive, like i'm told that pilots that have flown planes for very long end up feeling the wings of the plane as if they were part of their own body.

Tyson: Is this a common sensory occurrence?

Dawkins: Yes I think it is, its a common thing, it think its a common thing when people get skilled at using micro manipulators where they are using their hands, and whats actually going on is only tiny minuscule movements, going on as if under the microscope.

Tyson: So it becomes their hands?

Dawkins: yes

Tyson: I see, so the plane becomes the pilot, or the pilot becomes the plane.

Dawkins: Indeed, just as you said, the telescope is an extension of the eye.

Tyson: I knew this person, my advisor in grad school, and I spoke to him one morning and he was doing research on star clusters that have these huge orbits around the centre of the galaxy, and he had this dream where where he was one of these clusters and he was orbiting the centre of the galaxy. And I thought this was so cool, as, if you start becoming your cosmic dream; I want to have those dreams! as you start to think more creatively about what might be discovered.

 

[rocketdodger]

I just googled it, but I can't find anything in any sort of reputable published literature to back this up. Do you have a link? I'm sure Penrose does not have time to respond to every online critisism of his work, im pretty sure he sticks to the more established scientific methods of peer review and journal publications. And if it is published I expect he will have replied to it with a reposte.

Again, if you want to read that Penrose paper I linked to and comment on why its "crazy" then please do. If you dont even want to read it then please dont keep arguing from ignorance.

I have read that paper of his many times. That isn't the crazy part. The orchOR jibberish is actually plausible ( although it is easy to find refutations in actual peer reviewed journals, in particular that the scale on which Penrose posits orchOR takes place is something like more than 10 orders of magnitude too small to statistically affect neuron behavior ).

The crazy part is that he thinks we NEED orchOR, or anything like it. He has a very old standing argument for that, called the lucas-penrose argument.

It basically goes like this: Human mathematicians can think of things that Penrose can't imagine could be arrived at via an algorithm, therefore there must be some non-algorithmic component to our thought process.

Like I said, that is not only wrong, but it doesn't even matter, since his orchOR idea doesn't escape the limits of computability.

 

[Zeuzzz]

LOl, did you even read the articles on the fallacy?

Let put it in language that might be easier for you: Penrose's arguments surrounding quantum consciousness are tantamount to someone arguing that a car engine can't function by internal combustion because there is no way little explosions could make the car teleport.

I know what his arguments entail -- that humans can reach conclusions that can't be arrived at using an algorithm guaranteed to halt, and that microtubules somehow allow neurons to make use of quantum computing.

I know why his arguments are invalid -- every human conclusion can be arrived at via an algorithm, just not necessarily one guaranteed to halt in all cases, and even if it wasn't, quantum computing doesn't do anything to escape computability.

So Penrose's argument is basically that a car needs to teleport to move, and that you can get a car to teleport by just giving it higher octane gasoline. We happen to know that no, cars can move by rolling, and no, even if they needed to teleport, it would require more than super-gasoline.

Nothing you said bears any relevance to anything I've read in recent literature proposed by Penrose et al.

I note you dodged my main point. I've just spent a fair while scouring journals for this as you asked, and not found anything.

So I say again:

I just googled it, but I can't find anything in any sort of reputable published literature to back this up. Do you have a link?

 

[quarky]

You are using "trained" and "learned" very differently than people who study those processes, like me, ever do. We define them in terms of changes in the behavior of individual organisms, not of a species over time through natural selection.

well, yes. I did use the term differently.
It sure doesn't mean I don't study the processes.
I'm the one suggesting this radical exploitation, and it comes from study.

If you're curious, I'd expound on the idea, if we can get past semantics.

Here's an example:

Chickens can have their roosts in a green house.
The plants and the chickens compliment each other, and the chickens lay more eggs in winter in a warmer coop.

When the green house gets uncomfortably warm, the chickens will exit it, through a vent that they gladly open, with no training. They go outside. When it begins to get cold, they go back in, and close that vent...with no training.

Yes, the chickens are dumb. But we are smart.


Or is it just me?

 

[tsig]

well, yes. I did use the term differently.
It sure doesn't mean I don't study the processes.
I'm the one suggesting this radical exploitation, and it comes from study.

If you're curious, I'd expound on the idea, if we can get past semantics.

Here's an example:

Chickens can have their roosts in a green house.
The plants and the chickens compliment each other, and the chickens lay more eggs in winter in a warmer coop.

When the green house gets uncomfortably warm, the chickens will exit it, through a vent that they gladly open, with no training. They go outside. When it begins to get cold, they go back in, and close that vent...with no training.

Yes, the chickens are dumb. But we are smart.


Or is it just me?

Two things are obvious:

You've never kept chickens

You've never had a greenhouse.

So it's just you.

 

[!Kaggen]

Two things are obvious:

You've never kept chickens

You've never had a greenhouse.

So it's just you.

You sure you got the right thread?
The discussion is about consciousness something you have no experience of.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I read Penrose's original book on quantum consciousness years ago and used to think it was very, very interesting. Now it just reads like argument from ignorance, e.g., he doesn't know how the brain can do what it does, so it must use quantum mechanics. He also seems to say, "the brain is mysterious, and quantum mechanics is also mysterious, so their must be a connection." Unfortunately, he has no evidence the brain uses quantum mechanic computers. Sorry, Roger.

 

[PixyMisa]

This may be of interest to anyone doing more than emotively reacting to posts. Its the most recent paper Pubished by Penrose et al on the subject of my above post.

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/Cosmology160.html

Taking that paper by itself, we would reach the inescapable conclusion that Penrose knows less than nothing about consciousness, brain function, and computation. He bases his position on the following premises, three entirely false and two entirely irrelevant.

The 'hard problem' Distinctions between conscious and non-conscious processes are not addressed; consciousness is assumed to emerge at a critical level (neither specified nor testable) of computational complexity mediating otherwise non-conscious processes.

Not true at all. See Dennett and Hofstadter for the most convincing (but not the only) resolution to this distinction. Meanwhile there is no coherent argument that the "hard problem" even exists.

'Non-computable' thought and understanding, e.g. as shown by Gödel's theorem (Penrose, 1989; 1994).

Not true at all. Penrose has failed to show any example of anything the human mind does that is not computable, nor does his position allow for such a thing.

'Binding and synchrony', the problem of how disparate neuronal activities are bound into unified conscious experience, and how neuronal synchrony, e.g. gamma synchrony EEG (30 to 90 Hz), the best measurable correlate of consciousness does not derive from neuronal firings.

Not true at all. The brain is a neural network, so of course disparate neural activities bind together (not into a "unified conscious experience", but at least into an illusion of one). And EEGs measure bulk neural firings, so that claim is incoherent.

Causal efficacy of consciousness and any semblance of free will. Because measurable brain activity corresponding to a stimulus often occurs after we've responded (seemingly consciously) to that stimulus, the brain-as-computer view depicts consciousness as epiphenomenal illusion (Dennett, 1991; 1995; Wegner, 2002).

Yeah. So?

Cognitive behaviors of single cell organisms. Protozoans like Paramecium can swim, find food and mates, learn, remember and have sex, all without synaptic computation (Sherrington, 1957).

Yeah. So? They compute; they just don't use synapses as such.

In his defense, he presents only speculation. No evidence whatsoever.

F-

And I'm being generous.

 

[quarky]

Two things are obvious:

You've never kept chickens

You've never had a greenhouse.

So it's just you.

What an odd thing to say.
I've had both, in 3 different states.
Perhaps you can't imagine the chickens not having access to the plants?
Or their comings and goings not tripping the vents?
Or you're having a bad hair day?

How about fish in a green house?

 

[!Kaggen]

I agree with Pixy on this one. Penrose is trying too hard to explain something without sufficient evidence. Then again so is Dennett.

 

[PixyMisa]

I agree with Pixy on this one. Penrose is trying too hard to explain something without sufficient evidence. Then again so is Dennett.

There's a difference, though. Where Penrose is offering an implausible explanation for something that's not in evidence, Dennett is providing a plausible explanation for something that is in evidence - and which other philosophers (Chalmers, Searle, Jackson) have asserted could not be explained at all.

While that doesn't establish Dennett's thesis as correct, he is at least advancing the discourse, which Penrose ain't.

 

[rocketdodger]

I actually think Dennett does more harm than good now. For that matter, so does anyone who tries to come up with theories about human consciousness that aren't literally grounded in human neural network topology.

The "multiple drafts" model is plausible but unfortunately it just doesn't fit well with the way the brain is connected. The more research I look at, the more it is apparent that it just isn't a great model. Global workspace isn't much better, but it is better nonetheless. You can sorta-kinda shoehorn global workspace into something like a brain topography. But even in that case it is better to just look at the neural networks and bypass the "conceptual model" entirely.

At this point I wish we could leave the speculative philosophy behind and just focus on the straight up science. We know enough to do that, the only excuse not to is if someone doesn't want to take the trouble to educate themselves on what is known about neural networks. I wouldn't accuse Dennett and Baars and Blackmore and the like of being lazy when it comes to the hard science, but I kind of feel that they are, a bit. They are happy to look at research but I don't get the sense that they could whip up a neural network program that could control a robot, for example.

However, Penrose is in an entirely different league. If Dennett is lazy, Penrose is outright ignorant.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I actually think Dennett does more harm than good now. For that matter, so does anyone who tries to come up with theories about human consciousness that aren't literally grounded in human neural network topology.

The top = neurons
To bottom = large scale structure models of the universe.

Non universality derived self similarity, anyone?

Take 60mg dimethyltryptamine, watch physical reality dissolve, and then come back and scientifically rationalize everything you experienced. Be sure to include the exact % of trancendance you experienced. It will be something like this.

 

[rcfieldz]

choices

too few choices....my mind is reeling.

 

[Jeff Corey]

well, yes. I did use the term differently.
It sure doesn't mean I don't study the processes.
I'm the one suggesting this radical exploitation, and it comes from study.

If you're curious, I'd expound on the idea, if we can get past semantics.

Here's an example:

Chickens can have their roosts in a green house.
The plants and the chickens compliment each other, and the chickens lay more eggs in winter in a warmer coop.

When the green house gets uncomfortably warm, the chickens will exit it, through a vent that they gladly open, with no training. They go outside. When it begins to get cold, they go back in, and close that vent...with no training.

Yes, the chickens are dumb. But we are smart.


Or is it just me?

I'm curious about the vent. Did you have fox around? As a kid, we raised chickens and I've seen what a fox can do to an unsecured henhouse.
Also, the chickens close the vent? Or is it like a pet door?

 

[quarky]

Two vents; in and out. The out stays open until they come back in, which is more like a pet door.
Fox trouble. I've always had a couple of dogs when having any farm animals, but I had a coop that was quite complex to enter and exit. The boss chicken would quickly learn the new obstacle, as I would add them one at a time. It proved to be too complicated for predators. Except snakes, I must add. And they would get the occasional egg. I think it was worth it, for the rodent work these snakes would do.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Take 60mg dimethyltryptamine, watch physical reality dissolve, and then come back and scientifically rationalize everything you experienced. Be sure to include the exact % of trancendance you experienced. It will be something like this.

To expand on this point, can anyone give a possible reason why the subjective experiences people report in such "+5 level" altered states of consciousness seem to be so similar?