Stuart Hameroff on Singularity 1 on 1: Consciousness is More than Computation!
by frankiespeakin 6 Replies latest jw friends
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frankiespeakin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
The quantum mind or quantum consciousness hypothesis proposes that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness, while quantum mechanical phenomena, such asquantum entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function, and could form the basis of an explanation of consciousness. It is not a single theory, but rather a collection of distinct ideas.
A few theoretical physicists have argued that classical physics is intrinsically incapable of explaining the holistic aspects of consciousness, whereas quantum mechanics can. The idea that quantum theory has something to do with the workings of the mind go back to Eugene Wigner, who assumed that the wave function collapses due to its interaction with consciousness. However, most contemporary physicists and philosophers consider the arguments for an important role of quantum phenomena to be unconvincing. [1] Physicist Victor Stenger characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having "no scientific basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and dragons." [2]
The philosopher David Chalmers has argued against quantum consciousness. He has discussed how quantum mechanics may relate to dualistic consciousness. [3] Indeed, Chalmers is skeptical of the ability of any new physics to resolve the hard problem of consciousness. [4] [5]
Contents
[hide]- 1 Description of main quantum mind approaches
- 2 Criticism by Max Tegmark
- 3 See also
- 4 References
- 5 Further reading
- 6 External links
Description of main quantum mind approaches [ edit ]
David Bohm [ edit ]
David Bohm took the view that quantum theory and relativity contradicted one another, and that this contradiction implied that there existed a more fundamental level in the physical universe. [6] He claimed that both quantum theory and relativity pointed towards this deeper theory, which he formulated in terms of a quantum field theory. This more fundamental level was proposed to represent an undivided wholeness and an implicate order, from which arises the explicate order of the universe as we experience it.
Bohm's proposed implicate order applies both to matter and consciousness, and he suggests that it could explain the relationship between them. Mind and matter are here seen as projections into our explicate order from the underlying reality of the implicate order. Bohm claims that when we look at the matter in space, we can see nothing in these concepts that helps us to understand consciousness.
In trying to describe the nature of consciousness, Bohm discusses the experience of listening to music. He believed that the feeling of movement and change that make up our experience of music derives from both the immediate past and the present both being held in the brain together, with the notes from the past seen as transformations rather than memories. The notes that were implicate in the immediate past are seen as becoming explicate in the present. Bohm views this as consciousness emerging from the implicate order.
Bohm sees the movement, change or flow and also the coherence of experiences, such as listening to music as a manifestation of the implicate order. He claims to derive evidence for this from the work of Jean Piaget [7] in studying infants. He states that these studies show that young children have to learn about time and space, because they are part of the explicate order, but have a "hard-wired" understanding of movement, because it is part of the implicate order. He compares this "hard-wiring" to Chomsky's theory that grammar is "hard-wired" into young human brains.
In his writings, Bohm never proposed any specific brain mechanism by which his implicate order could emerge in a way that was relevant to consciousness, nor any means by which the propositions could be tested or falsified. [citation needed]
Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff [ edit ]
Main article: Orchestrated objective reductionTheoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff collaborated to produce the theory known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) Penrose and Hameroff initially developed their ideas separately, and only later collaborated to produce Orch-OR in the early 1990s. The theory was reviewed and updated by the original authors in late 2013. [8] [9]
Penrose's controversial argument began from Gödel's incompleteness theorems . In his first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind (1989), he argued that while a formal proof system cannot prove its own inconsistency, Gödel-unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians. [citation needed] He took this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not describable as formal proof systems, and are not therefore running a computable algorithm. [citation needed]
Penrose determined that wave function collapse was the only possible physical basis for a non-computable process. Dissatisfied with its randomness, Penrose proposed a new form of wave function collapse that occurred in isolation, called objective reduction. He suggested that each quantum superposition has its own piece of spacetime curvature, and when these become separated by more than one Planck length, they become unstable and collapse. [citation needed] Penrose suggested that objective reduction represented neither randomness nor algorithmic processing, but instead a non-computable influence in spacetime geometry from which mathematical understanding and, by later extension, consciousness derived. [citation needed]
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designs
Does this explain why some who get a severe head injury wake up speaking a different language etc..