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I personally like roger penrose's theory (hypothesis?) of orchestrated objective reduction of consciousness (Orch-OR). He stipulates that in evolution of the qu

I personally like roger penrose's theory (hypothesis?) of orchestrated objective reduction of consciousness (Orch-OR). He stipulates that in evolution of the quantum state of a system the collapse of wave function IS a form of proto-consciousness. Essentially the he is saying that WF collapse is how a system becomes 'aware' of the choice and consciousness emerges from there onwards. A Brain of sufficient/right complexity is a connectionist structure that is responsible for perceiving and/or translating it. What he's missing is the agent responsible for incorporating in the human/animal brain but some interesting candidates have come forwards like microtubules in neurons. But it is all highly speculative, though, there have been some advances in proving that biology is not too wet-warm-noisy for quantum state to persist without decoehrence for instance.. photosynthesis.

mathgenius 6y ago
Penrose's stuff is very interesting, and I always enjoy hearing him talk about it. But for me it is a soup with too many ingredients. Better to look at the ingredients separately, for example, the idea of microtubules maintaining coherent quantum information. That already is very interesting, and would make a good meal.
- DesiLurker 6y ago
  its a few days late so i dont know whether anybody will read it but my thoughts exactly. there should be a significant more research dollars spent on this as there is so much unknown there. just that fact that we still dont know how general anesthesia works and how we regain consciousness back in itself is quite fascinating. IMO in all this philosophical debate about nature of consciousness we often overlook the basic starting points in front of our eyes what mechanishm are necessary to sustain it. we need serious research on this otherwise it will be dominated by psuedo science BS like deepak chopra.

mathgenius 6y ago

Penrose's stuff is very interesting, and I always enjoy hearing him talk about it. But for me it is a soup with too many ingredients. Better to look at the ingredients separately, for example, the idea of microtubules maintaining coherent quantum information. That already is very interesting, and would make a good meal.

DesiLurker 6y ago
its a few days late so i dont know whether anybody will read it but my thoughts exactly. there should be a significant more research dollars spent on this as there is so much unknown there. just that fact that we still dont know how general anesthesia works and how we regain consciousness back in itself is quite fascinating. IMO in all this philosophical debate about nature of consciousness we often overlook the basic starting points in front of our eyes what mechanishm are necessary to sustain it. we need serious research on this otherwise it will be dominated by psuedo science BS like deepak chopra.