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For me, it was the opposite. Reading Shadows of the Mind after GEB led me to finally see consciousness is NOT an emergent property of ordinary matter.
by cscurmudgeon 3y ago
For me, it was the opposite. Reading Shadows of the Mind after GEB led me to finally see consciousness is NOT an emergent property of ordinary matter.
- tasty_freeze 3y agoI find Penrose's argument uncompelling: he doesn't see how ordinary physics could result in the sensation of beingness and experience, and we don't really understand quantum mechanics, therefore quantum mechanics is responsible for consciousness. (obviously, his book works on it for 500 pages so my summary is a parody, but that was the gist as far as I can remember)
- bbor 3y agoOr one could speculate that consciousness arises from as-yet-undiscovered noncomputable laws of quantum gravity operating within brain structures called microtubules, as Sir Roger Penrose did in his 1994 book *Shadows of the Mind* Heh yeah doesn’t seem great. I think it’s you nailed it. This is from one of the reviews posted above
- knightoffaith 3y agoYou may want to read https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/finite.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/finite.html. Perhaps also https://iep.utm.edu/lp-argue/ https://iep.utm.edu/lp-argue/. The Lucas-Penrose argument is not generally accepted among philosophers. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it fails - truth isn't a popularity contest - but it does indicate there are some subtleties at play here; it's not so obvious Emperor of the Mind/Shadows of the Mind succeeds in its argument.
- hnfong 3y agoSpeaking of Scott Aaronson he has more recently (2013) wrote a much longer exposition about consciousness and (quantum) computation, and has a chapter specifically for Penrose: https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf
- fieryskiff17 3y ago[dead]