5 ms·

No.

• vog 11y ago
  Do you care to elaborate on your disagreement?
  • enord 11y ago
    I'll chime in with this conceptual map of the article (as far as i read it anyway): Perception->Visual perception->Ontology of visual perception and consciousness->Quantum physics->No. edit: Actually, when i think about it, there's something analogous to Goodwin's law in papers/articles about the mind and consciousness. Whenever quantum physics becomes a topic the whole article just unravels into nonsense. This is of course obvious to anyone who've studied the physical properties of the mind (We don't even understand how whole braincells work together to form mental phenomena and conscious thought, so anything on a sub-atomic level is just out on a bike-ride (Norwegian idiom, sorry)).
    • sudioStudio64 11y ago
      That was perfect, thank you. It's quantum woo.
      • kabdib 11y ago
        Had to look that up ("woo woo" = unfounded or ludicrous belief).
        • gipp 11y ago
          It's usually a bit more specific than that. Something like "Disguising an unfounded or ludicrous belief as science by using the right vocabulary, just in nonsense ways."
          • sudioStudio64 11y ago
            Right, like Deepak Chopra saying that "brains are soul localizing devices". Using the misconceptions around scientific jargon to describe the same old dualist who-hah (that one's my own).
    • TelmoMenezes 11y ago
      It is true that a lot of woo is produced by people who appeal to quantum weirdness without having a basic understanding of modern physics. This article seems to be no exception (I did not have the patience to read it all). What you say, however, is dogmatic. You assume the emergentist theory of consciousness: that consciousness somehow emerges from the complex physical interactions in the brain. This theory is itself woo at the moment, because there is not even a proposed mechanism by how this could happen. There is just a magic step: complexity -> magic -> consciousness. It makes all the sense to take into account the additional information about reality that quantum mechanics provides when trying to understand consciousness, which is so far a mysterious aspect of reality.
      • titzer 11y ago
        It's not hard to argue that materialism implies emergentism, since materialism assumes nothing but physical properties and processes exist. No one really believes that individual neurons are conscious, yet no one disagrees that brains are conscious. Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior. So it's either emergentism or woo, by my reckoning. YMMV.
        • lgas 11y ago
          The problem is that saying that consciousness emerges from neurons, or the configuration of neurons in the brain, or whatever doesn't provide any actual explanation. It doesn't give us any more information than we had before. http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/
        • TelmoMenezes 11y ago
          > Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior. I think you're being too quick. Let's think about things that we know to be emergent structures/behaviors: cities, societies, the human body, ecosystems, etc. In all of them, you can recognize that the network of interactions is too complex for human intelligence to fully grasp, but you can pin-point the building blocks. It's not magic. We know how DNA directs the synthesis of proteins, how proteins fold, how they combine to form larger structures, etc. It's not possible to fully grasp the full mechanism that is a human body, or a society, but this is because it's too complicated, not because we don't know the components. With conscious we don't have that. It's an all-or-nothing proposition. What is your consciousness made of? Can you identify building blocks? If not, then you just have faith in emergentism, but you don't have a serious scientific theory. If eventually you can identify building blocks, and emergentism is correct, then surely these parts will belong to smaller chunks of the system. Eventually neurons are part-conscious. Otherwise how could the big thing emerge? So, in this case, there is something fundamental about matter that we know nothing about. Or, consciousness is more fundamental than mater. Serious people have also proposed this throughout the ages -- call it platonism maybe. This is an unfashionable philosophical position theses days, but as valid as materialism. Both are perfectly compatible with current scientific theories.