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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

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.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Platonism still has to explain why that fundamental consciousness arises only in particular material configurations, ie., if it underlies mater, why isn't all mater conscious? What are the building blocks necessary to channel that underlying consciousness?
    - TelmoMenezes 11y ago
      There is no known experiment one can perform that tests if something is conscious or not. We know we are ourselves conscious, so we assume that entities resembling us also are, and entities that are too different are not. Maybe that's the truth, but for now it's just a personal belief, not a scientific theory. For something to be a scientific theory it must be testable and falsifiable. Some people actually believe that all mater is conscious -- this position is referred to as panpsychism. Some people believe they are the only conscious entity in the universe -- this is solipsism. These positions may sound absurd, but they are not more or less scientifically credible than the mainstream one. They all fit the observable reality, and none of them can be tested. We all have our intuitions and personal beliefs, but from a scientific standpoint I think that the only rigorous attitude is to remain agnostic on this. Otherwise we fall into the same intellectual traps as mysticism. The scientific attitude is above all to doubt, not to blindly believe.
      - titzer 11y ago
        Even though solipsism is not falsifiable, falsifiability is not the only measure of scientific credibility. E.g. solipsism is less credible than materialism, since more observations support materialism and are relatively hard to explain under solipsism, not the least of which are object permanence, the apparent existence of other people who seem more intelligent than the solipsistic mind, disagreement, injury, pain, Occam's razor... Falsifiability doesn't apply to essentially any metaphysics, anyway. Which is where all the woo about panpsychism and morphic resonance and whole series of theories that make consciousness into some weird thing outside our universe. The question is what metatheories are _compatible with observation_, or at the least, under _what level of gymnastics_ they are. All this talk about "we don't know what consciousness is; therefore XYZ" is filled with woo. Even if we don't know what conscious is or can't exactly _test_ for it, most people agree there are at least different levels of sophistication of consciousness, and that some animals appear to be at least partially conscious. That's not odd if we explain this in relation to brain capacity and along normal evolutionary lines. Is it anything other than the evolution of brains really necessary to explain consciousness? Why do you believe so? So what new dimensions of reality would you like to request in order to explain consciousness? Does anyone have any evidence these other dimensions exist? No, of course they don't.
- carapace 11y ago
  I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious. Every micro-video I've ever seen leads me to credit that these tiny creatures are "people" in the same way that any multi-cellular living being is a person. I think consciousness is an intrinsic aspect of the Universe, which seems to be fundamentally made of it and something we can call the flux which is everything else. The flux has pattern/form and is constantly changing apparently in accord with rules, some of which we seem to grasp quite well. Consciousness, on the other hand, has no properties and does not exist in time, it is always now. In fact the only way we know about consciousness (and give talk of it any heed whatsoever) is that we are consciousness. We often forget this due to the distraction of currently occupying a body (a self-referential "whirlpool" of flux that includes an apparatus for interfacing with consciousness in a way that is as yet entirely mysterious to science) but that soon solves itself in the fullness of time. But let that pass. More interesting from the point of view of this thread is the way that a human mind arises from the mind of the body's cells, if you credit that they are sentient themselves. It also points to the larger multi-human sentient entities which we can and do comprise.
  - Elrac 11y ago
    > I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious. OK, I'll bite: Just what makes you believe that? What evidence convinces you this is true?
    - carapace 11y ago
      There is nothing I can point to that serves as evidence of consciousness. As I said above, the only way we know that the word "consciousness" has a referent in the real world is that we experience it. I have no evidence that microbes and cells are conscious any more than I have evidence that I am, or you are. I have, myself, had some experiences that seem to me to have something to do with some of the statements I sometimes make about "consciousness". But there is no way to share that experience with you, no symbols I can transmit. There is no consciousness-o-meter (except for consciousness itself maybe.)
      - 11y ago
enord 11y ago
Actually, I assume abstraction not emergentism but my assumptions are beside the point. My point is that quantum weirdness is not observed on scales that are not quantum-sized and quantum-whatever is therefore a poor candidate for analogous reasoning. In addition, the gap between the physical components (I do assume physicalism) of the brain and the properties of the mind is so far removed from the quantum-sized(weird) phenomena of quantum physics that some reconciliation(read: major breakthrough) must happen in the field of physics before quantum physics becomes a viable scalpel with which we can try to dissect the mind-brain problem. I agree that emergence-flavoured theories of consciousness are essentially woo woo, or non-explanations. I am therefore not very exited about massive statistical simulations trying to achieve intelligence, because even if Watson were to become self aware after stuffing it with even more megahertz, we would just have another "brain" on our hands and we will have nothing but the turing test to discern its "brain-ness". That is to say - I am exited, because Watson is really cool and useful, but not exited about what neural nets, genetic algorithms or statistical data analysis will tell us about consciousness.

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.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Platonism still has to explain why that fundamental consciousness arises only in particular material configurations, ie., if it underlies mater, why isn't all mater conscious? What are the building blocks necessary to channel that underlying consciousness?
  - TelmoMenezes 11y ago
    There is no known experiment one can perform that tests if something is conscious or not. We know we are ourselves conscious, so we assume that entities resembling us also are, and entities that are too different are not. Maybe that's the truth, but for now it's just a personal belief, not a scientific theory. For something to be a scientific theory it must be testable and falsifiable. Some people actually believe that all mater is conscious -- this position is referred to as panpsychism. Some people believe they are the only conscious entity in the universe -- this is solipsism. These positions may sound absurd, but they are not more or less scientifically credible than the mainstream one. They all fit the observable reality, and none of them can be tested. We all have our intuitions and personal beliefs, but from a scientific standpoint I think that the only rigorous attitude is to remain agnostic on this. Otherwise we fall into the same intellectual traps as mysticism. The scientific attitude is above all to doubt, not to blindly believe.
    - titzer 11y ago
      Even though solipsism is not falsifiable, falsifiability is not the only measure of scientific credibility. E.g. solipsism is less credible than materialism, since more observations support materialism and are relatively hard to explain under solipsism, not the least of which are object permanence, the apparent existence of other people who seem more intelligent than the solipsistic mind, disagreement, injury, pain, Occam's razor... Falsifiability doesn't apply to essentially any metaphysics, anyway. Which is where all the woo about panpsychism and morphic resonance and whole series of theories that make consciousness into some weird thing outside our universe. The question is what metatheories are _compatible with observation_, or at the least, under _what level of gymnastics_ they are. All this talk about "we don't know what consciousness is; therefore XYZ" is filled with woo. Even if we don't know what conscious is or can't exactly _test_ for it, most people agree there are at least different levels of sophistication of consciousness, and that some animals appear to be at least partially conscious. That's not odd if we explain this in relation to brain capacity and along normal evolutionary lines. Is it anything other than the evolution of brains really necessary to explain consciousness? Why do you believe so? So what new dimensions of reality would you like to request in order to explain consciousness? Does anyone have any evidence these other dimensions exist? No, of course they don't.
carapace 11y ago
I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious. Every micro-video I've ever seen leads me to credit that these tiny creatures are "people" in the same way that any multi-cellular living being is a person. I think consciousness is an intrinsic aspect of the Universe, which seems to be fundamentally made of it and something we can call the flux which is everything else. The flux has pattern/form and is constantly changing apparently in accord with rules, some of which we seem to grasp quite well. Consciousness, on the other hand, has no properties and does not exist in time, it is always now. In fact the only way we know about consciousness (and give talk of it any heed whatsoever) is that we are consciousness. We often forget this due to the distraction of currently occupying a body (a self-referential "whirlpool" of flux that includes an apparatus for interfacing with consciousness in a way that is as yet entirely mysterious to science) but that soon solves itself in the fullness of time. But let that pass. More interesting from the point of view of this thread is the way that a human mind arises from the mind of the body's cells, if you credit that they are sentient themselves. It also points to the larger multi-human sentient entities which we can and do comprise.
- Elrac 11y ago
  > I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious. OK, I'll bite: Just what makes you believe that? What evidence convinces you this is true?
  - carapace 11y ago
    There is nothing I can point to that serves as evidence of consciousness. As I said above, the only way we know that the word "consciousness" has a referent in the real world is that we experience it. I have no evidence that microbes and cells are conscious any more than I have evidence that I am, or you are. I have, myself, had some experiences that seem to me to have something to do with some of the statements I sometimes make about "consciousness". But there is no way to share that experience with you, no symbols I can transmit. There is no consciousness-o-meter (except for consciousness itself maybe.)
    - 11y ago

enord 11y ago

Actually, I assume abstraction not emergentism but my assumptions are beside the point. My point is that quantum weirdness is not observed on scales that are not quantum-sized and quantum-whatever is therefore a poor candidate for analogous reasoning. In addition, the gap between the physical components (I do assume physicalism) of the brain and the properties of the mind is so far removed from the quantum-sized(weird) phenomena of quantum physics that some reconciliation(read: major breakthrough) must happen in the field of physics before quantum physics becomes a viable scalpel with which we can try to dissect the mind-brain problem. I agree that emergence-flavoured theories of consciousness are essentially woo woo, or non-explanations. I am therefore not very exited about massive statistical simulations trying to achieve intelligence, because even if Watson were to become self aware after stuffing it with even more megahertz, we would just have another "brain" on our hands and we will have nothing but the turing test to discern its "brain-ness". That is to say - I am exited, because Watson is really cool and useful, but not exited about what neural nets, genetic algorithms or statistical data analysis will tell us about consciousness.