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Previous post by Hameroff

 how do synchronized neural firings and synaptic transmissions produce experiential qualia, emotions or free will? Physicalists believe this to be relatively straightforward (brain = mind = computer) however others find the question intractable, or as vexing as trying to coax a reluctant genie from a magic lamp. I see three problems with the brain = mind = computer analogy:

1. Is consciousness classical computation? In a controversial stance Roger Penrose ^1-3 has asserted that essential aspects of consciousness are non-computable. But regardless, classical computers appear to be evolving toward quantum computers. Beginning in the early 1980's Benioff, Feynman and others proposed that states in a system - bits in a computer - could interact while in quantum superposition of all possible states, effecting near-infinite parallel computation. Rather than classical Boolean bit states 1 or 0, quantum computers would utilize interactive "qubits" of 1 and 0. If quantum computers can ever be constructed they will have huge advantages in important applications. As the brain/mind has always been cast as current information technology, consciousness may inevitably be seen as some form of quantum computation.

2. Are neural firings the "fine grain" of consciousness? Cells and synapses are far more complex than simple on­off switches. Consider the paramecium, a single cell organism which gracefully swims, avoids predators, learns to escape from capillary tubes, and finds food and mates. Observing intelligent behavior in unicellular creatures C.S. Sherrington said in 1951: "Of nerve there is no trace. But the cell framework, the cyto-skeleton, might serve." Lacking synapses, paramecium utilizes its cytoskeleton for communication and organization. Neurons have a rich and dynamic set of cytoskeletal microtubules which regulates synapses, and tremendously increases potential computational capacity (e.g. 10¹⁶ bit states/second/neuron)⁴. More importantly, neurons are alive and we don't yet know what that implies for consciousness.

3. Details which don't fit the brain = mind = computer scheme are overlooked.

For example:

1. Neurotransmitter vesicle release and cognitive reaction times are "noisy", and exhibit apparent probabilistic randomness (?non­computable quantum indeterminacy⁵).
2. Axonal firing patterns (rather than average frequency) and dendritic­dendritic processing may be relevant to consciousness⁶.
3. Apart from chemical synapses, primitive electrotonic gap junctions couple neurons and glia synchronously and may play an important role in consciousness.
4. Glial cells (80% of the brain) are ignored in the brain­as­computer view.

Quibbling aside, the physicalist view fails to address difficult issues. For example the problem of 'binding' in vision and self is often attributed to temporal correlation (e.g. coherent 40 Hz), but it is unclear why temporal correlation per se should bind experience without an explanation of experience. Regarding transition from pre­conscious or implicit processing to consciousness itself, the physicalist view sees emergence at a critical level of neural-level computational complexity. But no conscious threshold is apparent, nor is there a reasonable suggestion why such an emergent property should have conscious experience. As physicalism is based on deterministic computation, it is also unable to account for free will or Penrose's proposed non­computability. But the major problem remains experience, for which physicalism offers no testable predictions. Something is missing.

 

RHYTHMIC STILLNESS

 

Specks of Crystal Light

Modulated by Solar Sprays

Reflect bright Earth sounds

Toward my Sight

 

History records in an instant

On carbon folds

The pulses of Earth rhythms

Upon my spinal shaft

 

The Harmonies of Light

and Sound

Blend with Magnetized

Crimson Flow

 

Rhythmic nasal motion

Swings the Pendulum

Of Spinal fluids

And Cranial Electrics

 

Neuronal jumps of Ecstasy

Rush with each ionic Breath

Sending flame-like radiations Oscillating

Between Earth's core and Heavens Cosmic Gates

 

Action turns to stillness, attention Follows

the Oxygenated Rhythm

Vibrations of intensity

Surge past and Thru

 

Now-ness invades the total-ness of Being

The thin-stretched Skin

Of Terrestrial Life

Enters from all Perception

 

Wafts of heat driven Air

Dust and Touch

With gentleness and Blessings

Distant snowfields bounce Echos

of Light

Sounding the bell-tones

of a million leaf cells

Curled around the smiling Blossom

of gathered Sun-Sounds

 

All to modulate this total Being

and Send charging energy Up

the three-fold Path

To spontaneously Explode

in the Feelings of

LOVE

by

shine

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Even so a bird, near to giving birth, already careful, already afraid, wonders on what branch to hang her vacant house; here she foresees winds, here thinks anxiously of serpents, here of men; finally as she doubts, a shady place takes her fancy; scarce has she alighted on the stranger boughs and all at once she loves the tree.

Statius, Achilleid

"If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly backwards to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is the manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Plato; or, the Philosopher", Representative Men

 

There are two basic types of string theories: those with closed string loops that can break into open strings and those with closed string loops that can't break into open strings. String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles) that are the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics. For this reason, string theories are able to avoid problems associated with the presence of point-like particles in theories of physics, in particular the problem of defining a sensible quantum theory of gravity. Studies of string theories have revealed that they predict not just strings, but also higher-dimensional objects. String theories are classified according to whether or not the strings are required to be closed loops, and whether or not the particle spectrum includes fermions. In order to include fermions in string theory, there must be a special kind of symmetry called supersymmetry, which means for every boson (particle that transmits a force) there is a corresponding fermion (particle that makes up matter). So supersymmetry relates the particles that transmit forces to the particles that make up matter.

 

Quantum fields are well-known to violate all the pointwise energy conditions of classical general relativity. 'Invoking a new paradigm is not too radical since since the prevailing model of physical reality has regularly undergone paradigm shifts and this has always involved moving ever further from our common-sense notion of reality. The standard dichotomy between matter and mind arose at a time when one could adopt the simplistic view that the arena of reality is 3-dimensional space. However, since then the physicist's world-view has changed profoundly and it is clear that our physical sensory systems reveal only a very limited aspect of reality. In particular, General Relativity explains gravity by proposing that the world is 4-dimensional and Kaluza-Klein theory explains electromagnetism by adding a fifth dimension; this is wrapped up so small that it cannot be observed directly but its existence neatly explains Maxwell's equations.'*

 Modern extensions of this idea propose that the other physical interactions can be accounted for by invoking further wrapped-up dimensions. In "M-theory", for example, the total number of dimension is 11, while in the "superstring" theory it is 10. One thus has an 4-dimensional "external" space and a 6 or 7-dimensional "internal" space. In the most recent variant of this idea, proposed by Randall and Sundrum, the extra dimensions may not even be compactified and the physical Universe is regarded as 4-dimensional "brane" in a higher dimensional "bulk". This is very far removed from the naive view of reality adopted by the sort of reductionist materialists who reject psychic phenomena out of hand.

Perhaps an example from modern physics may help make better sense of this. "String Theory" posits that the all the fundamental particles in nature are constituted by strings vibrating in nine-dimensional space. As Brian Greene explains:

Nicholas Humphreys joins some more dots with Seeing Red.

Just as a violin string can vibrate in different patterns, each of which produces a different musical tone, the filaments of superstring theory can also vibrate in different patterns.

But these vibrations don't produce different musical notes; remarkably, the theory claims that they produce different particle properties. A tiny string vibrating in one pattern would have the mass and the electric charge of an electron; according to the theory, such a vibrating string would be what we have traditionally called an electron. A tiny string vibrating in a different pattern would have the requisite properties to identify it as a quark, a neutrino, or any other kind of particle.

Thus String Theory claims that the vibrating string is an electron because it has all the properties of an electron. My theory of consciousness claims that a subject who is creating the appropriate activity in a reverberating circuit in his brain is having a red sensation because he has all the properties of a subject having a red sensation.
Well, perhaps both these ideas are hard to grasp. But it's not clear that the latter is necessarily so much harder than the former.

 

 

*B. Carr (2001), "Can physics be extended to accommodate psi?", Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Meeting of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association, ed. Arleta Griffor, ANPA (anpa-list@sitename.com, using 'yahoogroups' for the sitename).

... (2003), "Is there space for psi in modern physics?" abstract for Euro-PA 2003 conference, http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/psi/carr2003.html

 

 

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