In The Emperor's New Mind Penrose proposes his "quantum theory of consciousness," in popularized form, as a argument for human consciousness being distinctly different from machine logic and any future "machine consciousness." At the time I read the book, it struck me that Penrose was putting a lot of effort into refuting machine consciousness.
The theory doesn't seem any less speculative for all that there is evidence of biological harnessing of quantum states in photosynthesis and apparently now in neural microtubules. It's a fascinating development, but nothing yet confirms that quantum entanglement gives rise to consciousness, AFAIK. Does it suggest that biological logic that harnesses quantum states is fundamentally different from a (future) computational consciousness? It's equally hard to say. If consciousness is part of the fabric of the universe, why would it be restricted to biological entities? Theories of consciousness that rely on linguistic structures, intersubjectivity, cybernetic feedback, or mirror neuron activity also locate consciousness beyond the body, in distributed systems of various sorts. Granted, these theories are less tantalizing than quantum pantheism—but they also seem to pose more immediate ethical questions about how we construct our being-in-the-world, and would, I suggest, continue to have validity even if there is some hard evidence at some point that apperception (in the philosophical sense, self-awareness) arises from biological quantum activity. -- Paul On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 9:54 AM, James Morris <[email protected]> wrote: > > http://www.kurzweilai.net/discovery-of-quantum-vibrations-in-microtubules-inside-brain-neurons-corroborates-controversial-20-year-old-theory-of-consciousness > > > On 14/11/14 10:47, marc garrett wrote: > > Omega Point > > Recent discoveries in neuroscience support a twenty-year-old controversial > theory of consciousness entitled Orch-OR that states that consciousness > does not emerge from complex computational activities inside the brain, as > it was previously thought, but rather it emanates from quantum vibrations > inside the microtubules. These microtubules are microscopic tubular > structures present inside brain neurons. According to this theory, > developed by Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, consciousness exists as > quantum information everywhere in the universe; we are merely the receivers > of it rather than the creators. Omega Point invites the participants to > perceive themselves as part of a cybernetic universe of infinite quantum > information feedback loops. > > https://vimeo.com/111828812 > > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing > [email protected]http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- ----- |(*,+,#,=)(#,=,*,+)(=,#,+,*)(+,*,=,#)| --- http://paulhertz.net/
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