Consciousness needs a brain to manifest itself.
Radio waves were always there. but there was no radio till Marconi
invented it.
I remember John Hagelin stating that Consciousness all by itself is
can't do anything unless it has a manifested structure to express itself.
--- On Mon, 10/19/09, Hugo <richardhughes...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: MUM professor calls Victor Stenger’s Quantum Gods:
Mistaken, Misinformed and Misleading
Date: Monday, October 19, 2009, 8:06 AM
> --- "Hugo" <richardhughes103@ > wrote:
> <snip>
> > Having read a bit more of Scharfs article I'm intruiged
> > by two things: Why do people think that because
> > consciousness hasn't been fully explained that it must
> > be some sort of fundamentally unknowable QP sort of
> > weird phenomenon rather than another mystery like so
> > many others that got explained eventually?
>
> I don't think they necessarily think that, actually.
Clearly it's what they do believe, I wouldn't wonder why
they go on about it so if I hadn't read so much to this effect.
> But have you ever read anything by David Chalmers on
> what he calls "the hard problem" of consciousness?
I noticed that Scharf referenced Chalmers and not Dennett
in his argument. I've read many theories on the hard problem.
Some think it's not going to be expained ever. Which is weird
as it isn't like no other mystery has ever been solved. And
how can you know whether something is intractible or not?
It's like the TM argument that at a certain level the
universe disappears into a field of subjectivity so you can't
ever objectively know the fundamental level. I'm sure
we'll see about that.
Others like Dan Dennett, think that the mystery of
consciousness will be explained by understanding the brain
better. Given the evidence of human ingenuity I'm with
Dennett and not the mystics. Happy to be proved wrong though.
I'm convinced consciousness is generated in the brain
simply from my own experiences. I got knocked out once,
very nasty, fell off a large John Deere tractor going 20mph
and landed on my head. Lost four hours of my life, total blank
and had no memory of where or who I was when I woke up. The
funny thing is though, I wasn't just lying on the ground
out cold I was apparently walking around and picking fights
with people, which is most unlike me. So where was consciousness
then? How does that, and things like LSD which radically alter
consciousness, fit in with the idea that consciousness is somehow
seperate from the brain? If we need a certain degree of functioning
to maintain consciousness then why are the mystics so sure that
the whole thing *isn't* generated within the brain?
The way we experience the world is an illusion. That's about
the only thing we know about it. The illusion is that there is an
"us" sitting in the middle of the mind looking at a stereoscopic
view of what's out there. We know that the brain *isn't* wired up
like that simply by looking at how it works, it creates this field
of perception to help us get around. For some reason it added an
observer which is obviously also dependent on healthy functioning.
How much of a problem is it going to be? I have no idea. But then
I frequently have to sit down because I'm so astonished there is
anything here at all let alone a universe like this with things
in it capable of (perhaps) understanding it! Which is the most
amazing part of that?
> Before he became a reductionist, Francis Crick was
> deeply intrigued by the problem of consciousness.
> He told a story about trying to convey to a friend
> why it was such a difficult problem. She didn't see
> why it should be.
>
> He asked her how she envisioned her own consciousness.
> She said she imagined it was something like a little
> TV set in her head.
>
> "But who," he responded, "is watching it?"
>
> He says she then got the problem immediately.
I get the problem just not the conclusions that perhaps make
more out of it than necessary. Simple fact is no-one knows.
>
> It seems to me that as long as you're pursuing
> a linear cause-and-effect explanation, you're
> just going to have an infinite regress. Here I
> think MMY has nailed it, in terms of "self-
> reference." In effect, it's circular rather than
> linear; consciousness folds back on itself.
Is there any evidence that it's more than a cause
and effect problem?
> Another way of looking at the problem is that if
> you're going to work with *observational* data
> about consciousness, what is it that's doing the
> observing? Consciousness is inextricably involved
> in the process of figuring out what consciousness
> is; you can't extract whatever you come up with
> from consciousness.
Ah, but you won't need to extract it. Once the hard
problem is solved we'll just have a new model to get
to grips with. If awareness of qualia are caused by
the sheer size of neuron connections then we'll be able
to accept that the idea of an "us" is just that, an idea.
> > Why does Hagelins GUT have to have something to do
> > with this mysterious level of consciousness when
> > others don't?
>
> I took a stab at this in my previous post; it seems
> that, according to Scharf, at least, it doesn't. It's
> entirely preliminary.
But used as justification for MMYs unified field theory
of the mind and all manner of nonsense. And he hasn't
finished Einsteins work. I was a bit amused by Scharfs
appraisal of Hagelins career, reading it you'd think he
was one of 20th century sciences great heroes. My over-
riding memory is of him trying to justify yogic flying
using quantum probability equations. Flipped SU5
might turn out to be important but the other 90% is BS.
In fact, all I've ever heard is MMY and JH using QP
theories to justify their brand of mysticism. I was
offered a set of JH lectures recently but I turned it
down. Why oh why! They would come in extremely useful
here, but I saw two of them and thought they were so awful
I didn't want to give them houseroom. Just ranting about
how all mysteries have been solved by Marshy's ideas and
then more ranting involving loosely or unconnected theories,
don't know anyoe who enjoyed watching them.
