(May 15, 2014 at 4:54 pm)pocaracas Wrote:

wiki Wrote:Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS (born 8 August 1931), is an English mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science.

Not a biologist, not a neurologist...
Maybe you are aware that, if you have some ailment and go to a doctor, you have several outcomes:
- If you go to an endocrinologist, you have some problem with your hormones.
- If you go to an orthopedic doctor, you have something wrong with your bones.
- If you go to a cardiologist, you have something wrong with your heart.
- If you go to a dermatologist, you have something wrong with your skin
- and so on and so on...

This Penrose fellow is a mathematical physicist, so deals mostly with theoretical physics and quantum is everywhere for him... So it makes sense that he'd come up with something involving his field of work... or else he'd just shut up.
He's biased.
His notion of computer processing on the algorithmic level does not correlate with the kind of processing done on a neurological brain. He strawmans the brain with that algorithmic processing and then claims it can't be like that... well whoopedidah!

Except for the fact that his coauthor, Stuart Hammerhoff, does have the required medical credentials and their most recent 2014 experiments have shown some support for their theory. You might also look into Henry Stapp's work as well. ORarc isn't the only game in town. You guys talk big about science but when it comes to mind-brain Issues you look to 19th century physics for answers.

(May 15, 2014 at 5:22 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:

(May 15, 2014 at 4:54 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Not a biologist, not a neurologist...
Maybe you are aware that, if you have some ailment and go to a doctor, you have several outcomes:
- If you go to an endocrinologist, you have some problem with your hormones.
- If you go to an orthopedic doctor, you have something wrong with your bones.
- If you go to a cardiologist, you have something wrong with your heart.
- If you go to a dermatologist, you have something wrong with your skin
- and so on and so on...

This Penrose fellow is a mathematical physicist, so deals mostly with theoretical physics and quantum is everywhere for him... So it makes sense that he'd come up with something involving his field of work... or else he'd just shut up.
He's biased.
His notion of computer processing on the algorithmic level does not correlate with the kind of processing done on a neurological brain. He strawmans the brain with that algorithmic processing and then claims it can't be like that... well whoopedidah!

Except for the fact that his coauthor, Stuart Hammerhoff, does have the required medical credentials and their most recent 2014 experiments have shown some support for their theory. You might also look into Henry Stapp's work as well. ORarc isn't the only game in town. You guys talk big about science but when it comes to mind-brain Issues you look to 19th century physics for answers.

Chad, do you have a link to the experimental results that doesn't directly cite Hameroff and Penrose? I couldn't find one when I first heard about it a few months ago and I found that a bit strange. It seemed to me to suggest that the article was colored to their interpretation rather than just presenting the facts.

(May 15, 2014 at 4:54 pm)pocaracas Wrote: This Penrose fellow is a mathematical physicist, so deals mostly with theoretical physics and quantum is everywhere for him... So it makes sense that he'd come up with something involving his field of work... or else he'd just shut up.
He's biased.

Argumentum ad hominem.

Quote:His notion of computer processing on the algorithmic level does not correlate with the kind of processing done on a neurological brain. He strawmans the brain with that algorithmic processing and then claims it can't be like that... well whoopedidah!

Well, it is the AI folks themselves who strawman the brain with algorithms ...
In any case, the Orc OR theory does not rest on his Gödelian argument, which might not be fully convincing.

---

(May 15, 2014 at 5:51 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Chad, do you have a link to the experimental results that doesn't directly cite Hameroff and Penrose? I couldn't find one when I first heard about it a few months ago and I found that a bit strange. It seemed to me to suggest that the article was colored to their interpretation rather than just presenting the facts.

You mean this article:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...4513001188
?

(May 15, 2014 at 6:09 pm)Hegel Wrote:

(May 15, 2014 at 4:54 pm)pocaracas Wrote: This Penrose fellow is a mathematical physicist, so deals mostly with theoretical physics and quantum is everywhere for him... So it makes sense that he'd come up with something involving his field of work... or else he'd just shut up.
He's biased.

Argumentum ad hominem.

Yep... sort of... he's still biased, though.
But let's look at the paper, shall we?

(May 15, 2014 at 6:09 pm)Hegel Wrote:

Quote:His notion of computer processing on the algorithmic level does not correlate with the kind of processing done on a neurological brain. He strawmans the brain with that algorithmic processing and then claims it can't be like that... well whoopedidah!

Well, it is the AI folks themselves who strawman the brain with algorithms

They try to model the brain... but keep falling short due to technological constraints.

(May 15, 2014 at 6:09 pm)Hegel Wrote:

(May 15, 2014 at 5:51 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Chad, do you have a link to the experimental results that doesn't directly cite Hameroff and Penrose? I couldn't find one when I first heard about it a few months ago and I found that a bit strange. It seemed to me to suggest that the article was colored to their interpretation rather than just presenting the facts.

You mean this article:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...4513001188
?

That article IS by Hameroff and Penrose.... If I read correctly, Pickup_shonuff asked for something NOT by any of them.
It seems these are the only two people on this planet advocating for this...errr... theory....

But let's see what's in there, shall we?

First, what are these things people are calling microtubules? Are they like nanotubes?

Quote:Interiors of eukaryotic cells are organized and shaped by their cytoskeleton, a scaffolding-like protein network of microtubules, microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs), actin, and intermediate filaments [57]. Microtubules (‘MTs’, Fig. 3) are cylindrical polymers 25 nanometers in diameter, and of variable length, from a few hundred nanometers, apparently up to meters in long nerve axons. MTs self-assemble from peanut-shaped ‘tubulin’ proteins, each tubulin being a dimer composed of alpha and beta monomers, with a dipole giving MTs ferroelectric properties.

Scaffolding... fascinating place to look for something as simple as consiousness... carrying on...

Quote:MTs are particularly prevalent in neurons (109 tubulins/neuron), and are uniquely stable. [...] neurons, once formed, don't divide, and so neuronal MTs can remain assembled indefinitely.

Nice.

Quote:After Sherrington's broad observation in 1957 about the cytoskeleton as a cellular nervous system, Atema [65] proposed that tubulin conformational changes propagate as signals along microtubules. Hameroff and Watt [66] suggested that distinct tubulin dipoles and conformational states—mechanical changes in protein shape—could represent information, with MT lattices acting as two-dimensional Boolean switching matrices with input/output computation occurring via MAPs.

So this sort of information pathway is present in any and all cells...

Quote:Simulation of anesthetic molecules ( Fig. 5, red spheres) shows binding in a hydrophobic channel aligned with the 5- and 8-start helical winding pathways in the microtubule A-lattice.
Fig. 6b shows collective dipole couplings in contiguous rings. Quantum superposition of both states is shown in gray.
Anesthetics (lower right) appear to disperse dipoles necessary for consciousness, resulting in anesthesia

MIND.BLOWN!
Just because of some alignment between the anesthetic and these MTs, we are to go straight to "dipoles necessary for consciousness"???
He's not biased, right? I'm going ad hom on this... right?

Here I thought that anesthetics that knock a person out mainly hyper activated the sleep part of the brain... I guess my info is way outdated!

Oh, wait, this was about a particular anesthetic:

Quote: In the most definitive anesthetic experiment yet performed, Emerson et al. [86] used fluorescent anthracene as an anesthetic in tadpoles, and showed cessation of tadpole behavior occurs specifically via anthracene anesthetic binding in tadpole brain microtubules.

On tadpoles?!!

So, the information pathway in the nervous cell is blocked and the neurons don't work, hence the tadpole "ceases to behave". Why am I not surprised?
How does this correlate with the "consciousness" of the mind?
Or is consciousness just the opposite of unconscious? Where unconscious is typically easily confused with sleeping? And conscious is awake.
Somehow, this sounds a bit far removed from any AI.... but let's continue reading...

Quote:In 1989 Penrose published The Emperor's New Mind [23], which was followed in 1994 by Shadows of the Mind [24]. Critical of the viewpoint of ‘strong artificial intelligence’ (‘strong AI’), according to which all mental processes are entirely computational, both books argued, by appealing to Gödel's theorem and other considerations, that certain aspects of human consciousness, such as understanding, must be beyond the scope of any computational system, i.e. ‘non-computable’. Non-computability is a perfectly well-defined mathematical concept, but it had not previously been considered as a serious possibility for the result of physical actions. The non-computable ingredient required for human consciousness and understanding, Penrose suggested, would have to lie in an area where our current physical theories are fundamentally incomplete, though of important relevance to the scales that are pertinent to the operation of our brains.

Self-referencing much? oh, but Penrose is second author, so it's ok, I guess...
I guess it's time to google this

Gödel's incompleteness theorems Wrote:The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (e.g., a computer program, but it could be any sort of algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.

errr... This is starting to look a lot like those people who use the second law of thermodynamics to disprove evolution...
How on Earth can this theorem apply to anything about consciousness?
It applies to, let me double check, "natural numbers"!!


Any speculation about this OR thing is bogus from now on. Not reading any more or the paper.
AD hom or not, the bias shows.
Fancy language and a bit of obscurantism not a solid theory make.

(May 15, 2014 at 5:51 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Chad, do you have a link to the experimental results that doesn't directly cite Hameroff and Penrose? I couldn't find one when I first heard about it a few months ago and I found that a bit strange. It seemed to me to suggest that the article was colored to their interpretation rather than just presenting the facts.

I'm working off memory here, but I know I didn't read an actual study because the theory is very complex and I wouldn't really understand it. I think it still needs independent verification.

If one values the scientific method then it makes sense to look for a solution to the mind-body problem using modern physics. Classical physics hasn't produced any new theories, just the kind of dogmatism you see in Chas and Brian37.

To me the most interesting a credible articles can be found here:

http://quantum-mind.co.uk/

(May 15, 2014 at 9:46 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:

(May 15, 2014 at 5:51 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Chad, do you have a link to the experimental results that doesn't directly cite Hameroff and Penrose? I couldn't find one when I first heard about it a few months ago and I found that a bit strange. It seemed to me to suggest that the article was colored to their interpretation rather than just presenting the facts.

I'm working off memory here, but I know I didn't read an actual study because the theory is very complex and I wouldn't really understand it. I think it still needs independent verification.

If one values the scientific method then it makes sense to look for a solution to the mind-body problem using modern physics. Classical physics hasn't produced any new theories, just the kind of dogmatism you see in Chas and Brian37.

To me the most interesting a credible articles can be found here:

http://quantum-mind.co.uk/

You call me dogmatic, WooWooters? Irony.

I require evidence of and a plausible mechanism for a claim. There is no plausible mechanism for dualism, nor evidence of it.

All of the evidence from neuroscience is for consciousness to be brain-based.

(May 15, 2014 at 10:15 pm)Chas Wrote: You call me dogmatic, WooWooters? Irony.

I require evidence of and a plausible mechanism for a claim. There is no plausible mechanism for dualism, nor evidence of it.

All of the evidence from neuroscience is for consciousness to be brain-based.

Waving at the brain isn't showing a "mechanism." So far, science has done exactly zero in determining how material structures or interactions cause things to actually experience qualia, rather than just seeming to.

The evidence for dualism is that there is mind, and the objects which a mind perceives and thinks about. You can insist that the mind supervenes on the brain-- certainly, the content of ideas and thoughts seems to do so. But not only can we not show a mechanism for the supervenience of consciousness on the brain, we can't even show why it would be that a physical structure which can input and process information and produce a behavioral output would cause/need actual subjective awareness.

(May 16, 2014 at 3:15 am)bennyboy Wrote: The evidence for dualism is that there is mind, and the objects which a mind perceives and thinks about. You can insist that the mind supervenes on the brain-- certainly, the content of ideas and thoughts seems to do so. But not only can we not show a mechanism for the supervenience of consciousness on the brain, we can't even show why it would be that a physical structure which can input and process information and produce a behavioral output would cause/need actual subjective awareness.

The evidence you cite is for the mind in general and not particular to dualism. You are right to be critical of the lack of demonstrated mechanism for the monist position, but dualism has the same problem with the added burden of location issues and the effect of physical trauma on the mind.

(May 16, 2014 at 6:40 am)Cato Wrote:

(May 16, 2014 at 3:15 am)bennyboy Wrote: The evidence for dualism is that there is mind, and the objects which a mind perceives and thinks about. You can insist that the mind supervenes on the brain-- certainly, the content of ideas and thoughts seems to do so. But not only can we not show a mechanism for the supervenience of consciousness on the brain, we can't even show why it would be that a physical structure which can input and process information and produce a behavioral output would cause/need actual subjective awareness.

The evidence you cite is for the mind in general and not particular to dualism. You are right to be critical of the lack of demonstrated mechanism for the monist position, but dualism has the same problem with the added burden of location issues and the effect of physical trauma on the mind.

And the additional burden for monism is explaining why some neural systems are associated with consciousness and others are not. There is clearly an additional process beyond just neural activity.

(May 16, 2014 at 3:15 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(May 15, 2014 at 10:15 pm)Chas Wrote: You call me dogmatic, WooWooters? Irony.

I require evidence of and a plausible mechanism for a claim. There is no plausible mechanism for dualism, nor evidence of it.

All of the evidence from neuroscience is for consciousness to be brain-based.

Waving at the brain isn't showing a "mechanism." So far, science has done exactly zero in determining how material structures or interactions cause things to actually experience qualia, rather than just seeming to.

The evidence for dualism is that there is mind, and the objects which a mind perceives and thinks about. You can insist that the mind supervenes on the brain-- certainly, the content of ideas and thoughts seems to do so. But not only can we not show a mechanism for the supervenience of consciousness on the brain, we can't even show why it would be that a physical structure which can input and process information and produce a behavioral output would cause/need actual subjective awareness.

When Siri version 2050 arrives with actual subjective awareness, will the monism/dualism debate be over?