Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intelligence"?

[pocaracas]

You read half of an article on topic you've never heard of (although the theory is well known, has adherents and Penrose is as famous as Stephen Hawkins in circles who follow science), which deals with stuff of which 95% goes over your head and which you don’t even have the education to fully get; and then you find some "absurdities" and bravely proclaim its "bogus", playing with fancy words, etc ... That's pretty… I don’t say what.
Basically, if that's your attitude, your simply ignorant, and there no poitn in having discussion, but perhaps you were just frustrated or something.

Yeah.. frustrated at people's abilities to jump enormous hoops in order to sell their own brand of loony.
Yes, of course some quantum mechanics is involved.... it is everywhere, but never at the scale proposed here...

Now, you have two problems here
1) you have not understood the theory and what its all about and what is the claimed evidence for it
2) you seem to be a victim of some serious epistemological misunderstandings.

yeah, must be the second one...

Now, where they think consciousness resides on physical level is objective reduction (collapse of wave function interperted realistically), an idea based on interpretation of QM by Penrose. So, you can’t understand what the stuff is about if you’re not familiar with philosophy of physics.

Philosophy of physics... what an oxymoron...

Let me see is my QM is still up to notch: what do you think this collapse of wave function is? Which wave function?

Why their theory was taken to be false was because, due to decoherence, it was assumed that it should be impossible for microtubules to maintain superposition for long enough time. THAT was the reason the theory was "debunked" in the 90's when Penrose developed its first version.

Now, P & H claim that they have evidence that this accusation is incorrect due to quantum biological etc evidence.

And if they’re right, then they do have a piece of evidence.

And the only stuff you refer to, anesthetics, is not the most essential evidence they have.

It saddens me that it should be the first piece of evidence in the article, so one would expect it to be the most compelling one, gripping the reader so he would go on reading...

Just because of some alignment between the anesthetic and these MTs, we are to go straight to "dipoles necessary for consciousness"???

Noe that's the epistemic fallacy, that is to say, inductionist fallacy.

Let me explain.
They have a theory, let it be noted as T.
From T they deduce {p1,p2, ...}, that is, propositions which ought to be true, if the theory were true. Then they try to test these p's: if all p's tend to be true, that is to say, if they do NOT manage to FALSIFY T, then the theory is corroborated which does not mean verification.

If you complain: "their evidence does not verify their theory", you make the inductionst fallacy. It's a falsifiable hypothesis, and P & H are refuting attempts to falsify it!

Remember, I only read that article... their theory was not there.

i.e.:
if T is true, then t it should be the case that (p) drugs that block consciousness should block microtubular activity. (etc, that is, other p’s)

Thus, if they did not, that would falsify T.

Correlation does not imply causation...
oh well...

But you had a complaint:

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?

It is far from obvious that microtubules should have effect on firing of the neurons. it is certainly not zero information, as you claim!

Indeed it is far from obvious. Still, it's to be expected that an alteration of the nerve cell should lead to an impairment (or improvement) of the neural impulse emission.

Does the anesthetic only affect microtubules? I did not see that detailed in there... perhaps it was in one of the references.

What you are really claiming is that they are trying to verify their theory with this evidence.

Gosh.

Some basic philosophy of science:

(a) if p is correct does not verify T, but
(b) if p is incorrect, that falsifies T.

Now, if you complain that T is not verified (and it does not matter here that it is not well corroborated enough to be the best hypothesis), that's precisely the logic of the creationists.

You can't verify evolutionary (nor any) theory, you can only corroborate it.
The whole game of the creationists is based on your epistemology, not of P & H.

This reminds me of the model of the Solar System, where the Earth is at the center... So many correct p's and yet....
Ok, manifestly, we're not there yet, but I see no bright future for this theory... I wish all their proponents well and a breath of nice results, but I anticipate no such thing.

How on Earth can this theorem apply to anything about consciousness?
It applies to, let me double check, "natural numbers"!!

Oh shit... You don't know what Gödel's proof is and what its about? Ok, you know Alan Turing and the Turing machine? What does Turing’s proof which, also an adaptation of diagonal lemma, apply to? Turing machine, computer, mind...

OH OH OH... like I didn't quote what the damn theorem says.... -.-'
OK, it seems I gave you the short version... it seems this is the correct version [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems#First_incompleteness_theorem[/url]]:

The formal theorem is written in highly technical language. It may be paraphrased in English as:

Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true,[1] but not provable in the theory (Kleene 1967, p. 250).

Turing? Where are you?...
oh, here he is:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/lp-argue/
Oh look who's making that connection... Penrose.
Always the same biased guy.

In any case, I think Penrose might have done an error here, but it makes no sense to explain why if you can't see how Godel's proof is related to mind... But it is a smart as fuck argument, and the orcOR does not hinge on its absolute correctness.

Yes, smart argument, yes...
I can't see how Gödel's theorem is related to the mind?... right... because it's not.
It has to do with arithmetic unprovable statements for any theory of arithmetic truth.
Basically, it says that math has axioms.
So, how does that apply to the physical mind?

Any speculation about this OR thing is bogus from now on. Not reading any more or the paper.

In that case it is only your standards of deciding what's "bogus" that are the only thing that is bogus.
You can't criticize anything before you even grasp what it’s about.

Sometimes, you don't need to understand something completely, to intuit that it maybe BS.
There's that nagging thing of the "collapse of the wave function" that's never well defined...
You know who else talks about quantum consciousness?
Oh no... http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/deep...erview.htm