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

[Cato]

Because Von Neuman brought consciousness into physics with the orthodox interpretation. As Henry Stapp explains, big things, like biological systems, are made from small things, like atoms. The measurement problem requires an observer that sits outside the physical system in which the wave collapse occurs. The Copenhagen interpretation is a pragmatic approach that glosses over the underlying ontological reality. If you want to understand consciousness you must look to the orthodox interpretation.

Name dropping von Neuman and Stapp quickly leads to the unsupported conclusion that God did it.

The idea that consciousness is required for wave function collapse immediately presents a problem, how did the universe operate before the biological evolution of consciousness? Either consciousness isn't required for wave function collapse or a pre-evolutionary conscious, for which there is zero evidence, must be conjured into existence.

The real problem is that people reflexively and wrongly anthropomorphize observer in QM. This is how the idea of consciousness becomes a nuisance and useless stowaway on the Goodship QM.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Until you can show a compositional difference between one set of neurons and another, both of which perform information process and of which only one is conscious, then you are presenting a 300 year old promissory note. How long can the materialist answer fail to deliver before it is considered a failure? The materialist approach to mind-body dates back to Newton! Physics has changed a lot since then, from classical ideas of particles bumping together to quantum processes. I fully accept the findings of neuroscience but do not accept interpretations that beg the question.

I was unaware that neuroscience was on a shot clock requiring everyone to accept an unsupported supernatural explanation when the buzzer sounds.

Last time I looked quantum mechanics was considered natural. While classical physics works well enough for describing processes at the macroscopic scale, the fundamental reality is still quantum. I fail to understand why the loudest advocates of science will not incorporate the most recent theories when it comes to the mind-brain problem other that trying to avoid findings that undermine their assumptions about how the world should work.

Case in point. Some quantum effects show retro causality. Meanwhile a recent neuroscientist claims that conscious choices occur after the unconscious has already set into motion the results of the decision. I believe the two very scientific findings are consistent and together support interactive dualism.

[pocaracas]

Until you can show a compositional difference between one set of neurons and another, both of which perform information process and of which only one is conscious, then you are presenting a 300 year old promissory note.

Granted that none of these have yet displayed consciousness (possibly due to lack of complexity on the implementation which depends on the current technology), but this is just to show how different neural networks can be made to tackle different tasks.

This is a perceptron neural network, meant for classification tasks:


This is a Hopfield neural network, dedicated to model human memory:


There are other types of Artificial Neural Networks, but these two should be enough to provide a hint that different brain structures may be related to different tasks. Different animals possess these structures in different amounts, which leads to different complexities in the tasks they can process.

This is what I view as the most likely scenario to account for brain function. Sure, it's still not proven one way or the other, so you're free to disagree.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Because Von Neuman brought consciousness into physics with the orthodox interpretation. As Henry Stapp explains, big things, like biological systems, are made from small things, like atoms. The measurement problem requires an observer that sits outside the physical system in which the wave collapse occurs. The Copenhagen interpretation is a pragmatic approach that glosses over the underlying ontological reality. If you want to understand consciousness you must look to the orthodox interpretation.

Name dropping von Neuman and Stapp quickly leads to the unsupported conclusion that God did it.

The idea that consciousness is required for wave function collapse immediately presents a problem, how did the universe operate before the biological evolution of consciousness? Either consciousness isn't required for wave function collapse or a pre-evolutionary conscious, for which there is zero evidence, must be conjured into existence.

The real problem is that people reflexively and wrongly anthropomorphize observer in QM. This is how the idea of consciousness becomes a nuisance and useless stowaway on the Goodship QM.

Well gee, if God is involved it cannot possibly be true...that comment just goes to show that your objections are not scientific but rather ideological.

Perhaps you didn't notice that I clearly distinguished between the pragmatic Copenhagen interpretation and the ontological orthodox one. You just cannot eliminate the role of the conscious observer. The physical apparatuses that perform the measurements are part of the quantum process and the physical brain is also part of the quantum process. Where in your theory do you make the cut between the quantum event and the 'observer'? In the photographic plate? In the retina that relays the image on the plate? In the visual cortex of the brain? Exactly where in the series of physical events does the wave function collapse? The fact is there is an indeterminate physical event awaiting interpretation by something that is not a part of that physical system. You can call it woo all day long but its still reality.

[Cato]

Last time I looked quantum mechanics was considered natural. While classical physics works well enough for describing processes at the macroscopic scale, the fundamental reality is still quantum. I fail to understand why the loudest advocates of science will not incorporate the most recent theories when it comes to the mind-brain problem other that trying to avoid findings that undermine their assumptions about how the world should work.

Case in point. Some quantum effects show retro causality. Meanwhile a recent neuroscientist claims that conscious choices occur after the unconscious has already set into motion the results of the decision. I believe the two very scientific findings are consistent and together support interactive dualism.

QM is natural, but it's those of you wanting to invoke what we see at the quantum level as a direct explanation for higher level phenomenon are guilty of not appreciating the difference in scale.

Consider this...
We are getting closer to being able to use QM to quantify electron pair bond lengths and angles, but still aren't there. And this is for simple hydrogen bonding. Now consider the thousands of electron pairs in organic molecules. Next consider the molecular interaction in any given cell. How many cells are we talking about for simple neurological processes?

The descriptive problem you present by invoking the subconscious is still for now a matter of brain chemistry. The fact that much of our information processing is done without explicit awareness doesn't mean the mechanism for the processing is somehow different. I am fond of Jonathan Haidt's elephant and rider analogy for understanding the interplay.

[Neo-Scholastic]

My previous posts did account for the differences in scale. The reality is that quantum processes underlie every physical process at every scale. Classical physics is just a technique that bundles together a vast number of quantum events for the sake of simplicity. It just isn't true that classical physics is ontologically correct at some specific scale. QM is true. Classical is a convenient fiction.

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And your assertion that consciousness is brain chemistry is just that...an unsupported assertion.

[Cato]

My previous posts did account for the differences in scale. The reality is that quantum processes underlie every physical process at every scale. Classical physics is just a technique that bundles together a vast number of quantum events for the sake of simplicity. It just isn't true that classical physics is ontologically correct at some specific scale. QM is true. Classical is a convenient fiction.

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And your assertion that consciousness is brain chemistry is just that...an unsupported assertion.

You didn't account for the differences in scale, you just stated they existed. You, or anyboy else for that matter, has yet to explain how QM results in phenomenon at macroscopic levels.

The fact that consciousness has only yet been observed in biological entities possessing a brain is sufficient support for my assertion. You have yet to demonstrate a single example of consciousness not associated with a brain. This means that even if in the distant future we can use QM to explain higher level systems, consciousness arises out of organic chemistry not lower level quantum phenomenon.

[Chas]

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.

There is no evidence for dualism, and you have not provided any.

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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.

No, he is not 'right to be critical'. We don't yet know how it works. That's it. That's the way science works.

[MindForgedManacle]

Other than misdirection, I'm not clear why people keep bringing physics in to this. Consciousness has only ever been observed/measured/recorded in living creatures with some sort of brain. Fact. That makes this a question for biologists not physicists. Everything else is just misdefinition of terms in an attempt to support supernatural and unfalsifiable speculation.

I would actually say this is a question for cognitive scientists. Neuroscientists are generally terrible in explaining consciousness at all, but cognitive scientists are trained to draw on half a dozen fields (philosophy (of mind and of language), linguistics, A.I., psychology, neuroscience, etc), so they're much more well equipped than any to answer the question of consciousness.

Oh, VERY FEW physicists accept that consciousness is involved in quantum mechanics. The "consciousness causes collapse position" got 6% of the 42% of adherents to the Copenhagen interpretation, which is like nothing. Those that do are nearly all woo peddlers, even among the trained physicists. It's more understandable why a few notable physicists 80 years ago might have been entertained by the idea, but there's a very good reason it never caught on: It's useless.

[Chas]

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.

No, that is not at all clear. The more likely explanation involves complexity of the network.