Message from discussion
Penrose's nonsense
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From: r...@maths.tcd.ie
Newsgroups: sci.physics.research
Subject: Re: Penrose's nonsense
Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 11:11:07 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
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Ralph Hartley <hart...@aic.nrl.navy.mil> writes:
>bjflanagan wrote:
>> Ralph Hartley wrote:
>>>bjflanagan wrote:
>>>> He further compounded his error by suggesting that quantum theory
>>>> has important things to tell us about the mind.
>>
>>> "Are you suggesting that making such nonsense believable and
>>> respectable was a *good* thing?"
>>
>> That comment may have been intended as irony.
>You mean *your* comment about "error"?
>I'm not sure if you mean to suggest (by irony) that Penrose's argument
>is not really an error, or that it was an error, but making it
>respectable was a good thing anyway.
Apparently the two of you have difficulty communicating.
>Abandoning irony *completely* let me make my position clear.
>(1) Penrose's argument that quantum theory has important things to tell
>us about the mind is nonsense.
>(2) Making nonsense believable and respectable is *not* a good thing.
>(3) It would be a bad thing even *if* the conclusion were correct (which
>is very unlikely in this case). An invalid argument for a true
>proposition is still an invalid argument.
>Do you disagree with any of those points? If you disagree with (1), show
>me a valid argument that Penrose made (or any valid argument for that
>matter).
You are fighting against Penrose instead of my namesake. What Brian
was saying was that Penrose's discussion of the subject made it
acceptable for scientists to acknowledge that there is such
a thing as consciousness, even if his actual claims were
speculative, unjustified and incorrect. This was a "good thing"
because previously scientists, and especially physicists,
stood side by side with new age enthusiasts and with those
who oppose all rational enquiry, in condemning any attempt to
think about the mind and its relation to the physical world.
Most of them still do, in fact; I think my cousin is more
optimistic than I.
There was a global prohibition on physicists talking or even thinking
about the mind, and young physicists were trained to sneer at and
insult those who talked or thought about it. Such physicists can
be spotted very easily because when they mention the mind they put
quotation marks around it, to give the reader the impression that
they don't believe it exists, and have contempt for those who do.
This plays an important role in the society of physicists,
as bashing an officially recognised enemy is one way for
a person to maintain their self-esteem. Hence every physicist
can say "I, as a physicist, am superior to all philosophers,"
and will encourage other physicists to adopt the same behaviour,
which they gladly do, since it nurtures their self-esteem. Racism,
hatred of homosexuals and liberals or whoever is officially recognised
as bad in some community, all feed from the same basic impulse.
Tribalism. Savagery.
Physicists who suggest that perhaps the philosophers may have noticed
something that physicists in general haven't, are to be publicly
ridiculed, and all discussion of the subject of philosophy itself
is officially banned, and the ban is implemented in public
discussion arenas. Physics has nothing to do with the mind
because physics has nothing to learn from philosophy, because
philosophers are filthy, dirty, untermenschen.
It wasn't always so; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
many physicists were also philosophers, and, for somebody such as
Descartes or Leibniz, it was crystal clear that there was such a
thing as the mind. The official understanding of physicists today
is that the physical world is all there is, which is the same as
saying that experience doesn't exist. Pointing out that this is
incorrect is officially evil, tantamount to the crime of philosophy,
and whoever talks of experience can be accused of believing in
spirits and immediately classified as a lunatic.
Contempt for philosophers is communicated from physicist to physicist
in the way that racism spreads, but no physicist will admit that
their distate for philosophers was communicated to them in this way,
because each person, in his quest for the respect of his peers,
will try to present an image of himself as a perfect being, unaffected
by social pressures and not in need of any support for his self-esteem.
He will say that he came up with the idea himself, after careful
thought and consideration. Meanwhile, physicists in general are
doomed to remain ignorant of philosophy, except for some of the
"common sense" philosophers such as Russell and Popper.
To demonstrate that this is to the detriment of physicists generally,
I need only draw attention to the epistemology/ontology debate,
which is the same as the Copenhagen/Many-worlds-Bohm-Transactional-
Relational "debate" in physics, which isn't even a debate since
physicists are forbidden from talking about it. The same discussion
has played out again and again among physicists, "Let's talk
about interpretations of quantum mechanics ... Whoops, we're
talking about philosophy. We'd better stop. We're not allowed
to do that." No progress is ever made because thinking and
talking about it is banned.
Again, on the subject of "the mind", I should make it publicly
known that the social rules by which physicists abide say that
it's OK to break the rules of normal rational scientific
discussion when dealing with such filthy philosophers, just as it is
acceptable for a news reporter to exaggerate the dangers of drugs
(it helps keep society safe), or bend the truth in the service of
patriotism. The rules which make science successful are to be
abandoned when they conflict with the "higher good" of giving
philosophers a public trouncing at the hands of physicists.
Hence, if no flaw can be found in their arguments, their
conclusions can be rejected anyway, because they're crazy
fools.
At this point the humble physicist would reflect that physics
has been successful not because of the inherent greatness
of physicists, but because they have traditionally kept well
to the rules of scientific enquiry. It is those rules, not
personal inner greatness, which have kept physics largely immune
from the corrupting influence of emotional motivations. When
a physicist breaks those rules he is abandoning the thing
which had made physics successful, even if he has been trained
to do that by other physicists. If he thinks that inner greatness
or deep insight will make his assertions correct anyway then
he is deluding himself.
>>> "Quantum theory has *nothing* to tell us about 'the mind.'"
>> Thank you for the benefit of your informed and reasoned analysis.
I think Brian's summary of my rant is concise, but, given the
difficulty of communicating about "the mind", I prefer to
be verbose to avoid misunderstanding.
>You are welcome :-) That was the conclusion. I will repeat the
>justification that followed:
[snipped]
Your argument establishes that it is unlikely that quantum
effects play any role in neural information processing. Of
course, it's not conclusively ruled out, but it's fairly unlikely.
I should clarify that there are two different ways
in which quantum effects are unlikely to play a role.
One is that the brain somehow make use of quantum computation,
either inside a neuron at the level of somatic membrane potential
(meaning that the question "Will this neuron fire?" is decided
as the outcome of a quantum computation, after which the consequences
of the firing are classical), or at the level of communication
between neurons, so that the state of one neuron is entangled
with the state of another.
The other is that the "randomness" of quantum mechanics
stops being quite so random inside the brain, and that
when a particle spontaneously adopts a position (as the
Copenhagen interpretation would have it), the position
is specifically tailored to help the animal behave
or perceive.
Now, as you argued and I agreed, these are very unlikely
indeed, but that doesn't justify your original statement:
>>> "Quantum theory has *nothing* to tell us about 'the mind.'"
Rather it says that quantum theory is unlikely to tell us
much about how information is processed by individual
neurons or groups of neurons in the brain.
You might, of course, challenge me to explain how quantum
theory could have something to do with the mind. I would
then be entitled to say that I never claimed that it
did; I merely haven't seen any proof that it doesn't,
and dogmatic (that is, unproved) assertions don't persuade me,
even if they are coupled with emphatic asterisks and
I-don't-even-believe-in-the-mind quotation marks.
But I won't do that; instead I'll tell you how quantum
mechanics might have something to do with the mind, and
I stress that it is only a possibility.
Quantum mechanics appears to very nicely characterize
induction - the basic notion that similar experiments
give similar results. The old problem with induction
was that it remained vague because of the difficulty
involved in measuring the "similarity" of experiments.
Quantum mechanics solves that problem by giving
an explicit mathematical representation of the
experiments. Rotate your apparatus, and there's a
corresponding SO(3) action on your observable
operator. It provides the quantitative element
that was missing from earlier attempts to say
precisely what the principle of induction was.
Also, quantum mechanics is where induction breaks
down. You can't predict the position of the
particle with any more accuracy than |psi^2|,
even in principle. Do the same experiment twice
and you don't get the results.
It's possible that quantum mechanics is a quantitative
formalization of the principle of induction, just
as boolean algebra gives a formalization of deductive
inference (propositional calculus). Now, both inductive
and deductive inferences are done by the mind, so, in
so far as formal logic sets out the rules of correct deductive
thought, quantum mechanics might very well play the
corresponding role for inductive thought.
R.
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