Thanks to all for a lively and well-tempered discussion, to which I
should like to add a few notes.
Sue Pocket and John McCrone wrote in response to a thread on
PSYCHE-B, Michael Schmitz here on PSYCHE-D.
Stuart Hameroff
> You might say - why must we go all the way to the Planck scale to
find
* qualia? Because they are fundamental.
Bj: Well, space-time is somehow fundamental, and yet it exists on
large scales.
Sue Pocket
I think this is a misunderstanding of the word fundamental. In my
view a fundamental feature of the universe doesn't necessarily have
to be very small. The word fundamental just means irreducible, or
not able to be explained in terms of anything simpler.
Bj: Together with Leibniz, Maxwell, Wittgenstein, & Russell, I would
put forward the primary & secondary qualia as examples of elemental
entities.
For the sake of argument, let us take these qualia as the elements of
a formal theory T, of a very general nature, such as we find employed
in Godel. Say the mind/brain can be modeled by such a theory. Now
look what happens: The model will not be able to define its
elements-if it could, the elements would not be elements.
But in our model the elements are qualia, and so for the model the
qualia are, in a precise, logical sense, irreducible. Just as for us,
as sentient beings, the various qualia are irreducible. And so,
perhaps, here is an example of the facts of our experience finding a
kind of explanation in the dictates of logic.
And also a partial solution to the 'hard problem'; since all we know
through experience depends on patterns of sense-data (Einstein), and
these patterns are not reducible to anything simpler. (Patterns or
'figure' being among the traditional primary qualia. (Galileo, et
al.)
Stuart
Please give an example. Dave Chalmers uses this argument, but I don't
see
how it could work. He even says that an emergent phenomenon can be
fundamental, but that makes no sense to me. By definition, an
emergent phenomenon
depends on factors elsewhere in a hierarchical arrangement. As an
analogy, think of a very large number which is a product of prime
numbers. Which would be
fundamental - the product, or the primes?
Bj: I don't see how Chalmers' position would work, either, as stated.
The choice of examples from number theory is arguably unfortunate,
however, raising many another difficult issue--chief among them,
perhaps, the notion that one number is more 'fundamental' than
another.
> You might say--but how is this testable? The Planck scale is not
* accesssible technologically as yet.
*
bj: How do you deal with Planck energies?
Stuart: For example it should be possible to extract Planck scale
geometric
patterns> for known qualia, and expose conscious (naive) observers to
them inducing > the corresponding subjective qualia.
Bj: But we do this on a routine basis with photons. Are photons
somehow more fundamental on the Planck scale of description?
Sue: Well, it is already is possible to extract much larger scale
electromagnetic patterns that correlate with conscious sensations.
Bj: I have been arguing something like this for twenty years. Here is
an interim report to the SPIE/IEEE:
http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9911&L=quantum-mind&F=&S...
Stuart: But you say 'a fundamental feature of the universe is that
these patterns are sensations'. What about other electromagnetic
patterns? What is it about brain em patterns which make them sensate?
Bj: Well, they're in the right place at the right time, and
(quantum!) mechanically co-vary with perceptions. The other part of
the answer might be that the NNs of our brains support EM processes
of sufficient complexity as to enable them to describe themselves in
a Godelian, self-referential manner.
[Stuart Hameroff previously]
>What about the hard problem?
> In the Orch OR model qualia are related to the essence of the
> sensory stimulus, and at their deepest levels are particular
* patterns in fundamental spacetime geometry
bj: I would sharpen this assertion, and put the secondary qualia
forward as candidates to fill the vacancies at the foundations of
quantum theory, such as the so-called hidden variables, and/or the
additional spatial dimensions of string/M-theory, or Kaluza-Klein
theories generally.
> The redness of a rose is a particular arrangement at the Planck
> scale. The sound of an oboe is a different particular type of
> pattern in fundamental spacetime geometry at the Planck scale.
> Orch OR within those specific neurons recreates the same
> patterns at the fundamental level in the brain. The sound of an
> oboe is specific Planck scale patterns in auditory cortex,
> the redness of a rose is different particular Planck scale
˙ patterns in visual cortex.
My reservations about Plack-scale arguments aside, I would argue,
with Feigl, Russell, and Lockwood, that some such relation must be
true, especially soin a mind/brain identity theory.
John McCrone
So you are saying that there is a red rose out there creating a
[snip] dent in space-time and I will have a red rose
qualia whenever the same shaped dent occurs in my brain?
Bj: I would reply that red corresponds to a degree of curvature in
one of the additional spatial dimensions of string/M-theory,
corresponding to the direction of the ‘complete’ photonic vector
space.
Stuart
The red rose and the particular dent in Planck scale spacetime are
the same thing. Mass (and everything else) is curvature in
fundamental spacetime geometry. The corresponding pattern (rather
complex for just a 'dent') in your Brain is isomorphic to theexternal
pattern.
Bj: I basically agree.
John
But how does the 3-D shape of this rose get to be transmitted to the
depths of my brain? Ambient light bounces off the rose and through my
eyeballs, hitting the flat mapping surface of my retinas. This
subsequently gets turned back into a 3-D qualia by a lot of brain
work - work that includes fleshing out the experience with stored
memories about the "normal" shape of roses as well as the processing
of available sensory cues to create a feeling of rounded space. So
you believe that the brain takes crudely sampled input, subjects it
to a hierarchy of processing, mixes it with a lot of stored
knowledge, shakes down an interpretation of what probably caused the
initial retinal disturbance - then projects a [snip!] replica of all
this on some handy mesh of microtubules?
Bj: On the contemporary scientific view, all of the foregoing
processes are just quantum field processes. (Dyson)
John
Doesn't this mean, at the very least, that the brain's Planck-scale
representation of the rose is going to be an interpreted recreation
of the real thing, not the external Plank-scale disturbance
transplanted
in some fashion? That is unless your microtubules simply resonate
with
outer reality in some direct manner (and the brain goes through all
its known information processing hoops for no particular reason).
Bj: The foregoing can, I believe, be handled by the mathematics of
matrices and vectors. Now, it is worth noting that both NNs and QM
can both be described with matrix operators acting upon input vectors
to yield output vectors. And perhaps this is why: NNs are structured
as they are so as to mediate the underlying QM processes. (Umezawa)
Stuart
Or the brain evolved to facilitate this resonance.
I think about simple organisms early in evolution sampling the
environment
by internalizing it
bj: Again, I basically agree.
John
The story seems even worse with the redness of the rose - after all
Stuart, remind me, do retinas see colours or wavelengths? If you
admit that the rose only has "wavelengthness" as a physical property
then why should replaying the [snip] geometry of this wavelength in
the brain cause something else - the sensation of redness?
Bj: Perhaps just ‘because’ the redness is an invariant property of
photons of that wavelength. But since both photons and colors behave
line vectors, and since these vectors regularly co-vary, perhaps it
would be simpler and more illuminating to compare vectors with
vectors.
John: Indeed spectral absorbance is surely the real property "in"
your external rose-shaped dent in [snip] space-time
bj: But "spectral absorbance" is a complicated theoretical construct,
whereas color is immediate and irreducible.
Stuart
How photons derive from spacetime is certainly beyond my physics (and
probably anyone's physics,
Bj: Well, photons and all other particles are generally regarded as
geometric/group theoretic structure upon space-time. In much of
contemporary physics, the photon e.g., is regarded as a model of the
‘U(1)’ group, because its phase space is thought to be that of the
circle. (Now, this takes us deep into gauge theory, and that is
probably out of place at this juncture. Let me just note, however,
that I am persuaded that color might just be ‘hidden’ gauge
information, on the observation that color seems to act like a
Noether-style, ‘conserved current’.)
John
(a) Or maybe you want to argue that redness really is an inherent
physical property of matter and so it is even likely, in some
pan-psychic
fashion, that "red" wavelengths bouncing off "red roses"
(b) actually experience themselves as being red - they are qualia
unto themselves?
Bj: How does (b) follow from (a)?
John
And that for some unknown reason, both we and these "red" wavelengths
experience our qualia in the particular format we know as "colour",
rather than in some perhaps more naturalistic fashion, like a
"vibrational tingle"?
Bj: What seems more "naturalistic" has been highly conditioned by
centuries of scientific doctrine, the fundamental principle of which
is just this division of qualia into primary & secondary. (Hume)
John
So Orch OR is based on an implausible mechanism (one that demands new
physics and new biology even to get off the ground as a theory).
Bj: This is far from implausible. No lesser a figure than Gell-Mann
has now
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