These videos about consciousness sure do attract all kinds of nutters in the comments. I can only imagine the amount of absurd letters these scientists receive in the post.
To say consciousness as a emergent property, I think is a fallacy. There is no single other example of strong-emergence except consciousness. So it is unfounded to claim something simply emerge - where there is no other example of such emergence. But if proto-consciousness is already a fundamental property of the universe, then it is consistent with existing science.You will never find out what is the reality (explanation) of consciousness by simply studying correlation (but it is worth doing)
@Kikarok What are you talking about? Koch has no proof for his EM theory of consciousness.
Hameroff's views are thoroughly grounded in scientific theory and are expounded in Shadows of The Mind which he co-authored with Prof Roger Penrose. I suggest you read it before you make such a brash statement.
Dismissing a claim does not require proposing an alternative. You sound like a theist: "You don't know what caused x, therefore my claim about it is correct."
@Kikarok Except that Hameroff happens to be making a scientific claim as to what caused x.
Whether or not he's correct, he's at least trying to figure it out. Koch on the other hand is interested in figuring out x at all. (x being the hard problem)
@Kikarok I see, but Koch happens to be just wrong at that point though:
"Wigner's friend" shows that unless dualism is true, which I think we'd both disagree with, that the subjective info we see as observers is ontologically identical to the info derived by non-conscious photodetectors. To prove this wrong we'd need to observe an uncollapsed wave-fcn -and no one has.
The DCQE experiment then shows there is nothing behind these observations -hence "moments of experience" are indeed primary.
@Kikarok (part 2) Secondly even if we didn't have Wigner's Friend in combination with the delayed choice quantum eraser around to experimentally verify Whitehead style panexperientialism, Koch isn't pointing out any actual scientific flaws in Hameroff's view. He's just saying "we can't verify it." Not being able to directly verify it is isn't the same as it being wrong. We have stuff like that all of the time in physics -string theory for example.
Hameroff was bang on when he talked about tunnel vision. I view specialization in one form of science while neglecting the others to be one of the greatest problems with the current scientific community. You have neuroscientists who know only neuroscience, you have quantum physicists who know only quantum physics, when understanding the greater picture may require both.
If the dogmatic materialists don't like the "quantum mystics" now just wait till quantum gravity is fully understood!
Quantum Gravity by the very nature of what it's trying to do will NECESSARILY destroy physicalism! It's all made of information at root (which is phenomenal) not matter: watch?v=4NP4QmrbBww
@MathDoobler Albeit an unproven theory, there is no need to slap the "pseudoscience" bullshit sticker on it just because it sounds extraordinarily bizzare.
I've given up trying to argue with those who aren't open to new ideas. Call us "mystics" if you like, I'm damn proud to be one. No wonder the religious community hates us more than they hate the secular community and the materlialists can't stop judgementally ridiculing us, because they fear what they don't understand.
@Gluumer I stand by my statement that this video is almost all pseudoscience, simply because it is almost all speculation, and virtually no hard facts. Statements such as, for example, Hameroff's "protoconsciousness is what consciousness is derived from, and has existed ever since the universe has" are hopelessly vague and utterly untestable at present, simply out of virtue of vagueness. Any experimentally untestable statement is, by definition, unscientific.
@MathDoobler By that logic, String theory, M theory and the majority of theoretical physics is pseudoscience,
because it's well known that we can't and probably will never be able to test a superstring.
If it weren't for the speculation we would never advance in science. Plenty of people scoffed at Einsteins theory of relativity at first. Theres always a group of wackos saying "The world is round!" and a group of mundane thinkers who always reply "Unjustified pseudoscience!" in fear.
@MathDoobler Well, then our understanding of the world and the universe will need to be WAY scaled back and we'll need to quit looking further. The end. No more science. Since our absurdly restrictive sensory modalities seem to be the means by which so many insist that science must be proven, then science itself is a wasted endeavor since we've essentially already put such limits on it that the "results" are nearly pre-determined. Wow, existence just became brutally boring.
@Gluumer You can't just spew any new ideas into physics and call it an actual theory. M-Theory and String Theory currently is only present because it fits with the math, but even now String Theory physicists have problems with the mathematical aspect of String Theory/M/Super etc. One of them are the infinities. And in order to cancel out the infinities, they would need 10 dimensions. Now I'm not saying it's wrong, but it could be wrong. Actually understand some quantum physics.
Somebody once said something like the greatest ignorance is to dismiss something you know nothing about. Sadly, mainstream science just refuses to look beyond what it wants to believe in. To make progress, you must look at all avenues and not just the ones you want to believe in. It is those who are prepared to look at different theories who find the answers, that is the reality of science.
@impressionsbysimon It is possible to use quantum physics to explain consciousness and our brain functions (neuron atoms and electrical charges - our brains even emit some weak forms of electromagnetic radiation) but taking mysticism in is just pure bullshit. Yes, we actually do create our own reality. But that is only in our mind, reality is as it is and entanglement no longer becomes entanglement when an observer observes a particle - entanglement is only noticable on the quantum scale.
I actually agree with Stuart Hameroff. Yes, it is very important to understand the neural correlates of consciousness, and that is where we ought to spend our money. It's like Newton's law of gravitation, to take a crude example, gives us the correlation of gravitational attraction and distance but does not *explain* gravitation and takes that as a fundamental feature of reality (perhaps to be explained by a later deeper theory). Decoherence through einselection is our best bet at that level.
of course there's consciousness....it's probably from somthing other than just our physical brains...if our consciousness creates all the reality we percieve.....who knows..but not looking into it because we don't know about it?...
I'm curious as to why these people have neglected the importance of chemistry and biology to the whole shebang...It's an integral part of how we work. No chemical/biological explanations, no way to get to resolving these problems of the 'mind'. Physics plays, at most, a foundational role in the explanations. Extra questions start tumbling in too: what about evolutionary biology? Personal history? Babies are not conscious in the same way that adults are...so how does this transition occur?
@CathySander >All this has got something to do with the emergent propertys in nature. We see emergence in aswell a biological, chemical, physical way. And indeed we see scientists from both groups doing their, research mostly independent.
"I'm curious as to why these people have neglected the importance of chemistry and biology to the whole shebang"
I suspect it has more to do with a language/communication problem than a matter of clashing understandings. For instance, look at the history behind the Gaia hypothesis (the wiki article on it is sufficient).
Hameroff could be right (I find certain panpsychist ideas somewhat attractive when I'm in a peculiarly Mysterian mood), but Koch is right that it isn't science.
True.But how do you explain the physical effects of the mind over the body ?
I remember reading some years ago about some experiments done by hypnotists and to this day I'm baffled by what I've read.How is it possible only by suggestion to make people develop blisters on their body?or burns?
I think this is more intriguing and needs more attention
@Torcika: It's simple--the brain-body system is ultimately chemical in nature. Chemical systems can exhibit self-recursion and autocatalysis. What happens [we are still learning about the details] is parts of the brain's neurochemistry affects the chemical gradients of other substances downstream [and vice versa]. There's nothing mysterious about that. If only people stopped thinking that the mind is some otherworldly thing...
What is Hameroff doing in there? Providing an impetus to logical refutation?
Quantum mechanics, intriguing though it is, is both emergent and probabilistic. It is so many scales removed from modulated neural activity that those crazy hypotheses that purport that quantum phenomena can explain consciousness should be whacked with a thick Planck [sic].
Have you or any of the commentators, seen "TED Henry Marskram Supercomputing the brain" ?
Maybe it ads value to the debate.
Marskram says that the formula's he used to build his simulation of the brain are congruent to the formula's that George Smoot uses to make his simulation of the universe (also see in this context George Smoot The desigh of the universe)
What's the meaning of this, or what are the opinions ?
I don't think that the underlying problems with the Hameroff-Penrose quantum-consciousness hypothesis are difficult to grasp. They are going in completely the wrong direction.
Hameroff gave a talk at one of the Beyond Belief conferences ('06 ?). The audience's response is a clue.
However, while it is undeniable that billions of quantum events are happening in our bodies every second -- and this includes our fingernails and hair. It is preposterous to claim that an organized "activity" such as consciousness could result from probabilistic, emergent, substrate phenomena.
Yes I agree , this is something of the last decades, so it's so hard to pull any conclusions yet. Mister Bogen makes a good point that there is a lot of variety in levels and diffence of consiousness. Hamaroff tries to show a total picture but by reflecting one consiousness he actualy shows just a small part of the subject he trys to describe.
Have you read the fift comment on the page, it's just something my mind fell on several weeks ago.
I'm not quite sure which is the fifth comment on the page. I counted down five comments from yours on the video-page (rather than the "view all comments" page) and merely found a comment of mine -- to which you had responded.
If you did mean my comment, then, yes, I had more-or-less read it ;D
I don't know ? Who will say so ? It's al new to me so I'm asking you. At the end of the talk, ther's an interesting possibility spoken by Marskram. I don't see my self qualified to conclude anything in this matter.
Marskram says that the formula's he uses are the same formula's George Smoot uses to make a simulation of the structure of the universe. My mind just fell on that. That's all.
I would have to watch the talk to comment on that. However, I see problems with directly extrapolating from an understanding of one physical system to another. Admittedly math is 'universal', but understanding any particular physical phenomenon would require examination of that system. For example, the brain-as-a-computer paradigm did not work particularly well. *Modulated* computer *network* would seem a more appropriate conceptual model.
well what's interesting about the brainstructure is that it shows , in it's geometric "shape" of the electronpaths , that these are congruent with the geometrical "shape" the universe has. That's kind of surprising, because of the huge difference in scale and size between a brain and a universe.
Just an argument: if we could accept that sertain structures in the universe are congruent in terms of "shape" , could it be possible that we will see the same at the quantum level or the theory below.
Hmmm. A fishing net also has a reticular structure, so I think that too much can be made of accidental resemblances of structure.
Again, I think that the point about quantum mechanics is that it is not "controllable". It's more like Leibniz's windowless monads than a phenomenologically responsive entity such as the brain. Because it is "mysterious", I think that QM has become a substrate for the sort of myth-driven thinking that underlies material dualism.
@EvolvedAtheist I get irrritated as well with mystical QM mumbo jumbo used to justify nonsensical, new age mush. However, neural activity, like everything else in the universe, is quantum to the core. Stuart Hameroff made a good point about matter itself posessing a type of "protoconsciousness" that existed at the time of the big bang, or perhaps even before. This follows, makes sense, and is ontologically consistent. That is, the universe is hard-wired for creating and expanding consciousness.
Yes, it was an ad hominem. I enjoyed it. You want an argument? Everything, everything, everything is based upon quantum events, which are probabilistic and not "controllable." Consciousness is no more the result of quantum events than is the operation of your pancreas. If you are impressed by Hameroff, then I suggest that you re-think your position. End of discussion.
@EvolvedAtheist It's the end of your discussion maybe. You sound like you have had too much coffee. And you didn't think that statement out very carefully did you? Go back and read it. Everything is based on quantum events (your own words) but consciousness is not based on quantum events (again your words). I appeal to anyone reading this thread to back me up that you have no idea what you are talking about. You can't even make a logical argument so I doubt you know anything about consciousness.
@SubDNA1 Also there is huge discussion between determinists vs. indeterminists and incompatilists vs. compatibilists over the nature of consciousness that has been going on for some time and it is no way "end of discussion." No one has the last word in that debate, yet. So for you to arrogantly proclaim you have the answer and it's "end of discussion" just shows you haven't grapsed the material and don't know what you're talking about. Athesist you may be but you are hardly "evolved".
@EvolvedAtheist The idea that consciousness may be a quantum phenonemenon doesn't come from Hameroff, it comes from Roger Penrose, one the of the most respected mathematical physicists working today. Have you read his book The Emporer's New Mind?
Yes, I know. I never said otherwise. Penrose should have stuck to what he knows and not tried to shove his area of expertise somewhere that it does not belong. Hameroff just jumped on the bandwagon. As a physician, he definitely ought to have known better. However, I suspect that snake oil has has considerable appeal for such a wanna-be-showman.
@EvolvedAtheist You seem to forget that we know a priori that consciousness or at least phenomenality is fundamental. Since a priori knowledge is intrinsically known whereas a posteriori empirical knowledge is derived we know that whatever the mind is in itself it is not explainable in the way suggested by Dennett and company.
If you doubt this explain how his model can derive the Cartesian theater, free will and qualia -which we already know exist so there is no point in denying that they do.
@EvolvedAtheist ? QM still has a significant and residual effect in between the meso and nano-scale -which is where neurons come in. BTW they've found qubits in microtubules just like Hameroff predicted: watch?v=VQngptkPYE8
its important to do research and experiments on the level where things are measurable so we can further move humanity, but also important to take endevours into philsophy because that will do just as well
That guy with the gray beard is a nut.. Lucky the guy with the German accent schooled him proper.
Its sad to see university professors give up religion, only to replace it with more ridiculous superstition. I'm beginning to think that human beings will always be immersed in stupidity, no matter what the sciences and humanities bring us.
I can imagine the delusion of the future, ninety percent of the world wont be talking about religion, but they will be talking about crazy shit like this nut.
Biological matter and non-biological matter are the same. What is different is their structure and processes. A carbon atom does not take on some 'life force' when it is absorbed into a bacterial cell. It's still just a carbon atom. It's simply participating in a process called metabolism, which builds up structure in the cell. There is no *actual* difference between living and non-living matter. Same matter, different processes.
Same thing with consciousness. Same matter, different processes.
Think about it this way: A salt crystal is made of sodium and chlorine atoms. When salt crystallizes out of salt-water, it is absorbing surrounding Na and Cl atoms from the water. The Na atoms and Cl atoms do not possess any inherent 'crystalness'. It is simply the case that when Na and Cl atoms join, they form a crystalline structure. We call the structure a crystal.
Likewise, the atoms that make up my brain are not inherently conscious, but the structure they form (a brain) *is* conscious.
That's my point. The material is the same, but the inherit physical systems which yield key patterns we associate with life or consciousness are different from non-life, or non-consciousness.
The only difference is how the individual components coalesce.
Just to backtrack to a dialogue eight months ago, we were both talking about emergent properties. My remark was essentially, "proto-consciousness is to consciousness as abiotic matter is to biotic."
In retrospect, I'm not sure why I phrased it any other way.
When I said that the brain harbours consciousness, I meant it in the sense that neural activity operates through the brain, but consciousness isn't the material structure of the brain itself.
Right now several neuroscientists are looking for correlations between conscious phenomenon and the brain. Even if they are wrong and consciousness is not something that happens at the neural level (very unlikely), their search is very scientific.
It's the same thing with people criticizing scientific enquires into the helms of ethics, determinism and freewill. Science has the methods to investigate these issues, it's not something circumscribed only to philosophy.
"I still think consciousness is a very loosely defined term."
This, I have no problem with. I see both "consciousness" and "life" as being terms which could be used to describe distinct emergent properties. Unfortunately, due to their semantic history, they are still too loosely defined to be profoundly useful in interdisciplinary discussion or have any serious explanatory power when brought to the lay public.
Arguing at what point physical complexity leads to consciousness is similar to arguing about at what point of physical complexity does abiotic matter become living. It's counter-productive because it is just a game of semantics.
I don't see the "protoconsciousness" remark to have any value in the conversation at all, it seems rather self-evident.
"I don't see the "protoconsciousness" remark to have any value in the conversation at all, it seems rather self-evident. "
Ah, now I get it... You don't even know what the idea he is supporting is.
It has nothing to do with the complexity potential of matter to do things like organize into a biogenesis... he is literally saying that consciousness is a quantum level event. That it actually, and literally occurs at the plank scale and is identical with some property of subatomic physics.
"he is literally saying that consciousness is a quantum level event. That it actually, and literally occurs at the plank scale and is identical with some property of subatomic physics."
Ah, okay. That's more of a dualism remark, and by that, it wouldn't be scientifically relevant.
I'm all in for the philosophical methods of investigation of all phenomenons in the world, and I think it's as valuable as the methods used by science. I don't really think one is better than the other; I think philosophy and science complement one another very nicely. But when someone like Hameroff comes along with a very outlandish theory for a problem, one that raises more questions than answers and offers no room for logical analysis or empirical testing, I don't see any reason to support it
the bearded bald stewart hammerhoff guy is a TOTAL QUACK- quantum consciousness ha ha- what a crock- every respectible cognitive scientist think he's bogus
while I think that consciousness is produced on "circuits" level of a brain I also agree with what the unpopular guy blured out. There has to be something like that for "hard problem of consciousness" not to be a problem.
philosophy is shit, it cabt tell us what consiousness is never mind were to look for it, you telling me an atom has consiousness because it spins, fuck that its magic boogy man stuff, consiousness is a product of a brain mind function, it cant exost anywere ilse but in a brain, and even then we need to define mind and consiousness, not tal;k giberish about spinning protoplasmic crap.
@tersse: And this is why I'm disappointed at the neglect of other branches of science in piecing a natural history of consciousness in this discussion.
Carl Gustav Jung registrated this lack of overlap of information from, aswell the scientific side and the philosophical side.
We seem to mis the point as humanity at this level of understanding ? So why is that ?
For me it's an indicator that "science" won't have the last word. There might be more going on than Darwin included in his theories. Since Darwin describes NON of the consious / unconsious processes. (especialy the emergent ones). Neither does science.
The most important thing everyone needs to remember is that we should not jump to conclusions over whether we will understand X [where X is anything we don't understand yet]. Neuroscience is still in its infancy [e.g. fMRIs were first used for brain scanning during the 1990s].
It's a mistake to limit enquiries into the nature of consciousness to science, although I agree with the final speaker that as far as science goes, it should stick to the testable. However, there is an important place for philosophy, especially as dualist and monist arguments can give us a clue as to where consciousness could lie.
"It's a mistake to limit enquiries into the nature of consciousness to science..."
That is fine, if all you want to do is talk about it in a literary or linguistic sense. I'm much more interested in whether the word refers to some objectively verifiable thing or process and if it does, how it works. That is the purview of science.
Philosophy is certainly not purely linguistic in its nature. If you want to correlate consciousness with something empirically verifiable you must first be able to say that it can be thusly correlated (for the record I think it can be but my belief is based upon philosophy). If you're asking the question 'what is consciousness?' it seems silly to limit yourself to science unless you recognise that you're making certain assumptions to begin with (there's nothing wrong with this latter option).
"Philosophy is certainly not purely linguistic in its nature."
Throughout history, many problems handled by philosophy have been completely explained by science. As science gets a better and better handle on both the brain and physics, I see every reason to believe that this trend will not only continue, but accelerate.
Also, what possible contribution can dualists make to a serious conversation about reality these days... seriously?
I'm not quite sure what your definition of philosophy is. It is simply the study of knowledge: what we know, and what methods we use to discover said knowledge.
Please note that until relatively recently psychology was part of philosophy. It was only when a methodology could be decided upon that it became its own field. Scientists used to be called 'natural philosophers' as a few centuries ago the scientific method was not properly refined.
"Scientists used to be called 'natural philosophers' as a few centuries"
I know. I don't really have anything against philosophy in general, but science is where the rubber hits the road. Things that exist in some objective way can be empirically studied of some kind. Everything else boils down to a matter of imagination or semantic argument. I have yet to see any good reason to alter or expand these categories.
Science is where the rubber hits the road, but philosophy tells us if it is, and it also guides the rubber and the road together..
BTW, what do you call sciences that dont observe things directly such as gravity, strings, and quantum mechanics? Dont a lot of these things boarder line philosophy?
Also, what science is, is defined by philosophy.
Dont get me wrong, science is a sexy beast, but it NEEDS philosophy.
Realism, anti realism, social construction, logical positivists, Thomas Kuhn..
"BTW, what do you call sciences that dont observe things directly such as gravity, strings, and quantum mechanics?"
String theory is the only one out of that list that makes no laboratory predictions and some physicists do call it philosophy... quantum mechanics gets tested both in the lab and every time you turn on a computer. And we know gravity so well that we con orbit asteroids and make predictions about gravitational lensing events which have been confirmed.
"Dont get me wrong, science is a sexy beast, but it NEEDS philosophy."
Like I said, philosophy is handy in mediation, interpretation etc. My problem is, there still seem to be philosophers out there who think that Plato had the right idea when he suggested that you can determine how the world works through a process of pure thought.
If the Mass Consensual Hallucinations that most people call reality, better matched actual reality, I think most philosophy would be a no brainer...
Are theories of gravity and quantum mechanics just arbitrary social constructions? Similar to what Thomas Kuhn calls a paradigm.
Or are the theories actually describing reality like the logical positivists would have us believe?
Do strings really exist like the realists would have us believe. Or are they just functional ideas, and we dont know if they actually exist, as the anti realists would have us believe..
I don't think Kuhn would argue that paradigms are "just arbitrary social constructions," but rather that they are the overarching assumptions under which normal science (i.e. "puzzle solving") progresses.
The selection of one paradigm over another is far from arbitrary. Scientific theory choice is guided by the theoretical virtues of increasing explanatory power, maximizing parsimony, and (to a lesser extent) developing aesthetically pleasing interpretations of data.
Someone in the modern day who believes that the Newtonian paradigm better illustrates reality compared to the Eisensteinian paradigm is simply mistaken.
Paul Faerabend would disagree... This is because paradigms explain things all the time, and accurately, but the paradigms are in fact wrong.
It all comes down to what questions one personally feels a paradigm should answer. This is ultimately arbitrary...
Kuhn did think that science makes progress. However, he also stated that there was no way to know which paradigm was the best answer to anomalies during a crisis.
@tempemonkey2323: Does that matter for practising scientists? I don't think so. Sometimes I wished that philosophers do some actual science before making some philosophical discussions and arguments about the nature of the world.
The problem the philosophers have is the same the scientists have ; Nobody knows excactly what's going on, and What it is we are describing. So indeed It takes time, to sort things out. Tunnelvision of scientific groups won't make it easyer. (It will keep a good platform of debate, though).
@tempemonkey2323: You, unfortunately, are asking too much of our own capacities at the moment. We already have genuine problems to solve...and discussion over what science [in essence!] is doesn't get us far. Science exists independently of philosophy...and thus doesn't have to be on equal terms with the philosophers. What I ask is that people start doing science first hand, rather than argue ad nausem about the field of science...which for most philosophers, don't actually understand.
"...are the theories actually describing reality like the logical positivists would have us believe...[or] are they just functional ideas, as the anti realists would have us believe."
First, I already mentioned that string theory is in scientific limbo... continuing to lean on it is silly.
Second, do the theories have explanatory power? Yes? Then next question please. What you are describing is little more than semantic naval gazing to me, unless you can show HOW it "guides" science.
It guides science by saying what it is and is not. Some people DO CLAIM THAT STRING THEORY IS SCIENCE. Whether it is or not, is fought out in philosophical dialoge...
I would like to ask you a few questions, see if you can answer them without using philosophy.. What is science? How do we know when something is a science or a pseudo science? What is the scientific method? Is there a scientific method? IF SOMETHING HAS EXPLANITORY POWER, DOES THAT MAKE IT TRUE- Ether had explanitory power.
Resorting to weasel words to excuse the fact that what you are talking about does not have explanatory power doesn't make your argument better... neither does caps-lock, nor ignoring the fact that I have said, many times, that there is a place in interpretation and mediation. And who said anything about "truth"? I have facts and a model that explains those facts and makes predictions that I can use to get stuff done.
What do you mean by a weasel word? I dont remember making claims that dont have explanatory power either. What is the difference between facts and truth? What do you mean by interpretation and mediation?
Do you know anything about the philosophy of science? I didn't think so. Stop wasting my time and go back to your simple world... You fit in better there.
I don't know anything? You apparently can't even use google to look up a common term. The claim without power is String Theory, and its lack of explanatory power makes it a poor choice for your argument. An argument which, I might add, was not even the most productive one available to you.
Your posts have demonstrated serious holes in your understanding of both science and effective argument... so the only person wasting your time here, is you.
How many books have you read on the philosophy of science? How many philosophy of science classes have you taken? None...
Why dont you go to your room and tell your dolls how smart you are. Im sure they will agree, you are soooo smart about everything... That way, us adults can have a discussion.
All I am saying, is that there is a gray area between science, and pseudo-science, or even non science. This is all sorted out through philosophy. This is obvious.
"string theory is in scientific limbo" What a pile of tosh, Not only is string theory in current development but it makes testable predictions, it is one of the chief reasons the LHC has been built. Your utterly bigoted and uninformed opinion about a branch of physics you clearly have no understanding of - at all, is a stunning example of somebody compiling stock answers to make themselves seem clever. Read up on string theory, discover why it is a main stream tool and how elegant it is.
"Not only is string theory in current development but it makes testable predictions, it is one of the chief reasons the LHC has been built."
Currently in development doesn't mean anything. Most of the means to falsify string theory are to falsify QM or General Relativity. As of 2005 there were at least 3 books by prominent physicists criticizing string theory, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more. And unless a new prediction has been added since I last looked...
the only unique tests of string theory require energy levels many orders of magnitude higher than the LHC is capable of.
I don't think that it's a dead end by any means, but when I was reading up on it 3 or 4 years ago it was still one contender of many, with many interpretations and it's validity was still hotly debated. Perhaps limbo is too harsh a term, but it seems unlikely to become the new Standard Model any time soon.
Ok, I was too harsh too obviously, And my problem was with your overly quick dismissal of what is in many ways the most simple and elegant guess we have at the moment, which is thoroughly tested by those attempting to find solutions and falsifiable predictions, which need not be at high energies.
strings being small does not mean that they need predict small stuff.
"And my problem was with your overly quick dismissal..."
Did you read the whole thread? I was being asked if I thought something below the plank scale literally exists or is just an abstraction, a false dichotomy that is outside of my field and based on the assumption that string theory is the only game in town.
As for your confidence in the theory if you can offer a specific unique prediction of string theory that has been tested then by all means, do so. I would be genuinely interested.
Gosh, I don't have the details to hand, but there is an LHC experiment which will test for a particle who's presence will be induced from an energy drop. It will not prove sting theory, but if it is absent then string theory can justifiably be called very shaky indeed, it's a situation where opinions matter less than experimental outcomes; real science, which might leave both of us dumbfounded when eventually published, isn't it great? :)
In any case, that was a diversion but a necessary one. My point is that the assumption that consciousness is explainable by purely empirical methods is a mistake. Instead of asking the question 'What is consciousness?' you've assumed you already know (i.e. a purely empirical phenomenon). I'm not saying that it isn't the latter, but alternatives should be considered and refuted before making that assumption. This is the place of philosophy.
What can the dualists provide? They can provide an argument about the seat of consciousness which needs to be addressed and refuted before a monist theory of mind can be fully accepted.
This is the place of philosophy. Questioning the methodology and asking whether it is adequate and accurate.
I don't think that we're really disagreeing. I'm merely responding to the dismissive way you treated my subject. I'm a philosophy student if you hadn't guessed ;).
"I don't think that we're really disagreeing. I'm merely responding to the dismissive way you treated my subject. I'm a philosophy student if you hadn't guessed..."
See, this is the thing, I was a philosophy student. There are a handful of places where there are still interesting ideas floating around and where certain kinds of mediation are important. But, I want to know what is going on in the brain... whether that fits a definition of consciousness or not is just semantics.
Hey man, I have a BA in philosophy and am huge on the brain. We should talk and exchange some ideas sometime. Just send me a private message if you are interested.
The concept of 'protoconsciousness' makes sense to me. In the same way that abiogenesis makes sense.
I don't see the contention? The neuroscientist just wants to focus on what is of testable consequence, and the other guy wants to focus on the inherit and irreducible properties of matter. Neither of them are necessarily wrong in their approach.
"Neither of them are necessarily wrong in their approach. "
I'm sorry, but to anyone that has spent time with the problem, it is obvious that Hameroff is a wingnut. He had no more business being at that table than someone like John Edward.
The only reason Hameroff sounds reasonable is because he uses big words and has an MD... if you look past that though, he is just spouting spiritualist nonsense, not science.
He's just discussing something which is generally untestable at the moment, but his one extrapolation about proto-consciousness is logical. In this particular clip, he has said nothing that is a stretch from reality.
What he said is akin to saying: there is a property of inanimate matter which has the potential to become animate.
Ignore the fact that he may have a bad reputation. Look at his ideas exclusively.
Big words? Give me a break, you're not a lexophobe too are you?
"Ignore the fact that he may have a bad reputation. Look at his ideas exclusively."
Look, I read his book long before I had heard about his reputation... The man is a mystic. His intellectual kin are ghost hunters, psychics, victorian spiritualists... etc. His reputation is bad because his idea is full on lunitic fringe nonsense.
As for the "big words" I'm sorry to tell you, but it is a fact that many people out there are easily enchanted by anything that just "sounds" like science.
"Protoconsciousness is as much a science as abiogenesis."
It is untestable, has no serious explanatory power, is a concept derived with no more evidence than something out of a sci-fi novel and doesn't even lead to a useful idea of consciousness.
Even within this conversation, what he says is meaningless. It bears no connection to anything we know about physics, psychology or neurology. It sounds neat... that really is all.
Well yeah, that's the point. It doesn't have any explanatory power aside from the correlation to the fact that conscious is only a specialized energy pattern, which has the potential for forming in any physical system, given the right conditions.
The question is really about what we recognize as consciousness, and that doesn't have any explanatory power either. The question is completely wrong, so subsequently Hameroff's comment seems appropriate.
Under the right conditions, the matter within a rock can become conscious. For instance, let's say a chunk of iron ore was used in the production of a vitamin supplement, and that iron was then absorbed by your body and utilized in the construction of your neural pathways.
But it is no longer a rock. That point is crucial.
Consciousness depends on physical structures and processes. What's important is not that the rock and the brain both contain iron atoms, but that the iron atoms in a rock form a rock, while the iron atoms in a brain help form a brain. A rock is a rock. A brain is a brain. A rock is not a brain. Brains can be conscious. Rocks are not.
You're looking at this in terms of conceptual entities, I'm looking at it in terms of the matter involved.
It's like saying a puddle of mud in primordial earth is not living. The point your missing is that the puddle of mud under the right conditions can yield life from non-life.
Likewise, a rock can yield consciousness from non-consciousness.
@Ephemerance: I would much prefer calling 'protoconsciousness' as 'a natural history [in the evolutionary biology sense] of consciousness'. We don't have to understand consciousness to find out how it came about. To proclaim that we need to know what it really is essentialism, which is contrary to the evolutionary processes that Darwin first proposed in 1859. Once we see that these processes are gradual, bottom-up events, then we can begin researching on this.
And what about the unconsiousness !? does this Darwinian form of evolution aplie to that.
And what about advanced creativity, the emergence of "The idea" . We seem to have evolved something extra. Something that has not been clearly described by one of us, despite all the progress scientists have made.
Question ; is it certain that consiousness / unconsiousness will be described by science at all !?
Because it's something lately emerged on the evolutionairy path, does it aplie to this path ?
I can't answer these sorts of questions in advance...we are still learning more about how our brain works. It does seem that we have "evolved something extra"...but doesn't that sound arrogant, given our ignorance?
Unconscious systems are subject to natural selection, a good example being protein enzymes. They don't have to 'know' they're there for the work to be carried out. Likewise for consciousness::our daily lives usually do not require us to know about consciousness; we act out of it.
@CathySander > No I don't think it's arogant in the sence that it is a result of the pepertual evolution. We should indeed do better with our capabilitys. We're also developing / learning, using a more advanced brain than other animals. But ofcourse we're still a little ignorant.
2 > Unconsious systems vs unconsiousness.
Would the same "rules" be aplieble for two in essence different systems ? Again ; can you use the old theorys for the new, emerged platform of truth, the unconsiousness ?
I'm surprised Hameroff still shows his face after that beating he got at the TSN event (I forgot the name!). Yet for some reason I always enjoy the videos where he's involved. I guess this may be for the same reason people enjoy watching "cops". Sit through the bull long enough and you get to see someone manhandled.
It's painful listening to Stuart Hameroff sometimes. He makes so many assertions about quantum mechanics relating to consciousness, then when he's asked how it works he says "I don't know".
These videos about consciousness sure do attract all kinds of nutters in the comments. I can only imagine the amount of absurd letters these scientists receive in the post.
smartwounds 2 months ago
It's like watching Harrison Ford in the Last Crusade, only this time he's actually a Nazi ;)
rephaim23 3 months ago
But by some deep mechanistic understanding of consciousness we can even detect foreign consciousness experience that have no similarity with our own.
freakiest421 3 months ago
To say consciousness as a emergent property, I think is a fallacy. There is no single other example of strong-emergence except consciousness. So it is unfounded to claim something simply emerge - where there is no other example of such emergence. But if proto-consciousness is already a fundamental property of the universe, then it is consistent with existing science.You will never find out what is the reality (explanation) of consciousness by simply studying correlation (but it is worth doing)
freakiest421 3 months ago
Hammeroff makes mystical, unfounded statement of [poor] conjecture. Koch smacks him right down and calls it out for what it is. Bravo, Koch.
Kikarok 4 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@Kikarok What are you talking about? Koch has no proof for his EM theory of consciousness.
Hameroff's views are thoroughly grounded in scientific theory and are expounded in Shadows of The Mind which he co-authored with Prof Roger Penrose. I suggest you read it before you make such a brash statement.
regards
KTK401 3 months ago
@Kikarok Except Koch doesn't even attempt to explain consciousness. Epic fail.
JohananRaatz 2 months ago
@JohananRaatz
Dismissing a claim does not require proposing an alternative. You sound like a theist: "You don't know what caused x, therefore my claim about it is correct."
Kikarok 2 months ago
@Kikarok Except that Hameroff happens to be making a scientific claim as to what caused x.
Whether or not he's correct, he's at least trying to figure it out. Koch on the other hand is interested in figuring out x at all. (x being the hard problem)
JohananRaatz 2 months ago
@JohananRaatz
None of that is at all relevant to the action of Koch pointing out flaws in Hammeroff's "scientific claim."
It does not in any way require presentation of an alternative claim.
Kikarok 2 months ago
@Kikarok I see, but Koch happens to be just wrong at that point though:
"Wigner's friend" shows that unless dualism is true, which I think we'd both disagree with, that the subjective info we see as observers is ontologically identical to the info derived by non-conscious photodetectors. To prove this wrong we'd need to observe an uncollapsed wave-fcn -and no one has.
The DCQE experiment then shows there is nothing behind these observations -hence "moments of experience" are indeed primary.
JohananRaatz 2 months ago
@Kikarok (part 2) Secondly even if we didn't have Wigner's Friend in combination with the delayed choice quantum eraser around to experimentally verify Whitehead style panexperientialism, Koch isn't pointing out any actual scientific flaws in Hameroff's view. He's just saying "we can't verify it." Not being able to directly verify it is isn't the same as it being wrong. We have stuff like that all of the time in physics -string theory for example.
JohananRaatz 2 months ago
dunno why but the thumb nail for this vid made me think of "only fools and horses"..
HOMEnHIGH 4 months ago
Where is the whole thing? It would be nice if we have the longer discussions rather than just bites.
Ermal8711 5 months ago
Koch is entirely right. We can only work with what we have. It sounds as if Hammeroff just wants us to presume things...
Ermal8711 5 months ago
Hameroff was bang on when he talked about tunnel vision. I view specialization in one form of science while neglecting the others to be one of the greatest problems with the current scientific community. You have neuroscientists who know only neuroscience, you have quantum physicists who know only quantum physics, when understanding the greater picture may require both.
AnduinX 5 months ago 3
If the dogmatic materialists don't like the "quantum mystics" now just wait till quantum gravity is fully understood!
Quantum Gravity by the very nature of what it's trying to do will NECESSARILY destroy physicalism! It's all made of information at root (which is phenomenal) not matter: watch?v=4NP4QmrbBww
Jasonator1000 6 months ago
QUANTUM MYSTICISM? Oh dear god, I thought "quantum consciousness" was as pseudoscientific as you could get. I guess I was wrong.
MathDoobler 11 months ago
@MathDoobler Albeit an unproven theory, there is no need to slap the "pseudoscience" bullshit sticker on it just because it sounds extraordinarily bizzare.
I've given up trying to argue with those who aren't open to new ideas. Call us "mystics" if you like, I'm damn proud to be one. No wonder the religious community hates us more than they hate the secular community and the materlialists can't stop judgementally ridiculing us, because they fear what they don't understand.
Gluumer 11 months ago 5
@Gluumer I stand by my statement that this video is almost all pseudoscience, simply because it is almost all speculation, and virtually no hard facts. Statements such as, for example, Hameroff's "protoconsciousness is what consciousness is derived from, and has existed ever since the universe has" are hopelessly vague and utterly untestable at present, simply out of virtue of vagueness. Any experimentally untestable statement is, by definition, unscientific.
MathDoobler 9 months ago
@MathDoobler By that logic, String theory, M theory and the majority of theoretical physics is pseudoscience,
because it's well known that we can't and probably will never be able to test a superstring.
If it weren't for the speculation we would never advance in science. Plenty of people scoffed at Einsteins theory of relativity at first. Theres always a group of wackos saying "The world is round!" and a group of mundane thinkers who always reply "Unjustified pseudoscience!" in fear.
Gluumer 9 months ago 2
@MathDoobler Well, then our understanding of the world and the universe will need to be WAY scaled back and we'll need to quit looking further. The end. No more science. Since our absurdly restrictive sensory modalities seem to be the means by which so many insist that science must be proven, then science itself is a wasted endeavor since we've essentially already put such limits on it that the "results" are nearly pre-determined. Wow, existence just became brutally boring.
tvswnet 8 months ago
@Gluumer You can't just spew any new ideas into physics and call it an actual theory. M-Theory and String Theory currently is only present because it fits with the math, but even now String Theory physicists have problems with the mathematical aspect of String Theory/M/Super etc. One of them are the infinities. And in order to cancel out the infinities, they would need 10 dimensions. Now I'm not saying it's wrong, but it could be wrong. Actually understand some quantum physics.
HORRORTV1 2 months ago
little biliogist worm, tunnel vision scientist, he shouldn't have a job as a scientist for having such tunneled vision
Zee96969696 11 months ago
Somebody once said something like the greatest ignorance is to dismiss something you know nothing about. Sadly, mainstream science just refuses to look beyond what it wants to believe in. To make progress, you must look at all avenues and not just the ones you want to believe in. It is those who are prepared to look at different theories who find the answers, that is the reality of science.
impressionsbysimon 1 year ago 9
@impressionsbysimon It is possible to use quantum physics to explain consciousness and our brain functions (neuron atoms and electrical charges - our brains even emit some weak forms of electromagnetic radiation) but taking mysticism in is just pure bullshit. Yes, we actually do create our own reality. But that is only in our mind, reality is as it is and entanglement no longer becomes entanglement when an observer observes a particle - entanglement is only noticable on the quantum scale.
HORRORTV1 2 months ago
I actually agree with Stuart Hameroff. Yes, it is very important to understand the neural correlates of consciousness, and that is where we ought to spend our money. It's like Newton's law of gravitation, to take a crude example, gives us the correlation of gravitational attraction and distance but does not *explain* gravitation and takes that as a fundamental feature of reality (perhaps to be explained by a later deeper theory). Decoherence through einselection is our best bet at that level.
geodesicks 1 year ago
"Your looking for your keys under the lamp post because thats where the light is."
lol, I love it.
Hameroff is a wise man.
JarethGT 1 year ago
@JarethGT And a good basketball player, too :)
parlezuml 1 year ago
is that lady high? 2:48
TheVoluptuousness 1 year ago
...or having an orgasm?
TheVoluptuousness 1 year ago
of course there's consciousness....it's probably from somthing other than just our physical brains...if our consciousness creates all the reality we percieve.....who knows..but not looking into it because we don't know about it?...
peace :)
Neanerthebeaner 1 year ago
someone please press the reset button of this speaking "cpu's"
authmaax 1 year ago
I'm curious as to why these people have neglected the importance of chemistry and biology to the whole shebang...It's an integral part of how we work. No chemical/biological explanations, no way to get to resolving these problems of the 'mind'. Physics plays, at most, a foundational role in the explanations. Extra questions start tumbling in too: what about evolutionary biology? Personal history? Babies are not conscious in the same way that adults are...so how does this transition occur?
CathySander 1 year ago
@CathySander >All this has got something to do with the emergent propertys in nature. We see emergence in aswell a biological, chemical, physical way. And indeed we see scientists from both groups doing their, research mostly independent.
While it's all made of the same stuff.
This movie is a show of that again.
etiennealive 1 year ago
"I'm curious as to why these people have neglected the importance of chemistry and biology to the whole shebang"
I suspect it has more to do with a language/communication problem than a matter of clashing understandings. For instance, look at the history behind the Gaia hypothesis (the wiki article on it is sufficient).
Ephemerance 1 year ago
Hameroff could be right (I find certain panpsychist ideas somewhat attractive when I'm in a peculiarly Mysterian mood), but Koch is right that it isn't science.
GodlessPhilosopher 2 years ago
Christof Koch looks exactly like the young Harrison Ford and is talking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
hyperseauton 2 years ago 6
Get to da choppa!!
LennyBound 2 years ago
@hyperseauton
No Kidding. He looks like Indiana Jones. I bet he's 6 ft 1 and 180 lbs also, same as Ford.
rephaim23 3 months ago
True.But how do you explain the physical effects of the mind over the body ?
I remember reading some years ago about some experiments done by hypnotists and to this day I'm baffled by what I've read.How is it possible only by suggestion to make people develop blisters on their body?or burns?
I think this is more intriguing and needs more attention
Torcika 2 years ago
@Torcika: It's simple--the brain-body system is ultimately chemical in nature. Chemical systems can exhibit self-recursion and autocatalysis. What happens [we are still learning about the details] is parts of the brain's neurochemistry affects the chemical gradients of other substances downstream [and vice versa]. There's nothing mysterious about that. If only people stopped thinking that the mind is some otherworldly thing...
CathySander 1 year ago
What is Hameroff doing in there? Providing an impetus to logical refutation?
Quantum mechanics, intriguing though it is, is both emergent and probabilistic. It is so many scales removed from modulated neural activity that those crazy hypotheses that purport that quantum phenomena can explain consciousness should be whacked with a thick Planck [sic].
EvolvedAtheist 2 years ago
Haha, well put.
LennyBound 2 years ago
Have you or any of the commentators, seen "TED Henry Marskram Supercomputing the brain" ?
Maybe it ads value to the debate.
Marskram says that the formula's he used to build his simulation of the brain are congruent to the formula's that George Smoot uses to make his simulation of the universe (also see in this context George Smoot The desigh of the universe)
What's the meaning of this, or what are the opinions ?
etiennealive 2 years ago
@LennyBound
Correction: Jokingly well put dogmatic assertion.
RSFO 1 year ago
This is difficult matter to discus. this discussion has been going on for 10000 years or longer now and still we don't know anything about men.
that's weird when you think about it. Compare this with the fact how much we now of the universe, it's also just a tiny bit.
etiennealive 2 years ago
I don't think that the underlying problems with the Hameroff-Penrose quantum-consciousness hypothesis are difficult to grasp. They are going in completely the wrong direction.
EvolvedAtheist 2 years ago
Thanks for your reply. I'm 34 years now and I still don't know what to say about this debate. I guess I just have to study more.
etiennealive 2 years ago
Hameroff gave a talk at one of the Beyond Belief conferences ('06 ?). The audience's response is a clue.
However, while it is undeniable that billions of quantum events are happening in our bodies every second -- and this includes our fingernails and hair. It is preposterous to claim that an organized "activity" such as consciousness could result from probabilistic, emergent, substrate phenomena.
EvolvedAtheist 2 years ago
Yes I agree , this is something of the last decades, so it's so hard to pull any conclusions yet. Mister Bogen makes a good point that there is a lot of variety in levels and diffence of consiousness. Hamaroff tries to show a total picture but by reflecting one consiousness he actualy shows just a small part of the subject he trys to describe.
Have you read the fift comment on the page, it's just something my mind fell on several weeks ago.
etiennealive 2 years ago
I'm not quite sure which is the fifth comment on the page. I counted down five comments from yours on the video-page (rather than the "view all comments" page) and merely found a comment of mine -- to which you had responded.
If you did mean my comment, then, yes, I had more-or-less read it ;D
EvolvedAtheist 2 years ago
Sorry, more specitic , I meant the comment
"Have you or any of the other commentators , seen "TED Henry Marskram supercomputing the brain.....................
Posted by etiennealive. It must be on this or 2nd comment page.
etiennealive 2 years ago
Ah, yes, I did notice that comment, but I had not watched the TED talk.
Is it a good talk?
EvolvedAtheist 2 years ago
I don't know ? Who will say so ? It's al new to me so I'm asking you. At the end of the talk, ther's an interesting possibility spoken by Marskram. I don't see my self qualified to conclude anything in this matter.
Marskram says that the formula's he uses are the same formula's George Smoot uses to make a simulation of the structure of the universe. My mind just fell on that. That's all.
etiennealive 2 years ago
I would have to watch the talk to comment on that. However, I see problems with directly extrapolating from an understanding of one physical system to another. Admittedly math is 'universal', but understanding any particular physical phenomenon would require examination of that system. For example, the brain-as-a-computer paradigm did not work particularly well. *Modulated* computer *network* would seem a more appropriate conceptual model.
EvolvedAtheist 2 years ago
well what's interesting about the brainstructure is that it shows , in it's geometric "shape" of the electronpaths , that these are congruent with the geometrical "shape" the universe has. That's kind of surprising, because of the huge difference in scale and size between a brain and a universe.
Just an argument: if we could accept that sertain structures in the universe are congruent in terms of "shape" , could it be possible that we will see the same at the quantum level or the theory below.
etiennealive 2 years ago
Hmmm. A fishing net also has a reticular structure, so I think that too much can be made of accidental resemblances of structure.
Again, I think that the point about quantum mechanics is that it is not "controllable". It's more like Leibniz's windowless monads than a phenomenologically responsive entity such as the brain. Because it is "mysterious", I think that QM has become a substrate for the sort of myth-driven thinking that underlies material dualism.
EvolvedAtheist 2 years ago
Thanks for your reply. You've got good arguments.
etiennealive 2 years ago
@etiennealive: It takes time. We are very lucky to have science in the first place...
CathySander 1 year ago
@EvolvedAtheist I get irrritated as well with mystical QM mumbo jumbo used to justify nonsensical, new age mush. However, neural activity, like everything else in the universe, is quantum to the core. Stuart Hameroff made a good point about matter itself posessing a type of "protoconsciousness" that existed at the time of the big bang, or perhaps even before. This follows, makes sense, and is ontologically consistent. That is, the universe is hard-wired for creating and expanding consciousness.
SubDNA1 1 year ago
@SubDNA1
Hameroff is an anaesthesiologist. With respect to consciousness, he should have stuck to passing gas.
EvolvedAtheist 1 year ago
@EvolvedAtheist That's not an argument. It's just an ad hominem.
SubDNA1 1 year ago
@SubDNA1
Yes, it was an ad hominem. I enjoyed it. You want an argument? Everything, everything, everything is based upon quantum events, which are probabilistic and not "controllable." Consciousness is no more the result of quantum events than is the operation of your pancreas. If you are impressed by Hameroff, then I suggest that you re-think your position. End of discussion.
EvolvedAtheist 1 year ago
@EvolvedAtheist It's the end of your discussion maybe. You sound like you have had too much coffee. And you didn't think that statement out very carefully did you? Go back and read it. Everything is based on quantum events (your own words) but consciousness is not based on quantum events (again your words). I appeal to anyone reading this thread to back me up that you have no idea what you are talking about. You can't even make a logical argument so I doubt you know anything about consciousness.
SubDNA1 1 year ago
@SubDNA1 Also there is huge discussion between determinists vs. indeterminists and incompatilists vs. compatibilists over the nature of consciousness that has been going on for some time and it is no way "end of discussion." No one has the last word in that debate, yet. So for you to arrogantly proclaim you have the answer and it's "end of discussion" just shows you haven't grapsed the material and don't know what you're talking about. Athesist you may be but you are hardly "evolved".
SubDNA1 1 year ago
@SubDNA1 Nobody knows anything about consciousness. We don't even have a working definition for it. That's the problem.
parlezuml 1 year ago
@EvolvedAtheist The idea that consciousness may be a quantum phenonemenon doesn't come from Hameroff, it comes from Roger Penrose, one the of the most respected mathematical physicists working today. Have you read his book The Emporer's New Mind?
parlezuml 1 year ago 3
@parlezuml
Yes, I know. I never said otherwise. Penrose should have stuck to what he knows and not tried to shove his area of expertise somewhere that it does not belong. Hameroff just jumped on the bandwagon. As a physician, he definitely ought to have known better. However, I suspect that snake oil has has considerable appeal for such a wanna-be-showman.
EvolvedAtheist 1 year ago
@EvolvedAtheist And we know that consciousness is a product of modulated neural activity because..?
parlezuml 1 year ago
@EvolvedAtheist You seem to forget that we know a priori that consciousness or at least phenomenality is fundamental. Since a priori knowledge is intrinsically known whereas a posteriori empirical knowledge is derived we know that whatever the mind is in itself it is not explainable in the way suggested by Dennett and company.
If you doubt this explain how his model can derive the Cartesian theater, free will and qualia -which we already know exist so there is no point in denying that they do.
JohananRaatz 8 months ago
@EvolvedAtheist ? QM still has a significant and residual effect in between the meso and nano-scale -which is where neurons come in. BTW they've found qubits in microtubules just like Hameroff predicted: watch?v=VQngptkPYE8
JohananRaatz 6 months ago
Comment removed
polymath7 2 years ago
its important to do research and experiments on the level where things are measurable so we can further move humanity, but also important to take endevours into philsophy because that will do just as well
chungag 2 years ago
can someone subtitle this? please in spanish
claudiomatex 2 years ago
That guy with the gray beard is a nut.. Lucky the guy with the German accent schooled him proper.
Its sad to see university professors give up religion, only to replace it with more ridiculous superstition. I'm beginning to think that human beings will always be immersed in stupidity, no matter what the sciences and humanities bring us.
I can imagine the delusion of the future, ninety percent of the world wont be talking about religion, but they will be talking about crazy shit like this nut.
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
goatee mans statements were particularily stupid gobledeegook
ShalloeThought 2 years ago
Dualism only posits that the source of consciousness does not exist within observable matter, and likely with good reason.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
Stuart Hameroff thinks consciousness is built into the universe. Anthropocentric bullshit.
AntiSisyphus 2 years ago
proto-consciousness would not be the same as consciousness, in the same way that inanimate matter isn't the same as biological matter.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
Biological matter and non-biological matter are the same. What is different is their structure and processes. A carbon atom does not take on some 'life force' when it is absorbed into a bacterial cell. It's still just a carbon atom. It's simply participating in a process called metabolism, which builds up structure in the cell. There is no *actual* difference between living and non-living matter. Same matter, different processes.
Same thing with consciousness. Same matter, different processes.
wonderist 2 years ago
Think about it this way: A salt crystal is made of sodium and chlorine atoms. When salt crystallizes out of salt-water, it is absorbing surrounding Na and Cl atoms from the water. The Na atoms and Cl atoms do not possess any inherent 'crystalness'. It is simply the case that when Na and Cl atoms join, they form a crystalline structure. We call the structure a crystal.
Likewise, the atoms that make up my brain are not inherently conscious, but the structure they form (a brain) *is* conscious.
wonderist 2 years ago
The physical structures in themselves only harbour consciousness. Consciousness is an energy pattern which adheres to a recognizable intelligence.
The brain is like a cup, and the consciousness is like the water which rests in the cup.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
@Ephemerance: What is this 'energy' you speak of? I'm confused.
CathySander 1 year ago
That's my point. The material is the same, but the inherit physical systems which yield key patterns we associate with life or consciousness are different from non-life, or non-consciousness.
The only difference is how the individual components coalesce.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
@wonderist
Just to backtrack to a dialogue eight months ago, we were both talking about emergent properties. My remark was essentially, "proto-consciousness is to consciousness as abiotic matter is to biotic."
In retrospect, I'm not sure why I phrased it any other way.
When I said that the brain harbours consciousness, I meant it in the sense that neural activity operates through the brain, but consciousness isn't the material structure of the brain itself.
Ephemerance 1 year ago
Can you define proto-consciousness?
AntiSisyphus 2 years ago
energy patterns which under the right conditions of physical modification, can yield consciousness.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
I still think consciousness is a very loosely defined term. The search for what creates consciousness isn't very scientific.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
How come it isn't?
Right now several neuroscientists are looking for correlations between conscious phenomenon and the brain. Even if they are wrong and consciousness is not something that happens at the neural level (very unlikely), their search is very scientific.
It's the same thing with people criticizing scientific enquires into the helms of ethics, determinism and freewill. Science has the methods to investigate these issues, it's not something circumscribed only to philosophy.
IRBucephalus 2 years ago
The only determinations you could scientifically make upon consciousness is the relative presence of consciousness; nothing more.
This is a far cry from discovering the origin of consciousness, and I daresay, an explanation of such is unnecessary and untestable.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
"I still think consciousness is a very loosely defined term."
This, I have no problem with. I see both "consciousness" and "life" as being terms which could be used to describe distinct emergent properties. Unfortunately, due to their semantic history, they are still too loosely defined to be profoundly useful in interdisciplinary discussion or have any serious explanatory power when brought to the lay public.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Arguing at what point physical complexity leads to consciousness is similar to arguing about at what point of physical complexity does abiotic matter become living. It's counter-productive because it is just a game of semantics.
I don't see the "protoconsciousness" remark to have any value in the conversation at all, it seems rather self-evident.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
"I don't see the "protoconsciousness" remark to have any value in the conversation at all, it seems rather self-evident. "
Ah, now I get it... You don't even know what the idea he is supporting is.
It has nothing to do with the complexity potential of matter to do things like organize into a biogenesis... he is literally saying that consciousness is a quantum level event. That it actually, and literally occurs at the plank scale and is identical with some property of subatomic physics.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
"he is literally saying that consciousness is a quantum level event. That it actually, and literally occurs at the plank scale and is identical with some property of subatomic physics."
Ah, okay. That's more of a dualism remark, and by that, it wouldn't be scientifically relevant.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
I'm all in for the philosophical methods of investigation of all phenomenons in the world, and I think it's as valuable as the methods used by science. I don't really think one is better than the other; I think philosophy and science complement one another very nicely. But when someone like Hameroff comes along with a very outlandish theory for a problem, one that raises more questions than answers and offers no room for logical analysis or empirical testing, I don't see any reason to support it
IRBucephalus 2 years ago
I remember watching this a couple years ago. It's pretty great. Breaks a lot of complicated stuff down pretty well.
CptCrash21 2 years ago
the bearded bald stewart hammerhoff guy is a TOTAL QUACK- quantum consciousness ha ha- what a crock- every respectible cognitive scientist think he's bogus
robotaholic 2 years ago
while I think that consciousness is produced on "circuits" level of a brain I also agree with what the unpopular guy blured out. There has to be something like that for "hard problem of consciousness" not to be a problem.
esaman 2 years ago
philosophy is shit, it cabt tell us what consiousness is never mind were to look for it, you telling me an atom has consiousness because it spins, fuck that its magic boogy man stuff, consiousness is a product of a brain mind function, it cant exost anywere ilse but in a brain, and even then we need to define mind and consiousness, not tal;k giberish about spinning protoplasmic crap.
tersse 2 years ago
@tersse: And this is why I'm disappointed at the neglect of other branches of science in piecing a natural history of consciousness in this discussion.
CathySander 1 year ago
Carl Gustav Jung registrated this lack of overlap of information from, aswell the scientific side and the philosophical side.
We seem to mis the point as humanity at this level of understanding ? So why is that ?
For me it's an indicator that "science" won't have the last word. There might be more going on than Darwin included in his theories. Since Darwin describes NON of the consious / unconsious processes. (especialy the emergent ones). Neither does science.
So; WHAT'S GOING ON OVER HERE ?
etiennealive 1 year ago
The most important thing everyone needs to remember is that we should not jump to conclusions over whether we will understand X [where X is anything we don't understand yet]. Neuroscience is still in its infancy [e.g. fMRIs were first used for brain scanning during the 1990s].
CathySander 1 year ago
Loved this clip
PragmaticLiving 2 years ago
It's a mistake to limit enquiries into the nature of consciousness to science, although I agree with the final speaker that as far as science goes, it should stick to the testable. However, there is an important place for philosophy, especially as dualist and monist arguments can give us a clue as to where consciousness could lie.
miksedene 2 years ago
"It's a mistake to limit enquiries into the nature of consciousness to science..."
That is fine, if all you want to do is talk about it in a literary or linguistic sense. I'm much more interested in whether the word refers to some objectively verifiable thing or process and if it does, how it works. That is the purview of science.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Philosophy is certainly not purely linguistic in its nature. If you want to correlate consciousness with something empirically verifiable you must first be able to say that it can be thusly correlated (for the record I think it can be but my belief is based upon philosophy). If you're asking the question 'what is consciousness?' it seems silly to limit yourself to science unless you recognise that you're making certain assumptions to begin with (there's nothing wrong with this latter option).
miksedene 2 years ago
"Philosophy is certainly not purely linguistic in its nature."
Throughout history, many problems handled by philosophy have been completely explained by science. As science gets a better and better handle on both the brain and physics, I see every reason to believe that this trend will not only continue, but accelerate.
Also, what possible contribution can dualists make to a serious conversation about reality these days... seriously?
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago 2
None.
AntiSisyphus 2 years ago
I'm not quite sure what your definition of philosophy is. It is simply the study of knowledge: what we know, and what methods we use to discover said knowledge.
Please note that until relatively recently psychology was part of philosophy. It was only when a methodology could be decided upon that it became its own field. Scientists used to be called 'natural philosophers' as a few centuries ago the scientific method was not properly refined.
miksedene 2 years ago
"Scientists used to be called 'natural philosophers' as a few centuries"
I know. I don't really have anything against philosophy in general, but science is where the rubber hits the road. Things that exist in some objective way can be empirically studied of some kind. Everything else boils down to a matter of imagination or semantic argument. I have yet to see any good reason to alter or expand these categories.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Science is where the rubber hits the road, but philosophy tells us if it is, and it also guides the rubber and the road together..
BTW, what do you call sciences that dont observe things directly such as gravity, strings, and quantum mechanics? Dont a lot of these things boarder line philosophy?
Also, what science is, is defined by philosophy.
Dont get me wrong, science is a sexy beast, but it NEEDS philosophy.
Realism, anti realism, social construction, logical positivists, Thomas Kuhn..
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
"BTW, what do you call sciences that dont observe things directly such as gravity, strings, and quantum mechanics?"
String theory is the only one out of that list that makes no laboratory predictions and some physicists do call it philosophy... quantum mechanics gets tested both in the lab and every time you turn on a computer. And we know gravity so well that we con orbit asteroids and make predictions about gravitational lensing events which have been confirmed.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
cont...
"Dont get me wrong, science is a sexy beast, but it NEEDS philosophy."
Like I said, philosophy is handy in mediation, interpretation etc. My problem is, there still seem to be philosophers out there who think that Plato had the right idea when he suggested that you can determine how the world works through a process of pure thought.
If the Mass Consensual Hallucinations that most people call reality, better matched actual reality, I think most philosophy would be a no brainer...
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Are theories of gravity and quantum mechanics just arbitrary social constructions? Similar to what Thomas Kuhn calls a paradigm.
Or are the theories actually describing reality like the logical positivists would have us believe?
Do strings really exist like the realists would have us believe. Or are they just functional ideas, and we dont know if they actually exist, as the anti realists would have us believe..
Philosophy guides science, it defines science.
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
I don't think Kuhn would argue that paradigms are "just arbitrary social constructions," but rather that they are the overarching assumptions under which normal science (i.e. "puzzle solving") progresses.
The selection of one paradigm over another is far from arbitrary. Scientific theory choice is guided by the theoretical virtues of increasing explanatory power, maximizing parsimony, and (to a lesser extent) developing aesthetically pleasing interpretations of data.
LennyBound 2 years ago
Someone in the modern day who believes that the Newtonian paradigm better illustrates reality compared to the Eisensteinian paradigm is simply mistaken.
LennyBound 2 years ago
"The selection of one paradigm over another is far from arbitrary..."
Don't think I could have said it better myself.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Paul Faerabend would disagree... This is because paradigms explain things all the time, and accurately, but the paradigms are in fact wrong.
It all comes down to what questions one personally feels a paradigm should answer. This is ultimately arbitrary...
Kuhn did think that science makes progress. However, he also stated that there was no way to know which paradigm was the best answer to anomalies during a crisis.
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
@tempemonkey2323: Does that matter for practising scientists? I don't think so. Sometimes I wished that philosophers do some actual science before making some philosophical discussions and arguments about the nature of the world.
CathySander 1 year ago
The problem the philosophers have is the same the scientists have ; Nobody knows excactly what's going on, and What it is we are describing. So indeed It takes time, to sort things out. Tunnelvision of scientific groups won't make it easyer. (It will keep a good platform of debate, though).
etiennealive 1 year ago
@tempemonkey2323: You, unfortunately, are asking too much of our own capacities at the moment. We already have genuine problems to solve...and discussion over what science [in essence!] is doesn't get us far. Science exists independently of philosophy...and thus doesn't have to be on equal terms with the philosophers. What I ask is that people start doing science first hand, rather than argue ad nausem about the field of science...which for most philosophers, don't actually understand.
CathySander 1 year ago
What you deplict like many other scientists before.
Is a great paradox ; Science says philosophia is no science. OK I agree it isn't absolute an deterministic science,
But what is the being of it than ? Since this being invented science. Science can only be seen as PART of it's total being.
Why like Bertrand Russel says ; first describe something that is farrest away from us, and after thousends of years still not us ?
How can you expect science to deliver al theorys, from this point of view?
etiennealive 1 year ago
I'm not suggesting that science should answer all of our problems of existence; that's not it's goal anyway.
CathySander 1 year ago
@CathySander > Thanks for your reply.
etiennealive 1 year ago
"...are the theories actually describing reality like the logical positivists would have us believe...[or] are they just functional ideas, as the anti realists would have us believe."
First, I already mentioned that string theory is in scientific limbo... continuing to lean on it is silly.
Second, do the theories have explanatory power? Yes? Then next question please. What you are describing is little more than semantic naval gazing to me, unless you can show HOW it "guides" science.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
It guides science by saying what it is and is not. Some people DO CLAIM THAT STRING THEORY IS SCIENCE. Whether it is or not, is fought out in philosophical dialoge...
I would like to ask you a few questions, see if you can answer them without using philosophy.. What is science? How do we know when something is a science or a pseudo science? What is the scientific method? Is there a scientific method? IF SOMETHING HAS EXPLANITORY POWER, DOES THAT MAKE IT TRUE- Ether had explanitory power.
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
"Some people..."
Resorting to weasel words to excuse the fact that what you are talking about does not have explanatory power doesn't make your argument better... neither does caps-lock, nor ignoring the fact that I have said, many times, that there is a place in interpretation and mediation. And who said anything about "truth"? I have facts and a model that explains those facts and makes predictions that I can use to get stuff done.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
I dont know what you are talking about now..
What do you mean by a weasel word? I dont remember making claims that dont have explanatory power either. What is the difference between facts and truth? What do you mean by interpretation and mediation?
Do you know anything about the philosophy of science? I didn't think so. Stop wasting my time and go back to your simple world... You fit in better there.
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
"What do you mean by a weasel word?"
I don't know anything? You apparently can't even use google to look up a common term. The claim without power is String Theory, and its lack of explanatory power makes it a poor choice for your argument. An argument which, I might add, was not even the most productive one available to you.
Your posts have demonstrated serious holes in your understanding of both science and effective argument... so the only person wasting your time here, is you.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
How many books have you read on the philosophy of science? How many philosophy of science classes have you taken? None...
Why dont you go to your room and tell your dolls how smart you are. Im sure they will agree, you are soooo smart about everything... That way, us adults can have a discussion.
All I am saying, is that there is a gray area between science, and pseudo-science, or even non science. This is all sorted out through philosophy. This is obvious.
Read a book about it sometime.
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
Goodbye my sweet ad hominem machine.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Wow, you almost said something meaningful... too bad it's buried under five lines of ad hominem and petty insults.
I hope your wild speculations about the contents of my library can keep you warm, because your skill at reasoned debate certainly won't.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
"string theory is in scientific limbo" What a pile of tosh, Not only is string theory in current development but it makes testable predictions, it is one of the chief reasons the LHC has been built. Your utterly bigoted and uninformed opinion about a branch of physics you clearly have no understanding of - at all, is a stunning example of somebody compiling stock answers to make themselves seem clever. Read up on string theory, discover why it is a main stream tool and how elegant it is.
marsCubed 2 years ago
"Not only is string theory in current development but it makes testable predictions, it is one of the chief reasons the LHC has been built."
Currently in development doesn't mean anything. Most of the means to falsify string theory are to falsify QM or General Relativity. As of 2005 there were at least 3 books by prominent physicists criticizing string theory, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more. And unless a new prediction has been added since I last looked...
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
cont...
the only unique tests of string theory require energy levels many orders of magnitude higher than the LHC is capable of.
I don't think that it's a dead end by any means, but when I was reading up on it 3 or 4 years ago it was still one contender of many, with many interpretations and it's validity was still hotly debated. Perhaps limbo is too harsh a term, but it seems unlikely to become the new Standard Model any time soon.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Ok, I was too harsh too obviously, And my problem was with your overly quick dismissal of what is in many ways the most simple and elegant guess we have at the moment, which is thoroughly tested by those attempting to find solutions and falsifiable predictions, which need not be at high energies.
strings being small does not mean that they need predict small stuff.
marsCubed 2 years ago
"And my problem was with your overly quick dismissal..."
Did you read the whole thread? I was being asked if I thought something below the plank scale literally exists or is just an abstraction, a false dichotomy that is outside of my field and based on the assumption that string theory is the only game in town.
As for your confidence in the theory if you can offer a specific unique prediction of string theory that has been tested then by all means, do so. I would be genuinely interested.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Gosh, I don't have the details to hand, but there is an LHC experiment which will test for a particle who's presence will be induced from an energy drop. It will not prove sting theory, but if it is absent then string theory can justifiably be called very shaky indeed, it's a situation where opinions matter less than experimental outcomes; real science, which might leave both of us dumbfounded when eventually published, isn't it great? :)
marsCubed 2 years ago
@miksedene: Actually, that is epistemology. There's more to philosophy than that, for example: ethics.
CathySander 1 year ago
In any case, that was a diversion but a necessary one. My point is that the assumption that consciousness is explainable by purely empirical methods is a mistake. Instead of asking the question 'What is consciousness?' you've assumed you already know (i.e. a purely empirical phenomenon). I'm not saying that it isn't the latter, but alternatives should be considered and refuted before making that assumption. This is the place of philosophy.
miksedene 2 years ago
What can the dualists provide? They can provide an argument about the seat of consciousness which needs to be addressed and refuted before a monist theory of mind can be fully accepted.
This is the place of philosophy. Questioning the methodology and asking whether it is adequate and accurate.
I don't think that we're really disagreeing. I'm merely responding to the dismissive way you treated my subject. I'm a philosophy student if you hadn't guessed ;).
miksedene 2 years ago
"I don't think that we're really disagreeing. I'm merely responding to the dismissive way you treated my subject. I'm a philosophy student if you hadn't guessed..."
See, this is the thing, I was a philosophy student. There are a handful of places where there are still interesting ideas floating around and where certain kinds of mediation are important. But, I want to know what is going on in the brain... whether that fits a definition of consciousness or not is just semantics.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Hey man, I have a BA in philosophy and am huge on the brain. We should talk and exchange some ideas sometime. Just send me a private message if you are interested.
tempemonkey2323 2 years ago
The concept of 'protoconsciousness' makes sense to me. In the same way that abiogenesis makes sense.
I don't see the contention? The neuroscientist just wants to focus on what is of testable consequence, and the other guy wants to focus on the inherit and irreducible properties of matter. Neither of them are necessarily wrong in their approach.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
"Neither of them are necessarily wrong in their approach. "
I'm sorry, but to anyone that has spent time with the problem, it is obvious that Hameroff is a wingnut. He had no more business being at that table than someone like John Edward.
The only reason Hameroff sounds reasonable is because he uses big words and has an MD... if you look past that though, he is just spouting spiritualist nonsense, not science.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
He's just discussing something which is generally untestable at the moment, but his one extrapolation about proto-consciousness is logical. In this particular clip, he has said nothing that is a stretch from reality.
What he said is akin to saying: there is a property of inanimate matter which has the potential to become animate.
Ignore the fact that he may have a bad reputation. Look at his ideas exclusively.
Big words? Give me a break, you're not a lexophobe too are you?
Ephemerance 2 years ago
"Ignore the fact that he may have a bad reputation. Look at his ideas exclusively."
Look, I read his book long before I had heard about his reputation... The man is a mystic. His intellectual kin are ghost hunters, psychics, victorian spiritualists... etc. His reputation is bad because his idea is full on lunitic fringe nonsense.
As for the "big words" I'm sorry to tell you, but it is a fact that many people out there are easily enchanted by anything that just "sounds" like science.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
I have no idea who this man is, or what he stands for. Within this clip exclusively there are no illegitimate statements made.
And this is exactly how we should judge ideas, not by who is presenting them, but by their individual merit.
Protoconsciousness is as much a science as abiogenesis. There's nothing mystic about it.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
"Protoconsciousness is as much a science as abiogenesis."
It is untestable, has no serious explanatory power, is a concept derived with no more evidence than something out of a sci-fi novel and doesn't even lead to a useful idea of consciousness.
Even within this conversation, what he says is meaningless. It bears no connection to anything we know about physics, psychology or neurology. It sounds neat... that really is all.
AutodidacticPhd 2 years ago
Well yeah, that's the point. It doesn't have any explanatory power aside from the correlation to the fact that conscious is only a specialized energy pattern, which has the potential for forming in any physical system, given the right conditions.
The question is really about what we recognize as consciousness, and that doesn't have any explanatory power either. The question is completely wrong, so subsequently Hameroff's comment seems appropriate.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
'Where does consciousness exist in the mind' is like asking where life exists in the body. It's a misleading question.
Ephemerance 2 years ago 2
Rocks are made of matter and are not conscious.
AntiSisyphus 2 years ago
Under the right conditions, the matter within a rock can become conscious. For instance, let's say a chunk of iron ore was used in the production of a vitamin supplement, and that iron was then absorbed by your body and utilized in the construction of your neural pathways.
A rock has now become conscious.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
"A rock has now become conscious."
But it is no longer a rock. That point is crucial.
Consciousness depends on physical structures and processes. What's important is not that the rock and the brain both contain iron atoms, but that the iron atoms in a rock form a rock, while the iron atoms in a brain help form a brain. A rock is a rock. A brain is a brain. A rock is not a brain. Brains can be conscious. Rocks are not.
wonderist 2 years ago
"a rock is a rock"
You're looking at this in terms of conceptual entities, I'm looking at it in terms of the matter involved.
It's like saying a puddle of mud in primordial earth is not living. The point your missing is that the puddle of mud under the right conditions can yield life from non-life.
Likewise, a rock can yield consciousness from non-consciousness.
Ephemerance 2 years ago
I think that is a fallacy of composition or fallacy of division.
Either way its illogical reasoning.
AntiSisyphus 2 years ago
@Ephemerance: I would much prefer calling 'protoconsciousness' as 'a natural history [in the evolutionary biology sense] of consciousness'. We don't have to understand consciousness to find out how it came about. To proclaim that we need to know what it really is essentialism, which is contrary to the evolutionary processes that Darwin first proposed in 1859. Once we see that these processes are gradual, bottom-up events, then we can begin researching on this.
CathySander 1 year ago
And what about the unconsiousness !? does this Darwinian form of evolution aplie to that.
And what about advanced creativity, the emergence of "The idea" . We seem to have evolved something extra. Something that has not been clearly described by one of us, despite all the progress scientists have made.
Question ; is it certain that consiousness / unconsiousness will be described by science at all !?
Because it's something lately emerged on the evolutionairy path, does it aplie to this path ?
etiennealive 1 year ago
I can't answer these sorts of questions in advance...we are still learning more about how our brain works. It does seem that we have "evolved something extra"...but doesn't that sound arrogant, given our ignorance?
Unconscious systems are subject to natural selection, a good example being protein enzymes. They don't have to 'know' they're there for the work to be carried out. Likewise for consciousness::our daily lives usually do not require us to know about consciousness; we act out of it.
CathySander 1 year ago
@CathySander > No I don't think it's arogant in the sence that it is a result of the pepertual evolution. We should indeed do better with our capabilitys. We're also developing / learning, using a more advanced brain than other animals. But ofcourse we're still a little ignorant.
2 > Unconsious systems vs unconsiousness.
Would the same "rules" be aplieble for two in essence different systems ? Again ; can you use the old theorys for the new, emerged platform of truth, the unconsiousness ?
etiennealive 1 year ago
Thanks for the link in the sidebar. I want to watch the whole thing.
2bsirius 2 years ago 2
I'm surprised Hameroff still shows his face after that beating he got at the TSN event (I forgot the name!). Yet for some reason I always enjoy the videos where he's involved. I guess this may be for the same reason people enjoy watching "cops". Sit through the bull long enough and you get to see someone manhandled.
MononofuBlood 2 years ago
It's painful listening to Stuart Hameroff sometimes. He makes so many assertions about quantum mechanics relating to consciousness, then when he's asked how it works he says "I don't know".
NermalsChannel 2 years ago 3
this is important, nobody argues about this stuff, let us debate about existance
so what if there are no answers, I am sure that the debate will create new thoughts
upshall 2 years ago
Man ... you just had to post the link, I'll be awash in very interesting, full-length videos, until the cows come home!!
drchaffee 2 years ago
that was very interesting... thank you for sharing this with us...
peace2U
IChoseTheRedPill 2 years ago
Im so happy, knowing that one day I would be arguing with people like these
Nades129 2 years ago