Why the Mind is Necessarily Quantum Mechanical

This is a response to LordImmolation's Debunking Quantum Mind video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wZWL76UV-0

Quantum mind theories such as those suggested by Penrose, Hammeroff, Eccles and the like often receive an inordinate amount of flak within academia. However they are the only category of models to date that seriously attempts to resolve the scientific half of the mind/body problem.

Here five reasons why:

1.) The Existence of the Cartesian Ego: The Cartesian ego or "I" is irreducible. Thus if we are to assume the world is made of all one substance whatever substance the "I" is made of must also be irreducible. This necessarily places it at fundamental physical level in the quantum regime.

2.) Godel's Theorem: The human mind can understand statements which according to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem can not be derived computationally. Therefore to understand these statements (such as the natural numbers) the mind must engage in non-computational behavior. The only place we see non-computational behavior in nature is in quantum uncertainty.

3.) Holonomic Brain Activity: The brain has been shown to display very distinctive non-local behavior. When a hemispherectomy is performed, the patient suffers no memory loss, indicating that his memories are spread out non-locally throughout the brain. The only place that non-local behavior has been observed however is in the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

4.) Free Will: The existence of our free will necessitates that the mind be able to violate causality. The only place in all of science were causality can be violated is in the quantum regime.

5.) Tunneling Activity in Synaptic Processes: In a paper by John Eccles it was demonstrated that signals were unable to pass through dendrite barriers via classical means. The dendrite barriers were simply too thick. The only remaining explanation is that synaptic activity requires some form of tunneling through the potential barriers of the dendrite walls.


NOTE ON ELIMINATIVISM: Much of the criticism of quantum mind theories derive from a philosophic bias towards eliminative materialism. This however is not scientific, and it is perfectly possible to have philosophy of science that does not incorporate a materialist ontology (neutral monism springs to mind).

It should be noted however that current models of the mind in eliminative materialism fail to explain such simple aspects of consciousness as the "I," free-will, or our inherent knowledge of unprovable Godel statements. As they can not explain this evidence they are necessarily wrong. Simply denying the existence of this evidence because it does not fit into the eliminative materialist philosophic paradigm however is unscientific and is not a tenable position.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Quantum Mind Theory
• Quantum Mind
• Godel
• Godel's Incompleteness Theorem
• Quantum
• Quantum Tunnelling
• John Eccles
• Stuart Hammeroff
• Roger Penrose
• Eliminative materialism
• p-zombie
• David Chalmers
• neutral monism
• mind
• quantum mechanics
• matter
• free will
• Cartesian Ego
• holonomic brain activity
• non-locality
• synaptic activity
• dendrite barrier
• potential barrier
• dendrite
• neuron
• Orch-OR
• non-computability

[janko1212]

Dude, you are making big mistake by putting philosophy on equal level with science. 2000 years ago people used philosophy but they saw progress is impossible so they had to invent science. Now we finally have progress. Look at last 500 years. Philosophy is just useless nowdays and really cannot explain anything. It can just make bald assumptions which can never be prooven. One of those silly assumptions is this protophenomenal thing. I saw ur video about information, complety wrong reasoning

[JohananRaatz]

@janko1212 (3of3) "big mistake"

Well it's not just equal to it, it's above it. That's because the scientific method is based on philosophy.

"Philosophy is just useless nowdays"

You haven't studied any of it have you? It explains things science can't explain due to it being outside of the domain of science.

"silly assumptions"

Well you haven't proven your philosophic assumption -matter exists.

And my argument in the vid was similar to Greene's for the same conclusion.

[JohananRaatz]

@janko1212 (additional comment "4of3") Ok, here's my big issue, you argue that testability is the ONLY criterion for figuring things out. But how do you philosophically justify that statement? You have to first solve the problem of induction -which is not something that can be tested. Why? Because it's the basis for saying why testability is a valid criterion for determining things in the outside world to begin with.

So how do you justify the testability criterion with empirical evidence alone?

[JohananRaatz]

@SpamuelNeedbeef I already HAVE a university degree in physics. Besides, aside from the math which can get yucky looking, and the counterintuitiveness of the subject matter it's really not that difficult to grasp at a conceptual level.

"Take this up"

I have, two of my profs (one a quantum physicist the other a mathematician) actually agreed with me for the same reasons. In fact the physics prof wrote a paper way back arguing the same thing for the same reasons.

[Jasonator1000]

@janko1212 Philosophy is all we have here though, that and how philosophy permits the topic to be integrated into science. We would have no knowledge of internal mental states were it not for the data that forms of the basis of philosophy of mind.

"It can just provide some concepts which have no way to be tested and verified. "

Here's your problem. You're trading the justification principle which is logically primary, for the verification principle which only applies to the empirical category.

[janko1212]

@Jasonator1000

U are right, its currently impossible to do that empirically but what u dont realize is the fact that philosophy can do even worse in explaining subjective experience. At least science provides some guide and leads into the right direction but philosophy cant do anything. It can just provide some concepts which have no way to be tested and verified.

[Jasonator1000]

@janko1212 Nope sorry, you can't explain something that is subjective and non-empirical with empirical observation. You'll never get anywhere bridging the objective/subjective explanatory gap like that.

Empirically show me the subjectiveness of my experiences.

[janko1212]

@Jasonator1000

Mind/body problem does not even exist. Mind is the product of the brain. And yes, to explain that and how does it arrise you have to resort to science and experiments, not some philosophical guessing theories. That leads nowhere.

[Jasonator1000]

@janko1212 What do you mean? If I stay out of philosophy I can never explain the subjective part of the mind/body problem. The cases in medicine only proves correlates that change or modify consciousness. They don't explain why.

[JohananRaatz]

@janko1212 (2of3) "Philosophy is used"

You don't have any understanding of philosophy do you?

"proper questions than they use science and scientific method to get the answers."

No, because the scientific method is based on philosophy. Science isn't valid without philosophy.

"no testable"

Who said all answers are empirical? Testability is only a contingent criterion because philosophy said it was valid. There's no philosophic justification for having testability be epistemically primary.

[JohananRaatz]

@janko1212 (1of3) "Stop making things up. They havent found anything that prooves QM consciousness."

Not directly, but we do with deductive reasoning, and we have found things with inductive reasoning in quantum biology that suggests it plays a much larger role than one might think. And what about Bierman's presponse and the Libet experiments? You can't get that kind of "effect before cause" behavior from a classical system.