Consciousness and Quantum Mysticism

In this clip, neurosurgeon Joseph E. Bogen discusses the varying orders of magnitude observed in the natural world, and the different theories of consciousness that refer to them. Anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff then asserts that all these theories are mistaken, since they neglect the fundamental and irreducible character of consciousness. Neuroscientist Christof Koch then criticizes Hameroff for his panpsychist views, and advocates that instead of seeking progress by mere conceptual analysis, we ought to be looking for psycho-physical correlations through empirical research.

The complete video of this discussion can be viewed here:
http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=4947&fID=1688

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Consciousness
• Quantum Quackery
• Microtubules
• Scientific Reductionism
• Mind-Body Problem
• Panpsychism

[hyperseauton]

Christof Koch looks exactly like the young Harrison Ford and is talking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[LennyBound]

Get to da choppa!!

[impressionsbysimon]

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.

[smartwounds]

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.

[JohananRaatz]

@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]

@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]

@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.

[JohananRaatz]

@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]

@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."

[JohananRaatz]

@Kikarok Except Koch doesn't even attempt to explain consciousness. Epic fail.

[HORRORTV1]

@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]

@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.

[rephaim23]

It's like watching Harrison Ford in the Last Crusade, only this time he's actually a Nazi ;)