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Index

Quantum Mind Blog

Quantum-Mind Blog

05/09/08: The Structure of Thinking by Laura Weed is an important book for anybody who is disatisfied with mainstream consciousness studies. The author challenges conventional 20th century philosophy in respect of its attitude to the functioning of the mind. She argues that first person experience was squeezed out of the system, and its place taken by computer/logic type systems. She argues that contemporary neuroscience points to a larger role for direct experience, and further to this that the computer/logic based sorting, quantifying and abstract concept forming that happens in the brain cannot function without reference to the experiental input. This book represents an attack on the very foundations of the Dennett/Churchland orthodoxy.

29/13/08: A re-reading of Lee Smolin's 'Three Roads to Quantum Gravity' highlighted how closely aligned his views on the structure of spacetime are with those of Penrose. The proposal that the amount of information in any region of space is proportional to the area of the boundary region measured in Planck units, suggests that the universe is discrete at the Planck scale. Space in Smolin's favoured theory of loop quantum gravity is composed of fundamental discrete units, which can be envisaged in terms of the spin networks proposed by Penrose. Even Penrose has left it to his readers to speculate as to how his proposition that non-computable consciousness is embedded in the geometry of spacetime relates to these spin networks, but it appears plausible the the discrete structures proposed could code for the understanding or consciousness that is supposed to reside in spacetime.

29/08/08: In 'Neuroscience & Philosophy' Maxwell Bennett, himself a neuroscientist, remarks on the relativity slow progress that neuroscience is making in understanding the complexity of even the simpler parts of the nervous system. I would not say that this is a very helpful book from the point of view of understanding consciousness, but this one remark might hint at a gap in conventional neuroscience's approach. It is possible that, quite apart from consciousness, a quantum approach might make it easier to understand the workings of the nervous system.

13/08/08: Fred Adams of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor attempts to deal with the fine-tuning problem, by which only very specific conditions, such as the existing forces of nature can produce a universe that is suitable for life.

Adams points out that discussions of fine tuning usually revolve round what would happen if one characteristic of the universe, such as one of the forces of nature, was different from what it is in our universe. This thought experiment usually produces a universe that is completely unsuitable for life.

Adams, however, works from the basis of generating models in which all the forces etc. are adjusted. He claims that calculations for the multiverse that he has generated suggest that up to 25% of the possible universes could support stars, or at least starlike radiating objects, the first step on the road to life.

Beyond this point, the proposals get more doubtful. Many of the stars in these possible universes do not produce carbon. It is suggested that if the strength of the electromagnetic force was different from what it is in our universe, it would be possible to have universes with non-carbon life forms. This seems to go well beyond Occam’s razor in proposing something that has never been considered possible, in order to substantiate the theory. Even if we are prepared to go along with the idea, it seems likely that the odds against getting everything just right for the putative non-carbon life form might also be very high.

08/08/08: It is encouraging to read a frontal attack on a central part of Dennett’s reasoning by a writer that is affiliated and peer group reviewed. So often it is left to independent researchers to try and argue the contrary. Dennett has dominated much of consciousness thinking over the last two decades, with many writers simply accepting him as the correct standard, and criticising any deviation. It could be argued that this influence has contributed to the apparent stagnation of consciousness thinking in the present decade, with an orthodoxy that lacks explanatory value, but is effective in pouring ridicule on any attempts to get closer to the problem of consciousness. The fact that this criticism of Dennett comes from a doctoral student perhaps encourages a flicker of hope that a new generation of consciousness researchers will be less in thrall to Dennett.

04/08/08: On revisiting Chalmers classic book, 'Conscious Mind', in which he coined the expression 'the hard problem, it is surprising to find how near to mainstream ideas, and indeed to functionalism, his own theory of information-based consciousness actually is.

23/07/08: This week I had a look at Edelman's recent book, prefaced by Emily Dickinson's thoughtful poem. The book has useful material relative to criticism of the brain/computer analogy, the binding problem and the self, but when it comes to consciousness there is a sizeable explanatory gap. Consciousness or the stangely named 'phenomenal transform' arises from signals in the thalamocortical area of the brain, but no explanation is offered as to how this is might happen, it's just stated to be so. In the end, Dickinson's poem may have more to tell us about consciousness.

21/07/08: Last week, I took a look at Paul Davies's recent book, the Goldilocks enigma. As a conventional book, it is mainly remarkable for opening the door just a chink to the involvement of mind in the development of the universe. Davies certainly feels that both life and consciousness have been sidelined too much in looking at the history of the universe. However, I find it hard to get on with his idea of quantum backward causation by existing life forms, a zany idea derived from the physicist, John Wheeler. It is not clear how the first lot of life forms emerged to start off the backward causation process. Apart from this the book queries the currently fashionable Inflation/Multiverse theory, and has a good detailed account of many of the examples of fine tuning in the universe, notably the fine tuned nature of the process for the creation of plentiful carbon in stars.

15/07/08: In today's review, I revisit 'The Astonishing Hypothesis', a much hailed book on consciousness by Francis Crick published in 1994. After a somewhat over the top start to the book, with the famous phrase claiming that 'we were nothing but a bunch of neurons', consciousness is hardly mentioned for the next 200 pages. When Crick does eventually get around to it, the most interesting part of the discussion is his promotion of the idea of the gamma synchrony, as a correlate of consciousness. Unfortunately, this interesting aspect appears to have been abandoned later, when it was discovered that the synchrony was with dendritic rather than axonal activity. Crick concludes with an attempt to dismiss freewill, which boils down to the fact that much brain processing is unconscious. He seems to think that decisions are issued like a slip of paper with an order, ignoring both the conscious effort involved in thought, and even the mainstream work of Damasion on the importance of emotion and bodily feelings to decision taking. In the end, the main significance of the book is probably its role in making consciousness studies respectable.

11/07/08: David Black's paper in the July issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies examines the relationship between the concept of spirituality and modern studies of consciousness/subjectivity. I noticed one or two points that appeared interesting. Black criticises Richard Dawkin's attitude to genes. Dawkins refers to genes having reproductive success, but Black argues that the concept of success is projected onto the gene by subjective consciousness. Values such as success are argued to be a property of the emergence of subjectivity, and are meaningless in terms of the gene itself.

A bit later, Black argues that mythological objects should not be dismissed as mere delusion, but viewed relative to the importance of phantansy in modern psychoanalysis.

Evolution & Consciousness: Later in the same issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies, Joseph Corabi and Brian Earl separately argue against epiphenomenalism. Both of these seem to argue against it from the point of view of the adaptive value of consciousness. I wonder if this is the most useful approach. It has certainly always been a very open question. The main point seems to be that evolution would not have continued to select for something that had no function. The function is harder to find. However, it has been suggested that the problem of the huge odds against life emerging from a soup of organic molecules, could be solved if certain configurations of these molecules came with a quantum search engine that favoured replicators. The source of such a configuration probably needs to be looked for in the original laws of physics, much in the same way that the ability of super nova to produce carbon, oxygen and other useful (for organic life) heavier atoms is found in the same laws. Once in place in the earlist replicators, quantum systems might have been selected for because they provided algorithms for perception, something that has eluded classical computing and robotics. All rather speculative, but worth thinking about in the absence of more satisfactory answers.

08/07/08: A further note on Damasio's book, 'Descartes' Error'. On pp. 99-101, he discusses a condition known as achromatopsia. With this condition, damage to the visual cortex leads not only to a loss of the ability to perceive the colour of external objects, but even to the ability to imagine colour, even though the patient used to have colour vision. This contrasts with cases with people have gone blind, where they are apparently still able to imagine and dream in colour.

This condition might be seen as interesting relative to the thought experiment of 'Mary the colour scientist'. This unfortunate woman is confined in a black and white prison until some point well into her adult life. She uses the time to study everything that is known about colour, but without ever having seen anything coloured. Finally, she is released into the multi-coloured world. Does she experience anything new relative to colours such as red, blue etc.? Common sense would suggest what she is experiences is a revelation. However, it probably won't surprise anyone familiar with modern consciousness studies to learn that a large segment of establishment scientists and philosophers in conscious studies have a variety of ingenious arguments to the contrary. However, the existence of achromatopsia would suggest that it is possible to know about colour even to the extent of having seen colour, but subsequently not be able to experience colour, pointing to a distinction between knowledge and conscious experience.

07/07/08: The implications of Antonio Damasio's book, Descartes' Error look to have never been fully worked out either by himself or those influenced by him. The main theme of the book was that emotions and bodily feelings could influence reasoning, and that reasoning was not a computer process isolated from emotion and the body.

What was not tackled in the book was that while rational processing can often be unconscious, a good proportion of emotions and bodily feelings are experienced subjectively, and it is often just this subjective experience that gives them their power to influence decisions. Damasio suggests that emotions and feelings cut through the process of reasoning that could otherwise become so complex that decisions could not be reached within a practical period of time.

It is perhaps worth considering that Damasio's idea that emotions and feelings cut through problems that are potentially too complex to resolve, bears a resemblance to Penrose's argument that the human brain has some feature that can beyond the axioms of a formal mathematical system.

Creativity: Damasio is also interesting in relation to creativity. He suggests that creativity comes from the covert ability of the unconscious to juxtapose concepts that appear diverse, but may have an unexpected kinship. Most such juxtapositions are useless, but the prefrontal may have a facility to screen these out, leaving the conscious mind only to consider the more plausible options.


03/07/08: I have just added a number of reviews of chapters in 'Does Consciousness Cause Behaviour' Eds. Susan Pockett et al. Much of this revolves round the Libet experiments and more recent experiments by Daniel Wegner that purport to show that conscious will is illusory. The Wegner experiments as described have something of the air of trick questions aimed at gleaning evidence for a pre-established metaphysical position. Unusually for consciosness studies quite a few writers have come out of the closet to oppose or at least query Wegner.

13/06/08: I have just received the latest volume of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, entitled 'Consciousness and Language' and based on a theme session at last year's 'Towards a Science of Consciousness'
conference in Budapest. I do not want to disparage the careful scholarship that may have gone into parts of this volume, or the usefulness of knowing more about the links between language and consciousness, but when I thumbed through this book, I really found myself wondering if any of it was taking us any nearer to understanding the nature of consciousness. In the 90s, this journal used to introduce us to leading minds such as Chalmers and Penrose, but as in much of consciousness studies, there does not seem to be any clear way forward.

10/06/08: Two reviews added this evening. 'Inflation Deflated' discusses recent contra indications on inflationary theory, which could represent a problem for multiverse theories, and a longer review of Mary Midgleys book, 'The Myths We live By, which contains stringent criticism of main stream scientific attitudes to the mind-body problem, particularly the undue influence of 17th century physics and philosophy at the expense of modern physics, which tends to be ignored by biologists and others.

03/06/08: Mind-Like Universe: Articles recently added extend an idea of Paul Davies that mind-like qualities might be implicated in the origin of the universe, without invoking a full blown form of intelligent design.

Two important aspects need to be considered, firstly that we have to accept the idea of something uncreated if we are to avoid an infinite regress. Even a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum implies something law-like and different from nothing at all. Secondly, the abscence of mind from physics, and some would say also consciousness from neuroscience, remain a problem.

At this point, it might be worth considering both Penrose's idea of non-computable mind-like qualities embedded in spacetime, and Bohm's idea of mind emerging from the implicate order that might underly relativity and quantum theory. These concepts share a common property with the concept of the uncreated in being outside the normal cause-and-effect of an algorithm-based determinstic universe.

Perhaps, we should envisage the Big Bang as something uncreated and non-computable exploding out of the pre-existing void. It might fine tune the laws of physics to give a ordered universe, but leave the rest of its development fairly open, and certainly without the prospect of divine intervention in its onward development. This might appear simpler than the currently fashionable multiverse, which may in any case not escape a fine tuning problem, and looks suspiciously contrived to both exclude an intelligent designer and rescue string theory from its problems.

03/06/08: The 31st May 2008 copy of 'New Scientist' carries an article on the work of Karl Friston's group which conceptualises the brain as a probability machine, an idea sometimes referred to as a Bayesian brain. The brain as probability machine makes predictions, which are constantly updated on the basis of new input. In for instance assessing the distance to an object the brain might decide on a range of possible values, of which some were more likely than others. The brain’s models of possible future developments would arise and be altered in a similar manner.

Existing studies of subjects’ estimates of the speed and location of objects, and of their predictions as to what is going to be said next in a conversation give some support to the idea that the brain works in this way. Friston has more recently surmised that the brain is geared to reducing its initial prediction errors. This is suggested to underlie the processes of learning and memory, with the brain adjusting its synaptic connections in order to achieve more accurate predictions. MRI studies by Friston’s group are claimed to support these studies. Faults that may arise in brain processes for the reduction of prediction errors are suggested to be responsible for some mental disorders.

30/05/08: Lee Smolin's idea of Cosmological Natural Selection is a refreshing change from inflationary based versions of the multiverse. Smolin suggests that black holes can spawn new universes, and that our universe has evolved, as a universe capable of supporting life from a long line of universes not capable of this. However the conditions necessary for the number of black holes that would eventually allow a life bearing universe to become likely, themselves look to be fine tuned.

29/05/08: Robert Collins, a philosopher at Messiah College, PA argues that the emergence of a multiverse from the inflationary phase of the early universe requires the prior specification of the equations of general relativity, as these describe process by which random bubble universe could emerge from the inflationary phase. This would appear to increase the amount of fine tuning required for the pre-inflationary universe.

28/05/08: I was sent a recent piece from the Sunday Times discussing the controversy over stem cells. In the end the discussion has to be a bit ungrounded because of the lack of a consensus theory of consciousness based on experiment and observation. Of the quantum consciousness theorists only Penrose/Hameroff are specific enough about the biological details to provide much to discuss. They reckon single cell organisms have a microtubule based information system by which they can navigate, locate food, avoid predators etc. However, they do not think single cell organisms are concious. They suggest a critical mass of 300 neurons, as distinct from any other body cells that may exist. This critical mass would give a long enough time to collapse of the wave function, to be relevant to neural processes. Smaller aggregations of neurons might not manage this. Presumably, this initial consciosness of the 300 neuron brain would be of the raw qualia of the womb, quite different from a more developed human.

28/05/08: Added piece on Paul Davies's 'Universe Galore' chapter in 'Universe or Multiverse' Ed. Bernard Carr and published last year. Davies criticises multiverse theory and suggests that mind can be integrated into the universe.

27/05/08: Added discussion of Lee Smolin's book, 'The Trouble with Physics' highlighting the problems in string theory and multiverse theory, and appealing for new phsics to deal with the problems of cosmology. This seems to echo Penrose's appeal for new physics and Bohm's idea of an implicate order beyond both relativity and quantum theory.

24/05/08: Added lengthy discussion of Michael Lockwood's book 'Mind, Brain and the Quantum. A rather tortous discussion focusing on the relationship between time, relativity and consciousness, which still seems to miss out many salient points about time. The quantum consciousness part is very sketchy. Lockwood begins and ends his book with an attack on other philosophers for not having a proper go at the mind-body problem.

20/05/08: Added note on Sean Carroll's (Caltech) article 'The cosmic origing of time's arrow', relative to the problem of low entropy at the beginning of the universe.

19/05/08: Recently added are 'Quantum coherence in the brain' in which Hameroff discusses coherence between the spin of nuclei in the brain. Not conclusive since these are better shielded than electrons or protons. Also 'Magnetic quantum coherence in muscles' describing evidence of magnetic coherence in actin filaments in muscles. Both interesting in eroding the stance that quantum coherence in biological tissue is impossible.

Mohanty group at Boston University report the largest scale observation of quantum mechanical behaviour to date.

Ferreira, A., Guerreiro, A., & Vedral, V. in Physical Review Letters, 96, 060407 report that an electromagnetic field in an optical cavity with a macroscopic mirror can support entanglement at high temperatures.

Researchers at the Aist Tsukuba Diamond Research Centre consider it possible that Bose-Einstein condensation could persist in diamond films at room temperature.

Benjamin et al in quant-ph 0511198 suggest that C60 (fullerene) appear to be natural candidates for quantum technology. Individual C60 atoms can remain in superposition for long periods. The group has performed experimental work in this area.