Topic: Consciousness and Quantum Physics - page 3. (Read 11994 times)

I think we are on sound grounds to say that quantum effects are truly random.  If you speculate otherwise you need to do it at the level of the Uncertainty Principle and the math behind it, not on general philosophical grounds. 

Math easily handles n dimensionalities, example a cube-like object X with volume Z, we can easily compute Z for x^2, x^3, x^4, x^5.  However the last four do not represent physical (3 dimensional) reality.

Quantum Cognition and Brain Microtubules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm6Mt9BoZ_M

That was a cool video. This scientist is trying to define consciousness with equations and the mechanism of the how, going beyond the no need to do the hard thinking as consciousness is nothing but a word.

How do we know that quantum effects are truly random? Space is the 3rd dimension. Time is the 4th. Whatever the 5th is like, we can calculate, but it takes all kinds of mental tricks to hold it in the mind and understand it. 6th? 7th? 8th? How many dimensions are there? Might they even be infinite?

I would suggest that quantum is causal just like everything else. It's just that the causes lie in dimensions where we don't have any practical way of even suggesting, much less determining, what the causes are like, to say nothing of what they might be.

On the other hand, there might be a dimension where cause and effect, and randomness meet, where the come together, where they are the same thing, right?

Not to be pedantic but it IS just a word.  The "thing" the word describes is what has been the subject of extensive study.  The word itself is just a word.  We could just as easily discard the word and choose something else to call it, and the underlying "thing" it describes would still exist, unchanged. 

No, consciousness is not just a word.  It has been the subject of extensive study and definition.  This is within the domain of "cognitive psychology."

Both great points! Not sure if you have watched any of Jose Barrera's podcasts? he has done a very interesting series on :-

The Magical Foundations of Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxpMIGxNDQU&list=PLWX_Eh6pDqyjR4ZjIrzWUk4EZkil2j46f
Alchemy, Mandalas, and the Gods  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WovQII5yHUI&list=PLWX_Eh6pDqyjR4ZjIrzWUk4EZkil2j46f
Jose Barrera "The Goddess Reason https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AEx_KaMrCs&list=PLWX_Eh6pDqyjR4ZjIrzWUk4EZkil2j46f

All excellent perspectives, I'm not sure which one it is but he points out how the egyptians devoted their time to becoming immortal, and so they have, for as long as the human record remains their legacy will too Besides the pyramids and artifacts like mummified pharaohs etc, the most powerful vessel is their hieroglyphs, which preserved their conscious apprehension and has transported it forward to today.

I also think the book/video by Joseph Atwill, Caesar's Messiah is a brilliant look at how a meme crafted by warmongers has and still to this day grips humanity in a zombie trance of a war God.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrCMeQIB7Jg

The work of John Marco Allegro, http://www.johnallegro.org/ Like Jose Barrera, Allegro uses Philology to uncover starteling insights into human history and language. Besides decrypting the copper scroll, his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is an amazing thesis of how meme's apprehended by our primitive culture while high on psychoactive agents or hallucinogens have preserved this encoded in language and evolved alongside our culture all be it in somewhat a distorted form to this day dominates the human landscape.

Another great insight is Jan Irvin's  The Pharmacratic Inquisition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyQOeiY11RA&list=TLUBuY0jHlcHs

I then ask myself what is conciousness? That psychotropic compounds found in nature can imprint in us such profound perceptions that dominate our culture and hence our reality? Are we truly experiencing our reality or is it dictated by the entheogens found in our environment? Reality is truly stranger than fiction.

Not really.  The scientific method is evidence based.  In my experience the people who tend to have most trouble with the scientific method are adherents to things like astrology, numerology, mythology, various pseudosciences, etc.  In other words, things for which there is no repeatable evidence.  Obviously, if you have no evidence to support your claims you will take issue with a methodology that requires evidence.  As for the "inner child" you mentioned, well I mean, what it comes down to really is that the scientific method works.  We know this, as virtually all of our great discoveries were made following it.  I can't think of a single instance where a person abandoned the scientific method and just let their "curious inner child explore and experiment" and discovered anything of any use.

Ah, but see, this is exactly what I was just talking about.  You have already decided, before conducting any sort of investigation, just what all these things are and how they work (albeit perhaps not precisely).  No need to investigate really, if you have already decided what the conclusion will be regardless of the evidence discovered.

Well an adherent to the scientific method would not start with any of these assumptions.  You seem to want to dispute the scientific method as being effective, and then repeatedly list flaws that are found in pseudo scientific methods of study but NOT the scientific method, as your reasons for not liking it. 

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.  No number exists on a real plane.  A number is a representation in the same way a word is.  The actual, "thing" the number represents does exist on a real plane, including "imaginary" numbers. 
Again, I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.  Information is simply the description of energy\mass in a given system.  This is a little bit like saying speed has no motion.  It is technically true of course, but not particularly useful. 

Not to derail the topic but the Scientific Method is just a modern-day bible. It's an adjunct to reason, a cookbook that lays down a history of scientific findings, lists best practices and acceptable ways to approach certain types of problems. It's not a substitute for reason or the curious inner child that wants to explore and experiment.

I loosely define consciousness as the 'ego' or the "first person experience" - the something that imagines all that stuff that we're aware of when we're awake or dreaming. Right off the bat it's difficult for the scientific method because it focuses on empiricism as the dominant way of doing things. We're supposed to observe and measure the outside world, not the inside world. And it's easy to get caught in a trap of making too many assumptions:
-that consciousness exists somewhere else as well.
-that it's likely to be tied to some physical location, such as clumps of neurons inside people's brains.
-that it belongs to the category of real things, such as matter or energy.
-observing other's behaviour is as good as experiencing it myself, because I assume that I'm fundamentally similar to everyone else. After all, the images that I see of other people seem similar to the images that I see when I look in the mirror.

Well, what if we're mistaken to assume those things?
In much the same way that in mathematics imaginary numbers have no location on a real plane (or we can think of a separate imaginary plane that is orthogonal or a different dimension), why should our imagination be located in a real location?
I'm reminded that information has no mass or energy either. As far as my computer is concerned, the words on the screen are just meaningless noise that it was forced to draw by a program. So where is the information located?

I feel like we are arguing in circles here.  The original poster asked " is there any testable/scientific proof that consciousness is a product of quantum phenomena?"  and my response was no, and further more that none of the things mentioned even qualify as a scientific theory or hypothesis. 

You then declared that if that is true, "So then consciousness does not exist...".  This is of course patently false, and belies a complete misunderstanding of what the scientific method (which is what this thread was about, as far as it applies to one specific phenomenon) entails.  So I then attempted to explain in some further detail what a scientific theory is, and what it is not. 

You then one more time rephrased your initial declaration and asked me to define consciousness with a mathematical equation which of course I can't do.  I can't do it, because as I stated right in my very first post that is is not a scientific theory!
Again, I am trying to explain very simply how the scientific method works.  It is not the only method, many people subscribe to various forms of pseudoscience, and other things.  But the OP specifically asked from a scientific standpoint so that is what this topic is about.  Obviously though, it is difficult to discuss when you do not even know what it is.  For example:

This isn't true at all.  Science is fully capable of describing things that may or may not exist.  You even provided an example yourself, in black holes.  By now it is very likely that they exist, but for a long time no one really knew.  Science was quite capable of saying, "we do not know if these things exist, but if they do, this is how they will behave to an external observer".  It is very, very common for equations to have many possible solutions, and the ones that don't exist are simply ignored. 
We don't need to do anything of the sort.  Again, science is quite capable of measuring and dealing with this, we even have a name for it, the observer effect.  Just one example is an electron, it is physically impossible to observe an electron without effecting it.  Yet we are quite capable of developing fully functional models of how they behave.
No we don't.  And in fact, if any "theory" you come up with requires such assumptions without proof that they exist (thus making them not assumptions), then it is not going to be successful.

Your reality or mine?

 

I think you'll find more answers if you look at what some philosophers had to say about "the world". At least this approach seems helpful on my own journey. Some suggestions for research:

"5 minute hypothesis"
ask yourself:
What could the implications be for experiments that rely on collecting sequences of data and analysing them?
The world seems consistent and causal, but why should it be that way?
Could our actions in the present somehow seamlessly alter our memory of "the past" so that it fits our expectations?


The unresolved tension between causality and free will.
How can they co-exist? Surely, that would be a paradox?
Which one is the illusion:
-that life has some ability to interfere with the universe by exerting its will on it?
-the appearance that everything is locked to some causal cog?
Or maybe that's a false dichotomy, and there could be a bit of both?

Consciousness is the best tool to apprehend reality.

IMO when their is no hard evidence either way its important to keep an open mind, without falling prey to religious dogma.

Not so much a scientific perspective but more a philosophical and historical liturgy on the subject that is refreshing and thought provoking.

Graham Hancock, Exploring Consciousness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7PUssV9oNo
  

All 'quantum weirdness' may be caused by interacting parallel worlds, physicist theorizes



A Texas Tech University chemical physicist has developed a new theory of quantum mechanics that presumes not only that parallel worlds exist, but also that their mutual interaction is what gives rise to all quantum effects observed in nature.

The theory, first published by Professor Bill Poirier four years ago, has recently attracted attention from the foundational physics community, leading to an invited Commentary in the physics journal, Physical Review X.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141112131927.htm

Unlikely such proof will ever exist.
You would need to have a complete understanding of the 'quantum' phenomenon. However, no theory can be complete and exist in and of itself without fitting perfectly into the bigger theory that explains everything.
The quest for the theory of everything, the holy grail of knowledge, is one that is bound to fail every time. The reason is simple, the observer/theorist can never incorporate himself/herself into the theory which means the theory can never be truly complete. This quest, while glorious, is akin to dangling a carrot ahead of a donkey to keep it moving forward.

Having said that the proof you seek could still exist sometime in the future, even without 'knowledge of everything'. The world humans have built clearly shows that it is possible to thrive on incomplete theories    

The second layer of Penrose/Hammeroff's Orch OR theory, should you choose to understand it, is presented in these links:

http://tesla3.com/free_websites/ormus_science.html

http://tesla3.com/free_websites/ormus_mdg.html

See also here:
http://www.atmanprinciple.com/the-science-of-m-state-elements/

In my view, the essential question is whether the Universe as we understand it is "consciousness rich" or "consciousness poor".  In the one case, there would be a rich and diverse group of sentience, in the other it would be rare and possibly unique.

The far extension of the latter is that only humans are sentient, and life (and thus sentient life) is only C-N-O-H based.  I can think of no hypothesis that was testable which would prove that consciousness could only be CNOH based and many reasons why that could not be so.