Deepak Chopra's God 2.0

Cam, the Copenhagen interpretation does not depend on a conscious observer to effect wave-function collapse, it just depends on a classical measurement.

While I am inclined to agree that Chopra is indulging in "quantum flapdoodle", why is Shermer so hostile to the very idea that consciousness could be linked to quantum processes? In the past few years, there has been evidence for quantum coherence being linked to phenomena ranging from energy transfer in photosynthesis to allowing birds to align with the earth's magnetic field during migration. Penrose, Hameroff, and others like David Chalmers who are interested in this area are serious scientists and scholars. Furthermore, some versions of quantum theory, including some of the earliest and most influential (the Copenhagen interpretation derided by Shermer) depend on a key role for the conscious observer to effect wave-function collapse. Skeptics like Shermer may be uncomfortable with the idea that quantum processes are responsible for consciousness as it may leave a "back door" open for the soul, free will, or the supernatural. But dismissing it even as a possibility, particular when there is serious science exploring quantum processes in a wide variety of biological phenomena, is not science, but a form of materialist fundamentalism.

"These are all reasons to believe in God only if you already believe. If you do not already believe, these arguments ring hollow, having been refuted over the ages by philosophers from David Hume to Daniel Dennett."

As former president of the Yale Skeptics Society, which on one occasion I believe hosted Mr. Shermer, I can state with certainty that at least one non-believer was eventually convinced by some (although not all) of these "refuted" arguments.

P.A. Freynet, I'll give you this one. I'll accept that rationalism and empirical data are no match for arguments made on the basis of a priori belief, and the minimization of cognitive dissonance. Having also read McCutcheon's theory, derived the equations of motion (it requires introductory calculus to do this- apparently not available to the author) and compared the predictions with observations, I've done all I know how to do with my training as a Ph.D in physics. In my estimation, the theory is sophomoric claptrap, like innumerable "theories of reality" before it. But what the hell do I know. You might be right.

Having actually read McCutcheon's theory, I believe it will provide a solid footing for a better, more flexible model to work with, especially on quantum and astro physics levels. As we know from big bang and quantum theories, time does not exist. A working model must therefore be this - the universe arises anew at every moment out of chaos. This is, as already noted, a very old concept. The arising produces the effect and results in the physics defined by McCutcheon. Each resetting of light speed as provided by McCutcheon is a re-setting through chaos or big bang. This is the component missing from Mccutcheon's theory. Essentially, the theory can be kept intact, even the arrow of time. Notwithstanding the previous post, it conforms to all observations of our world. Conceptualizing an orbit according to the theory is very difficult because you are looking at the actual mechanism by which the orbit is explained, or explains itself, not at the ball on the string, which, as I previously stated, Newton knew was fatal. Most notable among thought experiments for McCutcheon is the dropped object experiment, a ball descending to the center of the Earth. Fig. 2-8 in the book. The theory of Energy - McCutcheons, will have to stand testing. The tenets of modern science are no less real than before of course. For example, dating the universe back to big bang is still a valid science. The difference is that the time, the years, take on an additional meaning and can be applied within a frame of reference different from the physical meaning. - But it has lost none of the physical meaning. For success in the approach on the quantum and astro-physical levels, it will be preferable to use a model that is as close as possible to the original archetype, from which mythologies and modern science take their cue. When applying a physical calculation, the current idea of singularity applies, though no doubt, it will quickly modify as we learn more about the archetype. I'm making a prediction to demonstrate my meaning, as far as I know, no one has stated this before. Today, as advances are being made in science, more and more experimenters, notably in fields like astro-physics and quantum mechanics, will experience a visceral as opposed to an intellectual understanding of what they are working with. This is the experience just as it is described by Fatio to Newton in a letter. The letter is printed in Michael White's The Last Sorcerer (I do not recommend the book) which White amusingly interprets as a homosexual love letter (it is of course, nothing of the kind.) The visceral effect is a result of the approach toward the archetypes, living ideas.

P.A.- Looking back over your posts, I believe your ideas are similar to those of Ed Fredkin, as outlined in Robert Wright's book "Three Scientists and their Gods". It is excerpted here: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/88apr/wright.htm

Fredkin postulates the the most fundamental units of reality are not particles, but information. I'm not sure how consciousness gets folded into this, but thought you might enjoy the article.

P.A.- Re. McCutcheon's book. The test of a scientific theory is not how popular or unpopular it is, but whether it can be tested (hence falsified) by experiments and observations. McCutcheon's hypothesis cannot explain the observations of Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, et.al, where they observed planets moving in unique, periodic paths across the background of the fixed stars. Galileo's telescope showed that Jupiter's moons circled that planet with well defined frequencies. Nothing in McCutcheon's hypothesis can explain these motions. The observation that the moon and the sun each span a fixed angular size (about 0.5 degress of arc)to our eyes prove that they are not expanding, and certainly not at different rates, unless they are simultaneously accelerating away from us (each each at a different rate). The rate of this (hypothetical) expansion is calculable (I did it), and found that the expansion hypothesis would require the recession rates to exceed the speed of light within a few days (there goes Einstein). And the light from the sun would long ago have been red-shifted out of visibility (there goes Maxwell). This hypothesis would not have made it to first base with even the ancient astronomers who constructed the Ptolemaic models. It is flatly contradicted by looking up into the sky.

I spent far too much time on that. Sorry.

I'm far less qualified to comment on the source of conscious experience, and whether it is inherent in matter. The concepts here are so immeasurable/unquantifiable/subjective that I don't think science can even grapple with them. We can make measurements to see if entities (particles, prions, plants or whatever) respond to each other in ways that suggest communication, mutual-awareness, or consciousness, but we will never know what their "experience" is. In this sense of conscious awareness, I'm confident that entities could be fabricated that show this behavior to an extent we would call intelligent.

If the math and experiments of McCutcheons’s book fail, then there’s nothing more to be said but to write it off based on erroneous interpretations such as planets and suns colliding is unwise. The fact that it is being ridiculed by no means equates to the theory being false.

Glen I think you understood what I was trying to say in spite of your reply. The fact that sub-atomic particles have properties is a given. The point I’m getting at is that the world as we experience it derives necessarily from one we do not and cannot perceive. This is being emphatically demonstrated to us by these experiments and modern scientific thought.

We can reasonably assume that what we can experience now of the sub-atomic reality is only a beginning, that as it progresses; it will get more and more of less and less. That is, to a point where it really doesn’t have physical properties and yet still has effects through artificial impetus. Living ideas.

It’s not enough to say that all matter has consciousness. It doesn’t really change anything as exemplified by your position which has apparently softened without skipping a beat. Tam is still intent on artificially creating a consciousness by building an artificial intelligence and equates the one with the other. In my opinion, they are not the same, and never can be, put the boundaries where you will.

I didn't know that I was a panpsychist, but I can accept that. Particularly if Freemon Dyson is also OK with it.

Now that we have that settled, who is going to straighten out Shermer and Chopra?

It is very tempting to reduce reality to either body-the physical, the mind-intellectual, or the spirit-meaning and purpose, but attractive as this reductionism might be it is always doomed to failure.

If the universe is only physical, from whence come natural laws and the purpose of life? Sadly some physicalists deny the reality of natural laws and the meaning of life.

If the universe is primarily intellectual, as traditional philosophy has maintained, from whence comes the natural basis of our everyday experience. Some have denied the importance of experience and the senses.

If the universe is primarily spiritual, as some mystics claim, from whence comes the realites of everyday life.

Humans are complex/one (both complex and unified) beings composed of body, mind, and spirit. We live in a complex/one reality of physical, intellectual, and spiritual universe. Christians believe that God the Source, the Foundation, and the End of all that is.

This is the reason that reductionism in whatever form does not work and why ultimately the reality of the Complex/One God is the only reasonable theory behind the reality of the universe.

Roger and Glen, the panpsychist position, which is logically necessary, in my view, if we accept the validity of our own consciousness, is that all things have some degree of mind. And I mean all things, down to the lowliest quark or electron.

This "mind" doesn't have to be self-conscious, and surely is not. Rather, this rudimentary mind is the most basic feeling, which encompasses awareness of other objects and then a choice as to how the subject/mind/actual entity in question manifests in the next moment.

Freeman Dyson said it well:

“The processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when made by electrons.”

And Sewall Wright, another well-known scientist (geneticist), and also a panpsychist, said: "Emergence of mind from no mind at all is sheer magic."

Other notable panpsychists who were also respected scientists: J.B.S. Haldane, Julian Huxley, Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, C.H. Waddington, and many others.

Roger- If conscious = self-aware, then I have misspoken. I believe that self-awareness doesn't begin until pretty high on the chain (but not limited only to humans).

I do think that organisms can communicate with other ones- by more than chemical trails or direct contact- and that they respond and adapt to these communications. In that sense, they might be "aware" or "conscious" of other organisms. Whether this occurs by electromagnetic field interactions, or something more esoteric like quantum tunneling, I don't know.

This is getting pretty far out there, but I think there are credible scientists who think so too.

Glen,

I have a problem with your statement that matter is "conscious" with conscious meaning self aware, being able to make decisions. I would agree that life and even matter are intelligent, meaning sensitive and responsive. Matter is "intelligent" in that it is governed internally and externally by rational natural laws. Plants seek light and water.

Non-living and living matter are "intelligently programed" so they are not self conscious. The question is, from where does this intelligence come, if it does not come from self conscious nature?

I think I'm on the same wavelength with Tam, though he says it more elegantly. Matter likely embodies consciousness from the get-go, becoming ever more emergent and complex as the systems get bigger. On the scale of insect colonies, ecosystems, or Gaia, systems exhibits high levels of responsiveness and adaptability, even though no self-awareness appears to be present within the system's components. Sounds like intelligent life to me.

P.A., I would claim that most fundamental particles do exhibit measurable sizes and dimensions, as measured by scattering experiments. Even wavicles (the quantum equivalent of a particle)can be localized within certain boundaries. Assumptions of point masses generate all sorts of nasty infinities, e.g. when calculating the self-energy of an electron. String theory was invented partly to correct this- even strings have sizes.

Having read Mark McCutcheon's book, I warn all physical scientists away from it. You'll sputter, roll your eyes, and dash off a scathing review to Amazon, as I did. And Amazon won't publish the review, maybe because it would hurt sales. Replacing the concept of action at a distance with a hypothesis that the earth is continuously expanding at 32 ft/sec/sec (thus giving the illusion of gravity) is, well, silly. A quick calculation shows that the expansion speed quickly achieves the speed of light and/or that the the ballooning earth and sun quickly collide. The concept is amateurish, at odds with all physics since Newton, and causes far more problems than it answers. Galileo would not entertain it for a moment.

There, I feel better.

Glen, the question is whether consciousness is actually a function of how neurons communicate, or of neurons communicating to accomodate consciousness.

For an example of how this accomodation would work, take quantum mechanics. The experiments we conduct involve particles that we say are and experience as small. But they have no dimension. They are small because we can barely apprehend them so that is the way it is represented to our senses - as being very small. It's an idea not a thing.

In the same way we represent the beginning of the universe as being very far in the past. But at the moment of the event, time did not exist so how can it have happened long ago. We apprehend it that way because we need the artificial or human condition/defintion of time to order it.

A description of what it would be like if we stood inside of big bangt 6 or 7 seconds after it began has an amazing resemblance to, for one, the Norse mythology description of ginungagap which is the beginning out of chaos.

The resemblance points to archetypes as being the actual origins.

Julia about the observer thing. Gravity, something we observe at every moment, has got to be as baffling as quantum and the two could be related. Mark McCutcheon's The Final Theory is a book with a fascinating idea. His theory of matter expanding infinitly at an accelerating pace gives a physical explanation for the gravity effect and addresses the biggest headache Newton had which was occult action at a distance. He points out some interesting mistakes in the math of both Einstein and Newton along with untenable thought experiments.

If, instead of constantly expanding matter you envisioned not only consciousness as now...now...now but the entire universe arising continuously, at every now..now...now, out of chaos, you could keep McCutcheon's theory intact and it would solve the question of how the universe could have existed previous to us happening along. It didn't. I think quantum entanglement confirms that time does not exist.

You're welcome Glen.

I'll sum up my arguments in this last post, trying to get back to the original discussion prompted by Shermer's critique of Chopra.

My approach to the question, is there a God?:

1) The reductionist materialist approach that dominates science today fails in principle to explain a number of obvious phenomena, most important of which is consciousness.
2) This is the case in large part because the modern materialist view (which I've labeled "crude materialism" in other work) sprang from the Cartesian duality of mind/spirit and matter/body, with the key difference that modern materialism simply lopped off the mind/spirit and attempted to explain everything as part of matter/body - as a working hypothesis in the centuries-long scientific process.
3) This approach fails in principle to explain mind because it has excluded mind from the beginning through this cleaving of Cartesian dualism into modern materialism. We don't have to believe in "spirit" in the Cartesian sense to recognize that "mind" is very real and cannot be excluded by fiat from our explanations of the world. All we have to do to verify this is look inside our own heads.
4) Modern materialism cannot explain mind because the components admitted into the modern materialist worldview are fundamentally mindless. It is, therefore, impossible for mind to spring from what is fundamentally mindless. This is what I mean when I write that materialism cannot "in principle" explain mind. Thus, materialism fails.
5) The only way to explain mind, other than to invoke the "a miracle occurs" approach of materialism, is to accept that it is there from the beginning in what we call matter (we can invoke "idealism," but panpsychism and idealism aren't really that different when we reconcile the two in a more common-sensical framework than what Berkeley developed). It's a continuum of consciousness, from the tiniest iota of mind in a quark or electron to full-blown human consciousness.
6) The manner in which higher-level UNITARY consciousness arises is still very much a mystery, but a number of lines of reasoning suggest strongly that some type of field coherence, possibly quantum coherence, is involved.
7) If this is the case, it is all but certain that unitary consciousnesses above the human level also exist, analogous to the process by which our neurons and groups of neurons combine to form the complex human unitary consciousness. And if human consciousness is the result of nonlocal quantum processes, there is no a priori reason why higher level conscious entities can't operate in a similar time scale as us.
8) If it is all but certain that higher unitary consciousnesses exist, they are as real as human consciousness is, and are not, thus, supernatural, but natural. When such a consciousness reaches the galactic or universal level (as the sum total of conscious entities), there is little problem in my view in calling such an entity "God."
9) Whether this God, or gods (there could be and probably are very many), is conscious in a way like we are conscious, is not possible to say at this time.

Again, Griffin's Unsnarling the World-Knot is a great introduction to Whitehead's system, which the above mirrors in many ways, as is David Skrbina's Panpsychism in the West.

Tam- Thanks for tip on The Rainbow and the Worm. Right up my alley- I've ordered it.

My feedbacks seem to be lagging other people's postings by several hours. It's either a time warp, or different time zones.
Chris, there certainly seems to be no need to postulate a God, when we are still doing fine in explaining reality in terms of it's material components and laws of interaction. What keeps me lower on the atheist scale is the awesome complexity and order that seems to have evolved spontaneously, and how it has built up inexorably from simple beginnings and few physical laws. And the fact that these laws are perfectly tuned to make a universe that persists long enough to evolve.
Every new discovery we make, from the low entropy of the big bang, to the relative weakness of gravity, to weak nuclear forces, to cosmic acceleration due to dark energy, turns out to be necessary to the way the universe has evolved. Nothing wasted, or being there for no reason. It's like communism: everything that is permitted is also compulsory. It's tempting to postulate a directing intelligence- call it God. Knowing that it's a waste of time trying to prove or disprove God. Not unlike trying to prove or disprove the multiverse.
Tam, I'm not going to make any rash claims for artificial consciousness, since I know that we have not yet figured out how neurons communicate. I'm just talking...
That neurons communicate at a distance, and not only through directly-connected synapses, seems likely. Possibly, they influence each other by the electric fields set up by the configuration of the proteins. The electric field map of the entire brain must be a pretty dynamic and complex thing, capable of containing a lot of information...more bits than the 10^14 or so synaptic connections.
But classical electric fields move only at light speed, and propagate deterministically. If we don't bring in indeterminism- via probabilistic wave functions- then we'll have to accept that there's no free will. That doesn't seem right, so our artificial neurons will probably need to operate on QM principles at low temperature in shielded spaces. Maybe too daunting a task to do with anything but biological components. More efficient to make baby brains the old fashioned way.

Julia, some things might clear up if you read the Wikipedea overview on the two-slit experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
Gravity waves are not involved- it's just that sometimes elementary particles (photons, electrons, etc) behave like delocalized waves of energy, and sometimes like localized particles of energy. Physicists still haven't agreed about what controls this choice.
The requirement for a conscious observer to collapse the wave function- hence cause transitions from potentiality to actuality- does not seem tenable, given that the universe seemed to evolve quite happily for the first few billion years, i.e. before conscious observers.
Unless you subscribe to a view that cause doesn't always precede effect, timewise. Some highly respected physicists (e.g. Feynman and Wheeler) have proposed that influences (and matter)can flow backwards. Hence they explain action-at-a-distance, antimatter, the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe, the path of photons through dispersive media, etc. It all fits with experiment.
Another alternative is that the wave functions can collapse when they interact with other wave functions, conscious or not. I personally like this one, because it might explain how an unstable nucleus can sit in a state of indecision for hundreds of years before decaying, while excited atoms don't last very long. The nuclei are well-shielded from outside fields, while orbital electrons are not. (Unless someone pokes a neutron into the nucleus, and all hell breaks loose.)

Glen,
I know of no atheist who claims certitude. I say that God seems to me to be highly unlikely. So I assume He does not exist, just as I assume when I go to bed that I shall wake up again. Dawkins puts himself at level 6 on an atheist scale of 1 to 7. Perhaps I am at 6•5.
I am not agnostic, because it seems unhelpful to say "something may exist", and all proposed possible Gods seem highly unlikely.

P.A. I do believe artificial intelligence is possible, in the strong sense of creation of truly conscious entities. However, as I just suggested in my response to Glen, I think it will be quite some time before we can create truly conscious AIs. Certainly, we're getting quite good at creating programs that can perform complex information processing tasks, a la Deep Blue and other expert systems. However, information processing itself is insufficient for unitary consciousness, as I suggested previously. Rather, the right kind of information processing, summed up by my term of "field coherence" is, I believe, necessary for unitary consciousness. The brute information processing in Deep Blue is not unitary because there is no apparent field coherence. So, if this line of reasoning is correct, we'll first need to understand a lot more about systems that we know are conscious (humans and other animals, for starters), sum up the observed similarities in these systems and then attempt to replicate these key features in our AI systems. This is an admittedly complex research program that I'm attempting to set forth in a paper, but it's taking me a while...

Julie, the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics does not subscribe to the concept of wave/particle duality in the traditional sense. The Copenhagen interpretation holds that all units of matter and energy have both a particle and a wave component, which are revealed in different types of experiments. This concept is most generally described by Niels Bohr's notion of "complementarity," which suggests that what may seem like contradictory features of the universe are in fact complementary because they represent different features that are revealed in different situations, much like the seven blind men examining an elephant and taking away very different conclusions about the true nature of the elephant.

However, Bohr's complementarity is, to me, simply contradiction enshrined as a grand truth. Bohr was also well-known for his statement that the opposite of a great truth is also a great truth. This is just way too loosy-goosy for me because it opens up any explanation as being potentially valid. An electron cannot be both a particle and a wave at the same time because these two concepts are mutually exclusive.

David Bohm solved the problem by suggesting, instead, that every "particle" also has a "guiding wave." The particle exists in the "explicate order," the physical universe, and the guiding wave exists in the "implicate order," a deeper level of reality that influences the physical realm directly at the quantum level. I analogize this model to the particle as a boat on the ocean and the guiding wave as the current pushing it along. So there is a type of duality in this interpretation, but there is no contradiction because each "particle" is not just a particle, but also a guiding wave. So whereas for Bohr each particle is a wave in some situations and a particle in other situations, for Bohm each unit of energy/matter consists of both particle and wave.

(The role you suggest for gravity as the "wave" is not what is meant by wave/particle duality in either Bohr's or Bohm's interpretation, but Roger Penrose has suggested a strong role for gravity in collapsing the wave function)

Glen, I'm not convinced that electronic neuronal replacement of biological neurons would yield the same consciousness - or any unitary consciousness, for that matter. The more I learn about the extreme complexity of biological structure, the more I realize that "functional invariance," while surely a feature of all conscious entities (as Chalmers proposes in his 1996 book, The Conscious Mind), very likely requires a level of functional invariance far more intricate than is supposed by the idea of electronic neuronal replacement. In other words, if the thought experiment were ever to work in actuality, the electronic replacement neurons would very likely have to match the structure of biological neurons to a degree not envisioned by any technology available in the next couple of decades. But I could be wrong.

I'm even more skeptical of this thought experiment due to my recent reading of Mae-Wan Ho's theories of quantum coherence as a key feature of all living systems. She does a great job in her book, The Rainbow and the Worm (1998), and many papers, of demonstrating the many interlocking cycles involved in living systems and the likelihood that quantum processes are involved in coordinating these many cycles in nonlocal feedback loops. Her theories are still works in progress, but highly suggestive. She is also highly inspired by Whitehead and Bergson, the founders of modern process philosophy.

I need to correct my earlier post, I referred to the slit experiment but meant the double slit experiment.

Quantum mechanics is a physical theory, and gets us no closer to God than Newton's theory.

Deepak C has started to believe his own press. His recent political comments have also seriously undermined his credibility as a spiritually profound thinker.

Accounts like razoo's, e.g. from Zen practitioners, Sufi mystics, and meditating monks are too widespread and consistent in theme to be dismissed. Something is going on here, and I would never be dismissive about the possible presence of universal consciousness. I am totally unimpressed by anyone claiming to understand the nature and source of God (or a lack of God). Both Shermer and Chopra seem to claim more knowledge about this than can possibly be justified. As do any true believers or atheists. Certitude is logically impossible.

It seems clear that the universe exists as a process, in addition to being a bunch of matter. The relentless buildup of complexity, through self-assembly of matter into ever-more coordinated assemblies (quarks-nuclei-atoms-stars-planets-galaxies-molecules-prions-cells-organisms... human minds-societies) seems to be a pretty orderly
process. The same pieces keep getting recycled into newer forms. Higher levels of consciousness seem to appear gradually throughout the buildup.

The atoms of the body you die in are not the same as the ones you start with, but you (as a process) are a consistent entity, if a temporary one. Your matter will certainly be recycled. So, maybe your consciousness, too.

And if the process (rather than the parts) is really what it's all about, then some parts may be interchangeable, or replaceable. Like consciousness represented in artificial neurons, i.e. machines that think. I suspect that quantum mechanical features may be key to the coordination of neural activity, if only because free will requires indeterminism.

The problem with wave/particle duality is (someone correct me if they know of an experiment that refutes this) that it is very difficult to separate the effect of the waves on the movement of the particles (which I assume to be gravity waves on Earth).

When the slit experiment was done it was with the assumption that the particle moving in a straight line was only one particle rather than two.

But that does not jive with my observations with the naked eye (I observed this in the middle of the night about a month before the Northridge earthquake less than a mile from the epicenter which may or may not have had an effect).

I observed that photons decay (arcs to the right or left) unless one or more collide, then the photons combine and move in a straight line.

So the question is, is the diffraction pattern a result of the particle/s or the effect of the particle/s moving along a wave which in turn is effected by the tidal forces (of the moon and sun pulling the Earth if it is in fact a gravity wave)?

I have researched this in the scientific literature but have not found anything about it and have been ignored by the physicists I have asked.

Julia, and others, I am not suggesting observation is required for collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. This is standard in the Copenhagen Interpretation, which I do not subscribe to. Rather, the Bohmian interpretation (also known as the causal or ontological interpretation) is a realist theory in that it does not require any wave collapse as part of the theory. Rather, each real thing in the universe consists of the "particle," or whatever word you prefer, and the "guiding wave."

Bohm's interpretation, described in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and The Undivided Universe, stresses unity, as the titles suggest, and avoids the large problem in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics ruling the quantum realm and classical mechanics ruling the human realm. This is the case because in Bohmian mechanics, there is just one set of rules that apply at every level of reality, though of course classical mechanics is a good approximation at the macro level.

Bohmian mechanics is also thoroughly Whiteheadian, and explicitly so, in that it posits consciousness in all things, from the bottom to the top.

Tam Hunt, I've been reading with interest your exchanges on the NKS Forum in '07 - '08 with Mike Helland and Tony Smith online. I see that your knowledge of and involvelment in AI is extensive.

Please bear with me as I step back to present an idea that comes from my personal bent. I do have a purpose in mind.

The manipulation of symbols - mathematical equations - has resulted in what might be described as a bare wisp of a concept given form by the equation.which reveals a window that permits a view beyond our physical world.

Because of the fact that the "particles" are not actual things but, possibly and so to speak, living ideas, there should exist a means by which a different view can be obtained of the same principals in nature, because they are the properties and origins of matter/energy and consciousness and if you're searching for knowledge, that is all there is to search with or into.

No matter how radically different two approches to a question might be, or rather because of that difference, the results of one could be useful to the other.

Another system exists which also uses the manipulation of symbols. The effects and interpretation of the symbols is more visceral than that of mathematics and the results for the experimenter occur within the real world. Though the school of thought involved is more specific, let's call it neo-platonism applied.

The challenge is consciousness and whether it is possible to create an artificial consciousness. If it is possible, then success in the chosen path of knowledge means it should demonstrate just such a thing.

I've done this in a paper I've written, as yet unpublished tho it has had considerable traction in Europe for a possible film, because film is the medium that best suits it. The paper is not about how it theoretically could be done. It demonstrates how it actually has been done, an actual artificial consciousness was produced with a specific purpose in mind.

The curious thing about it is the parrallel it has with the basic understanding we have of the principals involved in quantum entanglement wihich allow us to use the discovery for encryption. The same principal is used in the subjuect of my paper for just that: encryption, but at what might be termed a higher level of the consciousness involved.

If an observer were required for an electron to change states, there would be no HII areas in the universe, no stars and, thus, no life.

While Deepak Chopra is nothing more than a dubious character misrepresenting Indic medical knowledge for the urban elite of the West, what really bothers me is the almost obsessive Euro-centrist nature of discourse that i see in Shermer and Dawkins. Hindu Vedanta and Buddhism have a deeply atheistic foundation from Abrahamic point of view. Its deities are psycho-spiritual tools for realization of experiences that have specific neurological correlates. Calling non-Abrahamic traditions as non-western and then projecting Abrahamic monotheism as an intermediary step between polytheism and atheism is extremely simplistic and irrational.

personally speaking, In this age, I prefer to have a human mind elevated to superstatus in a reliable body. Any Body. Artificially organically whatever works. And then we can talk.

i do not agree with deepak chopra's views and neither yours. Sorry, I can't explain. .this is a sense of being, can't be put in words..just like maths and chemistry have different lingo. I will try and elaborate. Its a different kind of non-association existential state of mind. Although I still live a normal social life. First,for very brief moments in time in my life i have experienced the power of understanding without being limited to the normal thought processes OR senses of touch, taste, smell etc. thanks to my varied interests in kungfu, yoga, artificial intelligence, meditation,maths& sciences and computers, engineering, literature, arts,nanotech and whatnot.call it thepower of a good guess.. How so easily?. I have been flooding myself with knowledge acquired over the ages, as available from different sources. And, I am just open minded to try and get to the essence of what may be.
If you train your mind and then allow it to overload itself in a trained manner (not with confusion), Self awareness can become self knowledge once your brain takes the next step. That leads to extra sensory perception. Some can be gifted with it from birth.u might get future predictions or other kinds of awareness. Depends on your conscious-unconscious interactions. And then u realize and become aware that all matter, energy, quantum states etc. is pure information as it has already been experienced as parts of a process different from what is true. There is a different truth beyond all that which is attainable &/ unattainable. This is what I realized. Not just what someone else explained .
I have noticed established science journals&/publications cite for the past decade that our brain and seemingly self aware processes of the different systems and parts of the human body are not limited to sensory or thought processes alone. ...
My thoughts are not well ordered. U think. I do not. My realizations have a way of directing me to my multiple goals in life. I wish u can laugh at this kind of babbling and get to something beyond.
It's like I am possessed by an understanding of the future and not just the consequences. normal observation would explain that, my luck seems to favor me. In life, I've seen that luck is made to favor u, If u try REAL smart.
And, it is u who'd actually decide whether u want to have god in any form or way; in your world of being.
Again, I am not some super being. all are capable. I have realized that our capacity for the impossible is limited by our biases. And I have not attained perfection. I've been able to attain a path .
Let's just Say I feel blessed.
If u don't find proof of the facts I seem to talk about. I'll try and get back later. It will Not be just your or my loss. Time waits. Have other work. Actually looking for some,nowadays. But I like to help.

Hi, y'all. Sorry I'm late- I got here as soon as I could.

Very interesting stuff. I vote that consciousness emerges from the interactions of neurons. I'm not sure that one needs to invoke the non-locality of QM to explain it. Emergence of higher-order behavior in collections of interacting components is the consistent theme in the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang. And life/consciousness does seem to exist along a continuum from tobacco mosaic viruses to slime molds to bee colonies to Ph.D's.

We now have a pretty good understanding of how neurons communicate, through electrical signals. It would seem possible to build artificial neurons which mimic the input-output characteristics of the real things. Different neurons are programmed differently, according to what they have learned, but I subscribe that one might replace any particular neuron in my brain with a suitably programmed artificial one, without affecting my function.

If you can do that with one neuron, then you can do it with all of them. Resulting in a conscious, reasoning mind built entirely from integrated circuits. (If you subscribe to the view that conscious behavior is the result of brain activity, which seems reasonable to me.)

Zero, I don't think we need to invoke God for what you're discussing. Rather, I believe the better view is that the same process that leads to human consciousness leads to higher-level consciousness(es), which, when reaching the universal scale, seem worthy of being called "God."

P.A. Re the Chinese Room thought experiment, I am not suggesting, by analogy, that any program is conscious because a conscious programmer created it. Rather, I am suggesting that the Chinese Room-plus-programmer is conscious and that this is the more accurate boundary for our consideration than just the room plus the non-Chinese speaker inside the room. Similarly, any program-plus-programmer system is to be considered conscious due.

There is a more general principle at work with respect to consciousness, however, which I call "field coherence." Coherence is another way of saying synchrony because any coherent/synchronized system has that property because each component tracks the same time. Another way of looking at it is that coherence is characterized by sharing the same frequency of wave and trough.

To make this more concrete, consider a human brain. Gamma synchrony has been found to be concomitant with human consciousness. This means that the 40-70 Hertz electrical frequency range is observed with human consciousness, measured with EEGs

A very interesting experimental result, confirmed by Walter Freeman ("Nonlinear brain dynamics as macroscopic manifestation
of underlying many-body field dynamics") and I believe other researchers, is that gamma synchrony is achieved in the human brain faster than can be explained by electrochemical processing. This requires that some other process is at work. Perhaps quantum processes, which function instantaneously or near-instantaneously (Salart, et al, demonstrated in 2008 that quantum entanglement operates at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light).

We may speculate that quantum entanglement is at the root of all unitary consciousness above that of the most simple constituents of matter. Obviously there is a major electrochemical component in human consciousness and all animal consciousness, but this appears to exist alongside other signaling pathways, as suggested by Mae-Wan Ho, McFadden, Susan Pockett, Benjamin Libet, Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, and others. Hameroff and Penrose have developed a quantum model of consciousness that looks to microtubules in neurons as the area in which quantum processes have a role on consciousness.

I've speculated even further, in a paper that I hope will be published soon, that each unitary consciousness is unitary because it is akin to a particular frequency in terms of the ongoing creation of reality in each moment. If we look to the Planck moment as possibly the ultimate temporal resolution of the universe ("chronon" is a good term, which expresses the idea that time should be considered quantized, as matter is), there is a huge number of possible frequencies (10 to the 44th power) for each unique unitary consciousness. This ongoing creation of reality is what Whitehead called the creative advance, and it is fundamentally participatory because each component of reality is experiential and makes a choice, based on the information it receives from all other actual entities, how to manifest in the next moment.

This metaphysics is tricky to grok for neophytes, but I highly recommend David Ray Griffin's Unsnarling the World-Knot and David Skrbina's Panpsychism in the West, for an introduction to process philosophy and Whitehead.

Here's how I describe the field coherence idea in my paper:

I suggest that the field coherence that gives rise to each complex subject is the result of a shared “sampling rate” with respect to time. In other words, if the advance of time has such a fine resolution, there is a huge potential for each complex subject to enjoy its own “position on the dial,” its own frequency. With human complex subjects, even though gamma synchrony is defined as between 30 and 90 Hertz, which is thought to be a particular frequency, there is clearly an enormous number of different potential frequencies within this range – many billions of billions, in fact. Hertz is simply another way of saying “cycles per second,” so 30-90 Hertz means 30-90 cycles per second. Within this range of 60 cycles per second we can fit about 10-43 Planck “moments.” This provides for an astronomical number of possible “sampling rates” of this perpetual advance of time – Whitehead’s creative advance. The gamma synchrony in humans is, then, a literal synchrony if this speculation is correct. The synchronization relates to the most fundamental reality, the realm at which time and matter are quantized. In this manner, each complex subject arises because each component of the complex subject share the same time, the same rate at which time progresses. This literal synchrony allows the components to effectively be bound together in a shared, complex, experience.

Chopra does jump the shark, but there is a relationship between events at the quantum level and macro level, it is however more subtle.

If, as seems evident through observation, that a fractal aspect of the universe is either a primary aspect or arises out of quantum uncertainty; no event occurs without effect, and a unifying thread crosses the different scales from quantum to whole. I will not fall into the trap of labeling that "God", or of projecting into that space my imaginings, except as an exercise of artistry and playful reflection. (To my mind the great error that people make religiously is to displace the process of grappling with mystery to the creation of a form that ends that grappling.)

I should have remained a scientist, instead of studying maths, which gets hard to understand. I just read a bit in wikipedia about modern quantum theory. It seems that the theory no longer puts observers in a special situation where they cause the probability function to decay into the classical world. The theory is still probabilistic.

Tam Hunt, I haven’t read Chopra’s book yet but based on some of his televised lectures from years ago, it should be interesting.

At any rate, I can see why quantum entanglement is producing some interesting conjectures. If the entangled particles do not conform to laws of classical physics which is based on a world of polarity in the sense of here and there, now and then or up and down (gravity), it appears to be a state that would precede material manifestation which could be defined as a spiritual state. I’m not saying it is, I don’t know.

You mentioned that quantum entanglement may point to consciousness for higher level consciousness and I would be interested in hearing perhaps a little more detail on how or why consciousness could be postulated from the properties you mentioned.

The way I could see that being expressed is that I think we are looking at a unit of information rather than a particle or object in any sense of the word. If distance does not affect the instantaneous transfer of information between entangled particles, it means distance does not exist to that/those particle/s regardless of what appearances may be to us.

It’s no good to say that this one particle, composed now of the two entangled particles, stretches over the distance the two particles are perceived to travel (wavefunction) because that still implies distance and time for information to reach the other end – unless of course you postulate consciousness in the entangled particles.

That is, consciousness is present in the particle prior to “canonical conjugation” with its partner and now that they’ve shared the same bed for a while, one intuitively knows what the other is thinking, and either agrees, disagrees, or thinks something comlementary - or rather, the idea of separateness has become an idea of unity seeking balance.

If quantum entanglement does imply consciousness in the particle, it would seem to imply also that, at some intimate level, they may be connected to and thus are being affected by, the experimenter.

I think what you’re saying for the Chinese Room is that if the programmer of the computer program is conscious, the computer program is conscious. If that interpretation is correct, I disagree.

Hi P.A.Freynet, "stood on a tradition that dated far into the past" and "sophisticated cultures" are exaggerated, if we are talking about Aristotle. There were very few books around. The Greeks thought that mankind went back about 16 generations. Did Aristotle understand Sanskrit? The cultures 4000 years ago were sophisticated compared with what the Bible said about that millennium. But compared for instance with the current science culture they were very primitive.
As a general genius, it was reasonable for Newton to study alchemy and theology as well as maths and physics. He made important advances in the latter two. It is a pity he didn't discover the periodic table too. It is a pity that he remained with his unhelpful notation for calculus, rather than using dy/dx. If he had stuck to physics, he might have realised that light has wave properties. But we old men often turn to philosophy when too old to do anything more useful.

Hi Tam, my philosophy does not rule out that quantum entanglement may play an important part in our brain processes. Some day, this may be proved. Then we might decide to regard those brains that use this technique as those that have consciousness. A similar process has taken place regarding what we regard as human. (Study of genetics shows that Neanderthals should be regarded as our species, and thus as human. But it is unclear how far back humans go. We cannot say that one mutation was crucial).
Is not the modern view still that information cannot be passed faster than the speed of light? I believe the instantaneous distant effect of entanglement cannot be used to pass information?
Personally, I think it unlikely that there is any sharp cut-off between our brains and those of fish or even worms. Generally, as they get bigger brains get cleverer. But obviously improvement comes also from better organisation. Brains are small and slow enough that they do not need information transfer as fast as light. They seem sufficiently complex to account for their capabilities. A vital piece of the brain of a rat can be replaced by a chip.
Up to chimps and crows, brains seem to advance in parallel at a similar rate. Then there is something of a jump to human brains. But a one year old baby seems no cleverer than a crow or chimp of the same age. I do not believe that quantum entanglement then switches on. But that is something to find out by science, not by philosophy.

P.A., I'm familiar with Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment and I agree with his main point that, at least in the way he framed the thought experiment, it results in apparent meaning from what is certainly not a conscious process. But it's more tricky than it would seem. Clearly, the boundaries of what we consider to be "in" the thought experiment are key. If we accept Searle's boundary, his point is well-taken - there is something more than mere information processing required for meaning and consciousness to be present.

But - and this is important - the boundaries as Searle defined them aren't fair. To create his Chinese Room situation there has to be meaning inserted from outside his chosen boundaries, in the form of the rules of the Chinese language. Thus, the proper boundaries of the thought experiment include the person conveying the rules to the poor sap in the room working through the rules of Chinese language. Thus, the more fair and accurate boundaries of the thought experiment would certainly include a conscious subject and thus the whole setup is correctly considered conscious, at least in terms of its outputs.

This highlights again what I've referred to below as the "combination problem," which was apparently first framed by William James in 1890. The combination problem arises when we ponder, in either materialist or panpsychist views of consciousness, how small constituents combine to create an apparently unitary awareness like that we enjoy. It's also known as the "boundary problem," and this idea is fleshed out in detail by Gregg Rosenberg in A Place for Consciousness. The boundary problem is highly apropos to the Chinese Room thought experiment, as I've just shown.

More generally, it seems to me that there may be a quantum signaling (entanglement) component to higher-level consciousness, and perhaps to any entity that should be considered conscious beyond the highly rudimentary consciousness present in a quark or electron, for example. Mae-Wah Ho has fleshed out this idea a little, as has Johnjoe McFadden. And I'm also fleshing out this idea in my own work as we speak.

This is relevant to AI, which you raised as an issue, insofar as it may not be simply information processing that gives rise to higher-level consciousness (again, as opposed to the most rudimentary consciousness contained in the constituents of matter). Rather, it may have to be the right kind of information processing, achieved perhaps only through quantum entanglement, which in theory allows instantaneous or near-instantaneous information transfers. This is all quite speculative at this point, but it does bring us back full circle to Chopra's invocation of quantum mechanics as a new argument for God. I don't actually agree with his particular framing, which Shermer attacks, but I do think there is probably a key relationship between quantum mechanics and higher-level consciousness, manifested most likely in information flows, the nature of time, and the boundary issues I alluded to above.

Chris Wood, let’s turn the argument around. 2000 years ago, men were just as clever as they are today. Those men stood on a tradition that dated far into the past; inherited from men just as clever from remarkable, sophisticated cultures. Those systems can easily be made to appear stupid to us because the basic tenets were foreign to ours. That doesn’t mean they are useless.

It is because of that difference that their thought is valuable. Consider that generation after generation of clever, sane men dedicated their lives to a system of thought or related systems of thought that generation after generation affirmed to be valid and powerful. Archetypes are an important part of Plato’s thought and Platonism and neo-Platonism are derivative of that thought.

Modern science is a few hundred years old. Most would agree that it originated during the enlightenment and its father is Isaac Newton. As is now common knowledge through the work of Dobbs, Newman, Westfall amongst others by now, Newton gave far more concern to alchemy and later, theology than to physics and mathematics. The biography by Richard Westfall “Never at Rest” is perhaps the definitive one so far and it is well worth the read. As Westfall states - I paraphrase: - though we may wish things to be different, in terms of science, Newton was primarily an alchemist. Alchemy is largely neo-Platonism applied.

Newton initially tolerated, just barely, communications from mathematicians after publication of the Principia, later severing the communications entirely but sought out correspondence with alchemists. The Principia may be said to have sprung from alchemical studies as its composition was embedded between studies of alchemy.

From alchemy sprang the model we currently still use to build the world we live in. It has been humming along nicely though Newton could not define a universal consciousness in terms of its effects and consequences for science, he tried but failed.In my opinion, science has advanced to a point where it is now necessary to make such a definition.

Tam Hunt, I think the famous thought experiment put forth by Searle in 1980 that he called the Chinese Room is successful in illustrating how artificial intelligence can only mimic consciousness.

Though there's been an onslaught of attacks on it, I think this is more a result of the intellectual challenge than serious widespread belief in the AI field that computational complexity equates to consciousness. Anyway, the "formal arguments" section in the Wikepedia article on the subject is a good synopsis of the arguments so far if you are not already familiar with it.

It is interesting that in spite of attempting to demonstrate that computational complexity does not equate to mind, stating that "Brains must have something that causes a mind to exist. Science has yet to determine exactly what it is, but it must exist, because minds exist." he also believes man to be a conscious machine.

I think that the question of subjective and objective is central to what you're saying because it is equivalent to "inside" and "outside" of matter particles. As you say "consciousness can be characterized as essentially instantaneous (now, now, now...), life can be characterized by the maintenance of form over time." If I understand you, the relationship between the two is that the consciousness within maintains the form without (if consciousness is lost, all form disappears - to that consciousness from within and in terms of a body/form from without)

To speculate further, the consciousness of a matter particle could be said to be in a trance state being present only to provide stability and maintain its form over time. Perhaps it is the same consciousness that is incited to wake up through an increasing complexity of its form.

This in no way is equivalent to saying that a complex system that interfaces successfully with the world means this system is conscious.

Hi Steve Esser, firstly, why should things have intrinsic natures? Secondly, if they do, by definition of "intrinsic", we can never find out anything about these natures, so it makes no sense to think about them. In particular, it makes no sense for me to think about my own intrinsic properties.
B. Russell was clever, but had his limitations. He spent many of his most creative years working on a great problem, without realising that it had no solution (as proved by Kurt Gödel). Along with many others, he regarded thinking as something other worldly. After Darwin we should accept that thinking is the result of physical processes. There is no evidence that it is "intrinsic". This becomes clearer through computing developments and study of human and animal thinking.

Hi P.A. Freynet, do you really believe you can provide a solid foundation for the existence of matter, by defining a universal consciousness? That's weird!
Healthy respect for the ancients is OK, but should not be overdone. Some were clever, but of course they were ignorant of a lot that we know. I doubt whether intelligence has significantly declined in the last 2000 years, so there are probably hundreds of people around, as clever as Aristotle was. Education enhances intelligence. Plato seems not to have understood that words are just tools for communicating. I read that he defined a "chair" as being similar to an "ideal chair" in heaven. I believe he is remembered today because of his nice writing style, and perhaps because of his school, not because his philosophy was good.

Hi CaRteR, there is no significant evidence for god, and no significant indication what she might be like. There could be a creator, but we would know nothing about her. That seems to be a reason not to believe in her. What is the sense in believing in something completely unknown? OK, it makes sense to believe in god if it makes you and others happy.

Hi Tam, OK, I looked up Vedanta. I see guys obsessed with their own thinking processes, but not doing physical experiments to find out gradually how the brain works.
Schrödinger was worried, because the act of observing seemed to affect the result, (Schrödinger's cat). Do you think that experiments in quantum physics provide better evidence than Newton for your attempt to separate the observer from what is observed? The scientists seem to have got a better grip on this fairly recently. (I did not understand the lectures Dirac gave at Cambridge in 1964).
Recently it was argued that according to quantum theory an experimenter could not freely choose what to measure. I do not really believe in free will, but I like to believe that thoughts are somewhat randomised. So I was happy to hear that a mistake had been found in this argument. See http://if-blog.de/en/cw/ethik-nach-dem-humanismus/

P.A. Freynet, thanks for your support of my key assertion. I think, however, your assertion regarding mimicry of consciousness is incongruous with the first view.

If we accept that mind cannot spring whole cloth from matter that is defined as wholly lacking in mind, then any life form that we suspect of mimicking consciousness would not in fact be mimicking. Rather, it will, by dint of its complex behavior as a life form, necessarily possess also complex consciousness. As form/matter complexifies, so consciousness complexifies.

In my view, which I'm fleshing out in a number of papers, life and consciousness are distinct only as a matter of duration. So whereas consciousness can be characterized as essentially instantaneous (now, now, now...), life can be characterized by the maintenance of form over time. Of course, all things change, so no form is maintained perfectly for any length of time.

The relationship between life and consciousness is then, in my view, akin to taking the derivative of a curve: life is the curve and consciousness is the instantaneous value of that curve. They're not fundamentally different properties, but, are instead related through a durational difference.

Meh, Steve Esser did a great job of explaining what I mean but let me add a couple of clarifying remarks. Russell was indeed very clear in explaining the domain of physics as limited to the relations between things. But what are these "things"?

First, in my view, which is heavily inspired by process philosophy (Whitehead, Bergson, Griffin, Hartshorne, Cobb, Heraclitus, etc.) and Vedanta philosophy, there are no "things," there are only processes.

But this re-framing still requires we answer the question: if physics studies the relations between processes, what are those processes? Today's physics employs the methodological assumption that only objective things matter. This is what I mean by the "outside" of matter and what Steve Esser described as the relations between things. It's what we OBSERVE with our senses and our instruments in experiments.

Schrodinger describe it well in his lectures that were published as "Mind and Matter":

"[The 'principle of objectivation' in physics is] a certain simplification which we adopt in order to master the infinitely intricate problem of nature. Without being aware of it and without being rigorously systematic about it, we exclude the Subject of Cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavor to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world."

But "observation" requires a subject, as Schrodinger acknowledges even though methodologically he was as guilty as most other physicists of ignoring subjectivity. So what is that subject and how does it relate to the outsides of matter?

The subject is, most generally, experience/consciousness/mind. And this is what process philosophy does a good job of explaining, where physics has no explanation in its current form (and which it can't, even in principle, explain because it has ruled it out by definition).

The process philosophy view is that all things/processes have some degree of mind, which complexifies as matter complexifies. We can describe mind as the "inside" that complements the "outside," which is the purview of today's physics. Alan Watts said it well: "For every inside there is an outside and for every outside there is an inside."

To create a complete physics and a complete view of the world (or at least far more complete than today's materialist physics), we must include both outside and inside in our purview.

This view of reality explains mind, our place in the universe, and opens up the possibility of mind on far grander scales than we see in humans - perhaps on the scale of that which would be worthy of being labeled "God."

It's ridiculous to argue the existence of god - either for or against - inside physical or even intellectual terms.

It would be like sitting inside a box denying that one is inside a box because one can't see the outside of it.

God is a matter of faith. Either you believe it or you don't. And that's all she said.

"It is ontologically impossible for mind to spring from what is wholly lacking in mind". is a true and effective statement. There is though the question of the subjective point of view being a necessary part of the statement.

It is entirely possible that the mimicing of consciousness could arise through natural selection as it allows the organism better survival prospects. For example, as Chris Wood mentioned, computers et al could evelve to the dominant species through man. Be that as it may, right now, I have only my own consciousness to experience the world and I cannot make assumptions about yours.

Making predictions works well with Newtonian physics but in searching for a solid foundation for the existence of matter, it turns out there is none, and there never can be one to an organism that mimics consciousness because the question should be how matter is emergent from consciousness. That idea is not only medieval, it is ancient and anyone who doesn't have a healthy respect for the ancients has an incomplete education.

There is no solid foundation for the existence of matter until I define a universal consciousness.

I left off my last sentence (altho you probably see where this was going): The panexperientialist position is that there is an instrinsic experiential nature to all natural objects.