• 3017amen
    3.1k
    What do you guys think of this?Enrique

    One minor point that I don't think was addressed relates to the practical application or analogy to cognitive science's view of our 'stream of consciousness'. These concepts seem analogous.

    QM, indeterminacy, randomness, occurring in physics has a strange parallel to how the stream of consciousness is perceived/apprehended. Random thoughts that occur during everydayness closely resemble indeterminacy in physics relative to our experiencing that conscious phenomena.
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    If it is accurate that perception is modulated by a higher-dimensional quantum interfacing of electromagnetic fields and biochemical matter, perhaps one facet of a total revision in our picture of the physical world, qualia will be no less ineffable subjectively because language is a separate module from perception, but we can expect models in which a physical process isn't merely correlated with for instance the sight of a particular color, but actually is the sight of that color.Enrique

    I wonder what you mean by "higher-dimensional quantum interfacing of electromagnetic fields and biochemical matter" here? Space in mathematical modeling does not necessarily represent space in the usual sense (the physical space in quantum mechanics is still the 3+1-dimensional Minkowski space of Special Relativity). Often it is a phase space constructed out of independent state variables, or it can represent other things. Quantum mechanics in its vector formulation employs infinite-dimensional function spaces (Hilbert spaces). But other theories, including classical mechanics and thermodynamics, also make use of higher-dimensional spaces, so this is not something uniquely quantum.

    More to the point, there are something like 1010 neurons and 1014 synapses in the cortex, and as you probably know, this isn't just a network of simple binary switches and connectors either: each of these neurons and synapses is a complex analog system, and the entire network constantly mutates and rewires itself. This is an enormous amount of dynamical structural complexity, located many orders of magnitude closer to the scale of interest than quantum fields, and we have barely even scratched its surface. So I think that before we start speculating about what we will discover when we drill down all the way to the quantum scale - and barring a few sketchy results here and there, these are mostly wild speculations at this point - we should start with this lower hanging fruit (I won't say low, because even this "fruit" may prove to be out of our intellectual and technological reach).
  • Enrique
    842


    The properties of neuron synapsing are certainly key to an understanding of mental processes. Thousands of different types of neurons have been identified, the von Economo neuronal system linked with self-awareness, mirror neurons involved in perceiving mental states, certainly important for theories of perception. But I don't think biochemistry alone is ever going to be more than correlated with for instance a qualitative mental image, its going to require a comprehension of quantum effects in both cells and the natural environment to model perception directly. I've never learned exactly how mathematical concepts, observational contexts such as experimental designs, and structural models generally converge in quantum theory, but it would be nice if someone could find a way to make that common knowledge. We spend too much effort rhetorically promoting hugely simplified accounts of theories at the expense of explaining the details that enable their innovation and make them valid. I suppose that's what graduate school is for if you've got the money.
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    But I don't think biochemistry alone is ever going to be more than correlated with for instance a qualitative mental image, its going to require a comprehension of quantum effects in both cells and the natural environment to model perception directlyEnrique

    I am not sure what you think the role of quantum effects are going to be in modeling perception "directly." I mean, quantum fields aren't qualitatively different from, say, classical fields, nor is quantum mechanics that much more complex or information-dense than classical mechanics. There is no mystery stuff there, it's the same kind physics.
  • Enrique
    842


    I am not sure what you think the role of quantum effects are going to be in modeling perception "directly." I mean, quantum fields aren't qualitatively different from, say, classical fields, nor is quantum mechanics that much more complex or information-dense than classical mechanics. There is no mystery stuff there, it's the same kind physics.

    Like I touched upon, subatomic particles, ions, and small atoms have weird properties under many conditions, as diffuse wavicles that can tunnel across relatively large distances nearly instantaneously, adopt the form of multiple superposed phase states, morph in response to thermodynamically negligible amounts of energy, interact without direct contact, exist and move in higher dimensions than space-time such that the classical model of sequential causality might obsolesce, and more strangeness. I imagine scientists finding instances of quantum behavior to be so pervasive that atomic theory will be completely transformed, especially as we gain an improved understanding of entanglement, synchronicity effects and retroactive causality in both organic and inorganic settings, but this is currently all reasonable speculation.

    I'm conjecturing that the synthetic fluidity of perception can only be explained with quantum entanglement or some kind of quantum mechanism. If chemical reactions are the totality of mental processes, this lack of real integration would be mirrored by experience, but qualia in essence contrast with the time-lagged efficient causality of thermodynamic chemistry distributed in three-dimensional space. Mind seems to be caused by a phenomenon beyond mere concepts of spherical particles. As far as I can discern, these dynamics will be modelled both as emergent from atomic biochemistry and in contradiction to traditional principles of matter.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    I'm conjecturing that the synthetic fluidity of perception can only be explained with quantum entanglement or some kind of quantum mechanism.Enrique
    I agree with your intuition that the Qualia of Subjective Consciousness may be somehow related to the mystery of Quantum Entanglement. Unfortunately, we don't have a good theory for how entanglement works. So, for all practical purposes, it's magical. That's why some scientists and philosophers are offended by appeals to Quantum Magic.

    I have my own hypothesis to explain the "spooky action at a distance" of Entanglement. But it involves Infinity and Eternity. So It will also be offensive to those who prefer to remain within the familiar bounds of Reality. That's probably why even Roger Penrose proposes a material medium (quantum tubules) to explain how matter can become mind. :chin:


    Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist
    https://phys.org/news/2019-11-quantum-physics-reality-doesnt.html
  • Enrique
    842


    Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist

    A minor detail, but I'm not a fan of the suggestion that reality is not objective, I think this is a confusion of the issue. Objective reality should be defined as cultural practice based on collective models, a social function, not as a brain state, some perceptual entity, or physical objects. The more accurate view of quantum theory is probably that it does not yet provide for investigators to arbitrate between multiple possible objective interpretations, not that it implies reality is essentially subjective.

    The way that concepts of subjectivity are usually invoked misleads. "Subjectivity" results from distinctions between perception and description in the individual mind, not incommensurability of human perspectives. We are subjective to ourselves, but we invent a communal objectivity that can transcend subjectivity, and that's what makes civilized institutions even possible. We commonly reinforce social divisiveness with deceitful or flawed collectivity in the guise of proposed "objectivity" or "subjectivity", and this can sabotage the entire theoretical project, but we've got to be reasonable for this truth to be implemented behaviorally.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    A minor detail, but I'm not a fan of the suggestion that reality is not objective,Enrique
    I suspect that the article's title was intentionally provocative. All they did was to come to the same conclusion that Schrodinger did in his Cat-in-the-Box thought experiment. When a particle is in a so-called "state of superposition", it only exists in a statistical sense as a probability. Actually, the "state" may tell us more about the Mind than the Matter.

    We can't observe the virtual particle's physical properties in the usual way. That's because properties (Qualia) are in the mind of the beholder (ideas). On the macro scale, we can act as-if redness is in the apple. But on the Quantum level, it's like the bald kid in The Matrix said, "there is no spoon (apple)". It's only mathematical probabilities (ideas).

    Obviously, human mammals are not evolved to relate to abstract statistics, but to concrete things. Yet, for practical scientific purposes we can, and must, assume that objective reality is out there. But for theoretical philosophical purposes, we must admit that all we know about Reality is our personal subjective opinions. Just as I can't know your mind, I can't know your reality. Hence, objectivity is merely a social convention.That's why, in my personal worldview, I assert that our world is both Real and Ideal, depending on your perspective (relativity).
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    Like I touched upon, subatomic particles, ions, and small atoms have weird properties under many conditionsEnrique

    I'm conjecturing that the synthetic fluidity of perception can only be explained with quantum entanglement or some kind of quantum mechanism.Enrique

    It appears that the reasoning for your conjecture is summed up by the following flawed but rather common line:
    • X (in this case consciousness) is mysterious,
    • Quantum mechanics is mysterious,
    • Therefore, X has something to do with quantum mechanics.

    Please correct me if I got the wrong impression, but I don't see much more than that in what you have written. You name-check various counterintuitive or just interesting-sounding QM tidbits, like entanglement and "higher dimensions" (I am still not sure what that is about), but you don't suggest how they may be related to consciousness.

    I imagine scientists finding instances of quantum behavior to be so pervasive that atomic theory will be completely transformedEnrique

    Considering that modern atomic theory is already built on quantum foundations, I don't see how it could be completely transformed with the current quantum theory. Generally, as more fundamental theories are worked out, existing higher-level theories are not so much overturned or transformed as complemented, fine-grained, and corrected in a few places. But by and large, they remain functional and far more practicable in most cases.

    I'm conjecturing that the synthetic fluidity of perception can only be explained with quantum entanglement or some kind of quantum mechanism. If chemical reactions are the totality of mental processes, this lack of real integration would be mirrored by experience, but qualia in essence contrast with the time-lagged efficient causality of thermodynamic chemistry distributed in three-dimensional space.Enrique

    As cognitive experiments show, our conscious awareness is actually quite sluggish (even by classical neurochemical standards) and patchy, heavily leaning on prediction and interpolation to create the perception of a continuous real-time flow.
  • Enrique
    842


    I'm not exactly making a formal logical argument, I'm stating some weird facts about quantum mechanics and conjecturing that a theoretical accounting of these phenomena might revolutionize atomic theory. Maybe the subatomic constituents of separate atoms are entangled such that the notion of atoms as discrete units will change, perhaps electrons and photons move in higher dimensions than space-time. All of this centers on deriving the best structural model of the math, and when it comes to that issue I'm the student. Basically scientists have to hypothesize possible structures as mechanisms by utilizing geometrical forms and then construct experiments that will verify or refute their hypotheses.

    My hypothesis regarding consciousness is that the electromagnetic field of the brain interacts with cells by way of extremely sensitive quantum states in many molecules. I don't dispute that the biochemistry of the brain has a role in the structure of perception, as a hierarchical nesting of functional cell groupings that correlates with the orientation of more specific qualia, like an object's peripheral border as a two dimensional line positioned in space, to more general qualia, such as the total object. In Kant's terminology, we could call this various layers of a priori synthetic phenomena.

    I will venture to claim that perceptual patchiness is probably an artifact of laboratory tinkering or lesions. Natural perception is at its core a fully integrated multiplicity, and in the context of biochemistry alone, what exists to be interpolated? All simultaneous synapsing of neurons consists of time-lagged relationships between cells, but perception is not time-lagged. I'm guessing electromagnetic fields and maybe entanglement effects combine as a further layer of modellable causality beyond thermodynamic motions and reactions that makes perception a more cohesive, synthetic unity than traditional biochemistry can be, not time-lagged like the behavior of spherical particles. Perception can be inaccurate, variable, and damaged, but it isn't fundamentally an illusion, its real. Perception isn't approximation of an absolute reality of particles, its the mind, and theoretical particularity is its conditional concept, with progress towards better and possibly revolutionary mechanistic concepts intuitively seeming inevitable.

    Regarding ethical implications, I'm of the opinion that these new mechanisms along with many additional practical ideas can be made almost universally intelligible and acceptable to human beings, not at all obliging society to an information-based class oppression, though it seems many might disagree. This is a difficult issue because of prejudice, psychological struggle and eras of social conflict.
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    All of this centers on deriving the best structural model of the math, and when it comes to that issue I'm the student. Basically scientists have to hypothesize possible structures as mechanisms by utilizing geometrical forms and then construct experiments that will verify or refute their hypotheses.Enrique
    Are you aware of any mathematical models of entanglement that would yield geometric structures? It seems to me that the key characteristic of entanglement is lack of internal structure. By that I mean, when particles are in the wave-form state, they are no longer discrete parts, but somehow merge or blend into a whole system. I too, suspect that this transition from grainy particularism to fluid holism is a major factor in the emergence of Consciousness from Matter. But the current models are unable to describe what-is-going-on (mechanism) inside the "black box" of entanglement. :worry:
  • Enrique
    842


    I'm not aware of any direct models of biologically occurring quantum phenomena as mechanisms with geometric architecture. Experimenting with enzymes, scientists have shown that catalytic reaction rates in supercooled solutions plateau rather than continuously decrease, suggesting the process has quantum features, some kind of tunneling behavior independent of heat. Scientists also have demonstrated in experiments that enzyme catalytic rates are sensitive to minute changes in particle size. Replacing the typical, neutron-lacking form of hydrogen in reactive molecules with deuterium, one neutron hydrogen, measurably reduces the productivity of some enzymatic processes. The speculative conclusion was that quantum tunneling of sub-atomic particles in active sites had been inhibited by larger particle size. Researchers seem to be working around quantum tunneling, gathering circumstantial evidence of its probable existence in nature, but its structural form is a mystery. I've never come across any proven images of quantum tunneling in active sites, but plenty of you guys likely know more than me.

    The closest anyone had come to modeling quantum effects in biochemistry as of a couple years ago was as statistical data indicating levels of efficiency, speed, or sensitivity in bioactive chemical reactions that can be better accounted for with quantum concepts than thermodynamic concepts. I got the impression that research was progressing rapidly, so its not unlikely that major advancements have been made since then.

    I'm not familiar with the details of the wave function concept, what exact quantitative information it represents. Maybe a simple inquiry, easy to address, would help explain it. What is the relationship between the form of the wave function and scale? Can a quantum wave have any size at all, or what constraints exist?
  • Gnomon
    3.8k
    All of this centers on deriving the best structural model of the math, and when it comes to that issue I'm the student. Basically scientists have to hypothesize possible structures as mechanisms by utilizing geometrical forms and then construct experiments that will verify or refute their hypotheses.Enrique
    Off topic. I just happened upon this post on Quora Forum, which claims to show a structural geometrical proof of God. It's an interesting concept, but he offers no argument to make the connection between the pretty torus/mandala pattern of Magnetism and divine design. Based on the poster's name, I'd guess that his god is Allah. :grin:

    Proof that God exists : https://www.quora.com/Is-there-proof-that-God-exists-1
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    I'm not exactly making a formal logical argument, I'm stating some weird facts about quantum mechanics and conjecturing that a theoretical accounting of these phenomena might revolutionize atomic theory.Enrique

    Like I said, atomic theory is already quantum. If memory serves, we have analytical fully quantum solutions for the hydrogen atom in special cases, and numerical solutions for more complex systems. However, these quantum analyses treat the nucleus semi-classically, and even outside of the nucleus, more complex systems are also usually treated with semi-classical and even semi-empirical models - not because we don't have the theory (we do), and not only because it is hard to pull off, but because there isn't much need for a fully quantum treatment. The analyses, such as they are, already agree with experiments, so there would be nothing to gain from further refinements of the model. You have to smash atoms in colliders in order to get beyond the comfort zone of those approximate models. And that's my point: revolutions happen where we haven't looked before or where we have outstanding problems. They don't happen where we already have adequate solutions.

    I will venture to claim that perceptual patchiness is probably an artifact of laboratory tinkering or lesions.Enrique

    We learn about the psychology of perception not just from brain pathologies, but from non-intrusive measurements and even rather simple psychological experiments, such as those involving perceptual illusions and illusions of attention. Our visual field, for example, is not at all what it seems: a wide, almost 180 degree window that we perceive all at once. It is instead a narrow patch that darts hither and thither, painting a partial, time-lagged and sometimes not entirely accurate picture. The feeling of instantaneous integrated perception is created by the analytical machinery of your brain that fills in the gaps with interpolation and prediction and cleverly directs the actual visual attention only where it is needed most. (Much of your brain's impressive capacity is allocated not on contemplating Kant but on such mundane unconscious tasks.)

    Natural perception is at its core a fully integrated multiplicity, and in the context of biochemistry alone, what exists to be interpolated? All simultaneous synapsing of neurons consists of time-lagged relationships between cells, but perception is not time-lagged.Enrique

    How could you possibly know this? Your visual time resolution is on the order of tens of milliseconds (hence the 24 frames per second movie looks like a continuous image stream - a perceptual illusion). Audio resolution is a little better, sensory resolution - much worse.

    Perception can be inaccurate, variable, and damaged, but it isn't fundamentally an illusion, its real.Enrique

    It is tautologically true that your experiences, your qualia are not illusory, in the sense that you cannot be mistaken about having experiences at the time when they occur, but it is also demonstrably true that your interpretation of experiences can be mistaken (e.g. mistaking a discreet sequence of images for a continuous stream).
  • Enrique
    842


    It probably depends on what human beings are willing to introspectively assert regarding their own minds. Qualitative experiences happen that contradict a thermodynamic interpretation of nature, and some of this has been empirically observed in systematic experiments, like synchronicity in the brainwaves of meditators, but we may find some major perceptual variability, so we have to carefully navigate around our susceptibility to prejudice when we model mental capacities. Theorizing qualia can help immensely, medically for instance, but it can also divide sub-cultures. Maybe understanding the brain mechanistically such that qualia are modellable will actually make us more tolerant. Instead of locking up ol' Phineas Gage in an institution or punching him in the nose, we ethically study him, help him and everyone else better understand and deal with what is going on, and even repair his brain.

    Perhaps the substance interactions in some supposedly thermodynamic systems create temporary conditions where a model of quantum entanglement might be relevant, with a failure of traditional lab equipment to record this fluxing into unintuitive quantum states resulting from the reliance of technology's structure on the assumptions of more traditional models. Science might be seeing what it expects to see in some way, our instrumentation arbitrarily selecting unrepresentative, entirely non-quantum states of matter as it measures the environment because it is not finely grained enough, or maybe even inducing classical states as it operates. If scientists could find a way to record quantum behavior in a beaker of standard solution or a gas-filled container, that would be huge progress.
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    It probably depends on what human beings are willing to introspectively assert regarding their own minds. Qualitative experiences happen that contradict a thermodynamic interpretation of nature, and some of this has been empirically observed in systematic experiments, like synchronicity in the brainwaves of meditators, but we may find some major perceptual variability, so we have to carefully navigate around our susceptibility to prejudice when we model mental capacities.Enrique

    It's a big and to my mind unjustified leap from reported "synchronicity in the brainwaves" to "contradict a thermodynamic interpretation of nature." I am quite willing to entertain the possibility of some quantum effects coming to the fore as neuroscience details its models, but I wouldn't base specific conjectures on such a shaky foundation.

    As for entanglement, it is very difficult to maintain at a distance between isolated particles, even in laboratory conditions. A single photon interaction is all it takes to break it. That entangled states could somehow (?!) come into existence between particles embedded in separate bodies and then persist over time is completely implausible. This looks like very loose analogical thinking ("synchronicity" <-> "entanglement").
  • Enrique
    842


    The mechanisms are mysterious, its going to require a lot of hypothesis testing to find ways of observing quantum coherence. Maybe particles in natural settings coordinate their motions or phase states at a distance or in bulk without being technically entangled, conditions that aren't currently measurable.

    Thinking about the relationship of human vision to qualia, it seems eyesight does involve patchiness from saccading that is partially organized neuronally pre-awareness, but this seems to be distinct structurally from what we would consider our synthetic qualitative experience. Research shows that the vast majority of neuronal activity is directed towards the senses rather than into the brain. The mind is not a passive representation of the environment, it independently generates qualia beyond the influence of a sensing that is in its basics peripheral and subsidiary to the forms of perceptual consciousness.

    Glial cells compose the vast majority of the brain, perhaps it is possible that they have a role in generating qualia via an alternate process to neuron synapsing. This would explain why fiddling with neurotransmitter concentrations does not drastically alter the essentials of qualitative experience. Makes me curious what the chemical composition of glial cells is like. Maybe these cells contain molecules with similar properties to the cryptochrome pigment I mentioned with its fast triplet reaction sensitivity to magnetic fields. It would be interesting to study the effects of hallucinogenic substances on glial cells, though I'm not sure how that would be possible. Maybe this would identify some functional classes of molecules.
  • jorndoe
    3.6k
    It doesn't seem that quantum mechanics can downright bridge the gap (Levine, Chalmers).
    How would that work?
    Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the model could.
    Would we then have downright disproven solipsism, be able to determine that someone/thing is self-aware, have "redness" (the experience) somehow fall out of a mathematical equation, ...?

    On the other hand, I suppose quantum mechanics might provide some additional insights or (correlative) explanations.
    Perhaps like psychology/iatry, biology (and evolution), neurology, etc.
    And such insights surely remain worthwhile in their own right; "mysterious'ism" is hardly a goal onto itself in this context.
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    The mechanisms are mysteriousEnrique

    No, they are not. If you are talking about QM, and entanglement specifically, the mechanisms have been laid out out in theory decades ago, and have since been very precisely measured and confirmed. "Entanglement" is not a metaphor, it's a very specific feature of QM.

    If you are talking about some hypothetical future physics, then of course all bets are off (but don't expect to see anything much different where we have already done a lot of experimental research). But I don't see much point in such unconstrained speculation, to be honest.

    Thinking about the relationship of human vision to qualia, it seems eyesight does involve patchiness from saccading that is partially organized neuronally pre-awareness, but this seems to be distinct structurally from what we would consider our synthetic qualitative experience. Research shows that the vast majority of neuronal activity is directed towards the senses rather than into the brain. The mind is not a passive representation of the environment, it independently generates qualia beyond the influence of a sensing that is in its basics peripheral and subsidiary to the forms of perceptual consciousness.Enrique

    And pretty much all of this sensory processing flies under the radar of our introspection, which I think is a major reason to be skeptical of naive interpretations of "qualia" - I find that illusionists have a good point here.
  • Enrique
    842


    When I said the mechanisms of quantum behavior are mysterious, I meant as they occur in natural environments, not research settings. What's the relationship of entanglement to coherence? Could some kind of coherence be a naturally occurring or evolutionarily sculpted entanglement system? Does an alternate possible quantum mechanism exist for coherence, perhaps hinted at by laboratory results you've heard of?

    What exactly are you referring to when you say "sensory processing" and "naïve interpretations of qualia"?
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    When I said the mechanisms of quantum behavior are mysterious, I meant as they occur in natural environments, not research settings.Enrique

    If quantum behavior is different in natural settings and in research settings, then it is not not the quantum behavior that we know from quantum physics. Quantum physics is supposed to be universal, so that quantum physics in natural environments is no more mysterious than quantum physics in research settings. This then goes in the "future physics" file. At this time there is no reason to suspect anything of the sort - which of course doesn't mean that it couldn't still be true, but that's just the usual fallibilist disclaimer that we attach to almost everything.

    What's the relationship of entanglement to coherence?Enrique

    Probably none, if we are talking about quantum physics, as opposed to something completely speculative.

    Note the difference between the cases of chemical magnetoreception in birds and reported brain wave synchronization between different individuals. In the former case the radical pair chemistry, which is hypothesized as one of the mechanisms, takes place on a molecular spacial scale and over the duration of a chemical reaction. That's a far cry from quantum entanglement somehow getting established and maintained over vast distances and durations (by quantum measures) and in extremely noisy environment.

    What exactly are you referring to when you say "sensory processing" and "naïve interpretations of qualia"?Enrique

    I mean that we cannot introspect much about the way our senses work just from the way they feel to us. They may feel like something immediate and intimately familiar, but in reality there is a lot of brain activity involved in producing that sensation, and that activity is itself is quite opaque to introspection. Being the subjects of perception doesn't give us all that much privileged knowledge about the nature of perception.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    The mechanisms are mysterious...Enrique
    No, they are not.SophistiCat
    Sophisticat is in complete denial of the reality of human ignorance. 'There's nothing unknown out there, we already know it all.'
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    Failure of reading comprehension. As per usual.
  • Enrique
    842


    I mean that we cannot introspect much about the way our senses work just from the way they feel to us. They may feel like something immediate and intimately familiar, but in reality there is a lot of brain activity involved in producing that sensation, and that activity is itself is quite opaque to introspection. Being the subjects of perception doesn't give us all that much privileged knowledge about the nature of perception.

    Neuroscience shows that initial steps in the process of sensing occur beyond our awareness. But I think a disjunct probably exists between qualia and sensing that makes these almost incomparable domains. Qualia are the components of consciousness, while sensing consists of naturally selected unconscious relationships between bodies and features of ecosystems, and interfacing of these domains is more conditional function than representation, a biological abbreviation making a narrow array of particularly key behaviors, reflexes for instance, more efficient. Neuroscience can generate facts about sensing that are inaccessible to naked introspection, and introspection can elucidate consciousness in ways that material science alone is incapable of. Introspection can be more perceptive as a purposeful integration of and experimentation with qualia than our senses. Actually, even science seems to essentially be a method for proving introspections by collective analysis. I'm curious how you would combine this with the common idea that introspection is illusory.
  • Enrique
    842


    We have models of how qualia are stimulated by sensory organs and associated with some neuronal complexes, and we can correlate electrode activation of very specific brain regions to qualia with a lot of trial and error, but the spontaneous manifestation of qualia apart from these contexts has not been described. In general, explanations for qualia are mostly lacking. It seems to me that an entirely new set of physical processes in the brain and the environment must be identified to address qualia. If mechanisms differing from thermodynamic biochemistry, such as quantum effects, were located, color or perhaps any qualitative phenomenon could become more modellable.

    We might be able to correlate color itself with a particular complex of molecules, perhaps together with a total revision in our comprehension of what molecules are, figuring out how matter subsists in higher dimensions than space-time, which would be heavily dependent on the mathematics of quantum physics, applying our equations to the invention of instruments that measure naturally occurring retroactive causality of photons etc., near instantaneous tunneling of particles, and coherence.

    An entirely new vocabulary would enter common usage for reference to these novel conceptual intuitions of how mind and matter work. Qualia would still be ineffable in a sense because the verbiage is not identical to the experience itself, but from the standpoint of theory, we might arrive at a full explanation, where no phenomenon of qualia remains mysterious. Of course our enhanced observations and theoretical accounts could conceivably lead to further degrees of unintuitive causality that are presently not even imaginable.

    At least that's how it appears to me.
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