Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, the Reality Possibly
  • Enrique
    842
    I wrote a brief essay on the nature of qualia, an issue I've been thinking about a lot lately. Read it and give me your opinions!

    The Nature and Human Impact of Qualia

    Qualia have captured the imagination of philosophy of mind for generations, with a substantial body of scholarly literature devoted to exclusive analysis of this subject. What are these mysterious phenomena both internal and external to mind, which create the appearance of our world while being simultaneously informed by environments, both inside and outside of particularized matter as we know it intuitively? Why do qualia differ between species and human individuals, even when surroundings are nearly identical, and looking at the opposite side of the coin, why are qualia similar enough that many billions of organisms can perceive, conceive, predict each other’s behaviors, intentions, even overall mental states despite differing conditions of their biochemistries and physiologies? Some phenomenon extremely basic to the structure of mind as such must exist, embodied in all these hugely variant lifeforms as a foundational dynamic of cognition, yet at the same time so subtly and diversely intricate that no two moments of mental experience can ever be regarded as exactly the same, even for the intensely self-observant human psyche.

    A verified understanding of qualia pends much further research, but we can make some initial speculations based on current science. In particular, the application of quantum physics to biology sheds light on intriguing phenomena. Scientists have identified entanglement in photosynthetic reaction centers within which light-activated electrons of multiple chlorophyll pigments are actually more like a single perturbing quanta field than a particle transport chain, with energization transmitted to centrally located reaction center molecules responsible for initiating biochemical pathways that drive much of cellular metabolism in plants, stimulation that can take place from any direction and while diffuse electron wavicle structure is in any orientation. We can liken this type of quanta phenomenon to a subatomic body of water, where translation of light into kinetic energy at any point in the electron field generates a holistic ripple effect that never fails to evince statistical signs of reaction center activation in nearly identical proportion to UV exposure, total energy yield from any quantity or orientation of ultraviolet photons.

    Though experimental proof is still lacking, the key functional role of ‘entanglement systems’ or hybrid electron waves spanning multiple molecules to a biological process as basic as photosynthesis makes it seem probable that this type of phenomenon is one of the core components of physiology, a pillar of life’s chemistry. From this provisional assumption, and it cannot be emphasized enough that it is wholly an assumption, we can consider possible wider implications.

    First of all, we know that photons of different wavelengths have additive properties when combined: any two primary colors synthesize to produce a secondary color, all visible wavelengths together produce white light, and so on. Like photons, electrons also have a wavelike nature and no doubt additive properties within single atoms or small collections of molecules, which are probably minute enough to evade detection by the naked eye, and most likely decompose quickly in an inorganic environment due to decoherence from thermodynamic “noise” of kinetic entropy characterizing large aggregates of agitated mass.

    However, in a physiological context, mass is much less subjected to entropic effects of kinetic motion, being stabilized as emergent structurality in biochemical pathways and additional types of molecular systems, so that these additive properties of electron wavelength may possibly be sustained for a prolonged period. Not only this, but electrons can hypothetically be entangled in multiple ways at once, creating a superposition in which additive properties of numerous entanglement structures are simultaneously congregated into larger entanglement structures, systems within systems that we might want to distinguish from the relatively simplistic situation inhering in photosynthesis, a categorically different phenomenon of hybridized ‘coherence field’. If coherence fields are found to be supported by the molecular assemblages of cellular biochemistry in the nervous system, especially likely to be discovered in the brain, their extremely complex additive properties may be what we know as ‘qualia’. In this scenario, qualia are not merely an immateriality supervenient on atoms, but instead a kind of exceedingly complex “color” or electromagnetically quantum resonance, material states intrinsic to tangible structure of the physical world.

    The question then is how what we know as our conscious self-awareness can emerge from this basic qualia phenomenon. How do qualia give rise to the qualitative “experience” of a perceiver? A possible explanation is that biochemical and physiological structures exist, particularly in the brain, for synchronizing these sustained coherence fields, analogous to the clock mechanism of a CPU, so that qualia are metaorganized into a large array of experiential modules, parts of which compose the self-aware mind. Activity of these compound modules may manifest as the standing brain waves detected by EEG (electroencephalogram).

    Based on the anatomy of macroscopic organisms, it seems that some level of constraint is imposed on the ability of these coherence fields alone to adequately manage behavior. Limitations probably arise from the division of labor necessary for strong, efficient mobility in an environment influenced by gravitation, with systems that must be devoted more exclusively to gas exchange (respiration) and distribution (circulation), excretion, access to nutritional sources, defense from predation, and so on, which precludes ubiquitous presence of standing waves and clock mechanisms in many tissues.

    Nervous systems resolve this structural complication as a highly effective means of integrating far-flung parts of the body by extremely rapid electron coherence and tunneling in more or less dense webs of nerve cells, theoretically comparable to the electrical conductance of electronic devices, which allows organisms to simply grow bigger without prohibitive sacrifice of motility and general responsiveness to demands of ecosystems. Extreme density of nerve cells in the brain strongly hints that either some kind of upper limit exists to the possible size or synchronization of functional coherence fields in organic tissues, requiring a further mechanism of physiological connectivity, or molecular organization of nerve cells is key for somehow amplifying coherence field effects, perhaps in conjunction with the chemistry of glial cells. The vast variety of different kinds of neurons and glia in the brain may be an indication of why there are such widely varying classes of qualia - visual, aural, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and so on - a gigantic miscellany in possibilities for additive resonance.

    These insights point to some very definite theoretical conclusions. Qualia themselves, as a basic facet of matter, may be more fundamental than the modular experiencing we term ‘mind’. A bacterium or bacteria colony for instance could participate in an emergent phenomenon of qualia as a result of its molecular assemblages, even to the extent of remote analogy with the essence of human awareness, without a metaorganization sufficient to yield the kind of agency we call ‘self’. It may also be possible to induce sustained coherence fields as qualialike states in inorganic matter by some unknown mechanism, so that awareness and perhaps self-awareness are not confined to carbon-based material forms. Additional unintuitive phenomena of the quantum scale such as retroactive causality in photon entanglement indicate that entangled systems, hypothesized coherence fields and probably substance in general exceed the boundaries of spatiotemporality, a nonlocality transcending particular places and times that organic processes and perceptual mechanisms conceivably have access to. Ongoing synthesis of progressing experimental science with introspective psychology can possibly bring much more clarity to qualia as we investigate the nature of our own experiencing bodies, those of additional species, and their interactions with the environment, contextualizing these multifarious dynamics in theoretical constructs.

    If qualia and emergent experiential modules of the mind are this deeply rooted in the very essence of matter, it shows human existence in a new light, not entirely unintuitive, but certainly not scientifically conventional either. Qualitative perception may have a multibillion year history, and qualia may be as ancient as the universe itself. Even the slightest signs of what would become large-scale civilization by contrast, with its institutions for inculcating high-level reasoning as the foundation of a prediction-based social economy, appeared on this planet only ten thousand years ago. From a historical perspective, qualitative perception is an unfathomably vast tapestry, while rationality in civic systems is like a single pixel. Nevertheless, reasoning has completely transformed ecosystems globally and given humans unprecedented influence on terrestrial life’s destiny. Humans are an intelligent species, but considering the colossal forces of nature that oppose this sliver of an opportunity for deeply reflective pauses we have attained, it is evident we must never take planned society for granted. The security of humanity’s civilized future demands that everyone make commitments towards advancing the precarious culture of rationality whenever possible, a personal conviction to distribute and put into practice conceptual tools that built, maintain and augment our humble edifice of sanity amongst the leviathan psychoactive essence of the material universe.

    Science inclines in modern times to think of the human being as machinelike, a mechanistic system of coordinated parts analogous to our technological gadgetry. In the Information Age, this has transitioned towards viewing consciousness as a massively complex device of computation. The mind certainly calculates and predicts its surroundings, so in this respect it can be interpreted as performing many of the same functions as a computer, but even if conscious experience does someday turn out to operate according to fixed mathematical laws that resemble human engineering, its mechanisms must far surpass any theoretical idea we have remotely entertained. Scientific revolutions we can barely imagine are no doubt possible, but we can stagnate from excessive attachment to precedential theories, or even make civilization inhospitable for human actualization by overreifying, assigning names and concepts to phenomena without a culture that provides for successive improvements in comprehension and related practices. We must achieve balance between dedicated thought and entrepreneuring flexibility so that reason remains one of our primary psychical instruments rather than becoming our oppressive structural master.
    Enrique Options
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    What are these mysterious phenomena both internal and external to mind, which create the appearance of the world while being simultaneously informed by environments, both inside and outside of particularized matter as we know it intuitively? — Enrique
    Although my thesis is intended to reunite metaphysical Qualia with physical Quanta in 21st century Science, the quantum level implications are outside my limited range of knowledge. So, I don't really know what I'm talking about. FWIW though, here's some off-the-top-of-the-head speculations :

    Some phenomenon extremely basic to not just current biological functionality but the structure of mind as such must exist, embodied in all these hugely variant life-forms as a foundational dynamic of cognition, — Enrique
    The fundamental phenomenon, that produces both Qualia and Quanta, is what I call "Information". In its dynamic form I call it EnFormAction : the creative power to enform, or to transform.

    where the translation of light into kinetic energy at any point in the electron field generates a holistic ripple effect that never fails to evince the statistical signs of reaction center activation — Enrique
    Yes. As waves begin to cohere, they begin to differentiate into particles, but remain somewhat entangled in the fluid field. Those first "particles" are called Photons. But as the speed of propagation of Light-waves slows down, due perhaps to interactions with other fields, it "condenses" into particles (drops) of Matter. Each such change should produce an equal & opposite reaction of some kind, which we know as Thermodynamics.

    a categorically different phenomenon of hybridized “coherence field”. — Enrique
    I assume that a "coherence field" is essentially an entangled system of particles. But "hybridized" with what?

    How does a Coherence Field relate to an Energy or Force Field? Coherence is the essential quality of a holistic system. Perhaps it's similar to what I call an "Enformation Field", which causes novel & unique things (wholes) to appear where there was only statistical potential before. The EF is not a material field, but merely a mathematical operator, like addition.

    Entanglement is, by definition, the sign of a whole system, composed of at least two inter-related parts. The parts are interconnected via a valence (+/-) relationship, in such a way as to always be complementary (always add-up to 1 or 0). Which is why change to one-half of a partnership automatically means the other is of opposite value. Anyway, perhaps entanglement of parts on the quantum level is the first step toward greater wholes on the macro level.

    How do qualia give rise to the qualitative “experience” of a perceiver? — Enrique
    My guess is that the property of Coherence is what converts a quantum singleton into a system of many parts (wholes). And perhaps the mind is designed to detect signs of coherence in the environment as significant objects (holons) that may have the potential to affect the well-being of the perceiving organism. Incoherent things are random noise, which can be ignored.

    To quantify something is to count individual parts. To qualify something is to attribute personal value or meaning to a thing or system of things. So qualification is merely the act of evaluation relative to Self, which we interpret as meaning. It gives personal significance (quality) to an otherwise abstract sensory experience.

    It seems the structure of macroscopic bodies must impose some level of constraint on the ability of these coherence fields alone to adequately manage an organism’s behavior. — Enrique
    "Structure" is, by definition, a constraint that makes a group of individuals into an interactive system. That constraint can be either a physical energetic force, or a metaphysical meaning relationship. The process of Enformation creates internal structure, giving Form to the formless.

    Qualia themselves, as a basic facet of matter, may be more fundamental than the modular experiencing we call “mind”. — Enrique
    What you are calling “Qualia” above, is what I call “EnFormAction” : the power to create meaningful forms (ideas, things). It's more like a "facet of energy" than matter. It is also more fundamental than Mind, because Consciousness emerges at a late stage in evolution. EFA begins as Energy, then transforms into Matter, and then Mind emerges as the function of highly organized Matter.

    qualia may be as ancient as the universe itself. — Enrique
    Yes. Qualia (information) is primordial.

    but even if conscious experience does someday turn out to operate according to fixed mathematical laws that resemble human engineering, its mechanisms must far surpass any theoretical idea we have even remotely entertained. — Enrique
    That's why I have concluded that there must have been a Primordial Engineer or Prime Programmer. In my thesis the Mathematician itself consists, not of matter, but of infinite Information (potential ratios, relationships). Which is why Reason or Logos or Structure is the essence of everything we know. Since I don't know anything about that hypothetical entity, I simply call it G*D, and define it by its observed effects in the world.
    Gnomon Options
  • Enrique
    842
    How does a Coherence Field relate to an Energy or Force Field? Coherence is the essential quality of a holistic system. Perhaps it's similar to what I call an "Enformation Field", which causes novel & unique things (wholes) to appear where there was only statistical potential before. The EF is not a material field, but merely a mathematical operator, like addition. — Gnomon

    The way I understand it, energy is fundamentally a mathematical entity like you seem to be saying, a completely abstract quantity. It is a definition of relative motion, so all matter above absolute zero can be measured as energized.

    Relative motion creates tension relationships resulting in relative stabilities. An example from classical physics is the structure of a building, a balancing of kinetic energies that produces relatively stable potential energies. Atomic chemistry, the constrained range of energy wells typically called orbitals that electrons probabilistically reside in, analogous to harmonics of vibrating strings. Quantum physics, the entanglement systems of electrons we are discussing, where interactions between multiple wavicles create a hybrid structure. Coherence fields could be a further level of emergence in entanglement, where electron wavicle fields are in multiple so to speak superimposed states at once, on both smaller scales and larger scales, similar to how visible photons produce colors, and complex additive properties of wavelengths in these superpositioned systems supported by arrays of molecules create more sustained and organized qualia, the basic substance of perception, which eventually become sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings emergent from synchronizing and amplifying mechanisms in cells and organic bodies generally.

    That's why I have concluded that there must have been a Primordial Engineer or Prime Programmer. In my thesis the Mathematician itself consists, not of matter, but of infinite Information (potential ratios, relationships). Which is why Reason or Logos or Structure is the essence of everything we know. Since I don't know anything about that hypothetical entity, I simply call it G*D, and define it by its observed effects in the world. — Gnomon

    I'm on the Kantian fence about whether reality itself operates according to mathematical laws. Math may be fundamental, but it could also be the product of a distinctly organic way of perceiving, perhaps only relevant as an evolutionary adaptation in relation to earth environments, with the foundation being chaotic fluctuation that our minds resolve into form as an approximating prediction mechanism. I think observational science could conceivably prove either option though, so its not a hopelessly inaccessible antinomy.
    Enrique Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    Yes. Qualia (information) is primordial. — Gnomon

    @Gnomon and @Enrique, please explain in more concrete terms what you guys mean by this. Makes little sense to me for explaining the experiential qualia aspects of our consciousness. In my model (way of thinking), the only thing that is 'primordial' is the genetic-like programming that lays the basic interpretation/behavioral framework for our sensory/motor filtering, behavioral, and imaginative projections (e.g., like color red, sugar is sweet, etc.). Sounds like you guys are talking spiritual stuff, which would much more be a 'quack topic'.
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    @Enrique,

    I'm on the Kantian fence about whether reality itself operates according to mathematical laws. Math may be fundamental, but it could also be the product of a distinctly organic way of perceiving, perhaps only relevant as an evolutionary adaptation in relation to earth environments, with the foundation being chaotic fluctuation that our minds resolve into form as an approximating prediction mechanism — Enrique

    I've never found that to be such a mystery as most think it is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my mind, all math boils down to algorithmic addition and subtraction of whole/fraction numbers and related rates, all in one or more dimensions. This is exactly how the universe physics works on (calculations) combinations energy, matters, space/time, motion, etc. So, no big surprise it all can be described by our symbolic math that follows our universe’s core linear superposition model. And when it doesn’t we approximate, aggregate with regressions and statistical behavior and apply our basic math of that. N’est pah? Where am I thinking wrong here?
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    I'm on the Kantian fence about whether reality itself operates according to mathematical laws. Math may be fundamental, but it could also be the product of a distinctly organic way of perceiving, perhaps only relevant as an evolutionary adaptation in relation to earth environments, — Enrique

    A lot of what you say here seems sound to me, but have to take exception to this phrase. Science itself doesn't know what about mathematics makes it so powerful as an explanatory medium. Einstein himself said 'the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible'.

    He also said that
    You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way .. the kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the 'miracle' which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.

    Letters to Solovine New York, Philosophical Library, 1987.

    But the major point is that through mathematical analysis, it is possible to discover and predict a lot of things which could otherwise never be known at all. And I can't see how these discoveries can be understood as specific to a species.

    As for whether mathematical rationality is something that can be rationalised with respect to biology - well, that's just today's 'biological reductionism' writ large. 'We used to believe man was imago dei, now we know he's just another species produced by the same basic laws as other species'. But I say that with the acquisition of language and reason, h. sapiens 'transcends the biological', and can navigate domains which are not at all within the purview of the biological sciences. The principle of natural selection is, after all, first and foremost a theory governing the origin of species, even if in the modern world it is sometimes treated as a 'universal acid' which dissolves all previous philosophical insights.

    My view is that the nature of number and scientific laws can't be explained, as they're the basis of explanation; they are what we look to for explanations. When science turns around and 'looks at itself', so to speak, then it's no longer engaging in science per se, but often attempting to apply the same kind of reductionism that it employs successfully in the domain of phenomena, to another domain altogether. That is the source of a lot of confusion in my view.
    Wayfarer Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    My view is that the nature of number and scientific laws can't be explained, as they're the basis of explanation; they are what we look to for explanations — Wayfarer

    I just explained it above.

    Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the 'miracle' which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands. — Wayfarer

    that is kind of a creationist non-statement in the context of quantum mechanics and string theories, because it is not a miracle in that it just happens to be the myriad of universal physics constants happened to take on the values they have to give us the physics we have making our universe mostly driven by linear superposition, related rates, conservation of energy/mass, path reverseable, based on algorithmic addition and subtraction of whole/fraction numbers , etc.

    However, they predict we exist in a foam of parallel universes with other physical constants in which none of our math could apply and indeed in which we could never have come to exist the way we are. No not a miracle, just every one of infinite combinations exist at once and we call the one we experience an ordered "miracle".
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    please explain in more concrete terms what you guys mean by this. — Sir Philo Sophia
    It's a long story. My Enformationism thesis takes mundane Information (Quantitative/Shannon & Qualitative/Bayesian to be the essence of both Matter & Mind (also Quanta & Qualia, Concrete & Abstract). Ancient people had no concept of modern Information, so they referred to the same things as Body & Soul. If you take it that way, it is indeed "spiritual stuff", and could be easily dismissed by Materialists as a "quack topic". If you don't take Qualia seriously, the thesis won't make any sense to you. If you don't like the notion of "Creation via Evolution", don't bother looking into the thesis. :nerd:

    In my model (way of thinking), the only thing that is 'primordial' is the genetic-like programming — Sir Philo Sophia
    My thesis includes a primordial program that is similar to modern Genetic or Evolutionary programming.
    Gnomon Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    If you don't take Qualia seriously, — Gnomon

    I do take what I understand to be 'qualia' (the vivid experience aspect of awareness) seriously; however, to me that has nothing necessarily to do with spiritual or soul stuff, and is instead purely a mental property of the brain which dies with it. You make it sound like qualia referred to by the consciousness research community has to be spiritual/soul stuff. Am I missing something there?

    If you don't like the notion of "Creation via Evolution", — Gnomon

    what is the basic concept? I do believe that evolution of any system creates new innovative configurations as if they were intelligently designed as such.
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Enrique
    842
    ↪Sir Philo Sophia


    I do take what I understand to be 'qualia' (the vivid experience aspect of awareness) seriously; however, to me that has nothing necessarily to do with spiritual or soul stuff, and is instead purely a mental property of the brain which dies with it. — Sir Philo Sophia

    My hypothesis is that qualia occur from the additive properties of wavicles whenever they entangle and superposition. In non-living environments, these wavicles are perpetually disentangling and decohering also, so matter is composed of fleeting nanoscale qualia properties. When structures evolve to sustain and synchronize this additive facet of wavicle interactions, a mind can emerge. So qualia, the basic building block phenomena of mind, exist independent of awareness, and qualitative experience results from the organizing of inanimate qualia in various ways.
    Enrique Options
  • Qwex
    366
    ↪Enrique
    I think your guess misses something but for the most part I agree.

    It is not that space is a pure cube, but more a web of potential knowledge of space. There is probably a field.

    Matter is the fullness, we are transforming.

    Matter is chemical, per 1.

    A degrade of a massive elemental equation, matter is of the 'big bang' more than space.
    Qwex Options
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    You make it sound like qualia referred to by the consciousness research community has to be spiritual/soul stuff. — Sir Philo Sophia
    Qualia is the metaphysical manifestation of Information. Matter is a physical form of the same fundamental stuff. If you want to know how I arrived at that conclusion, you'll have to read the Thesis. But if you are a committed Materialist, you won't like it.

    "Spirit" and "Soul" were ancient terms describing the metaphysical aspects of the world. So "Qualia" and "Information" are simply modern terms for the same phenomena. But, in my thesis, the magical properties of Spirit & Soul are merely mundane mental deception, using memes & metaphors instead of smoke & mirrors.

    So, yes, Bayesian Information (including Consciousness & Qualia) is what used to be referred to as "Spirit/Soul". But the magic is in the mind of the believer, not in the real world.


    Meta-physics :
    The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
    1. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
    2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled “physics” - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled “metaphysics” - what we now call "Philosophy" .
    3. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: “Ideal” as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal “forms” (concepts) were prior-to the Real “substance” (matter).
    4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the “formal” cause of the thing designed.
    http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html


    what is the basic concept? I do believe that evolution of any system creates new innovative configurations as if they were intelligently designed as such. — Sir Philo Sophia
    Intelligent Evolution : http://gnomon.enformationism.info/Essays/Intelligent%20Evolution%20Essay_Prego_120106.pdf
    Gnomon Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    ↪Gnomon

    so, according to your beliefs/thesis, it will be impossible for AI implemented on computational machines to attain human level qualia consciousness of themselves? If you say 'yes' then, IMHO, your philosophy on the subject is not so much metaphysics but supernatural/Theological.
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    so, according to your beliefs/thesis, it will be impossible for AI implemented on computational machines to attain human level qualia consciousness of themselves? If you say 'yes' then, IMHO, your philosophy on the subject is not so much metaphysics but supernatural/Theological. — Sir Philo Sophia
    Where did you get that? I'm not qualified to offer an expert opinion on the possible future of AI. But some Cognitive & Computer Scientists are skeptical of machine consciousness. Are they of necessity supernatural/theological? Personally, I'm agnostic on that possible future. Are you a firm believer in AI as the replacement for humans, as Qualia perceiving moral agents?

    FWIW, my thesis does conclude that there must be a First Cause (or Enformer), which is "super-natural", in the sense that it must exist logically prior to the emergence of space-time in the Big Bang. I don't call that Theological/doctrinal, but perhaps Deological/scientific. Yet, again, I am agnostic regarding any features of the Prime Mover beyond what Aristotle postulated in his Metaphysics.


    Emergence of SpaceTime : “Spacetime and gravity must ultimately emerge from something else,”
    https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/physical-world/2019/quantum-origin-spacetime
    Note : He postulates that something quantifiable existed before the BB. But I think it more likely that the First Cause was qualifiable (i.e. Qualia). But neither of us can prove it.
    Gnomon Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    Bayesian Information (including Consciousness & Qualia) is what used to be referred to as "Spirit/Soul" — Gnomon
    what are you meaning there? Are you making up your own terminology? 'Bayesian Information' should be related to using Bayes conditional probabilities in forming the information. Yet, that has nothing to do with "Spirit/Soul" stuff.

    FWIW, my thesis does conclude that there must be a First Cause (or Enformer), which is "super-natural", in the sense that it must exist logically prior to the emergence of space-time in the Big Bang. — Gnomon
    why could it not be a randomly formed set of initial conditions for the system(s) to evolve from there? no need for super-natural stuff.
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    ↪Enrique


    In non-living environments, these wavicles are perpetually disentangling and decohering also, so matter is composed of fleeting nanoscale qualia properties. — Enrique
    that is pretty vague. So, zero point energy of free space has experiential/qualia consciousness? you define free space a having qualia consciousness?


    When structures evolve to sustain and synchronize this additive facet of wavicle interactions, a mind can emerge. — Enrique
    are you saying that is the necessary and sufficient condition for a mind to emerge? Could a qualia mind be made w/o that? why not? So, according to your hypothesis a worm could have experiential/qualia consciousness so long as it is in touch with its 'wavicles'?

    what do you say is the special property of random quantum fluctuations that could conceivable be the basis for ones on personal sense of experiencing the mind/body/world in a sentient manner?
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    what are you meaning there? Are you making up your own terminology? 'Bayesian Information' should be related to using Bayes conditional probabilities in forming the information. Yet, that has nothing to do with "Spirit/Soul" stuff. — Sir Philo Sophia
    I'm using a conventional mathematical probability concept for my own special purposes. Shannon information is abstract & mathematical. Bayesian Information takes into account human beliefs, which are subjective & metaphysical. It definitely has something to do with the ancient notion of "Spirit/Soul", as described in Aristotle's Metaphysics. His hylomorphic concept says that body & soul are a union of physical Matter (raw clay) enformed by metaphysical Form (design; structure). Form is the essence (soul) of every thing. Aristotle's rational discussion of human understanding of reality, later came to be applied to irrational fears of ghosts and demons.

    Meta-physics : The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
    1. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
    2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled “physics” - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled “metaphysics” - what we now call "Philosophy" .
    3. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: “Ideal” as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal “forms” (concepts) were prior-to the Real “substance” (matter).
    4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the “formal” cause of the thing designed.


    why could it not be a randomly formed set of initial conditions for the system(s) to evolve from there? no need for super-natural stuff. — Sir Philo Sophia
    Because, by definition, Randomness alone cannot evolve any novelty. That's why evolution requires both Random Mutations -- most of which are destructive to order -- and Natural Selection -- which is the design criteria (Platonic Form) for fitness. Would you expect anything meaningful to emerge from the random noise on your TV screen? When you see a meaningful image, you know that an intentional signal has been superimposed on the formless randomness.
    Gnomon Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    Because, by definition, Randomness alone cannot evolve any novelty. — Gnomon

    that is not how it works. you are confounding many distinct mechanics. maybe you are unaware, but in AI (e.g., genetic algorithms, neural nets, boltzman machines, etc.) initial conditions of the model are very often set randomly (e.g., random GA gene populations, random weights in NNs, etc.) and thereafter algorithms are applied to evolve, train, anneal, etc. My statement was that with such random initial conditions you do not have to have any kind of “First Cause (or Enformer)” because all the algorithms are perfectly fine starting off with a random set and quickly evolving/converging to a solution from there. So, in this framework it is nonsense to say
    Would you expect anything meaningful to emerge from the random noise on your TV screen? — Gnomon
    .

    I'm using a conventional mathematical probability concept for my own special purposes. Shannon information is abstract & mathematical. Bayesian Information takes into account human beliefs, which are subjective & metaphysical. It definitely has something to do with the ancient notion of "Spirit/Soul" — Gnomon

    you do not seem to understand what those math formulations mean. Shannon information theory uses entropy to estimate the maximum information which a particular coding system can contain or a comm channel can transfer, which definitely has nothing "to do with the ancient notion of "Spirit/Soul".
    Bayes rule (often employed in Baysian networks) is about optimal decision making using conditional probabilities when you have enough statistics of the events in question occurring together, alone, and have their probability density functions. Again, that definitely has nothing "to do with the ancient notion of "Spirit/Soul".

    Please factually explain otherwise.

    Thx.
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    My statement was that with such random initial conditions you do not have to have any kind of “First Cause (or Enformer)” because all the algorithms are perfectly fine starting off with a random set and quickly evolving/converging to a solution from there. — Sir Philo Sophia
    Do you think algorithms (programs) exist eternally apart from a Programmer? Or were they, like computer algorithms, a creation of an ententional mind? Who created the algorithms of Nature? Who was the rule-maker? Who gave the instructions to impose order upon chaos. Did organizing constraints on randomness just miraculously appear out of nowhere? Who was the miracle worker? Like any patterns within randomness, algorithms are a sign of an organizing intervention : in most cases, a Mind.

    Apparently, your worldview is based on the ancient notion of Materialism : atoms bouncing randomly in the void, and accidentally creating the marvelous world we know & love. Mine has been updated with 21st century Information and Quantum Theory. Early Quantum researchers were surprised to learn that their measurements [root : from mensura : -mens = mind] were affecting the particles being measured. That's because they were ignoring the power of the human mind to influence the physical world --- not by magic, but by making choices. Likewise, you are taking the Mind behind reality for granted. Like any philosopher, I want to know what's actually going on behind the curtain : Ontology.

    Algorithm : Algorithm : a finite sequence of well-defined, computer-implementable instructions, typically to solve a class of problems or to perform a computation.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm

    you do not seem to understand what those math formulations mean. — Sir Philo Sophia
    I'm not a mathematician --- are you? But I get my information from scientists who are mathematicians. And not all of them are Materialists. In fact, mathematicians are more likely than biologists to believe in some kind of God, because of the "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in the formulation of the laws of nature. ___Eugene Wigner.

    which definitely has nothing "to do with the ancient notion of "Spirit/Soul". — Sir Philo Sophia
    That's your opinion. I beg to differ.

    Please factually explain otherwise. — Sir Philo Sophia
    Nevermind. :smile:
    Gnomon Options
  • Sir Philo Sophia
    303
    Do you think algorithms (programs) exist eternally apart from a Programmer? — Gnomon

    yes, b/c they are built into the physics of the universe itself. all algorithms can be implemented with a comparison function combined with an "IF...THEN" function, both of which physics implements to carry out almost any natural process.
    Who created the algorithms of Nature? — Gnomon
    According to big bang and string theories they were randomly created.

    You seem to be thinking like a creationist not like a student of quantum mechanics and/or string theories, because they state our universe and its physics is not a miracle b/c it just randomly happened that the myriad of universal physics constants took on the specific values they have to give us the physics we currently have, making our universe mostly driven by linear superposition, related rates, conservation of energy/mass, path reverseable, based on algorithmic addition and subtraction of whole/fraction numbers , etc.

    Moreover, they predict we exist in a foam of parallel universes with other physical constants in which none of our math could apply and indeed in which we could never have come to exist the way we are. No not a miracle, just every one of infinite combinations exist at once and we call the one we experience an ordered "miracle".

    So, if you are going to loosely quote quantum mechanics to support your otherwise creationist/theological/supernatural views then you got to own all their theories too, not just the ones you cherry pick out of convenience.


    I'm not a mathematician --- are you? — Gnomon

    in this context, yes.

    In fact, mathematicians are more likely than biologists to believe in some kind of God — Gnomon
    so, your world view here is to sell God as the answer to all things you cannot otherwise explain with the science the non-God believers created for you? That is a dead-end for me as it does not give actionable answers/solutions to resolve factual problems, just allot of feel good spiritual stuff that gives opium to the masses.

    Hope your god-centric philosophy of mind gives you the peace you are searching for... ;-)
    Sir Philo Sophia Options
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    If coherence fields are found to be supported by the molecular assemblages of cellular biochemistry in the nervous system, especially likely to be discovered in the brain, their extremely complex additive properties may be what we know as ‘qualia’. In this scenario, qualia are not merely an immateriality supervenient on atoms, but instead a kind of exceedingly complex “color” or electromagnetically quantum resonance, material states intrinsic to tangible structure of the physical world. — Enrique

    Replying to the essence of your position, I've indicated here - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/105999 - why you might be right about the fact of quasi-classical nanoscale "coherence" at the level of organic chemistry, yet this actually supports a biosemiotic rather than a biopsychic position.

    Your argument is still based on treating consciousness as a Cartesian substance. Logically it is a stuff that can then be fractionated or diluted. You can imagine little droplets called qualia, or the very faint glow of qualia as a kind of radiation starting up from its dimmest setting. Qualia simply exist in some brute primal fashion - the mind-stuff out of which everything is made, or which is at least another aspect of the stuff out of which everything is made.

    So this is a familiar pattern of thought that leads so many to conclude that some kind of panpsychism is the case.

    But science shows "consciousness" is some kind of information processing. And semiotics gives - for my money - the best model of that. Consciousness boils down to our organismic modelling of the world - indeed a model of the "world" with "us" in it. It is modelling with an embedded point of view - what we call a self in relation to what we call "the world" (or the Umwelt).

    As I report in that post on the new biophysics, it is is now known how life itself is based on this kind of semiotic machinery. Down there are the molecular level, there is "information processing" going on in terms of molecular machinery that harnesses the entropic forces made available by the quasi-classical level of physical "stuff".

    So your approach - talking about quasi-classical effects at the transition zone between the quantum and classical scales - offers no reason at all for why anything happening at that level should have the "property" of consciousness. That is only a conclusion derived from the presumption that reality is fundamentally "a substance". And so if there seems to be material substance and mental substance, perhaps we can collapse the two into the one by the material analogy of thinking in terms of atomisation or rarification.

    Panpsychism is a solution derived from a particular ontological model - substance ontology.

    Pansemiosis by contrast is about moving forward with the fundamental dichotomy between entropy and information that lies at the heart of modern science.

    Mind (as understood by neurology) is some kind of information processing - but one anchored in entropic reality. And matter is no longer a "substantial stuff" anymore. It is somehow anchored in informational processing - quantum instability stabilised by classical constraints.

    And as I outline, the findings of biophysics show this to be true at the boundary on which life must first form. We see the two sides of reality - the quantum instability, the mechanical regulation - coming together at that nanoscale of being.

    So pansemiosis is testable hypothesis. There is empirical data. Biophysics gives us a direct view of the grain of being where "mindlike" stuff starts to exist as a causal mechanism.

    Panpsychism is simply an attempt to persevere with the substance-based metaphysics that the information~entropy approach to explaining "substance" has already long made obsolete.
    apokrisis Options
  • Enrique
    842
    ↪apokrisis


    Those are cool theoretical ideas, and I'll give some criticism.

    Information/entropy might very well provide a viable model of quantum fundamentals to an extent, but I think this is still reifying our intuitions of bulk, relatively macroscale matter and applying it at the quantum scale, similar to the particularity of atomic theory. When you get into quantum phenomena, you're talking about near instantaneous tunneling, almost teleportation, entanglement across vast distances, superposed occupation of the exact same space with simultaneous differentiation, somewhat like parallel universes, even retroactive causality that has been demonstrated in photon entanglement, where instantaneous synchronicity occurs as induced subsequent to passage of a particle beyond the experimental point of perturbation. The reality is not merely a case where qualia inhere in spatiotemporal matter, its complete transcendence of the spatiotemporal paradigm.

    I think we can be more ambitious about envisioning what an apex model might look like based on current science. We don't merely have to stop at a theory of the macroscopic/microscopic spatiotemporal divide, but can postulate a completely new, essentially nonlocal facet of substance yet to be detected directly by instruments, in conjunction with which sense-perceptual matter can defy the laws of classical physics and even those of quantum mechanics as it presently stands, something like a realm of supradimensional prime movement. If qualia are integral to not merely matter as spatiotemporally conceived but this nonlocal substrate as well, we can legitimately expect to explain vastly more phenomena, basically skipping the "spatiotemporal dynamics as information" step and going straight to supradimensional substance. The principles of nonlocality may completely defy or reconstitute our fundamental image of entropy among much else, such that the structure of all prior models is like a delusion (though I incline to doubt entropy itself will be transgressed, but who knows).

    I agree that panpsychism isn't necessarily an accurate concept, for many mechanisms might exist that don't involve a degree or kind of organization in matter adequate for qualitative experience to emerge out of base level qualia, but the most true account will probably blow all current materialistic conventions to smithereens, and this is tantalizingly within reach.
    Enrique Options
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Information/entropy might very well provide a viable model of quantum fundamentals to an extent, but I think this is still reifying our intuitions of bulk, relatively macroscale matter and applying it at the quantum scale, similar to the particularity of atomic theory. — Enrique

    Mmm. I would argue instead that we are only just getting to a position of understanding how the transition from the quantum to the classical scale of description is not a black and white cut off (the arbitrary binary of the "wavefunction collapse) but instead itself a zone between the two physical extremes.

    The problem is we have these dual schemes - quantum physics and classical physics. And both claim to cover the same total ground as quantum physics goes "all the way up" - because there is nothing formally in the quantum model to create a cut-off. And likewise, classical physics pretends to go "all the way down" - as again, no lower threshold exists in the theory to provide a cut-off.

    Understanding that there is in fact this quasi-classical transition zone - in the very particular world that is room-temperature water at atmospheric pressure - now becomes a way to marry the two kinds of physics with an effective cut-off mechanism.

    It does root the quantum~classical transition in an already particular scale of "stuff" - tepid water. But that is the obviously correct "stuff" if we are going to locate life and mind as natural biological phenomena.

    The most general quantum~classical transition is of course way down back at the Planck-scale – the physical universe as it was with the energy density and interaction distances it had at the moment of the Big Bang. That is the most generic description of the transition zone - the phase changes that did stuff like turn the quark-gluon soup into a flood of gravitating particles in the first split second.

    But that is a time when biology and neurology had no place. There is no room for what we want to explain - the "mind" - when even physical stuff was not properly formed.

    When you get into quantum phenomena ... its complete transcendence of the spatiotemporal paradigm. — Enrique

    It is incompatible with a classical Newtonian framework. Sure. But rather than getting carried away by the thrilling surprise that Newtonianism was too simple and mechanical to be the final theory, let's pay attention to how physics is actually knitting everything together nowadays. And how biophysics now has the tools and concepts to explore the quantum~classical boundary zone in empirical detail.

    This is a not-insignificant advance in knowledge that must constrain our biological (and hence neurological) theories.

    A panpsychist can't just jump on the woo mystery of 1920s quantum theory and ignore the 2020s pragmatism of biophysics as it reveals the really new insights.

    We don't merely have to stop at a theory of the macroscopic/microscopic spatiotemporal divide, but can postulate a completely new, essentially nonlocal facet of substance yet to be detected directly by instruments — Enrique

    As a scientist, you can freely postulate what you like if you back it up with empirical confirmation.

    I went through those hoops with Stuart Hameroff when he was proposing quantum decoherence in microtubules as the special sauce mechanism. I was quite happy to talk to a whole bunch of quantum consciousness researchers (and the psi community too) even if I felt they were deluded or charlatans.

    In the end, so long as they played the game of making testable predictions, they passed as scientists. And I'm not picking on them. Science is full of crazies who sometimes wind up right.

    If qualia are integral to not merely matter as spatiotemporally conceived but this nonlocal substrate as well, we can legitimately expect to explain vastly more phenomena, — Enrique

    I see your point but the problem remains that this is extrapolating an analogy rather than producing an empirical theory.

    The principles of nonlocality may completely defy or reconstitute our fundamental image of entropy among much else, such that the structure of all prior models is like a delusion — Enrique

    My argument is that "non-locality" is a transgressive shock to classical physics - as the metaphysics of substantial being. And that appeared to open the door to all kinds of wild ideas for a time. Plenty of folk invoked the quantum as the explanation of mind (just as an earlier generation invoked electromagnetism).

    But from a holistic or systems science perspective - as with a modern thermal decoherence approach to QM - this non-locality is seen for what it really is. And that is the holism of contextuality, the holism of global informational constraints. It is no longer a bug but a feature - a prediction of the metaphysics. (Peirce arguably predicted it.)

    Entropy is quite safe in this new scenario because thermal decoherence gives a nice explanation for why the Comos has an emergent arrow of time.

    Classical entropy does tend to get regarded as a substantial stuff, it is true. But really it is about gradients - a slope down which development rolls. And that general slope is from the Big Bang (the moment of maximum quantum chaos/minimal classical deterministic structure) to the Heat Death (the end state that is its exact reverse)

    ...but the most true account will probably blow all current materialistic conventions to smithereens, and this is tantalizingly within reach. — Enrique

    Well, for me at least, the recent biophysical discoveries were a confirmation way beyond what I expected.

    As I say, the surprise is that the mystery of where biosemiosis could start has turned out to have such a complete and quite simple answer.

    When in practice does the Universe become organised enough that it can provide a substantial platform for the new level of entropic complexity we call life and mind? Well it is rooted at the nanoscale of tepid H2O. There is enough entropic instability or quantum indeterminism concentrated at that physical point to drive the (classically-described, informationally-encoded) molecular machinery of biology.

    Everything is unlocked by making that connection. Everyone involved should be getting their Nobel prize in another 30 years or so.
    apokrisis Options
  • Enrique
    842
    ↪apokrisis


    You seem to have substantial knowledge about this nanoscale range of molecular behavior, so I'm curious how you see it fitting with the following model:


    In exactly what way consciousness emerged via evolution is a mystery, but we can be fairly certain about what eventually had to obtain in order for it to be possible. Initially, electrical properties in aggregates of tissue such as the brain needed to be robust enough that a stable supervenience of electromagnetic field (EMF) was created by systematic electron fluxing. Quantum effects in molecules of the body are sensitive to trace EMF energy sources, creating a structural complex of relatively thermodynamic mass containing pockets of relatively quantum biochemistry integrated by sustained radiation. EMF/quantum hybridization is likely responsible for our synthetic experience of qualia, how we perceive unfathomably minute and diverse fluctuating of environments as a perpetualized substrate, perturbed by its surroundings but never vanishing while we are awake and lucid, the essence of perceptual “stream of consciousness”. Nonlocal phenomena are ever underlying the macroscopic substance of qualitative consciousness, its EMF properties as well as bulked three dimensional matter in which nonlocality is partially dampened, and quantum processes in cells interface perception instantiated in bodies with the more or less nonlocal natural world mostly still enigmatic to scientific knowledge.

    Quantum features of biochemistry have likely been refined evolutionarily so that mechanisms by which relative nonlocality affects organisms, mechanisms of EMF/matter interfacing, mechanisms targeting particular environmental stimuli via functionally tailored pigments along with further classes of molecules and cellular tissues, and mechanisms for translation of stimulus into representational memory all became increasingly coordinated until an arrangement involving what we call ‘intentionality’ emerged, a mind with executive functions of deliberative interpretation and behavioral strategizing, beyond mere reflex-centric memory conjoined to stimulus/response. Qualitative consciousness precedes the degree of unification we experience as humanlike awareness, for qualia can exist and perform a functional role in consort with quantum effects and additional gradations of nonlocal reality while an organism is almost entirely lacking executive, centralized control in the form of intentions.


    Does this look like a viable theory, with "pockets of relatively quantum biochemistry" being the scale at which our thermodynamic body and (I think partially classical physics defying) molecular machinery generate the convergence zone? When I suggest that nonlocality is so to speak beneath bulk mass, I don't mean three dimensionally, but more like functionally, as a supradimensional causal influence of which spatiotemporal aggregate matter is the sense-perceptual facet. Its ALL nonlocal, but relative locality is the apparent form within certain kinds of exteroceptive sensation.
    Enrique Options
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Initially, electrical properties in aggregates of tissue such as the brain needed to be robust enough that a stable supervenience of electromagnetic field (EMF) was created by systematic electron fluxing. — Enrique

    But the brain doesn't run on electricity. The "fluxes" are at best ionic gradients across axonal membranes - sodium and potassium. And these are all regulated by molecular machinery, transport channels, so are classical rather than quantum in nature.

    Quantum effects in molecules of the body are sensitive to trace EMF energy sources, creating a structural complex of relatively thermodynamic mass containing pockets of relatively quantum biochemistry integrated by sustained radiation. — Enrique

    The crucial point of the recent biophysical revelations is instead that biology exists because it has the classical machinery to regulate such quantum effects. It is imposing order on chaos. So the logic is the other way around.

    For example, oxidative respiration releases enough energy to "blow up" a mitochondrion. But these cellular energy factories harness that by trapping the "hot electrons" in a transduction chain.

    Mitochondria have respiratory proteins with a string of iron-sulphur receptors that can "milk" an electron of its energy in nine gradual quantum steps.

    So yes, the system is quantum. The iron-sulphur crystal clusters have to be spaced by exactly 14 angstroms so that the electron stays captured by the chain as it makes its (most probable) quantum hop.

    But much more importantly, that quantumness is strait-jacketed by the fact the protein complex imposes such precise constraints on its path. It is all about the limits being placed on the quantum freedom in order to extract usable work.

    Quantum features of biochemistry have likely been refined evolutionarily so that mechanisms by which relative nonlocality affects organisms, mechanisms of EMF/matter interfacing, mechanisms targeting particular environmental stimuli via functionally tailored pigments along with further classes of molecules and cellular tissues, and mechanisms for translation of stimulus into representational memory all became increasingly coordinated until an arrangement involving what we call ‘intentionality’ emerged, a mind with executive functions of deliberative interpretation and behavioral strategizing, beyond mere reflex-centric memory conjoined to stimulus/response. — Enrique

    Again, what biology actually shows is the opposite. Yes, quantumness does provide a necessary ingredient - a fundamental uncertainty at the base of physical being. But the point then is that is why classical machinery - a structure of semiotic regulation - can in fact impose a useful organic order on the "quantum chemistry". An essential lack of order is what paves the ground for an evolution of ordering machinery.

    So biology/neuroscience evolves not as a magnification of quantum "coherence" but as the hierarchical imposition of "mechanical" certainty on quantum uncertainty. It is all about the harnessing of variety - levels of regulatory constraint.
    apokrisis Options
  • Enrique
    842
    ↪apokrisis


    I'll give some brief detail about the science behind this model and see what you think.


    It seems that quantum phenomena of biochemistry are exceedingly sensitive to incoming energy, so even the slightest increase in entropy can produce decoherence, converting a system into the more familiar form of self-contained jostling particles combining and separating at rates determined by three dimensional structure. Hypothesizing claims quantum biology is in need of a thermodynamic buffer shielding its actions from even most molecular-scale forces, which directs the search for its presence to very specific chemical components of even large macromolecules, particularly anywhere that individual protons, electrons or other charged particles are relatively free to shift across some kind of gap, such as between atoms.

    One possible instance of a biologically active quantum occurrence is the fast triplet reaction. An electron in an outer atomic orbital paired with its partner of opposite spin is so to speak knocked or drawn out of position into another atom due to the peculiar orientation of these atoms to each other. Even after this happens, the newly positioned electron remains quantum entangled with its former mate, while electromagnetic force is also exerted on it by its new partner, in which state it is in superposition putting it into a statistical percentage of same spin with each, a highly unstable formation that can be driven out of its wavering tension by tiny quantities of energy. When this type of reaction exists upstream of biochemical pathways in key cells, its behavior might be magnified by molecular flow it instigates, engendering exquisite sensitivity of organic processes to the environment.

    A fast triplet reaction was found by molecular biologists at a particular site in a blue light sensitive pigment called cryptochrome present throughout the animal kingdom within many different cell types and body parts, and was almost simultaneously identified in the eyes of European robins and antennae of monarch butterflies based on collaboration with field biologists. These two instances came to the heightened attention of biochemists because it was apparent that the cryptochrome reaction is sensitive enough for responding to the earth’s magnetic field, a vanishingly small energy source, supplying possible perceptual means of managing long-range migrations. Through a fortunate set of events the camps joined forces, discussing each other’s research projects and pinning down cryptochrome as a likely candidate for stimulating magnetically-induced qualia in transient species. Cryptochrome and similar molecules in additional organs also have a plausible adaptive role for making organisms sensitive to the magnetic charge of approaching storm fronts and other natural events, allowing them as everyone notices to find shelter far in advance.


    In its initiatory stages is quantum theory’s promise for clarifying the workings of consciousness. It has been known for decades that nerve cells function by voltage conductance down their length as ions are transported perpendicularly through the axon's cell membrane via a cascading longitudinal sequence of ion channels, stimulating release of neurotransmitters into synaptic clefts between axon terminals and dendrites as well as between dendrites, where neurons intersect. A well-founded model, but as in the case of enzyme activity, this process happens too fast to be explained in the standard way, as spherical particles incrementally ferried through a three dimensional rate bottleneck. It is also unclear how qualia with their subjectively experienced causal effects can exist at all in association with averred bare, traditional chemistry, resulting in persistently advocated dichotomy of mind and matter within our modeling of the central nervous system.

    Accounts have ranged all the way from consciousness as an accidental byproduct of the brain, supervenient on matter, with consciousness’ apparent causality being an illusion, at most a certainty-bolstering epiphenomenon of perceived free will, to awareness as fundamental to the universe and matter nestled within it, the corporeal world essentially being a perception. Philosopher Rene Descartes proposed the pineal gland as the point of intersection between mental and material, physicist Roger Penrose offered that gap junctions connecting brain cells might abet a mechanism of qualia production, but contemporary quantum biology presages a superior model, though tests are still forthcoming.

    Those versed in quantum mechanics find it likely that extremely rapid rate of turnover in the ion flow cycle of nerve cells necessitates that these ions take the form of a tunneling wavicle as they enter and leave cells through transport channels. Rather than being seized as localized mass by some kind of membrane machinery and moved or coaxed with electromagnetic charge through a medium of three dimensions, they probably undergo higher dimensional, near instantaneous tunneling into and out of the cell, along with some sort of complementary wavicle afflux down longitudinal transport chains internal to the axon that bust through rate barriers of diffusion. Along the length of an axon's interior, transduction of the total signal via diffusion alone would require hours, yet comes to pass in milliseconds, so obviously something much more potent is at work.

    In this quantum state, ionic motion may be acutely responsive to minute inputs of energy, just as in the fast triplet reaction, and the electromagnetic field of brains as registered by an EEG machine may be such an energy source. If brain waves linked to states of awareness can in fact impact ion channels or other quantum-scale facets of the biochemistry of brain and nervous system, this may go a long way towards explaining how qualia seem both supervenient and causal, with subjective consciousness being describable or at least much more predictable in terms of energy field/quantum mechanical interactions. Maybe we would gain the ability to say what something such as ‘color perception’ or ‘stream of consciousness’ is at the cellular level, and the dubious view that professes a paucity of function for the pervasive phenomenon of qualia would be overcome.


    I'm not familiar with exact science behind the brain's electromagnetism, but I imagine it could simply be emergent from tens of billions of neurons conducting voltage simultaneously, and this EMF along with brain matter might have coevolved so that cellular mechanisms of additive superposition in entangled wavicles are integrated with saturating and perhaps finely modulated radiation as our qualitative perceptual field.

    I think the anchoring causal stratum of this functional, semimechanistic complexing associated with organic matter corresponds to
    the nanoscale of tepid H2O — apokrisis
    Enrique Options
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    ↪Enrique
    So the cryptochrome example would go to my point. The nanoscale is where quantum effects can be harnessed by molecular machinery. The claim is that is how a physical energy - variations in the earth’s magnetic field - can be turned into an information processing signal.

    So consciousness is what comes from the information processing side of the equation - the reality modelling activities of a lifeform’s nervous system. The quantumness is just part of the necessary balance where the physics of the world becomes a bistable switch. Information processing has something it can work with - a switch to flip - just like a computer needs its transistor gates.

    When our laptop does its thing, we don’t consider that quantum computing even though a transistor gate is a quantum device down at the level of the flow of electrons in the semiconductor matrix. In the same way, the fact that the brain relies on exquisite quantum balances to transduce the physics of the world into neurally encoded signals doesn’t mean the resulting conscious state is fundamentally quantum. It is instead fundamentally information processing.

    And the same argument applies if it is shown that ion channel dynamics seem better described in quantum terms rather than classical terms.

    From a biosemiotic point of view, the quantum and classical descriptions are two crude ways of saying the same thing. What is actually going on only comes into sharper focus with a quasi-classical level description where we are modelling the way some kind of molecular machinery (the information processing aspect) is harnessing some kind of entropic potential (a physical flow that is poised at criticality and so amendable to switching and other forms of useful regulation).

    So a panpsychist is imputing consciousness to the quantum substrate and seeing the molecular machinery as some kind of amplifier of that flow of “qualia”. Subjectivity is basically physical.

    But the biosemiotic view is that the quantum physical world is only relevant as a zone of exquisite dynamical balance that lends itself to the new thing of being mechanically switchable. The microphysics can be controlled by informational processes - like whole systems of neural switches doing signal transduction and reality modelling.

    Consciousness - like life in general - is a semiotic relation that is made possible by the physics but happens because of the processing.

    Panpsychism has thus been refuted by science now. Or at least we have the explanation of how “mind” and “world” can interact at a fundamental level. There is this special thing happening at the nanoscale convergence zone. Physics becomes switchable. And so life could arise as the molecular machinery doing some self-interested switching.
    apokrisis Options
  • Enrique
    842
    ↪apokrisis


    Maybe instead of panpsychism, this paradigm can be thought of as something like transpsychism, meaning that mind transcends organic matter. Coinage of a really good term for it might be fun to contemplate.
    Enrique Options
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    Maybe instead of panpsychism, this paradigm can be thought of as something like transpsychism, meaning that mind transcends organic matter. Coinage of a really good term for it might be fun to contemplate. — Enrique
    I coined the terms Enformationism and EnFormAction to serve as a modern indication that Information (mind stuff, psyche) is universal (pan-) throughout the natural world. Other theorists have coined their own novel technical terminology to describe their new paradigm of a world made of metaphysical Information, of which Energy is one form, and Matter another. A literal translation of "Panpsychism" in view of the new paradigm would be "Universal Informationism". I just changed the spelling for reasons spelled-out in the thesis.

    But few of those theoretical physicists have noted that this new concept is akin to the ancient notion of Spirit --- "invisible, immaterial, and powerful", like Energy. Or, if they did see the connection, they wouldn't admit it for fear of ridicule by peers. My equation of mundane Information with transcendent Spirit is what freaked-out Sir Philo Sophia. He couldn't wrap his materialist mind around such a transgression of physicalist dogma, and accused me of theological propaganda. It's true that I see parallels between pre-scientific metaphors (Spirit is like Wind or Breath) and modern empirical models, but I'm no theologian or evangelist. :nerd:

    Forget Space-Time: Information May Create the Cosmos
    https://www.space.com/29477-did-information-create-the-cosmos.html

    A Universe Built of Information : “Information is physical” and “Information represents the ultimate nature of reality.”
    https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-03633-1_13

    Fundamental Information : The basis of the universe may not be energy or matter but information
    https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/the-basis-of-the-universe-may-not-be-energy-or-matter-but-information

    Spirit : The Greek word for Spirit is pneuma (Strongs 4151), which has a similar meaning to the word ruach. “Pneuma; to breathe, blow, primarily denotes the wind. Breath; the spirit which, like the wind, is invisible, immaterial, and powerful”
    https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hebrew_Roots/Trinity/Holy_Spirit
    Gnomon Options
  • apokrisis
    7.3k
    Maybe instead of panpsychism, this paradigm can be thought of as something like transpsychism, — Enrique

    Trans means "beyond" and so that would be a claim of dualism. Pan is a claim of monism. My own approach is semiotic and so triadic - about a relation between a system of interpretance and the world it models via a machinery of signs.

    Is reality all a single dual-aspect stuff? Is it composed of two essential and unrelated substances? Or is "mind" an informational model born out of the necessities of a entropy-regulating process?

    These are the positions as I see them.

    I'm not familiar with exact science behind the brain's electromagnetism, but I imagine it could simply be emergent from tens of billions of neurons conducting voltage simultaneously, and this EMF along with brain matter might have coevolved so that cellular mechanisms of additive superposition in entangled wavicles are integrated with saturating and perhaps finely modulated radiation as our qualitative perceptual field. — Enrique

    A bunch of people, like Pockett, McFadden, many others, have tried to suggest that consciousness is just some kind of global EM field. But it isn't neurologically plausible.

    The brain exists in a world with far more powerful EM fields than can be generated by the whole brain, let alone the trillion or so sub-fields down at the synaptic level that would represent the "modulation" of some kind of collective outcome. Your cellphone would zap your brain in a big way.

    And so the evidence that it takes a really big jolt - kilo-volts - to pulse your brain with transcranial magnetic stimulation, should be enough to show the brain is in fact a poor conductor and pretty resistant to forming any kind of global EM pattern. It just isn't designed to do that kind of thing. If it were, it would be obvious from the biology.

    Science is good at finding this kind of stuff. We know fish can indeed generate electric fields as a form of radar.

    Electric fish generate these pulses using special cells called electrocytes. These run in rows along the length of the animals’ bodies. These cells pump positively charged sodium atoms, called ions, from inside themselves to the outside. Then the cells open gates to let the sodium ions back in. The flood of ions back into the cells produces an electrical pulse. The voltages of all the electrocytes in a row add up. It’s similar to how the row of batteries work to collectively power a flashlight.
    An electric fish uses its weak pulses like radar. Those pulses create an electric field around its body. This acts like a bubble of electric current. When another animal enters that space, the fish detects a distortion in the electric field.

    https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/shocking-electric-eel

    So EM fields can be harnessed by biology as a tool of its information processing. It uses regular neural hardware - the ability to create pulses of ion exchange across membranes. The technology is there if consciousness did have something to do with generating EM fields. And so by the same token, we can see this is not what the brain is normally trying to achieve.

    Instead, electric eels turn EM pulses - generated by batteries of electrocytes - into a way to attack rather than just sense other fish. It blasts them so hard that their muscles are spastically contracted.

    Thus any EM-based account of brain function has to deal with the fact that brains don't seem in any way designed for sustaining fragile EM patterns. Instead they are designed for robust information processing once the necessary delicate physical signals have been transduced.

    This is in fact the central feature of biosemiosis, as I have explained. Information becomes possible as its own thing because physical signal transduction does reduce the "mind's" actual physical contact to the world to the smallest possible scale.

    The eye can detect single photons just about. The nose tells you there is a rose from connecting with one corner of some stray organic molecule floating about.

    It is not an accident that we sense the world in terms of its faintest sensory traces. Models must stand apart from what they model. The mind - as what the brain does - has to be as far removed from the actual physics of the world as it can so as to represent the world using its own neural language of "synaptic switches".

    The map is not the terrain, as they say. So the mind is formed by the machinery that first gates the physics of the world so as to make it possible to start building an informational picture of it.

    And to the degree that the world is quantum or electromagnetic or whatever, the brain must filter out that raw physics as a first transduction step. And by the same token, that means that any mark recorded - some neuron in the eye or nose gets triggered in threshold detector fashion - becomes a significant or meaningful feature of the resulting mental map of the world that is being composed.

    Biosemiosis is all about the need for an intermediating transduction step - the one that makes physics controllable. That is how organismic nature imposes its desires on a physical environment.

    Panpsychism is flawed from the get-go because it is all about avoiding what Howard Pattee - the theoretical biologist who laid the best groundwork for biosemiosis - calls the "epistemic cut".

    That may be all a bit technical still. But it is important that science has considered panpsychism in all its guises and has good reason to find it wanting. And now the evidence has really stacked up in favour of the biosemiotic approach to life and mind. The recent findings in biophysics seal the deal.
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  • Metaphysician Undercover
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    Those versed in quantum mechanics find it likely that extremely rapid rate of turnover in the ion flow cycle of nerve cells necessitates that these ions take the form of a tunneling wavicle as they enter and leave cells through transport channels. — Enrique

    You ought to realize that a "wavicle" is not a real thing.
    Metaphysician Undercover Options
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