Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. — alphahimself

Do you see the muddle? The standard for electrons is inference but your standard for consciousness is observation.

A scientific approach to consciousness is exactly analogous to any other subject of scientific study: you model the thing as best you can based on observations (not necessarily observations of the thing itself), you draw hypotheses from your model about future observations (prediction), then you make those observations (test), then go back and refine the model. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_consciousness?wprov=sfla1

To observe consciousness, directly or indirectly, you have to first robustly define what it is, and then determine differences in behaviour between something that has it and something that doesn't. This is difficult because people struggle to agree on what the thing is. It's even more difficult because people tend to insist that, whatever the scientific model of consciousness arrived at, there must be, as a matter of taste, a bit left over that is the bit we actually mean, whatever it might be (a la the hard problem of consciousness), and this bit can't be defined robustly in scientific terms (and therefore probably isn't real).

In our Philosophy of Science class, we have seen that Science focuses on the object, while the totality of reality is an interaction between subject and object. Looking at Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, we could say that science is a closed system, and that a statement such as "I am conscious" is known to be true but cannot be verified within the scientific system.

Does it mean that science is not useful in some cases? or it is just a tool for modelling the observable world. Like any tool, it works best when used for its intended purpose.

Don't you think that we underestimate the challenge of understanding the nature of consciousness by being convinced that we simply need to continue to examine the physical structures of the brain to determine how they produce consciousness?

Thank you.

To explain an event, it is necessary to define the event exactly in observable terms and to deduce it from a set of general laws and factual circumstances. The explanation must then be tested by predicting the recurrence of the event in the context of these - or similar - laws and circumstances.
Science in its present state (neurology and psychology, basically) cannot explain the specific phenomena that are called consciousness. Science can determine the general framework in which the phenomena of consciousness occur, but it cannot predict them.

It is not easy to understand whether this inability is due to intrinsic difficulties of the phenomenon called consciousness or to the current state of science. Much hope was pinned on definitive and immediate progress in this field in the 90'. It has not been achieved. Given the implications of the problem I am not sure whether this delay and its possible blockage can be beneficial or pernicious for humanity.

Nevertheless, scientists continue to study the issue with partial success. It is to be hoped that such progress will serve to prevent certain mental and social illnesses and not to control other people's minds without their consent. Both are possible.

As for the subjective, it is neither good nor bad. It is the inevitable outcome of the current situation. If we do without it we will not understand anything of actual facts of consciousness. That is why the subjective element must be included in explanations of consciousness.

Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen but can be inferred. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. We know that consciousness exists not through experiences, but through the immediate feeling of our feelings and experiences. — alphahimself

Actually, objective reality is a derived product of subjective construction. In essence, we trick ourselves into believing that the empirical entities we study as scientists can be focused on independently of the conscious process that constitutes them. But even though we are not aware of it, when we study an object ‘out there’ in the world , we are always implicitly studying consciousness. Studying consciousness is not a question of switching our gaze from the outer to the inner , but from the generic and superficial to the intricate. Phenomenology provides a method for doing this.

In essence, we trick ourselves into believing that the empirical entities we study as scientists can be focused on independently of the conscious process that constitutes them. — Joshs

The empirical entities (phenomena) that science studies exist outside of scientific theories. It is another thing if the concepts that science uses to study them were absolutely objective, absolutely independent of the scientific theories that explain them. Concepts are a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity. Broadly speaking, we can say that some concepts are very objective or less subjective than others. We trust the objectivity of those concepts that have been repeatedly tested and distrust the objectivity of those that do not meet rigorous criteria.

If these things are not made clear, it seems that there is neither objectivity nor subjectivity. This is not true either.

In our Philosophy of Science class, we have seen that Science focuses on the object, while the totality of reality is an interaction between subject and object. — alphahimself

If you take a look at e.g. the phenomenology of quantum mechanics, you'll see that science is already invested in this arena.

Does it mean that science is not useful in some cases? — alphahimself

To say that science is not useful, e.g. in describing consciousness, is to posit the existence of a thing that leaves no discernible mark on the universe around it. But since such a thing could never make its existence known, it as, at best, a negligible thing. If consciousness does effect its environment, then it is amenable to scientific study.

Don't you think that we underestimate the challenge of understanding the nature of consciousness by being convinced that we simply need to continue to examine the physical structures of the brain to determine how they produce consciousness? — alphahimself

Ah, well the technological viability of an experiment is a separate thing. It is perfectly possible that a scientific theory is only testable in principle, and that the technological requirements to perform the test will always be beyond us.

A more likely challenge for consciousness is probably ethics. Corpses don't have it, and we can't eliminate the possibility that only humans have a vital component of it. There might be experiments within our capability that we ought not to perform for ethical reasons.

Concepts are a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity. Broadly speaking, we can say that some concepts are very objective or less subjective than others. We trust the objectivity of those concepts that have been repeatedly tested and distrust the objectivity of those that do not meet rigorous criteria. — David Mo

Saying they are a mixture doesn’t make things clear.
Objectivity is a matter of intersubjective agreement on events which appear in different guises to each of us. We learn to treat our own vantage on an event as just an aspect of the ‘objective’ object , the ‘same’ object for all of us, when in fact it is never ‘same for all’ except as an abstraction, albeit a very useful abstraction. What is certain is that for each of us experience of that world is shaped by constrains and affordances such that some ways of interacting with the world are more useful relative to our purposes that others. The criteria of objectivity change over time as cultural an scientific practices change.

The issue of how consciousness can be physically modeled has been discussed at length by me and some additional posters to this forum, and I think we made some significant general progress. If you want a brief selection of casual reading material on the subject, look at my threads:

Qualia and Quantum Mechanics
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, The Sequel
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, The Reality Possibly

I'm turning into something of a quantum consciousness missionary lol Be interested to know what anyone thinks...anyone at all...(echo)

The issue of how consciousness can be physically modeled — Enrique

I think you got that backwards. You dont want to model subjectivity on the physical but show how models of the the physical emerge out of subjective
processes.

You dont want to model subjectivity on the physical but show how models of the physical emerge out of subjective processes. — Joshs

In my opinion, how models of the physical emerge out of subjective processes is simply the question of how unconscious aspects of mind give rise to the rational structuralizing of theory, which is a subset of the issue regarding how consciousness can be physically modeled. Did I grasp your meaning accurately?

Did I grasp your meaning accurately? — Enrique

I’m still working on my grasp of your grasp of my grasp of your grasp.

I’m still working on my grasp of your grasp of my grasp of your grasp. — Joshs

graspastic!

To be fair , I’d need to go over the thread you linked to. I would only preliminarily say that anything reminiscent of Roger Penrose’s formulations of a quantum basis of consciousness is barking up the wrong tree.

I would only preliminarily say that anything reminiscent of Roger Penrose’s formulations of a quantum basis of consciousness is barking up the wrong tree. — Joshs

I think he had the general idea with his microtubule hypothesis, but my theory is that it is additive superpositions amongst the entangled wavicles of some incompletely known class of molecules, a kind of quantum resonance, that gives rise to qualia in the brain by a similar mechanism to additive properties of the visible light spectrum, and the electric field of the brain is this mechanism's signature, one form of a much vaster coherence field phenomenon that allows consciousness to exist beyond the realm of humanlike nervous tissue. You can read about it in the posts I linked to!

Some relevant observations by Thomas Nagel, drawn from his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.

The first quote frames the problem in respect of modern scientific method, in particular:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Pp35-6

This basic idea was also the subject of Philip Goff's recent book, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (although I haven't read it.)

Nagel also presented a precis of his book in a New York Times OP.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.

Of course, none of this rules out a scientific account of consciousness, but both Phillip Goff and Thomas Nagel say that if this is to occur, it requires a re-definition of some fundamental axioms of scientific method, specifically, the axiom that such explanations can only be founded in objective terms. Because the cardinal issue of consciousness, is that in studying it, we are not apart from what we seek to know. This insight was also behind the origin of Husserl's phenomenological method, but it has been practically universally neglected in English-speaking philosophy since Ryle.

I like Evan Thompson’s way of putting the issue.


“Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience. The hard problem is the conceptual and metaphysical problem of how to bridge this apparent gap. There are many critical things that can be said about the hard problem (see Thompson&Varela, forthcoming), but what I wish to point out here is that it depends for its very formulation on the premise that the embodied mind as a natural entity exists ‘out there' independently of how we configure or constitute it as an object of knowledge through our reciprocal empathic understanding of one other as experiencing subjects. One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.

One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as transcendental or metaphysical realism. From the phenomenological perspective explored here, however — but also from the perspective of pragmatism à la Charles Saunders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as its contemporary inheritors such as Hilary Putnam (1999) — this transcendental or metaphysical realist position is the paradigm of a nonsensical or incoherent metaphysical viewpoint, for (among other problems) it fails to acknowledge its own reflexive
dependence on the intersubjectivity and reciprocal empathy of the human life-world.

Another way to make this point, one which is phenomenological, but also resonates with William James's thought (see Taylor, 1996), is to assert the primacy of the personalistic perspective over the naturalistic perspective. By this I mean that our relating to the world, including when we do science, always takes place within a matrix whose fundamental structure is I-You-It (this is reflected in linguistic communication: I am speaking to You about It) (Patocka, 1998, pp. 9–10). The hard problem gives epistemological and ontological precedence to the impersonal, seeing it as the foundation, but this puts an excessive emphasis on the third-person in the primordial structure of I–You–It in human understanding. What this extreme emphasis fails to take into account is that the mind as a scientific object has to be constituted as such from the personalistic perspective in the empathic co-determination of self and other. The upshot of this line of thought with respect to the hard problem is that this problem should not be made the foundational problem for consciousness studies. The problem cannot be ‘How do we go from mind-independent nature to subjectivity and consciousness?' because, to use the language of yet another philosophical tradition, that of Madhyamika Buddhism (Wallace, this volume), natural objects and properties are not intrinsically identifiable (svalaksana); they are identifiable only in relation to the ‘conceptual imputations' of intersubjective experience.” (Empathy and Consciousness)

One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? — Joshs

I think all indications are that quantum biology will provide very effective physicalist models of subjective consciousness.

What this extreme emphasis fails to take into account is that the mind as a scientific object has to be constituted as such from the personalistic perspective in the empathic co-determination of self and other. — Joshs

My opinion is that an account of subjective consciousness based on quantum physics will not diminish the sense that subjective experience is real or important in any way because subjective experience is nonetheless a causal aspect of reality. If anything, it will dissolve the sense that mind is intangible and objects are tangible to create a synthetic concept of tangible substance as both mind and matter. It overcomes an antiquated philosophical duality that gives rise to our materialist/spiritualist divide, not the cognizance of causal multiplicity and separate theoretical/practical domains. If anything, it will be a cool additional facet of self-knowledge.

Are "things" observable?
If so, in what sense are they observable?

Objectivity is a matter of intersubjective agreement on events which appear in different guises to each of us. — Joshs

Indeed, but it is not simple intersubjectivity, a simple matter of perception. The general criterion is what has been called the "adversity" index. That is, the resistance that the world opposes to our desires and practices. If it were not for this resistance, everything would be subjective and we would live an existence in solitude. Other criteria that are commonly used are derived from this one. Intersubjectivity, repetition, prediction, quantification... etc.

I don't see what is confusing. The application of the criterion and the objects to which objectivity is attributed may vary with our knowledge of them. The criterion does not change. And neither does our confidence in the existence of certain common objects throughout history and the world. A stone is always a stone and it is there. It is an immediate fact that only a fool -or a philosopher- would question.

A stone is always a stone and it is there. It is an immediate fact that only a fool -or a philosopher- would question. — David Mo

How does that have bearing on the OP?

If you would propose a theory of quantum consciousness can you explain why the observer effect in the double slit experiment occurs in response to experimental apparatus - as well as conscious observation. Inability to explain this would seem fatal to any such idea.

"Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature. The observer has, rather, only the function of registering decisions, i.e., processes in space and time, and it does not matter whether the observer is an apparatus or a human being; but the registration, i.e., the transition from the "possible" to the "actual," is absolutely necessary here and cannot be omitted from the interpretation of quantum theory." - Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, p. 137

If you would propose a theory of quantum consciousness can you explain why the observer effect in the double slit experiment occurs in response to experimental apparatus - as well as conscious observation. — counterpunch

From what I've read, the observer effect is not initiated by human perception but rather the detection sensor placed at the slit. This dissolves the interference pattern and you get two bright bands on the florescent screen behind the slits instead. It seems that what is going on isn't an observer effect at all but rather decoherence induced by interaction of a thermodynamically complex device with the quantum process.

This is seen in cells also. The most studied example is probably enzyme catalysis (specifically hydrolysis by amino acid metabolizing proteases), shown by multiple sources of indirect experimental evidence to involve quantum processes, perhaps tunneling. The reaction is buffered from surrounding thermodynamic noise with its decoherence effects in order to reach extremely rapid rates, one of the functional roles of an active site. Any chemical process in nature that occurs too fast to be accounted for by diffusion alone probably has quantum features, but quantum weirdness can be dampened in large collections of particles.

Conversely, many circumstances exist where quantum processes trump thermodynamic entropy on the macroscopic level, an example being electrical conductance, where the electrons move as particles through a copper wire at 10% the speed of light but simultaneously transmit a signal via entanglement and tunneling at 90% the speed of light. This extremely rapid "flow" through naturally occurring matter has not been explained in total, though we witness it so clearly in some contexts that it is almost taken for granted.

My theory is that substance itself transcends the dimensionality of sense-perception, but in some specific circumstances that are found on Earth it becomes more parameterized, as four dimensional, three dimensional and two dimensional, with our sense organs and bodies tailored for especially salient instances such as electromagnetic radiation traveling through the atmosphere nearly as if in a vacuum, macroscopic objects subjected to gravity, molecules fitting together like a hand in a glove, etc. In these cases, our perception exaggerates the phenomena to an extent, just as vision enhances the contrast between light and dark, is fooled by shadows, and distorts lines and shapes depending on their surroundings. Our perception can create an illusion that makes us sense degrees of demarcation in nature which don't actually exist.

So supradimensionality flows into lower dimensional form within many conditions, sort of like a cloud of polarity with relatively more definite shape, and our bodies exaggerate some of these states to give us an experience of tangible or inert objects which do not actually exist. What fundamentally goes on is more resemblant of quantum physics than the classical physics that is like an optical illusion.

From what I've read, — Enrique

How could you possibly understand the concepts you're using, and not have heard of the observer effect? From someone who was really capable of understanding these concepts, I would have expected something along the lines of - "my theory of consciousness is not dependent on the observer effect. Rather, the quantum qualities of consciousness are ....blah, blah, blah." Instead, it's like you googled the observer effect, and quoted wikipedia. Who are you trying to fool? Yourself??

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. — Wayfarer

Sounds balanced.

The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order

Apparently he didn't learn any science from the 20th century. Objective spacetime has been dead for more than a century.

In the double-slit experiment its not an observer effect, its quantum decoherence induced by the experimental devices. Instrumentalism, not woo. Maybe a fallacious analogy is being made between the double-slit and something else that is an observer effect. Obviously qualia have causal influence in nature via the mind, maybe that's what you mean.

Other than those five paragraphs of impenetrable jargon that just screams "look how smart I am mummy" we're really no closer to you giving an explanation of your quantum theory of consciousness.

Werner Heisenberg thought a potential subjective interpretation of the observer effect in the double slit experiment relevant to address. Perhaps...

qualia's causal influence in nature via the mind — Enrique

...was what he meant! But my guess is Heisenberg says what he means, and uses intelligible language to say it, and jargon where unavoidable. You, on the other hand give me five paragraphs of unintelligible jargon, that don't answer the question I asked. What am I to infer? Did you download a quantum mechanics jargon generator?

Indeed, but it is not simple intersubjectivity, a simple matter of perception. The general criterion is what has been called the "adversity" index. — David Mo

I looked up adversity index and couldn’t find anything about it. It sounds like you’re talking about the fact that our perceptions and cognitions are shaped by constraints and affordances offered by the world that we encounter. This is what keeps us from a radical relativism. Some ways of perceiving the world are more useful than others because of these constraints and affordances. But I don’t agree with the naive realist position that it makes sense to talk about an object as if those constraints and affordances are perceived identically by everyone , that is, that they are a pure function of objects in the world rather than a relationship between the knower and the known. This is not to say that we cannot achieve intersubjective pragmatic agreement on the objectivity of objects in order to do science but it is important to recognizes that the ‘same object for all’ is only a useful abstraction , and subject to change as science evolves.

A stone is always a stone and it is there. It is an immediate fact that only a fool -or a philosopher- would question. — David Mo

The other groups that would question the coherence of making subject-independent claims about objects are researchers in autopoietic self-organizing systems theory( Francisco Varela, Thompson) which includes biologists as well as psychologists, 4EA cognitive psychologists (embodied, enactive,embedded, extended and affective, Shaun Gallagher, Jan Slaby, Di Paulo, Andy Clark, Matthew Ratcliffe ) and workers in perceptual psychology ( Alva Noe ) and AI( Riccardo Manzotti:

https://res.mdpi.com/d_attachment/philosophies/philosophies-04-00039/article_deploy/philosophies-04-00039.pdf )

You should take a peek at their research.

You, on the other hand give me five paragraphs of unintelligible jargon, that don't answer the question I asked. What am I to infer? Did you download a quantum mechanics jargon generator? — counterpunch

lol, you could try reading about the terms I used. Was it "Earth" that threw you? Looking back at that I guess its kind of technical, but reading some articles about the terminology should be sufficient, the concepts are all drawn from books I've read by respected scientists. Deconstructing the history of quantum physics is beyond my ability. If some specific aspect of what I wrote is indecipherable to you at this point, I'll be more than willing to attempt a clarification if you want. I've been analyzing this topic awhile and maybe lost track of where earlier stages of comprehension are at.

I'm reminded of that famous old quote by Albert Einstein "If you cannot explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Tell me how quantum mechanics explains how there's a 'something' looking out through my eyeholes.

What, in no more than a dozen words, is the relationship between the two?

Tell me how quantum mechanics explains how there's a 'something' looking out through my eyeholes. What, in no more than a dozen words, is the relationship between the two? — counterpunch

Have you been watching too much MTV? lol Electric field of brain as registered by EEG interacts with quantum fields of entangled particles (qualia) in additive way (like wavelengths of the visible light spectrum), to produce qualitative experience (sounds, images, feels) in the head. Horribly verbose, I realize, but does that make sense?