• Enrique
    842
    This is an essay I wrote on a subject I've been harping on for months at this forum, the substance of subjective perception! For those of you who have been engaging in discussion with me about this topic along with everyone else, maybe you will find it interesting and have some insights for me.


    1. In Search of a Paradigm for Theorizing Consciousness

    The mind/body problem has deeply preoccupied many natural philosophers and then scientists since at least the 17th century when Rene Descartes brought it into sharp relief with his book Meditations. He described how it is possible to radically doubt the facts of existence, for we may be fooled by errors of our senses, fallacious hearsay, or even a malicious spirit bent on duping us behind the scenes. But there is one fact we can never deny: our thoughts exist, the condition for any first-person experience at all to be taking place. As a consequence of his reasoning, he wrote the Latin words cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am”, immortalized in the annals of intellectual tradition.

    But then the question immediately presents itself: what is the substance of thought, its composition? Descartes’ is certainly not the only possible approach, and a schema this paper intends to counter with a sort of panprotopsychism to be unveiled as we proceed, but he adopted dualism, the view that human thought obtains in a spiritual substance distinctively capable of reason, set apart from our material bodies and the visceral instincts which arise from them. This perspective has intuitive appeal, for human thoughts certainly seem to occur independent of flesh and bone, with the capacity to pilot our bodies, impulses and decisions in profoundly executive functioning. At the same time, alterations to anatomy, most dramatically in the nervous system and brain, clearly modify the properties of human experience such as feelings, sensations, mental images, even personalities, reasoning patterns, all sorts of cognitive abilities. Mind affects physiological matter while the matter we are comprised of likewise influences mind; causality proceeds in both directions, from qualitative subjectivity to the objectively physical or vice versa, and academia has been interrogating this enigmatic interface for centuries.

    The issue was not lost on Descartes, who proposed the brain’s pineal gland as an intersection point of mind with matter. Not a bad initial hypothesis, for conjoinment obviously must consist in something definite, concrete, tangible about the body’s structure, and the brain’s key relationship to awareness makes its interior the logical choice. But as we learned more about biochemistry, it became apparent that organisms are made of fundamental units called cells, dazzlingly diverse aqueous solutions contained by membranes, and solution chemistry as investigated in a typical lab seems anything but amenable to bodily processes. Thousands of enzymes, each simultaneously catalyzing up to a hundred intricate reactions per second between complex molecules, neurons transmitting signals from head to foot and back again in mere milliseconds, this is nothing like the optically inspectable diffusion of base in a beaker of acidic solution infused with indicator chemical, the gradual melting or freezing of water, even the substantial delay in the diffusion of a noxious gas throughout a room. There must be something more, responsible for the impossibly rapid yet highly organized rates so characteristic of biology.

    The answer for Earth’s terrestrial nervous systems, organisms and ecosystems generally seems like it must reside in the quantum nature of matter as discovered since the beginning of the 20th century. Quantum processes have been proven extremely fast, often nearly instantaneous, and while first assumed operative upon only subatomic constituents, they are being implicated at larger and larger scales. Recently, the record for quantity of entangled atoms was set at a whopping fifteen million, and then shattered by entangling two aluminum drums a fifth the thickness of a human hair. Entanglement has been demonstrated to occur at a minimum of three trillion meters per second, while light speed is a comparatively slow three hundred million meters per second. Thermodynamic chemistry and physics have historically aimed at encompassing, in theory, the nature of atoms as driven by heat (energy transfer between matter of different temperatures, more specifically different rates of internal motion) or work (energy transfer between matter as classical, Newtonian force is exerted between objects), and still hold as an apt model of immense ranges of material occurrence, but are transitioning into the subsidiary of a quantum paradigm which more accurately and precisely synthesizes our knowledge of macroscopic phenomena with the inner features of atoms as exacted by electrons, nuclei, radiation, etc.

    To get a handle on the quantum world, we may describe three of its facets. In quantum tunneling, the wavelike nature of matter can create a nonzero chance of particles transiting to the opposite side of a thin barrier, a phenomenon which explains how nucleic particles travel out of a radioactive atom, the penetration of electrons through oxide film in soldered metal wires, even the flux in enzyme active sites. Quantum superposition is a property by which waves combine to produce new hybrid waves, responsible for the shapes of electron orbitals and colors of the visible spectrum. Quantum entanglement refers to the way material systems correlate in “spooky action at a distance”, jointly modified by near-instantaneous causality, which has found applications in cryptography, helped to explain the function of biological systems such as photosynthetic reaction centers, and continues to be further elucidated by crafty experiments.

    So it seems that quantum processes are central to many material happenings, including organic ones. The brain along with much else in the natural world can only be accounted for if its components are moving and changing at quantum rates. But surely an explanation of nature and the body in terms of its quantum features must lie far in the future? It turns out that a quantum theory of organic matter is just around the corner, and already engenders hope for explaining one of the most elusive aspects of neuroscience in particular, the generation of qualitative experience.


    2. Arrival at a Theory of Qualitative Experience

    The first foray into a substantive quantum theory of consciousness was probably carried out by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff in the 1990’s. Orch-Or (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) theory proposed that microtubules, the basic components of a cell’s cytoskeleton, have properties conducive to entanglement between their atoms, and in neuronal masses these ubiquitous entanglements may give rise to a sort of integrated quantum pulse or periodic coordination of superpositions sufficient to extend throughout the entire brain. The philosophical significance of this theory is that since quantum processes have so far evinced nondeterministic features in the lab, a variegated cycling between quantum coherence and wave function collapse might be the material mechanism of free will, our intuitively experienced indeterminacy of human choice. Early versions of the theory have been debunked by researchers who recognized microtubule structure, brain temperature and additional factors as unsuitable to support this mechanism as thus far detailed, but the core idea of a global superposition is important, for some agent must bind disparate regions of the brain to yield unified stream of consciousness, even if this does not ultimately allow for the existence of free will as conventionally conceived.

    Johnjoe McFadden and colleagues attempted to address this binding problem, the question of how a single field of awareness can emerge from trillions upon trillions of distinct biochemical ingredients, with CEMI (Conscious Electromagnetic Information) theory in the early 2000’s. It claims the brain’s electromagnetic field, arising from many billions of axon potentials, is a sort of supervenient layer of functionality, amplified by the synchronization of constructive wave interferences to play a predominant role in forming the more or less steady state, fluid holism of waking consciousness. This readily explains why consciousness exemplifies a superordinate unity, which is quite obvious from the close correlation of states of awareness with brain waves as registered by an EEG, but does not by itself pinpoint a mechanism, what the electromagnetic field acts upon.

    McFadden himself offered some big clues regarding the intersection of radiative fields with brain matter. He described how ion transport channels, which he hypothesizes as an ultraquick quantum tunneling of ion wavicles into and out of the axon, may be receptive enough to the brain’s electromagnetic field (an interaction which would be mediated by electric charge) that a ferrying of single ions is affected by brain waves. He also elaborated how the fast triplet reaction, consisting in machinations of three entangled electrons, was discovered in a molecule called cryptochrome which is present in the eyes of European robins, the antennae of Monarch butterflies and elsewhere, revealed to be sensitive enough for responding to the Earth’s magnetic field and seemingly one of the first links in biochemical pathways that enable many organisms to sense their way towards destinations during long-range migration.

    Quantum biochemistry is quintessentially sensitive to quanta fields or their signatures, and making the conceptual leap to quantum neuromaterial that is uniquely adapted for cocausality with electromagnetic brain waves at the level of both species and individual organisms proves simple enough. The preeminent postulate regarding qualitative subjectivity must clearly start from the following: an electrically charged quanta field/molecular complexing as the substance of stream of consciousness, engaged in a feedback loop with memories that are etched into the chemistry of brain matter by some related mechanism, altogether an orchestration ranging from the most unconsciously particulate phenomena to the most synthetically aware.

    But the famous hard problem of consciousness remains: why do all these variously dispersed or holistic phenomena result in a “what it is like to be”? What is added on to mere hylic form that renders it a subjective mind? What is the palpable medium of experiencing? This has been a difficult issue, but it seems we should begin with the most parsimonious hypothesis, that it is due to something in the way quanta of various kinds entangle as they interact.

    Understanding how electromagnetic radiation entangles is relatively straightforward, and it has been studied effectively since the 19th century. The most salient example is provided by visible light: primary colors can easily be blended to produce secondary colors, all colors blend to produce white light and can be separated again by a prism, while the colors of course blend in different combinations to produce the entire spectrum of shades. Electromagnetic waves have additive properties, with their various wavelengths compounded into new, individualized hybrids when proximal enough. It is the nature of waves to form unions when they touch, composites which do not erase the original wavelengths, for they can be teased apart again, but nonetheless bringing forth something alternate upon formation, an admixture with emergent properties not possessed by any of its elements alone. Essentially, entangled waves superposition, and superpositions such as these are the root of color’s objectively defined correlates in the environment.

    Then what is the source of subjective color, consisting in our perceptions at the boundary between mind and matter? A logical hypothesis is that it relates to the way particles superposition. Just as wavelengths of light superposition while they entangle, subatomic wavicles and especially electrons doubtless superposition when they blend into hybrid orbital shapes, and these superpositions take effect on a macroatomic scale, as it has been shown that trillions of atoms can entangle at once. Light is able to blend into electron orbitals in an atom, changing their energy and also in some as of yet superficially comprehended way a complicated orientation in space, so the same principles of superposition seem to apply in the case of both light and electrons. Then if we envision electrons in atoms as something akin to hybridized standing waves, what might the mechanism of this arrangement look like?

    We get an indication from the 100% efficiency of photosynthetic reaction center complexes in translating light to chemical energy. If a single, central molecule can absorb energy from multiple chlorophyll pigments no matter the quantity or direction of ultraviolet light, the state of these atoms cannot be much like an orbiting particle model, for Newtonian physics predicts at least some loss of energy as light and heat when electrons fail to contact each other as they cycle within the spatial bounds of a transport chain. Total energy yield lends more validation to a picture of electron arrays as hybrid waves spanning numerous molecules, stabilized by electric charge, cytoskeletal fibers and membranes, transmitting even the slightest excitation as a flow that never fails in making its way to reaction center complex hubs, resembling a minutely perturbable body of water.

    Then how might this lead to the phenomenon of subjective color? Experiments entangling trillions of atoms have so far been carried out at significantly higher than body temperature, with amalgamations being a chaotic mess within which any superpositions probably dissipate as quickly as they materialize. But in the nervous system, brain and perhaps elsewhere in the body, entangled molecules and molecular complexes may exist that have been streamlined by evolution to sustain superpositioned states for longer durations, perhaps long enough to supply a mechanism of subjective color, amounting to quantum resonances amongst hybrid wavelengths. These trillions of resonant “color” centers could blend into the global electromagnetic field of brains as electrically charged standing waves course through this organ, the mechanism for binding resonances into a cohesive stream of consciousness.

    This seems a satisfactory initial hypothesis for how image perception occurs, but what about the shocks and contours of auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile and interoceptive sensations, not spatial, yet extremely localized, nor temporal, yet time-lagged, not objects or concepts of objects, yet intrinsic to reality’s structure? The probable explanation is so economically simple that it almost escapes notice: it is an intrinsic feature of superpositions amongst entanglement - hybrid waves - to not only evince dimensionality but to feel in a diversity of ways. Most of these fragments of feeling in the environment discompose quickly enough as positions of molecules shift and fleeting chemical bonds break that qualitative experience is not in effect. But in organisms, molecular complexes are held in stable assemblages for prolonged periods, and even if these do not end up being as long-acting as consciousness itself, their synchronization as coordinated with, blended into, and exquisitely adapted to radiating electromagnetic fields from action potentials, all amalgamated by electric charge, perhaps in addition to further kinds of fields and associated forces, is adequate to bring about the nuances of subjective sensation.

    An interesting implication of this theory is that qualitative experience seems as if it would not be limited to highly cognitive organisms but rather pervades biology, likely existing to some degree in all creatures with a nervous system. It may be the case that an organism’s chemistry is an extremely heterogeneous standing wave partially welded into a medium of percepts by specially adapted properties of electrical charge, with even bacteria possessing rudiments of human subjectivity, though they of course must lack as involute a sense of self. Pushing this idea even further, the essence of qualitativity is probably not restricted to carbon-based structures, being instead a basic attribute of matter which saturates the environment, a collective soul. Heterogeneity of mind in matter means some parts of the brain may be more qualitatively active, possibly employed to project perceptual elements in an integrating way as a subjective substrate that might even exceed boundaries of the body, a foundation for memory sequences, thoughts and additional highly aware experiences as the locus of identity.

    It turns out that matter seems to influence mind and mind seems to influence matter because mind is lodged in matter, active on the same plane as physical reality though greatly transcending current knowledge, existent in part as a host of quantum processes. The search for molecules, biochemical pathways, all the adjuncts of qualitative experience, an endeavor which might even be provisional of a table of the perceptual elements, promises a vast vista of future research opportunities for science and a new paradigm in the study of consciousness.


    3. A Preliminary Model of Qualitative Experience

    These insights about how the previously enigmatic subjectivity of consciousness arises from basic matter can be summarized as follows:

    It is intrinsic of matter as it perpetually quantum entangles to also superposition, its wavelengths blending into hybrid structures of variable dimension. The nature of these superpositions is not only to occupy space but to feel in some primitive, fragmentary sense. Most of these entanglements discompose as rapidly as they form, but in conscious entities superposition persists long enough and achieves sufficing organization to supply the fundamentals of mind.

    For human consciousness in particular, a gargantuan selection of specially adapted molecules, molecular complexes and biochemical pathways, clearly with highest concentration in the brain, coordinate as the basic particulars of qualitative experience. Molecules of subjectivity must be located in neurons, probably glia and elsewhere, the full perceptual functions of which have not yet been discerned. The huge range of cell types and tissue regions in the brain grants qualitative experience its diverseness: visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, interoceptive and introspective elements of subjectivity with all their emergent conglomerations.

    The synchronized electric pulsing of thousands of neurons in billions of combinations throughout the brain creates a global electromagnetic field as well as electrical charge fluctuations tied to brain waves, at the highest levels of organization recordable with extant EEG technology. This permeating flux of standing waves generated by electrical potential, radiating throughout the entire brain’s mass, binds the superpositions linked to electromagnetic fields and cellular chemistry into an integrated stream of consciousness which is more than the sum of its molecular parts, an emergent energy capable of driving biochemical pathways by way of top-down mechanisms. Various sections of the brain are delegated to different subjective tasks: basic quantum sensations, synchronization, body awareness, memory, thought patterns, imagination, reasoning, the concept of self, personality, etc. These innumerable processes include propagation, coordination and projection by a highly electrified, EM/molecular brain as the primary platform of human consciousness.

    The theoretical perspective contrasts with Descartes’ dualism in being a sort of multifarious monism explaining perception as conventional chemistry infused with distinctly quantum dynamics, most essentially the superpositions or blended wavelengths which bring about complex assortments of color and feeling within matter. Yet it sharply differs from the physicalism that has been so pervasive amongst science’s monist accounts of material structure, instead regarding the hallmarks of perception as taking effect at a very basic level, something more akin to panpsychism. It is not, however, panpsychism strictly speaking, because even though superpositions which give rise to the substance of qualitative experience are very close to fundamental, they are still an emergent property, requiring relatively large-scale, finely tuned arrangements to produce anything resembling a sentient mind. The most precise term is probably panprotopsychism, in this incarnation distinguishing consciousness from the body and offering a conceptual conduit for describing body-transcending consciousness as a material occurrence, so that the collective unconscious, soul and the spiritual in general, all kinds of frontiers which psychology and neuroscience have barely breached, may become accessible and brought into harmony with the foundations of current knowledge.

    Quantum physics has begun to reveal phenomena that previous scientific paradigms were unable to model, particularly near-instantaneous and retroactive causality. It seems apparent that electromagnetic matter is the veneer of a more essential reality of much larger and deeper scope, the principles of which may subvert contemporary knowledge in amazing ways. Neuroscience along with many more disciplines are sure to transform, and it will be a parlous adventure to harness all of this futurism for the sake of consciousness and for the purpose of apprehending consciousness itself.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    It is intrinsic of matter as it perpetually quantum entangles to also superposition, its wavelengths blending into hybrid structures of variable dimension. The nature of these superpositions is not only to occupy space but to feel in some primitive, fragmentary sense. Most of these entanglements discompose as rapidly as they form, but in conscious entities superposition persists long enough and achieves sufficing organization to supply the fundamentals of mind.Enrique

    What does this mean? It means nothing. Nothing in this post means anything. As the saying goes, it's not even wrong. It says nothing about anything. I'd like to say this is pseudo-science of the worst kind, but it doesn't even rise to that level. "Twas brillig and the slivey toves did gyre and gimbal in the wabe" tells us more about the nature of reality and consciousness than this post does.

    This does not belong on this forum. I don't mind if it's allowed, but I want to make sure what it really is is recognized.
  • Enrique
    842


    Doesn't belong on this forum? Have you seen the kind of posts that are made on a regular basis? Its not drivel, its well-thought out, and doesn't reduce to three sentences. I explained all the preliminaries you need to understand that section near the beginning. You got a stick up your butt? Its simple stuff and falsifiable dude.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    Have you seen the kind of posts that are made on a regular basis?Enrique

    True. There's lots of crap on the forum. As I noted, I don't have any objection to your stuff remaining here. On the other hand, what you've written is not legitimate science in any way that I can recognize. I don't think that's caused by my lack to scientific understanding.
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    If consciousness is fundamental than how is it not a soul? And if quantum waves create consciousness how is that not physicalism?
  • Enrique
    842
    what you've written is not legitimate science in any way that I can recognize.T Clark

    An aspect of science is formulating hypotheses, and this is a hypothesis. Its where science starts. I purposely made it as easy as possible to understand, so your claim that it's some kind of word salad is consternating.



    The basics of consciousness are almost fundamental, emergent from material properties, essentially the superpositions amongst entanglement that I described. So soul exists, but has a mechanistic sort of explanation.

    My view differs from traditional physicalism because it does not try to explain away features of consciousness as an illusion or a causally insignificant phenomenon, but regards the kind of properties we identify with subjective percepts as integral to how matter works, similar to shape and size.
  • Wayfarer
    22.2k
    The basics of consciousness are almost fundamental.Enrique

    Right. So, divest yourself of consciousness, and then tell us what really is fundamental.

    An aspect of science is formulating hypotheses, and this is a hypothesis.Enrique

    But you can't test it. You can't go into a lab, or into the field, and demonstrate that this purported 'process' actually does what you say it does. You can only reason backwards from the fact of consciousness to hypotheticals, which does not really make it an hypothesis.
  • Enrique
    842
    So, divest yourself of consciousness, and then tell us what really is fundamental.Wayfarer

    Quantum superpositions amongst entangled wavicles are fundamental, which give rise at a very basic level to percepts, which eventually reach enough emergent organization to constitute consciousness. It seems as obvious to me as evolution was in Darwin's seminal account, but the research that proves exactly how it all works is yet to be performed.
  • Wayfarer
    22.2k
    Quantum superpositions amongst entangled wavicles are fundamental, which give rise at a very basic level to percepts, which eventually reach enough emergent organization to constitute consciousness.Enrique

    Backwards. The observer exists already, you can't explain what you're seeing without reference to the observer. So you can't explain the observer in terms of what is observed.
  • Enrique
    842
    The observer exists already, you can't explain what you're seeing without reference to the observer. So you can't explain the observer in terms of what is observed.Wayfarer

    The observer is an amalgam of sensations, feelings and introspections lodged in matter. Observer and observed are one and the same.
  • Wayfarer
    22.2k
    The observer is an amalgam of sensations, feelings and introspections lodged in matter.Enrique

    Reductionism exposed.
  • Enrique
    842


    Then what do you think an observer is? Its got to be a substance, which makes it at least analogous to matter.

    It's not reductionism, it's the physical substrate of perception which is only one facet of our knowledge about how consciousness functions. Psychology doesn't hold any less weight because of it.
  • Wayfarer
    22.2k
    Then what do you think an observer is? Its got to be a substance, which makes it at least analogous to matter.Enrique

    This is what I keep trying to point out. You cannot explain ‘the observer’, because ‘the observer’ is implicit in any observation. By trying to explain the observer, you’re falsely making the observer part of the picture, you’re trying to objectify the subject, as if you’re above or outside the act of observing.

    A note from Advaita philosophy:

    Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot see the seer of seeing. You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman."

    Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object.

    "Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense.

    Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner, kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further.
  • Enrique
    842
    You cannot explain ‘the observer’, because ‘the observer’ is implicit in any observation.Wayfarer

    The explanation can fail to be identical with the observer and still be relatively exhaustive within its specified context. Neuroscience tells us a lot about observers, and I think my theories are simply the next step in neuroscience. All kinds of illusions about our selves have been revealed by materialistic investigation.
  • Wayfarer
    22.2k
    Such as?

    On second thoughts, don’t worry.
  • Enrique
    842


    If the thalamus is damaged, we lose our sense of self.
  • SolarWind
    207
    Quantum superpositions amongst entangled wavicles are fundamental, which give rise at a very basic level to percepts, which eventually reach enough emergent organization to constitute consciousness. It seems as obvious to me as evolution was in Darwin's seminal account, but the research that proves exactly how it all works is yet to be performed.Enrique

    No classical, quantum mechanical, electrodynamic, chemical, thermodynamic or emergent equation contains a term for the smell of a rose.
  • Enrique
    842
    No classical, quantum mechanical, electrodynamic, chemical, thermodynamic or emergent equation contains a term for the smell of a rose.SolarWind

    Neuroscience will though if my hypotheses are accurate. However, these theoretical descriptions may remain in a different experiential context than immediate sensations.

    It seems obvious to me that we say, "My personality can be altered by frontal lobe damage" and similar statements. It doesn't mean a description of the frontal lobe exhausts the nature of personality, but it is nonetheless identical with it to a certain extent.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    An aspect of science is formulating hypotheses, and this is a hypothesis. Its where science starts. I purposely made it as easy as possible to understand, so your claim that it's some kind of word salad is consternating.Enrique

    Hypotheses have to come from somewhere connected to current knowledge. Just tossing some jargon from various theories, e.g. entanglement, superposition, wavicles, consciousness, neuroscience..., is exactly what you called it. Word salad.

    The basics of consciousness are almost fundamental, emergent from material properties, essentially the superpositions amongst entanglement that I described. So soul exists, but has a mechanistic sort of explanation.Enrique

    This doesn't mean anything. It's just some technical and spiritual terms juxtaposed to sound profound. How do you test this? I'm perfectly comfortable with discussions of spiritual matters based on insight into personal experience, but when you start calling it science and using scientific language, there are different standards.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    Many scientists do claim that consciousness arising from quantum effects can be tested. Those with a religious bent will always claim this is the quality in front of the soul\atman. Perhaps the classical is reduced to the quantum, but there is no consensus on how to interpret the quantum realm and furthermore information travels faster than light there so it seems to me the classical and the quantum are worlds apart. Just as the soul\atman might be beyond science, so may the classical be beyond the quantum.

    Nonetheless, the OP is well thought out and very well written. I did enjoy it
  • Enrique
    842
    This doesn't mean anything. It's just some technical and spiritual terms juxtaposed to sound profound. How do you test this?T Clark

    You find the molecules, molecular complexes and biochemical pathways in the brain and body that are not correlated with but are various percepts. These will involve specially adapted sorts of superposition states that are extremely responsive to electric charge and capable of being manipulated by electromagnetic fields. Then you expand from this base to define what goes on in the environment generally. I think this will eventually identify "nonlocal" sorts of fields and forces with effects that can be observed but not explained well by current quantum physics alone.
  • Joshs
    5.6k
    I am tempted to argue that what you have here is akin to an attempt to use a hardware description to explain software patterns. It’s not that your model is necessary wrong , just that your account ends just where the real scene of consciousness begins. To use the computer metaphor , you leave us with the
    power on and the monitor active. But what actually takes place in awareness requires an entirely different causal language that that of physics.
  • Enrique
    842
    It’s not that your model is necessary wrong , just that your account ends just where the real scene of consciousness begins.Joshs

    I can see how that is an apt observation. What I describe is a visualization of basic elements involved in what might be going on in the brain to produce qualitative consciousness, kind of a preliminary still frame. Personal psychology will have to advance in a complementary way, from the opposite subjective direction, so that this quantum biology is compatible with common sense. How dramatic a shift it could be in the language of consciousness theory is interesting to ponder. Still, I think it could be soon that we will say an introspective thought pattern such as a voice in our heads is a particular array of biochemical pathways in a specific region of the brain.
  • Corvus
    3.1k
    Unless they can fully explain, replicate, transfer the workings of the full intelligence and consciousness from one being to another and demonstrate, it would be a difficult theory to convince the most.

    Explanations and demonstrations on more complicated human mental activities such as emotions (worries, fears, jealousy, anger, happiness, love, care, desires..... etc), intuitions and creativity and reasonings and doubting with any type of physical or biological constructions and mechanisms look not easy, if not impossible task to achieve.

    Demonstrating some light detections and simple perceptive phenomenon via the workings of the particles, molecules and electromagnetic forces is as much meaningful attempt as saying when you open the blind on the window, it will pass the sun light into the room.
  • Enrique
    842


    With modern brain scans researchers can read subject's mental states, determine what their memories and thought patterns are about in a respectably nuanced way. Neuroscience is actually getting quite advanced. If arrays of molecules yet to be discovered are percepts, not just correlated with them, the discovery would be huge progress and lead to a new era of treatments and technologies, the next step in our science of consciousness. It's not a replication of consciousness, but it would model some of the primary features.
  • Corvus
    3.1k
    Physical or biological entities can be replicated for the exact cloning. If you are saying that human consciousness is constituted with the workings of the molecules and particles in physical and biological forms, then it should be possible to replicate, and even clone the consciousness into other beings. That would be clear proof that the theory is true. If it cannot replicate, then the theory does not have a physical or biological basis.
  • Enrique
    842
    If you are saying that human consciousness is constituted with the workings of the molecules and particles in physical and biological forms, then it should be possible to replicate, and even clone the consciousness into other beings. That would be clear proof that the theory is true. If it cannot replicate, then the theory does not have a physical or biological basis.Corvus

    I think it will be possible to introduce features of organic subjectivity into electronic devices for instance. This is an application that proves the theory is accurate. The full gamut of perceptual processes will take a while to figure out, but it should be possible to arrive at a model of percepts as detailed as our model of the brain's reward system (dopamine, nucleus accumbens etc.).
  • Corvus
    3.1k
    I think it will be possible to introduce features of organic subjectivity into electronic devices for instance. This is an application that proves the theory is accurate. The full gamut of perceptual processes will take a while to figure out, but it should be possible to arrive at a model of percepts as detailed as our model of the brain's reward system (dopamine, nucleus accumbens etc.).Enrique

    I think recent A.I. Robots technology are still mostly based on the microchips architecture and programming around them. So the codings still might have lots of the programming functions and procedures of If ... then ... do, else, and while such cases do, for 0 to n do loops with the traditional machine language or C programming or even Ada type PL.
    I doubt that they can replicate the human brain with some biochemical structures using particles or molecules based constituents. It would be interesting to see how far the A.I. tech will progress in our lifetime. Because what they have achieved so far is certainly phenomenal stuff, and actually they may be very near to be able to reveal the true nature of the human consciousness soon in near future.
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