Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules?

Ah, you mean that after perusing the Illustration, you saw the "nice" part. Kudos. Why do you think I put in the research and post it to accompany and clarify my commentary? In the real world I receive a little more respect for my efforts than in this forum. It's discouraging and not conducive to constructive discourse.

(I made specific note of the edit for ALL to see).

...................ARE YOU BLIND???????.......................

No subversion or misdirection. I added that to the original sentence in the spirit of clarity. If you give it some thought, I'm sure you will see my honorable intentions.

If you don't read what I post and can't see why I make reference to it, you still don't understand how you are misjudging my motives. It does not speak well of your objectivity. It makes you a zealot.

If you are confused by my narratives ask for clarification. I'll be happy to take all the time to correct any misunderstanding. Just be civil about it and DON'T CALL ME DISHONEST!

It's an ad hominem and NOT PRODUCTIVE.

And if you think that staying with the OP is being obsessive, "that's a good thing" , no?

After all the accusations of me posting unrelated materials here and there, I would hope that for once I am staying within thread topic. It's my thread.

Now you come here as admin and accuse me of being obsessive because I stay on topic ???
Make up your mind if you want to be a troll or an admin. I know what I am, do you know what you are?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

No.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

What makes you reject that notion?

Model of Magnetic Field-Induced Mitotic Apparatus Reorientation in Frog Eggs

https://www.cell.com/biophysj/pdf/S0006-3495(02)75482-9.pdf

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Nope. No evidence that this is the case.

 

Sorry, I was distracted.. The point I was trying to make is that microtubules have positive and negative poles.

AFAIK, an object with polarity will always tend to point to the magnetic north, no?

 

No.

 

I agree. However, Consciousness exists and is some form of emergent property from a set of physical attributes.

The trick is to find candidates that may accommodate such a network. It has always been assumed that, apart from some esoteric spiritual cause, the neural network was responsible for an emergent consciousness.

Well, within the neural network, the microtubules seem to be promising candidates for such a function.

Don't take my word for it. There are great minds who are intrigued by the capabilities of microtubules.
I'm merely providing as much evidence as I can find on the internet, and posing the question.

To reject the concept is premature, just as it is premature to make any definitive statement at this time.

I am really a little more objective and judicious as most here seem to think.

 

Oh, ok. What then are these people trying to say?

https://www.cell.com/biophysj/pdf/S0006-3495(02)75482-9.pdf

Is this not true or am I misunderstanding the meaning of that little abstract?

 

Sure. They are interesting. Consciousness is not found there.

You see these memes pop up all the time. I remember back in the 1980's interferon was going to cure cancer, stop all viral infections in their tracks and end Parkinson's disease - basically bring a new revolution to medicine. Turns out it's just a moderately interesting set of proteins that have some clinical applications. But that didn't stop publications with more hype than intelligence from declaring it the end-all and be-all of medicine.

Best to avoid such mindless hype IMO.

 

What is your minimum required sensory ability for consciousness? What would serve as evidence?

IMO, there is no way to measure any form of consciousness except by physical responses to stimulation.

Is a paramecium conscious? It can avoid obstacles.
Is a slime-mold conscious? It can solve mazes by marking where it has been.
Are bacteria conscious? They communicate via "quorum sensing"

At what point does "sensitivity to stimulation" turn into "conscious experience of stimulation"?

Again Anil Seth's profound statement; "You don't have to be smart to feel pain, but you probably have to be alive".

And if that is the minimum requirement the line becomes very fuzzy.
At what point does a bio-chemical pattern become alive and conscious?

 

I choose to interpret it that way. I can exercise that flexibility.
I have enough "likes" to feel comfortable with my contributions to this forum.

 

Yeah well, try to keep up.

I am not making a claim, when will you understand that? The OP asks a question!
I am making a proposition to consider microtubules as a possible candidate, based on available information and evidence on the internet. I am supporting all my speculations with actual scientific evidence albeit in "illustrative" and "narrative" form rather than mathematical equations.

This is a current topic of scientific inquiry. And as they say "a picture is worth a thousand words" . But only to those who actually look.

 

And, damn it....here I am trying to provide an informational library for discussion of current sciene, and I get sucked into a mudraking contest.
If you have nothing of interest to offer other than an attack on my honor, I'd just as soon not have you respond to my "inquiry" at all. I don't need that kind of shit.

I expect visitors to this thread to exhibit civil behavior. Or else stay the hell out of here!

I seek information, not questions about my veracity........bah!

 

An arbitrarily small ability. A human consciousness that could only perceive 1 and 0, and output 1 and 0, could still be fully conscious, and could communicate via Morse.

 

Why human consciousness per se? Is there only human consciousness? Of course not. Every biological object that is alive and responds to stimulation is a potential candidate for sensory awareness and by extension consciousness.

Several insects communicate long distance with pheromones, as far as twenty miles to signal a potential mate, who then can follow the pheromone trail to the female to mate.

OK. I firmly believe that microtubules meet that requirement. They are an unchanged functional common property of ALL Eukaryotic biological living organisms, since from the Prokaryotic epoch, where they existed in a simpler form because they only needed to execute simple RNA instructions, instead of the more complicated DNA instructions of modern Eukaryotic organisms.

If you can make an exact copy of a cell, it is a little more complicated than "one and/or zero". A slime mold can do "one and/or zero".

A Microtubule is an expert at "one and zero". It is a dynamic self-referential polymer, AFAIK.

 

This:

does not follow from the article.

1. In the 65 references to 'magnetic field', the article never once hints at anything to do with Earth's magnetic field.
2. What they do say, five times, is an intense magnetic field (therefore artificial).
3. And not merely intense - sufficiently intense - which means "as strong as we need to make it to get a result".

 

Are microtubules mentioned in psychology or neurology?

:EDIT:

Do viruses have microtubules?

 

What does follow is that magnetic fields seem to have influence over microtubular action. That is what it says, no?

I'll stipulate to that. I seemed to remember an article that homing birds like pigeons might be using microtubules in orientation to the various magnetic fields , but true, not necessarily the Magnetic Pole...
A poetic liberty?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

They're certainly mentioned in neurology.
But I would think that until we can establish an actual connection between "thought" and microtubules, it cannot be addressed through psychology.

From what I can read, its hard to tell. Apparently, viruses don't have any of the parts you would normally think of when you think of a cell. They have no nuclei, mitochondria, or ribosomes. Some viruses do not even have cytoplasm. In the absence of all those "normal" features, there is no need for microtubules and maybe the reason why viruses are not considered living, but "quasi-living" organisms.

Maybe a virus uses the cell's microtubular functions.

And this process uses microtubules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_viruses

And in context of consciousness, I don't give viruses a big chance of ever becoming conscious.....they don't have microtubules....

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!