Consciousness; a logical consequence of life

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by wellwisher, Jan 26, 2011.

  1. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The brain sets up simple hardware conditions which make consciousness a logical consequence of these conditions. The easiest way to see this is by looking at a neuron.

    A neuron expends up to 90% of its ATP energy, maintaining a potential across the neuron's membrane. When neurons fire, via the synapses, the potential energy within the membrane lowers. The neuron will then expend ATP energy to reform the membrane potential via exchanging cations.

    If you look at this situation in terms of energy and entropy, the rest state of the neuron, when it is not firing, defines its highest potential energy. The term rest state is sort of semantically misleading, since rest usually means lower energy. The rest state is actually the state of highest potential energy. While neuron firing lower this potential energy.

    Since the rest state is at higher potential energy, as well as at lower entropy, compared to firing, the first two laws of physics, i.e., nature prefers lowest energy and highest energy, will naturally act upon the rest state of the neuron, trying to lower the energy and increase the entropy. One way to do this is neuron firing, which has a connection to consciousness.

    Let me give an analogy to make the logic easier to see. Say we had an old wooden water tower that is full of water. The stored water has potential energy. The first two laws of physics says, nature prefers lower energy and higher entropy. One way to satisfy both conditions would be to spring a leak. This will lower energy (drain water) while also also increasing entropy, since a leaky tank now has more degrees of freedom compared to a static tank. If we wanted to lower energy and increase entropy further, all we would need to do is add more leaks.

    Our sensory systems will induce cerebral neurons to fire. These systems are lowering energy and increasing entropy within the brain; a natural source of leaks. The ability of the human mind to think and for us to consciously fire particular neurons (trigger memory), means human consciousness is at lower energy potential than the rest brain. It is just another trick by the first two laws, to increase the leaks within the tank. Consciousness simply follows the push of the physical universe, against the unique situation that life is able to create within its organic structures; higher energy and lower entropy.

    The cell membrane of any cell uses the same principle, to create the impression of its own version of awareness. The cell uses a lot of energy to form the higher potential energy in its own version of the rest membrane. Nature wishes to lower energy and increase entropy (more degrees of freedom). This is done, in part, with the diversity of leaks associated with transport. The cell then uses energy to increase the potential energy back.

    Consciousness is connected to the first and second laws, making these laws more efficient in the light of the ever increasing efficiency of life to restore the potential energy within the neurons, rest neuron. The various paths between recovery and leaks will structure consciousness.

    Computer memory works the opposite way, with the rest state of the semi-conductor at lower energy. We need to add energy; not take energy away to get the memory to work. That is why artificial intelligence tends to be more about software than hardware. Quantum computing is depending on the entropy increase of probability. Biological computers would simply use hardware that can sprout leaks, using the natural push to increase entropy and lower entropy, to fire neurons in changing synaptic configurations.
     
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  3. Hercules Rockefeller Beatings will continue until morale improves. Moderator

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    Interesting, but it seems to me you’ve made some faulty assumptions and conclusions. I don’t have time to address them all, but I’ll comment on a few:

    But a living organism is an ‘open system’ as it receives energy from the environment. As long as there is sufficient energy input, cells (and the organism as a whole) can happily maintain a biochemistry that defies entropy. In fact, that’s one of the classical definitions of life: metabolism (ie. the ability to take in energy, store it and release it at an appropriate time).


    Yes, neuron ‘firing’ has a connection to consciousness, but I don’t see consciousness as a logical consequence of neuron firing, as you are trying to assert. All the animal species, from mammals down to simple nematode worms and Cnidarians, have neurons and nervous systems of varying complexity. What percentage of all animal species has consciousness? Not many, yet they all have neurons that de-polarise and re-polarise.


    Is it? What makes you say that? Consciousness is associated with the cortex. But, as far as I am aware, there are many more neurons in total in the rest of the brain than there are in the cerebral cortex. These neurons go about their business of firing and re-polarising whilst they manage the innumerable subconscious activities of the brain.
     
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  5. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    If we were to place both sodium and potassium cations within a glass of water, they would maximize entropy by forming a uniform solution. When cells segregate these two cations, they cause these cations to lower entropy. This entropy lowering requires an energy input, such as ATP, with the gradient storing potential energy. These membrane partitioned cations exist at higher energy and lower entropy than they would in a normal solution.

    Another important way a cell lowers entropy, is within its many protein structures. This is done by making all the proteins left handed. A mixture of left and right handed stereo isomers would define higher entropy, since having both left and right would define more degrees of freedom (higher entropy). This lower protein entropy state, only left handed, like the cations within the membrane, sets a potential, to lower energy and increase entropy via the open system.
     
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  7. Hercules Rockefeller Beatings will continue until morale improves. Moderator

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    Okay, that’s all well and good. :thumbsup:

    But what does this necessarily have to do with consciousness? The hugely significant majority of all animal species have cells that achieve all that without there being any consciousness on the part of the animal in question.
     
  8. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Correct, but not only that Humans do all of this too when not conscious. Consciousness is some sort of special use of neural firing in a organized way not directly a result of any and all neural firing.

    You can know everything there is to know about neural firing, about depolarization waves traveling down an axon as Na ions rush in to drive the -70mV resting potential slightly positive, how the "sodium pump" uses energy stored in ATP to lower the internal voltage (lower the entropy also) etc. in man or snail (very little if any differences) and still know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS.
     
  9. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The problem I always face, when trying to present these ideas, is if I define things in terms of human consciousness, some will point out what about the consciousness of the worm. If I use the worm standard, then others will say what about the human or the single cell. So maybe I need to differentiate the various types of consciousness first.

    The easiest place to begin, is to consider human body language. If someone is sad, this is often reflected in their facial expressions and their body language. Just by looking at these output effects one can infer sad.

    Humans have will power, as well as two centers of consciousness; ego conscious and unconscious. For example, even if someone is sad, we can put on a smiling face and hide the natural body language of sadness. We can still feel sad inside (unconscious reaction) but we can alter the natural cause and effect of the unconscious body language. What the ego conscious center can do, is add more degrees of freedom to the natural body language. The ego has a connection to the open system of higher entropy.

    The natural unconscious body language is closer to animal consciousness. Animals are real and their reactions define the natural cause and effect of their instincts, in light of their environmental interaction. Their consciousness has lower entropy, since they can't add degrees of freedom to alter the natural reaction. They are closer to the configurations of life, lower entropy. This makes animals more limited.

    The only difference between complex and very simple animal consciousness is connected to the variety of wired output reactions. If the simple animal only had one reaction, flinch when touched, this is just a simplified version of complex facial expression, with one subroutine instead of dozens at the same time.

    Going from simple, conscious flinch, to conscious complex facial expressions and body language, adds degrees of freedom, associated with the open environment. To alter that even further using human ego will power, adds even more degrees of freedom. This inly occurs because the configurations of the brain have lower entropy and higher energy and therefore trigger a stronger reaction response from the open environment.
     
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    To wellwisher

    A behavior based "consciousness" is not better than a neural discharge based understanding of consciousness.

    Are you familiar with the philosophical zombie? It shows why your behavior based approach to consciousness also fails. There is no firm evidence that the p-zonbie exists (nor that consciousness exists - only each person's opinion that it does.) Conceptually there is no reason to think that advances in AI etc, can not create the p-zombie.

    As D. Chambers expressed it: "Consciousness is the HARD problem."

    Here is concise discussion of the pros & cons of the p-zombie:
    http://www.takeonit.com/question/316.aspx

    Note Susan Blackmore, writing there, makes a circular argument. I.e. starts with "If consciousness has a function ... Conscious creatures would have a selective advantage*, ..." But natural selection ONLY works on behavior. By definition, the p-zombie has identical behvior to the conscious human, so her argument fails. - It is basically just stating her unsupported belief that the P-zombie is impossible in principle because consciousness makes possible some behavior not possible for the p-zombie. That is disproof of the p-zombie by circular logic.

    For general discussion see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

    See also closely related (as it is all about "qualia") thought experiment originally proposed by Frank Jackson which in condensed form follows:
    "Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? [4]

    In other words, Jackson's Mary is a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of color, but has never experienced color. The question that Jackson raises is: once she experiences color, {red is the usually assumed first one} does she learn anything new?"

    Above quote from and more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_Room
    All of the "see also" given at end of this link you should read if not familiar with these topics.

    If Mary learns nothing with the first exposure then P-zombies are conceptually possible, and perhaps even if she does but they just do not learn what Mary did. I.e. P-zombies do not presumably have any qualia.

    One major problem with consciousness is it can not be proven to exist. Try to prove you are conscious, and not just a p-zombie who thinks it is conscious, to me. It is very much like the existence or not of "free will."

    -----------------
    *Not only is Susan's argument circular it presumes that the behaviors made possible by consciousness are on average beneficial, not tending to self destruction, etc. I.e. there is a lot of evidence in suicides etc. that it could be selected AGAINST.Perhaps leaving mankind with the delusion only that he is conscious but in reality he is a p-zombie who thinks he is conscious. Like belief that you have free will may be a delusion we all suffer from.

    Free will does seem to be a delusion to many who understand that the firing of nerves controls both thoughts and behavior and their firing is controlled by the physical laws, especially those relating to neurotransmitter diffusion across synaptic clefs. I believed free will was impossible for many years but have found, by accident, an escape that removes this inconsistency with physics; but is far from a proof that free will exists. See how it is possible for free will to NOT be a violation of the natural laws, here:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2649421&postcount=233

    (Ignore first line where I just complain that I was miss quoted. i.e. I never asserted Free Will existed)
     
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  11. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I do not think that anyone has even a vague concept explaining consciousness.

    It could be an accidental byproduct of complexity. I have yet to see any cogent argument that it has evolutionary purpose.

    Many believe that is is necessary for intellegent behavoir, but there seems to be no evidence or cogent arguments supporting this POV.

    Note that Deep Blue was capable of beating the best human chess player & nobody claims that a computer program has consciousness. This suggests that consciousness is not a requirement for intelligent behavoir.

    I have yet to see any convincing arguments indicating that consciousness is required for any human behavoir, although some cogent arguements could be made relating to emotional behavoir.

    BTW: I believe that animals other than humans have some level of consciousness. I do not go with beliefs that rocks, plants, or single celled animals have consciousness. I do not think that insects have it, but do not know where to draw the line.
     
  12. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    The consciousness problem has been contained and localized to the brain, not just floating around on its own, but as Billy T says we still don’t know how it comes about or what it is.

    We do know that it comes last, not first, as the brain needs some small amount of processing time, and that neural correlates and brain areas have been roughly identified to correspond to what appears in consciousness, but, again, ‘correspondences’ don’t say how the brain process of consciousness operates. Some think that the lastness of conscious witnessing makes them a kind of tourist just along for the ride on a brain having thoughts, but that’s another matter.

    Yet, we know that it is a brain process, which is useful, for it further limits the possibilities.

    A worm or a snail probably has some degree of a smudge of consciousness, or at least high responsiveness, say, to light or dark, warm or cold, wet or dry, whereas a dog or a cat probably has more, but still as an extended-present kind of thing without self-reflection.

    Mary regained her sight and so I gave her a blue banana. She replied, “Don’t try to trick me, for, while I was blind I learned everything about a banana!”

    As for the brain’s results, it seems that it is able to go through scenarios of consequence rather quickly, and, of course, these may just be provisional, after coming into consciousness, getting ruminated on further, etc.

    The purpose of consciousness would seem to be to know what we are doing, plus a way to imagine action without actual activation of it, this ‘consciousness’ extending beyond the brain proper even down to the nerve spindles, but it is, of course, the brain that gets these reports. Also for learning, such as when learning to drive a car one has to be very attentive, automatic pilot often taking over later when one has become experienced.

    So what is a vague concept of what consciousness is?

    Seems to be kind of an ‘it from bit’ thing, as QM suggests about quantum information, or, as David Chalmers suggests, that information can be represented in two ways. This would be a fundamental, such as mass or an electron is a fundamental, but we still don’t know what ‘it’ is. This is probably the last frontier of the big unknowns, along with ‘What animates the inanimate to become life, and why there is existence?”

    Other ideas are that the brain literally makes a ‘map’, this map becoming the territory, which theory still needs more explanation, but I haven’t read the book ‘The Self Comes to Mind’ yet.

    On energy dispersion:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2692433&postcount=1393
     
  13. Twine Registered Senior Member

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    I think what you're trying to refer to is "qualia", not consciousness (though I suppose you could say that qualia is an aspect of consciousness).
     
  14. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, we're very highly evolved social animals, and we're capable of concealing our emotions and motivations from the other humans around us for strategic reasons. This is very strongly selected for in our species.

    Allows us to get along in tribes without habitually beating one another's heads in with rocks. Different animals have different selection pressures.

    I'm not seeing how you draw a direct connection between our social behavior and the working mechanism of neurons, although since I either never covered the metabolism of the neuron or forgot it along the way, I'm really glad to have stumbled across this.
    This explains rather neatly why the bodies of anorectics will cannibalize the heart-eat holes in it-to support the brain's metabolic needs...

    I tend to visualize all life, as we currently know it, as sort of a "backwards eddy."

    Admittedly, it is a process that involves increasing complexity through the mechanism of evolution. But on this planet and/or solar system (weren't bacterial fossils from a Mars meteorite confirmed? or am I mis-remebering?...oop, stay on target...) life is all fueled by the deterioration of our central star.

    Without that, we're all, well I would say 'toast', but I think 'popsicles' is a more appropriate foodstuff.

    Do I think consciousness is inevitable? no. I think it just happened to be useful, so it got selected for...this time. Seems to have been a first in how many epochs? Or at least a consciousness that created durable artifacts...that we've found...

    But I think if it were inevitable, it would have happened a lot more often in the fossil record. We'd be running across armed velociraptor fossils, and the elaborate grave goods of the manipedes or whatnot.
     
  15. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    I got home and my wife, when I read her this, thinks I'm confusing consciousness with self-consciousness and toolmaking...

    (*pop* goes the ego...oh well, I married her for her juicy brain.)
     
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    If qualia require consciousness, (I think they do, but I'm not sure* as that would depend on how consciousness is defined. Some think consciousness cannot be defined, but only experienced.) then "pleasure" at least with sex, does have an evolutionary benefit to those with consciousness.

    *Often a P-zombie (see my prior post 7) is considered to differ from a human only by the absence of an qualia. P-zombies could and would have sex, but would lack most of the motivation for doing so.

    Perhaps all ancient humanoids were P-zombies but then there was one with a genetic error / mutation who enjoyed sex. - His genes soon (genetic time scale) dominated all others for obvious reasons.
     
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  17. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    That is an interesting, and AFAIK original twist on the never saw color before Mary; but I think it wrong.

    If as most think there is an experience of seeing blue and a different "qualia" upon seeing yellow then Mary upon first seeing your blue banana will have a color qualia for the first time, but she has read about people with color vision have a different qualia associated with each color and she knows bananas are yellow. Thus she accepts the new experience / color qualia / as the one everyone calls "yellow." She has no reason to think you have tricked her with a blue painted banana.

    This differs from the often discussed "mad neuro-scientist" who while you sleep re-wires your brain in color processing area (V4 as I recall) to reverse the poles of the three color axes (Blue/yellow, red/green & light/dark). I forget if the max activity of the nerves of the Blue/yellow axis corresponds to blue or yellow so will guess it is blue to make my discussion clear.

    I.e. he makes the strongest activity in this axis occur when you awake and see yellow. Then when you look at the sky, you get what you have long called the yellow qualia experience, but you know that the sky is blue and banana are yellow, so you soon learn to call the what was once the yellow qualia "blue," etc.

    Mary in contrast has never before had this color qualia she is now experiencing when looking at your blue banana but knows from prior reading this is the "yellow qualia." You do not trick or confuse her.

    In fact there is no sure way to know that your "yellow qualia" experience is not my "blue qualia" experience. I.e. in both of us micro-electrodes inserted into V4, can find that blue wavelength light creates more activity than yellow does in the set of nerves that make our blue/yellow color axis, but my blue qualia is my blue qualia and not necessarily the same as your "blue qualia." Qualia (and consciousness) are subjective experiences, not IHMO, identical with particular neural impulses, but some people who do accept the "identity theory" would probably disagree.

    There is however, some evidence that tends to support that they are the same, at least in the psychological consequences associated with the higher blue light induced activity. - Studies in which the viewer is asked to judge the friendliness, danger, etc. of some displayed scenes. Almost all humans do think that red, yellow are "warmer" more "pleasant", etc. than blue or green, which are "colder," "more sterile", etc.

    Painters have long known this, as do they the architects who often specify light green hospital rooms etc. It is not purely by chance that firetrucks are red (or occasionally yellow) etc.

    BTW did you already know the impulses from the retina’s three different color cones (red, blue and green) are computationally transformed (I have the conversion equations in some old file) along with the light/dark signals from the rods into the blue/yellow, and red/green axis activity in V4 (or perhaps it is V5 – one is the color and the other is the motion processing sections of the brain’s visual system) when you made that banana blue?
     
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  18. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Me, too.


    Maybe this is why some people look like they got dressed in the dark, ha-ha, but, seriously, there may be differences, just as there are three main classes of taste buds, although I'm not sure how much variance there is in color among humans.


    'Color Symbols' in the poems thread:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2690977&postcount=1370


    The three types of cone proteins rotate according to the amount of primary color present, and I suppose that whatever came to represent the primaries was an arbitrary selection. I didn't know about the transforming details.

    Keep the good stuff coming, Billy.
     
  19. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Another vague idea about consciousness/brain:

    We can actually see the superpositioning of electrons in green sulfur bacteria, via fermo-lasers, as these electrons in superposition locate the most efficient path for photosynthesis. Maybe the brain does something similar.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    One convenient shorthand definition of "life" is "a large local reversal of entropy."
     
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Actually there are two slightly different groups of humans. The red and blue Rohdopsin molecules of the color cone are the same in all humans, but two slightly different green Rohdopsin molecules exist. - Somewhere back in human evolution the gene(s) telling how to make the green sensitive molecules changed and new, slightly different, "make green Rohdopsin" instructions in human DNA did not get lost from the gene pool. It is a very small difference, hard to even notice in the wave length vs sensitivity response curves, so not much selection for or against. AFAIK, man does not know which is the original and which is the mutation.

    For what kids are taught in early school years, that is correct, I think. But color TV designers know your retina has three different color responce curves with peak sensitivity in the red, green and blue and have three phosphere with these three (approximately) same peaks. Get up close to your TV and see dots with three different colors.

    Perception of color is very complex with many factors in addition to the stimulation wave length. Land of Polaroid fame, had a theory of color called the Retinex (not spelled correctly) theory. I have experienced his demonstration of it years ago. In that demonstration only a red and a white light slide projector superposed to make one image gave what you would logically think should be a pink image of the scenes, but you had the full set of color experiences. (Saw green leaves, etc.)
     
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  22. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks, Billy.


    Onto Consciousness not quite explained…

    Does consciousness make us pull back from the heat of a hot stove when we touch it? No, that was a reflex, but the pain was ‘felt’ in consciousness, as well as the ‘seeing’ of whole scene of color, odor, touch, and taste of the event. Was consciousness the first response? No, consciousness was the last to be informed of the painful experience, after which we absorbed the experience, thought about it, and perhaps did something else as a result.

    Whatever it is that the brain does to achieve consciousness can be stopped by anesthesia when it dissolves in the oily regions of the neuron microtubules. The brain then stays active but it does not produce any consciousness until the anesthesia is taken away. The same kind of result occurs when you faint. Consciousness is therefore surely of the brain—a process. As such, consciousness can be turned off and on by the xenon or isoflurane gas of anesthetics.


    Sciam web site (summary) and my note:

    Quantum Biology is the Key

    In the bacterial proteins having to do with photosynthesis, dancing electrons tunnel to other places kind of all at once, as happens within the quantum realm, and produce energy at a staggering efficiency rate of more than 95%.

    Instead of haphazardly moving from one connective channel to the next in the scaffolding of the cellular reaction center, the electron solar energy travels in several directions at the same time; then, at the end, collapses the quantum process, retroactively finding a very efficient pathway from its ‘random walks’.


    [This kind of thing may also be happening to produce consciousness in the microtubules of brain neurons, in that a scenario of consequences is reduced to an action or a thought.]

    Each brain neuron contains hundreds of long, cylindrical protein structures that serve as scaffolding. Anesthetics affect how some of the electrons in these regions behave, interrupting the neurons’ delicate quantum process.

    The microtubules normally are squashed and elongated at the same time since electrons are superimposed everywhere about the neuron. These constantly shifting sections, due to quantum entanglement, have an impact on other sections. It is in the faster-than-light subatomic communication that consciousness is born.

    Entanglement is not, like the name might suggest, a hopeless tangle of a mess of strings, but a dynamic quantum-mechanical dance of beautiful gyrations of that which is ever affected and continues to be.
     
  23. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    If that is a subtle reference to Daniel Dennet's book, I agree - his book does not live up to its title. Consciousness, IMHO, has much more to do with qualia than the constantly revised drafts / story we tell our selves. As P-zombies must be able to think / evaluate alternative choices / before acting, they also could tell them selves that constantly changing story and still not be conscious / have qualia. The P-zombie can no more know what it like to be a human than we can know what it is like to be a bat. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel)

    This tread gives irrefutable proof that "you" (I use quotes to indicate I am referring to your conscious self.) are the last to know in many things, including "your" decisions: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2227485&postcount=1 (with 72 posts total now)
    Save me trouble of finding and make sure I get to correct link by giving link. Thanks.
    Word I made bold, is poor choice, if not simply a misleading error. Although entangled systems with great physical separation do both collapse wave functions at the same time there is no possibility of information being sent from A to B faster than light. I.e. there is no communication from A to distant B possible via entanglement.
    This however does not rule out an important possible role of microtubules in brain function, including an essential role in the creation of consciousness / qualia. Nor does it rule out the possibility that they are just a residual evolutionary artifact, from single celled animals in which they helped with locomotion. They are found on the surface of many single cell organisms, which I strongly doubt are “conscious.”

    It has been at least a decade, since I read anything about them and the possible functions, so if you have a recent links discussing their functions, please give them. You assert that: "Anesthetics affect how some of the electrons in these regions behave, interrupting the neurons’ delicate quantum process.” And I would like to know why you think they may be specially important in anesthetic effects. I do agree that these tiny microtubular structures are the only part of the brain small enough for quantum effect to even happen.

    What you seem to be implying was the POV of Sir John Eccles – a really great (noble prize winning) neurophysiologist and the last of the knowledgeable “dualist” IMHO. I have read his book Mind and Brain in which he suggests that the soul acts thru these quantum effects and thus does not really interfere, with the laws of physics. Most lesser advocates of a soul do not realize that something immaterial with no force field cannot change the deterministic results of natural laws, but he knew and I think assumed, that the soul could determine which eign state a QM system collapsed into and there would be no way to know it had – no violation of a deterministic laws of physics. If the soul did have a force field (for F= MA etc.) then it would be observable. He also accepted the “three worlds” POV* that, I think, Sir Karl Popper proposed or made popular. The wiki link mainly focuses on this aspect of Sir John. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eccles_(neurophysiologist) but Mind and Brain (and probably most of his other books) is concerned with how a dualist can be a good scientists, via the microtubules, as I recall – I read it a long time ago. AFAIK, his faith that God / soul did act thru the microtubules was unshaken when he died in 1997.

    -----------------
    * I basically accept it too. In fact I argue that world 2 is the only one we are sure exists, but as a Ph.D physicist, my behavior certainly implies a belief in the first and third worlds too. I can tell you both know something about Chamber's "hard problem" and have interest in this area. I have a crackpot POV about how perception works / is achieved. I am certain the POV accepted by cognitive scientists (Perception "emerges" after many stages of neural computation transforms of sensory data.") is nonsense. Perhaps you would like to read it at:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=905778&postcount=66 and some posts in a thread on free will, especially this one explaining in more detail my RTS concepts:
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2644660&postcount=82
     
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