Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules?

[Write4U]

Yes. "microtubules" is the buzz word, and if you google it you'll get all kinds of hits. You're collecting stamps, essentially. You have a hard drive full of papers you can't do anything with (except to cut and paste random parts to this thread), which is a bit like having a stamp album full of stamps whose worth you can't determine.

Perhaps so, but they are based on a theme and that adds to its value.

I am collecting knowledge of a kind in a large album from which common themes can be gleaned, by more knowledgeable people than me.

 

[Write4U]

So, no, I'm afraid you don't measure up very well to Galileo, Write4U. But what did you expect? The man was a towering figure in the history of human thought. If not for him, you probably wouldn't have the computer you're reading this on.

That's just a cheap shot.

 

[Write4U]

Never mind that the waveguide paper you found makes not a single mention of microtubules.

Does it need to? I have shown that microtubules do experience "waveguides". You ask for explanations of terms, then when I give an explanation of a term you say it doesn't mention microtubules. Make up your mind already.

But then I guess you have made up your mind.

 

[Write4U]

Put it this way: there are a lot of kooks who have PhDs. Also, expertise in one narrow area certainly does not necessarily translate to expertise in unrelated fields.

And what exactly does that prove? How does that relate to microtubules?

 

[exchemist]

Does it need to? I have shown that microtubules do experience "waveguides". You ask for explanations of terms, then when I give an explanation of a term you say it doesn't mention microtubules. Make up your mind already.

But then I guess you have made up your mind.

A microtubule can't experience a waveguide. That is gibberish.

A waveguide is a thing that conveys waves, like a pipe conveying water. Normally waveguides convey microwaves, but potentially there can be other sorts. A microtubule may conceivably be able to act as a waveguide, though this has yet to be demonstrated, and it it can, it remains to be shown what that contributes to the functioning of neurons.

A pipe conveying water or waves does not constitute processing of information. That would require some form of gate process, triggered by another input, as in a transistor.

 

[exchemist]

And what exactly does that prove? How does that relate to microtubules?

It is not intended to prove anything. But it does show that possession of an academic qualification does not make the writer automatically a reliable authority, especially when they go off-piste from their own area of expertise.

 

[Write4U]

So I ask you what a "variable conformation" is, because it is a term you used in your post. Your response is not to define the term you used, but to suggest that it might be equivalent to another term that is also undefined by you.

Yes, it was my term and it generally describes the dynamic properties of microtubules. Microtubules are dynamically variable and assume different conformations depending on chemical information such as Tau binding.

Tau is an important microtubule-associated protein. Although the structure–function relationship of Tau has been intensively studied for many years primarily by molecular biology and biochemical approaches, little is still known about the molecular mechanisms by which Tau interacts with microtubules and promotes microtubule assembly.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1504081112#
What is your problem here?

 

[Write4U]

In other words, they modelled electrical signal propagation through a microtubule, essentially by assuming that the microtubule acts like a cylindrical waveguide. Since microtubules are, apparently, more or less cylindrical, this makes sense.

Yes.

The hard part, I imagine, would be making the experimental measurements since these things are small. So, well done on that.

ty!

So what have we learned? Microtubules tend to behave like similar cylindrical objects when they carry electrical signals of a certain type.

This was vehemently disputed in the past. I am happy this is now recognized as it supports the notion that data transmission of various kinds must contribute to the emergence of conscious awareness of this process.

I would put this in the category of an expected and unsurprising result. That is not to take away from the work these experimentalists put into doing the experiment, or from the value of testing the model experimentally.

I agree, their work provided proof.

Is this relevant to consciousness? I can't see any obvious reason why it would be, and I don't think the authors talk about that at all. So, for the current thread, it's more or less irrelevant.

How can you say that?
It is like saying; "You don't need flower to bake bread, because flower is used to bake cake".

 

[Write4U]

Your pet hypothesis (well, one of the three) is that microtubules are somehow responsible for consciousness.

Not quite correct. My claim is that the microtubule network is the substrate from which consciousness emerges.
Difference!

 

[Write4U]

In your own words.

I primarily use the same words as you, but when I use my own words you seem to have trouble understanding them.
That's why I rely on the quoted portions of peer-reviewed papers, because they use words that you will understand, no?

I quote them because I understand the general thrust of research and what it is they are trying to prove. I don't necessarily need to know the scientific equations involved.

 

[Write4U]

If you really want to talk about specific mathematics, we can. But I doubt you understand any of the mathematical models that might be relevant to EM waves or qubits in microtubules well enough to discuss them meaningfully. So why bluff?

You are directing your efforts in the wrong direction.
Do you understand what I post and the relevance of the posts? Instead of blaming me for being obscure, why not simply ask for clarification? Have I ever refused to answer a question?

 

[Write4U]

A microtubule can't experience a waveguide. That is gibberish.
A waveguide is a thing that conveys waves, like a pipe conveying water. Normally waveguides convey microwaves, but potentially there can be other sorts. A microtubule may conceivably be able to act as a waveguide, though this has yet to be demonstrated, and it it can, it remains to be shown what that contributes to the functioning of neurons.

Yes and microtubules are pipes that transport water via waveguide equations.

Water channel inside microtubule does a mysterious job that enables microtubules with 40,000 tubulins to demonstrate conductivity 1000 times more than the single tubulin protein. Moreover, the fundamental energy levels of single tubulin and microtubule are identical, and microtubule works as octave musical string.Sep 15, 2013

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956566313001590#

A pipe conveying water or waves does not constitute processing of information. That would require some form of gate process, triggered by another input, as in a transistor.

See above. Microtubules are transistors.

Microtubules (MTs) are important structures of the cytoskeleton in neurons.
Mammalian brain MTs act as biomolecular transistors that generate highly synchronous electrical oscillations.Sep 6, 2021

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2021.727025/full#

 

[Write4U]

It is not intended to prove anything. But it does show that possession of an academic qualification does not make the writer automatically a reliable authority, especially when they go off-piste from their area of expertise.

I agree, but again what does that prove?
Is that not what peer review is all about. I try to select quotes from papers that are peer reviewed or by agreement of all researchers involved. I doubt that entire ensembles of researchers would commit intellectual fraud.

IMO, if I had a single source that espoused the remarkable properties of this common denominator in almost all biology, I would tend to distrust that myself.

The fact that I have posted from a great variety of sources, all descriptions of microtubule properties and functions tend to reinforce the notion that MT possess truly remarkable properties that suggest its candidacy for being directly associated with emergent homeostatic control of the body's biochemistry and by extension the evolution of conscious experience of their continual processing of all kinds of information.

In that respect Penrose's hypothesis that MT processes involve some quantum function that produces what Hameroff has dubbed "Bings" of conscious experience at a deeper level such as an internal field, seems not unreasonable at all.

 

[Write4U]

Afterthought;
If "physical values" can emerge from energy fields in spacetime, can "experiential values" emerge from energy fields in braintime?

What Is a Particle?

It has been thought of as many things: a pointlike object, an excitation of a field, a speck of pure math that has cut into reality. But never has physicists’ conception of a particle changed more than it is changing now.

.......

The easy answer quickly shows itself to be unsatisfying. Namely, electrons, photons, quarks and other “fundamental” particles supposedly lack substructure or physical extent. “We basically think of a particle as a pointlike object,” said Mary Gaillard, a particle theorist at the University of California, Berkeley who predicted the masses of two types of quarks in the 1970s. And yet particles have distinct traits, such as charge and mass. How can a dimensionless point bear weight?

“We say they are ‘fundamental,’” said Xiao-Gang Wen, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But that’s just a [way to say] to students, ‘Don’t ask! I don’t know the answer. It’s fundamental; don’t ask anymore."

With any other object, the object’s properties depend on its physical makeup — ultimately, its constituent particles. But those particles’ properties derive not from constituents of their own but from mathematical patterns. As points of contact between mathematics and reality, particles straddle both worlds with an uncertain footing.

When I recently asked a dozen particle physicists what a particle is, they gave remarkably diverse descriptions. They emphasized that their answers don’t conflict so much as capture different facets of the truth. They also described two major research thrusts in fundamental physics today that are pursuing a more satisfying, all-encompassing picture of particles.

“‘What is a particle?’ indeed is a very interesting question,” said Wen. “Nowadays there is progress in this direction. I should not say there’s a unified point of view, but there’s several different points of view,A Particle Is a ‘Collapsed Wave Function’1[/paste:font]

The quest to understand nature’s fundamental building blocks began with the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus’s assertion that such things exist. Two millennia later, Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens debated whether light is made of particles or waves. The discovery of quantum mechanics some 250 years after that proved both luminaries right: Light comes in individual packets of energy known as photons, which behave as both particles and waves.

Wave-particle duality turned out to be a symptom of a deep strangeness. Quantum mechanics revealed to its discoverers in the 1920s that photons and other quantum objects are best described not as particles or waves but by abstract “wave functions” — evolving mathematical functions that indicate a particle’s probability of having various properties. The wave function representing an electron, say, is spatially spread out, so that the electron has possible locations rather than a definite one. But somehow, strangely, when you stick a detector in the scene and measure the electron’s location, its wave function suddenly “collapses” to a point, and the particle clicks at that position in the detector.

A Particle Is a ‘Quantum Excitation of a Field’2

The picture soon got even stranger. In the 1930s, physicists realized that the wave functions of many individual photons collectively behave like a single wave propagating through conjoined electric and magnetic fields — exactly the classical picture of light discovered in the 19th century by James Clerk Maxwell. These researchers found that they could “quantize” classical field theory, restricting fields so that they could only oscillate in discrete amounts known as the “quanta” of the fields. In addition to photons — the quanta of light — Paul Dirac and others discovered that the idea could be extrapolated to electrons and everything else: According to quantum field theory, particles are excitations of quantum fields that fill all of space.

more...... https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-a-particle-20201112/

Could this be happening inside a brain? Is that what Penrose proposes?

 

[exchemist]

Afterthought;
If "physical values" can emerge from energy fields in spacetime, can "experiential values" emerge from energy fields in braintime?

What Is a Particle?

.......

A Particle Is a ‘Quantum Excitation of a Field’2

more...... https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-a-particle-20201112/

Could this be happening inside a brain? Is that what Penrose proposes?

No.

 

[Write4U]

No.

Can you give a hint why not? A reference?

 

[exchemist]

Can you give a hint why not? A reference?

Yes, I can give a hint: "experiential values" emerging from "energy fields" in "braintime" contains three nonsensical terms. Whatever criticisms can be made of Orch OR - and there are many, as post 5 of this thread shows - Penrose does not write gibberish.

1) What is an experiential value?

2) There is no such thing as an "energy field". That is Star Trek or Deepak Chopra, not science. This has been gone over many times on this forum. You should know it by now.

3) What is braintime?

 

[Write4U]

Yes, I can give a hint: "experiential values" emerging from "energy fields" in "braintime" contains three nonsensical terms. Whatever criticisms can be made of Orch OR - and there are many, as post 5 of this thread shows - Penrose does not write gibberish.

What is an experiential value?

Tegmark calls it "perceptronium"

There is no such thing as an "energy field". That is Star Trek or Deepak Chopra, not science. This has been gone over many times on this forum. You should know it by now.

how about EM field?

An electromagnetic field (also EM field or EMF) is a classical (i.e. non-quantum) field produced by moving electric charges.[1] It is the field described by classical electrodynamics (a classical field theory) and is the classical counterpart to the quantized electromagnetic field tensor in quantum electrodynamics (a quantum field theory). The electromagnetic field propagates at the speed of light (in fact, this field can be identified as light) and interacts with charges and currents. Its quantum counterpart is one of the four fundamental forces of nature (the others are gravitation, weak interaction and strong interaction.)

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

What is braintime?

hehe, I knew that would get your attention. It is the spacetime inside the brain, as separated from spacetime outside the brain. And I know it is all space time, but there are local pockets of spacetime that have specific properties, no? I used "braintime" to indicate a local pocket of spacetime inside the brain.

What is "perceptronium"

This is how Tegmark uses the term.

Consciousness as a State of Matter
Max Tegmark Dept. of Physics & MIT Kavli Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 (Dated: February 28, 2014)

We examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, “perceptronium”, with distinctive information processing abilities. We explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other physical systems such as solids, liquids and gases: the information, integration, independence, dynamics and utility principles.

If such principles can identify conscious entities, then they can help solve the quantum factorization problem: why do conscious observers like us perceive the particular Hilbert space factorization corresponding to classical space (rather than Fourier space, say), and more generally, why do we perceive the world around us as a dynamic hierarchy of objects that are strongly integrated and relatively independent?

Tensor factorization of matrices is found to play a central role, and our technical results include a theorem about Hamiltonian separability (defined using Hilbert-Schmidt superoperators) being maximized in the energy eigenbasis. Our approach generalizes Giulio Tononi’s integrated information framework for neural-network-based consciousness to arbitrary quantum systems, and we find interesting links to error-correcting codes, condensed matter criticality, and the Quantum Darwinism program, as well as an interesting connection between the emergence of consciousness and the emergence of time.

more .......
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf

No wonder he was critical of ORCH OR. I have no such prejudices.

 

[exchemist]

Tegmark calls it "perceptronium"
how about EM field?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_field
hehe, I knew that would get your attention. It is the spacetime inside the brain, as separated from spacetime outside the brain. And I know it is all space time, but there are local pockets of spacetime that have specific properties, no? I used "braintime" to indicate a local pocket of spacetime inside the brain.
This is how Tegmark uses the term.

Consciousness as a State of Matter
Max Tegmark Dept. of Physics & MIT Kavli Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 (Dated: February 28, 2014)
more .......
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf

No wonder he was critical of ORCH OR. I have no such prejudices.

A state of matter cannot be a value. You are inventing meanings for things as you go. This is all garbage.

 

[origin]

hehe, I knew that would get your attention.

Hehe, that is one of the many reasons you and your ignorant tripe is ignored.