Consciousness and Reality

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OK so we have this seer coming up with amazing stuff, called psuedo science. I am thinking more of Penrose, and Bohm. They are, or were greatly respected scientists with a terrific track record of innovation. Add Hameroff and Wheeler to that.

Consciousness is a discrete, possibly "moment of experience" due to a possibly self induced collpase of the wave front. Please don't just take my word for it.

Hameroff talking about Whitehead

Talking about The Emperor's New Mind by Penrose

Recent science accepts that gravity and the wave front are fundamental to physics. They are at the heart of matter. Penrose and Wheeler have suggested a connection between reality and consciousness. Quite obviously when we say space/time we do not mean "out there" but something much closer to home.

Most people will think that consciousness is entirely inside the head, but I think the ground work has been laid to suggest something more. The implications go much farther than whether or not consciousness is in part outside the brain.

jup and if you take in acount how psychedlics affect people it makes even more sense. als think about this if everything exists as a fielde that overflows into the fields around isn't it then just one thing that overflows into itself rather then seperate things.

I dunno about the others, but in my opinion Penrose is just misguided. I agree that consciousness (that is, subjective experience) is a mystery, but I don't think that it is a mystery that can be solved using physics, even if it's quantum physics. In the end, all physical theories are mechanical (although they might have true randomness built in). A mechanical theory cannot ever explain why I have subjective experience. It can describe my brain, but not my mind.

arn't the quantum effect just the the way the nonlocal conciousnis enters the physical world atleast i think that kinda what penrose states i'm not sure who states what tough i've just been intrested in this for a while and have formed kind of my own theory.

Try thinking about the idea that your consciousness doesn't really exist, but the world in general does. It's fun.

Billions of little organisms in my brain. Billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions! Any given one could be connected to thousands...THOUSANDS!

Each and every one of them is a little organism with little--speaking broadly--"thoughts." Ions surge in and out of them, in and out, in and out. Calcium ion, sodium ion, potassium ion, ions, ions and more ions. On the surface of any cell, there are myriad, little pumps, pumping ions in and out.

The little pumps...they are controlled by tiny, little doo-dads that are made up of proteins. They are called "receptors." There are many kinds of receptors. Many of them do the same things, but they start doing stuff under different circumstances. There are many different kinds of them to any one person...alleles are thousand-fold!

In the brain, there are distinct structures, many and sundry. Each of these structures has a unique life of its own. Each does something different. All of these structures talk to each other. They check and balance each other.

The brain is divided into two halves. They talk to each other.

The brain talks to other organs in your body. This includes your digestive tract, which is also highly sophisticated. This includes your adrenal glands, which are nestled up next to your kidneys. This includes your spleen. This includes your thymus. It includes your heart. All are connected.

Your consciousness is a community. Your consciousness is a civilization. It is a religion.

Consciousness is abstract!

I don't really tend to buy into the whole quantum consciousness idea, and if anything, my background of knowledge suggests the opposite. Look into Dan Dennett.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on ... sness.html

The article was long and heavy going but I love quantum physics. I like the notion that our consciousness is like a wave that extends beyond our own brains. But who knows what it is.

It is a hard for us to understand how we have a subjective experience. Neuroscience helps to understand the brain as an organ but it does nothing to explain how electro chemical processes result in a subjective experience. In fact it looks to me like physical matter (our neurons and neuro transmitters) are being manipulated by electromagnetic energy. We still don't really know what electromagnetic energy is, or whether it is part of our universe or whether it is the shadow of something in another dimension. Whatever....

Declension, there are some who would argue mathmetician Penrose is doing Philosophy. He does say that the process of consciousness is not computable. I know nothing about Godel, so have to keep quiet about that.

daywalker, the wave collapase has to be fascinating, like where does the wave come from. I assume the collapse is due to gravity, which as far as I am aware moves in and out of space time. In fact is gravity the cause of space/time.

Awesome, I've had a quick look at Dennett. He says clearly that consciousness cannot be properly studied by science. However, his detractors say that he is considering perception not consciousness.

Yes, William, I have to think about the neuro peptides as my heart has been a necessary interest of late. I saw the subject written about me, by the heart specialist.

Robdemanc, my own experience gives me cause to think. I can write a story, using stream of consciousness and it is as though the whole thing has already happened and I am looking at some kind of mind's eye video. My own experience does come into play with this. In physics generally we can imagine the photon moving along a wave. Or maybe a virtual photon becames a photon due to the wave. The experts can help me out here. What causes the wave, or should we say the gravity, or the vibrations of string theory seems to a mystery to me. I have never read Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, although it sounds fascinating to me. Oh, yes, you can say the vibrations originate from heat, what sustains them.

When people talk of waves I don't imagine they are talking about something tangible but something logical. Like a distribution wave. My understanding of particles is that they pop in and out of the universe randomly but for the most part appear in a specific location, but on just a few occasions may appear miles away from where they usually appear. From that we can discern a distribution wave. I may have the wrong way of thinking about it.

Yes, quite right. The research is starting on the medical front, being heavily influenced in a lot of the unignorable 'flukes' they're finding with regard to NDE.

I think Greyson in this video explains the nature of the flukes, how physicians are looking at them, as well as the difference in psychology between scientists and physicians which will perhaps lead to more studies like AWARE and help form a sort of theory that the scientific community will be able to test and qualify/disqualify:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_qBIw7qyHU[/youtube]

What does this have to do with consciousness causing wave function collapse? There are theorists who'd suggest that as the brain itself is matter and function of wave collapse that it can't happen. What's discussed in this video kind of peels back the corners and shows what can perhaps be investigated further - whether it actually validates 'dualism' in the classic sense no one knows but again, it'll be interesting.

Actually, my central thesis was at the end: consciousness is something thoroughly abstract. The concrete working parts of it are the tiny, little peptides and doodads, working at the molecular level...they are the grit and substance of our thought processes. They are the working parts. Your consciousness is an abstraction that is produced by the interactions between them. It is futile to ask "where" your conscious is. It has no more substantial reality than a computer program.

And you don't need a machine more complex than the human brain to explain it. It's not exactly a simple organ.

Well, the issue is in untangling that difference.

As for "consciousness cannot be properly studied by science", I am unsure where you are getting that.

Consciousness is like an eyeball that can't see itself.

Appeal to authority much?

techstep, I had my own experience a few years ago. I had emergency open heart surgery for an aortic anuerysm. The doctor expanied to me not to count too much on my chances of surving the operation, but then I supposed my chances without it were even less. He explained they would be putting me deep, deep down unconscious for this kind of surgery. I was comatose for three and a half days. When I woke I saw my friend looking very sad, but I tried smiling and held out my hand to her. After that I think fever and the result of the strong anaesthetic took over. When I was unconscious I heard a voice saying this is a dream. I had been doing this that and the other and didn't seem to care about the seriousness of my situation. Death was definitely coming after me through that dream and I resisted it strongly. At one point a voice said why not just die, after all you are going to have a pretty miserable life from this time on. All manner of situations were hitting at me and you have to appreciate that at one point I tried pinching my arm to wake myself up. I simply could not wake up.

I can look back now and understand the time when it was the fever and anaesthesia affecting my mind. Reality had been altered in various ways. Some people called in to visit. I saw their faces as if they had be processed to golden perfection in graphics software. I saw the tubes and and heart monitor beeping. I imagined a computer controlling all of this, and thought if I could switch it off or pull the plugs out then all this nonsense would end. I couldn't find the switch or the cables. Finally the switch and cables were visible to me, but at that point commonsense seemed to take hold and I thought there is still unfinished busines to be done.

My point here is things happened in the dream and the fevered state which I thought were real. In the dream they didn't happen at all, and in the fevered state they were altered completely. Even when clarity came to my mind, I still thought some of these things had happened. It took some friends who visited to assure me they were not possible.

This was not one of those near death experiences, there was no tunnel or anything like that. One thing I can say for sure is whilst the medical profession were fight to save my life I was fighting all the way also. Was this God. I would naturally think so, but do not expect atheists to agree with me. I can tell you that various doctors have all been agreed they would not have expected me to live, but to all these claims there will be unbelievers can quote similar experiences.

A good and often made point.