Almost done with the meaning course. There are so many terms now, if you haven’t watched it all, I’m not sure how well you will get this one. The middle sections are usually the best, around 30 minutes.
In this one, he talks about how knowledge can just be the facts, but wisdom is applying them. Anyone can regurgitate Schopenhauer. A slightly more advanced student can compare him to Camus. A master of those can integrate the ideas into their thoughts naturally. But is that wisdom?
A wise person has the concepts and can apply them to different situations. There isn’t a test though. It’s knowing the model and knowing the model isn’t the thing. Or, with meaning, it’s knowing the lack of meaning doesn’t mean anything.
The example in the talk is the atom we see modeled in textbooks. Atoms don’t look at all like that. You can’t see the protons, but the model gives a visual description. For meaning, you can’t show it, there’s no checklist for what’s meaningful. You can feel it though. We have stories to tell each other, inspirational ones. You want to say those are lies. That’s where you confuse the model with the thing. The model is not the thing, but you can know the thing. You first need to understand that the model isn’t the thing itself.
They are not just electrical impulses.
They are an “orchestrated objective reduction” of electrical impulses , as compared and guided by the stored memories from prior experiences.
Roger Penrose believes this process is a form of quantum mechanics, facilitated by microtubules in the brain’s neural network.
The special organization of stacked microtubules that store memories are called Purkinje neurons and consists of special “pyramidal neurons”.
He’s actually not. Quantum consciousness is and always has been pseudoscience.
Your own wiki link even showed the theory itself is nonsense.
He might be an expert but that doesn’t make him right on this. It’s still nonsense like the last time you tried this and I’m not entertaining it further.
That seems a little below the belt. After all Neurobiology is a long way from Penrose’s expertise, mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science - if anything Penrose’s engagement with the problem is philosophical in nature. Not grounded in physical sciences, but relying on assumptions that arose from his mathematical philosopher’s mind, pretty near oblivious to what was happening in neurology.
The answers to consciousness will be found within materialist biological sciences - simply need to become familiar with the amazing recent progress. But that’s just my opinion and I never earned a Nobel Prize so the stinky eye for me.
But , the thing is, that opinion goes well beyond just little ol me.
Quantum consciousness (sometimes called quantum mind) is the idea that consciousness requires quantum processes, as opposed to the view of mainstream neurobiology, in which the function of the brain is wholly classical, and quantum processes play no computational role.
While many attempts at a theory of quantum consciousness are pseudoscientific by naively claiming the strangeness of quantum mechanics is a parallel to the strangeness of consciousness, more sophisticated quantum consciousness theories are an attempt at a solution of the “combination problem”; the problem explaining how a system of classical neurons can combine to form a single subject of experience (also referred to as the “binding problem”). However, there is currently little experimental evidence of computationally relevant quantum processes in the human brain, in part due to the technical difficulty of probing the brain at sufficient spatial and temporal granularity.
Whether or not quantum effects influence thought is a valid topic for scientific investigation, but simply stating “quantum effects cause consciousness” explains nothing unless scientists can come up with some suggestion about how quantum effects could possibly cause consciousness. The argument goes:
I don’t understand consciousness.
I don’t understand quantum physics.
Therefore, consciousness must be a function of quantum physics!
He is an expert in quantum mechanics. And at that level neurobiology is just physics. MT provide the physical substrate for quantum processes in the brain.
There is no mystique. And as long as GR and QM cannot be reconciled, nobody can claim one or the other is pseudo-science. That is just an admission of ignorance.
Penrose is one of the few who can claim Einstein’s level of insight. That’s why he is a Nobel Laureate.
Incorrect. He’s just a guy. A guy who’s out of his field on this matter.
Incorrect and kinda shows you know nothing about either field. The is a reason that link you showed me said it was pseudoscience with an extensive section proving how.
The brain is not a quantum process, end of story. Quantum physics has no role in it.
Explore the foundations of quantum physics and its applications in nature, life and technology. Read about molecular motors, the counting of light quanta, and the effects of randomness in nature. Enjoy the simplicity and beauty of microscopic motion. The volumes guarantee to be interesting, vivid and surprising on every page: they include many colour animations, photographs, riddles and curiosities. Reading about quantum effects is a fascinating adventure!
