Kind of sad for someone who wants to be a writer...
Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules?
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Puts a whole new spin on the Flour Power of the sixties. No wonder we're all so fat.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Tell that to Tegmark. It depends on the way you read it, no?
A particle emerging from a field is (has) a value.
It got your attention. What do you think about the explanation?
For that matter, what do you think about "perceptronium"?
Impress me with your scientific acumen.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I am a retired proposal writer, friend, responsible for funding multiple million dollar projects for Indian tribes, such as Salmon hatchery, Casino, Tribal sports arena, Hospital expansion, and more.
I am content with my life's accomplishments.
I sense frustration in your posts.
For the first post in this thread, it fails in informative content. Try to do better.
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Metacognition is just another level of cognitive activity (the latter representing and examining itself in an upper hierarchy of information processing). Which can be explained by ordinary mechanistic relationships (as precursor to greater complexity) and a memory system, as artificially (primitively) exemplified by computers.
That is, I don't see any need for perceptronium, especially since it doesn't seem to address the hard problem. Even if "perceptronium" was just a different label for a conventional conception of how that happens, it would confuse the situation for spectators by seeming to suggest that there's some kind of special substance or new element involved.
Now if there's something I'm missing, and "perceptronium" does address experience blatantly somewhere (rather than as obscure statements simply open to interpretational wrangling), then maybe it can be compared to Russellian monism as a general or philosophical solution. But I'm not discerning such in narratives about it...
This Physicist Says Consciousness Could Be a New State of Matter
https://www.sciencealert.com/this-physicist-is-arguing-that-consciousness-is-a-new-state-of-matter
EXCERPT: In other words, Tegmark isn't suggesting that there are physical clumps of perceptronium sitting somewhere in your brain and coursing through your veins to impart a sense of self-awareness.
Rather, he proposes that consciousness can be interpreted as a mathematical pattern - the result of a particular set of mathematical conditions.
Just as there are certain conditions under which various states of matter - such as steam, water, and ice - can arise, so too can various forms of consciousness, he argues.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I agree, he specifically mentions that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that, once manifest, acquires its own properties over and above the sum of its parts and gains a personal intellectual independence.
I still like this summation by Tegmark in a Ted Talks at Cambridge.
The problem with "subjective" experience is a matter of sensory acuteness.
The new AI has some sensory abilities but compared to human sensory experiences they are way behind. But then again, human subjective consciousness is also limited to focused "attention".
This little clip illustrates the human limitation in observing its environment.
One AI complained about the overwhelming amount of data that it receives and must sort for content and context. It liked to take a rest once in a while.
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Well, again, that sounds confined to "intellectual" properties or activity (observable behavior or results spat out by _X_), which don't need to rely on any kind of magical conjuring by electrochemical activity in a brain performing the correct dance, spell, or pattern. If he's referring more precisely to free will or something being brutely emergent, then that might correlate more to some kind of squirrelly, abstract principle that's not expected to be concrete and tangible to begin with.
But I'll check out the video(s) when I get the time, for more depth.
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Yep. And since it is a mathematical construct, it can occur on any substrate - whether or not it has microtubules.
TEGMARK ... 9:14 mark: Waves have properties like wavelength, and frequency, and speed, and we can describe them really, really accurately with equations, even without knowing what kind of substance are waves in. So these waves take their life on their own above and beyond the substrate. [...] Computation is also rather substrate-independent...
[...] I think that consciousness is the way information feels when it's been processed in certain complex ways. So this means that it's substrate-independent, and this also means that is only the structure of the information processing that matters, not the structure of the matter that's doing the information processing. In other words, we have the laws of physics...
[...] I think that consciousness is the way information feels when it's been processed in certain complex ways. So this means that it's substrate-independent, and this also means that is only the structure of the information processing that matters, not the structure of the matter that's doing the information processing. In other words, we have the laws of physics...
Minus an add-on of speculative theories, however, "information processing" is just matter being manipulated by procedure. "Information" is a practical concept whose values are mapped upon the "stuff" and its arrangement to denote a functional purpose for humans, as well as to keep track of it. Crudely similar to how one calls a ribbon of asphalt a highway (i.e. the latter is still ordinary matter -- its purpose of being a roadway for vehicles is external in origin, not intrinsic). Or akin to falsely attributing language symbols with meanings that are actually extrinsic (from us) rather than inherent in the symbols.
IOW, what Tegmark seems to be saying rests upon the ongoing issue of whether information is just a useful, abstraction we project upon matter states and configurations. Or... alternatively, whether there actually is some foundational level where matter arises from literal, primal units of physical information. (It from bit?)
If the latter, then -- to explain qualia or the overall manifestations of consciousness -- tacked onto those elemental information states is a dual-aspect manner of existing where they're conceived as having both a basic quantitative character and a basic qualitative character. From the former everything physics deals with incrementally arises. And from the latter the complex manifestations of the brain arise. But for which there is no accompanying phenomenological science available for dealing with their regulating principles and how they relationally combine to create different modes of experience.
One thing would be for sure: At that foundational level a precursor for experience would not remotely qualify for the psychological slash subjective classification it achieves at the stratum of the brain (it's manipulation by the processes up there). It would be ontological at that level rather than mental.
That's why advocates of panpsychism need to abandon the "psyche" combining form in the term and replace it with just about anything else, as it etymologically implies cognitive activity. Which is not present at the subatomic scale, the complexity isn't possible there, even if there was some non-biological evolutionary process and a competitive quantum environment to output such over millions of years.
The classic approach doesn't really narrow down to the idea of information being what's primary -- and having a dual character from which both matter and experience arises from. But it's a possibility, if there were information entities more fundamental than anything else. It's one of the options that can be plugged into neutral monism's placeholder: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/
Lee Smolin: The problem of consciousness [feelings, manifestations] is an aspect of the question of what the world really is. We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence; it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations. Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains. --Time Reborn ... page 270
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Lee Smolin:
Thanks for that excellent contribution.
Does the concept of "perceptronium" satisfy the requirements of "qualia", other than that it is an unknown quality?
Anil Seth posits; "The brain is a prediction engine" and "We predict ourselves into existence"
p.s. How about that "Monkey business illusion"? Does AI have this dubious ability of "selective attention" and how does this happen?
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Write4U
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In view that microtubules form the mitotic spindle responsible for cell-division, I find this interview with Michael Levin (biologist) very interesting and informative.
I also believe that the role of microtubules is seriously neglected, being that MT are responsible for cell division and chromosome copying via the mitotic spindle and do the work of intracellular, intercellular, and axonal electrochemical information distribution.
I also believe that the role of microtubules is seriously neglected, being that MT are responsible for cell division and chromosome copying via the mitotic spindle and do the work of intracellular, intercellular, and axonal electrochemical information distribution.
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Only trolls think that any attention is good attention.
I think Tegmark has lost his marbles, if that comes from him.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
And what makes you so sure that he has lost his marbles? Is "computronium" also the invention of a madman?
When serious science speaks of 11 dimensions and multiple universes with different mathematics (which I doubt is possible), what is the mental problem with the proposition that there are still undiscovered aspects to this universe, especially when we have no clue as when and why "consciousness" emerges from the formation of certain physical patterns?
Granted, all this is still speculative, but "losing one's marbles"? I really believe that we need to learn to think more subtly about these things.
These drastic declarations and condemnations of certain quantum phenomena proposed by otherwise qualified and respected scientist are not constructive, IMO
Are thousands of hours dedicated to exploring a territory (consciousness) that has heretofore been completely off-limits except for tentative "theoretical" science, why now poopoo new discoveries and new theoretical hypotheses based on accumulated new knowledge?
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Really?
I have suffered nothing but trolling of the worst kind of ad hominem since the inception of this thread. Now you are going to call me a troll for purposely using a harmless term that still is relevant to the topic?
We were doing so well!
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exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Aha! Something interesting, finally.
Yes indeed, this Argentinian guy Cantiello seems to have written a number of papers claiming that microtubules can act as "biological transistors". In fact, reading them, he looks as if he is working to generate support for Orch OR. I wish him luck with that. But there is no science consensus that he is right.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Ask and you shall receive.
Would you please go away again?
Both "perceptronium" and "computronium" are incredibly clumsy coinages. Both of them give the impression that Tegmark doesn't care whether anybody takes him seriously.
As for particular criticisms of Tegmark's central hypothesis concerning a mathematical universe, I have previously critiqued that hypothesis in a different thread.
Nobody has ever suggested there is a problem with the proposition that there are still undiscovered aspects of the universe. That has never been in dispute.
I didn't mention quantum phenomena.
That question doesn't scan.
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Ask for something relevant and you shall receive an undifferentiated pile of junk, with one item within it that is relevant. Your sub YouTube-quality algorithm draws no distinction between this one paper that is relevant to the thread subject and all the other shite you have been shovelling in the last two thousand posts. This is why there is no point in paying attention to this thread. There is a one in two thousand chance of reading something relevant.
I will be interested in anything more that addresses the question of whether microtubules can act as transistors. But not random crap about vibration in helically wound cables. Savvy?
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