The case against reality + How old & new make the mind ebb & flow

[C C]

The Case Against Reality
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ty/479559/

EXCERPT: As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

Not so, says Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine. Hoffman has spent the past three decades studying perception, artificial intelligence, evolutionary game theory and the brain, and his conclusion is a dramatic one: The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality. What’s more, he says, we have evolution itself to thank for this magnificent illusion, as it maximizes evolutionary fitness by driving truth to extinction.

Getting at questions about the nature of reality, and disentangling the observer from the observed, is an endeavor that straddles the boundaries of neuroscience and fundamental physics. On one side you’ll find researchers scratching their chins raw trying to understand how a three-pound lump of gray matter obeying nothing more than the ordinary laws of physics can give rise to first-person conscious experience. This is the aptly named “hard problem.”

On the other side are quantum physicists, marveling at the strange fact that quantum systems don’t seem to be definite objects localized in space until we come along to observe them. Experiment after experiment has shown—defying common sense—that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers. The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space. As the physicist John Wheeler put it, “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”

So while neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short, all roads lead back to the observer. And that’s where you can find Hoffman—straddling the boundaries, attempting a mathematical model of the observer, trying to get at the reality behind the illusion. "Quanta Magazine" caught up with him to find out more....

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How the old and new make the mind ebb and flow
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-old-and-t...b-and-flow

EXCERPT: For some 2,500 years, humans have located the mind in the brain inside our heads. But we ought to consider the origin of mind with an open mind. Is the mind truly within the brain? Or is this an illusion? [...] The mind is both embodied and relational. In our communications with one another, we often send linguistic packets of top-down words with narratives and explanations that are already constructing the reality we are sharing with another. Even when we try our best to use words to describe what we are experiencing, rather than explain what is going on, we are still using the construction of linguistic forms. And in our brain? Energy and information flow within us as well as between us. The nervous system, including its brain, plays a major role in shaping our embodied energy-flow patterns. This is how brain research illuminates, though not with totality, what the mind is and who we are....

[Zinjanthropos]

QBism (Quantum Bayesianism).... an excerpt from an article on the subject. A different look

Quantum mechanics is an incredibly successful theory but one full of strange paradoxes. A recently developed model called Quantum Bayesianism (or QBism) combines quantum theory with probability theory in an effort to eliminate the paradoxes or put them in a less troubling form.

QBism reimagines the entity at the heart of quantum paradoxes—the wave function. Scientists use wave functions to calculate the probability that a particle will have a certain property, such as being in one place and not another. But paradoxes arise when physicists as- sume that a wave function is real.

QBism maintains that the wave function is solely a mathematical tool that an observer uses to assign his or her personal belief that a quantum system will have a specific property. In this conception, the wave function does not exist in the world—rather it merely reflects an individual’s subjective mental state.

It appears observation and belief (mental state) may be related. 

Is there not a theory penned by Roger Penrose suggesting the brain is a quantum computer, a warm wet one at that? I stand to be corrected but I believe Penrose claims to have tested his theory (Orch OR- orchestrated observational reduction?) successfully. As a result consciousness and the human soul are linked somehow to quantum vibrations going on within the brain.... before I really get this screwed up I better go look it up.

Note: just knowing that science is beginning to zero in on the mind, consciousness and the soul is simply amazing IMHO.

[C C]

Is there not a theory penned by Roger Penrose suggesting the brain is a quantum computer, a warm wet one at that? I stand to be corrected but I believe Penrose claims to have tested his theory (Orch OR- orchestrated observational reduction?) successfully. As a result consciousness and the human soul are linked somehow to quantum vibrations going on within the brain.... before I really get this screwed up I better go look it up.

This news item is probably more recent than another one I recollect from the past that claimed research which undermined the whole idea (Hameroff offered a counter-response back then as to why it didn't). But it is still far from the mainstream looking upon it with approval (as well as other quantum-based hypotheses). There seems to be an a priori or preset conviction in biological circles that physics contributes nothing to an account of consciousness. Perhaps many upper level sciences intermittently, fancifully entertain that the general targets of their investigations float entirely on their own, as if arising from a lack of precursor circumstances or nothing beforehand.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...085105.htm

EXCERPT: After 20 years of skeptical criticism, "the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR," continue Hameroff and Penrose. "Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or "qubits," as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 -- of these, six are confirmed and none refuted."

[Zinjanthropos]

Looks like I got the acronym translation wrong.... should stand for Orchestrated Objective Reduction.

Why don't we hear of this theory? Is this not revolutionary?

[Syne]

Why don't we hear of this theory? Is this not revolutionary?

Not really. All of its purported supporting results come from other fields, where they may actually accomplish something, and this theory really doesn't add anything to the already reductionist view. Penrose is known for this kind of highly speculative hypothesizing.

[Zinjanthropos]

Why don't we hear of this theory? Is this not revolutionary?

Not really. All of its purported supporting results come from other fields, where they may actually accomplish something, and this theory really doesn't add anything to the already reductionist view. Penrose is known for this kind of highly speculative hypothesizing.

Oooooo! Maybe there's an even smaller, finer scale of particles yet to be discovered. 

Now that I'm a QBist, I can only take note that your viewpoint is a mere reflection of your subjective mental state.  

CC: for the life of me I cannot get that last link in your last post to work. My PC just buffers non-stop after opening it.

[C C]

CC: for the life of me I cannot get that last link in your last post to work. My PC just buffers non-stop after opening it.

Must be a javascript dependent ad causing it to hang. Can't be due to ScienceDaily being constantly over busy, because after all... It's a science news site. Plus I get it to download with no problem.

I use a Firefox add-on called QuickJava to disable javascript and anything else with one click. Do the latter before making another attempt to visit a problem page.

Chrome has Quick JS Switcher. Does not additionally and optionally disable images, flash, etc like the other.

[Carol]

Is there not a theory penned by Roger Penrose suggesting the brain is a quantum computer, a warm wet one at that? I stand to be corrected but I believe Penrose claims to have tested his theory (Orch OR- orchestrated observational reduction?) successfully. As a result consciousness and the human soul are linked somehow to quantum vibrations going on within the brain.... before I really get this screwed up I better go look it up.

This news item is probably more recent than another one I recollect from the past that claimed research which undermined the whole idea (Hameroff offered a counter-response back then as to why it didn't). But it is still far from the mainstream looking upon it with approval (as well as other quantum-based hypotheses). There seems to be an a priori or preset conviction in biological circles that physics contributes nothing to an account of consciousness. Perhaps many upper level sciences intermittently, fancifully entertain that the general targets of their investigations float entirely on their own, as if arising from a lack of precursor circumstances or nothing beforehand.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...085105.htm

EXCERPT: After 20 years of skeptical criticism, "the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR," continue Hameroff and Penrose. "Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or "qubits," as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 -- of these, six are confirmed and none refuted."  

I am frustrated that replies take so long or never seem to happen.  On the other hand, I am delighted by how well this forum handles disagreements.  I am coming from a different science forum where those in charge are behaving as the church of old, forbidding discussion of things they do not approve, and arbitrarily closing threads.  Here I see both sides of an argument presented very respectfully with supporting links.  This is what I want, not an authority determining what I can think about or what I am forbidden to think about.   

In another thread about consciousness, I mentioned research indicating at least some of our consciousness is coming through our genes.  This would include traumatic events such as genocide, having an effect on later generations.  That seems pretty farfetched but it is supported by less dramatic research, such as rats learning a behavior more easily if the parent had learned the behavior.  This has been likened to muscle memory and also crosses with questions about organ donors experiencing personality changes and changes in likes and dislikes.  In some cultures, it has been thought people think with their hearts.  We also ask, "what does your gut say?".  Not all of our thinking is done in our brains.  

When quantum physics comes into this, there is a story of someone who left some of his heart muscle in a lab for testing, and then went to the gym.  As the story goes, the heart cells began beating faster when he exercised in the gym.  I would love to have a good explanation of this.  Perhaps the story is false?  But if it is true what is happening and what does this imply?  This is the kind of thing that quantum physicist say happens, isn't it?

[C C]

I am frustrated that replies take so long or never seem to happen.

Some of us are probably very busy this month, which cuts into an already low membership as far as those that might be referred to as otherwise regularly active. The place accordingly needs those like you who want to discuss, albeit you may have to suffer through lengthy or intermittent waiting for the time being.

On the other hand, I am delighted by how well this forum handles disagreements.  I am coming from a different science forum where those in charge are behaving as the church of old, forbidding discussion of things they do not approve, and arbitrarily closing threads.  Here I see both sides of an argument presented very respectfully with supporting links.  This is what I want, not an authority determining what I can think about or what I am forbidden to think about.

Should you know any online acquaintances who might be interested in SciVillage, feel free to invite them to join. Especially if they're retired or have more time available for furthering discussions or contributing to multiple ones. Always been a shortage of that here.

In another thread about consciousness, I mentioned research indicating at least some of our consciousness is coming through our genes. This would include traumatic events such as genocide, having an effect on later generations. That seems pretty farfetched but it is supported by less dramatic research, such as rats learning a behavior more easily if the parent had learned the behavior. This has been likened to muscle memory and also crosses with questions about organ donors experiencing personality changes and changes in likes and dislikes. [...]

Body memory may have more to do with stress hormones being inherited from the parents rather than literally what it implies. Memory RNA was even a hypothesis borrowed and used in Larry Niven's short story "A Hole In Space". It has been outright discredited since then.

When quantum physics comes into this, there is a story of someone who left some of his heart muscle in a lab for testing, and then went to the gym. As the story goes, the heart cells began beating faster when he exercised in the gym. I would love to have a good explanation of this. Perhaps the story is false?

This too sounds a tad similar to those suspect anecdotes of the past about heart transplant patients acquiring habits and interests of the deceased donors. Under a science category it would need association with peer-reviewed, published research from credible sources to stimulate further discourse one way or another. If we had direct contact with and investigation of such affairs, it might diminish the skepticism for any of us in that non-mediated situation. But when we only know about _X_ cases in a second-hand way, the information begs to be supported by reliable science and lab results or some quasi-respected agency at the very least.

[Carol]

CC Is Scientific American a respected magazine or too full of pseudo-science to be respected?  This is a serious question because things were so unpleasant in another forum and I really want to avoid that unpleasantness, but I do not know how well-educated people judge such matter.  

Is this man well respected or a quack?

Darold Treffert
Dr. Darold Treffert met his first savant in 1962 and has been intrigued with those spectacular "islands of genius" seen in these extraordinary people ever since. His work has appeared in several previous Scientific American and MIND articles and it two books: Extraordinary People: Understanding Savant Syndrome (2006) and Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired and Sudden Savant (2010). He also maintains an internationally respected website on savant syndrome, autism and related conditions at www.savantsyndrome.com hosted by the Wisconsin Medical Society.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue...r-learned/

I really don't want to annoy anyone, but I pursue this line of questioning because of a personal experience and speculation that gives me a burning desire to know who I should ignore and what is good information.  I mean, I have a need to know of such matters.  Okay?