Quantum Physicist: Consciousness Arises Outside of the Brain

[Magical Realist]

Monday, May 18, 2015
"A quantum physicist at Chungbuk National University in Korea has provided mathematical evidence that consciousness cannot be simulated in or replicated by a computer, and in turn that it cannot be the byproduct of neurological activity in the brain.

Professor Daegene Song has provided mathematical proof that human consciousness cannot be simulated by a computing device, due to self-observation being a unique mechanism in the process of consciousness. In his paper, "Non-computability of Consciousness," Song shows consciousness as a mathematical representation, and in the process that it is not compatible with mechanical systems.

"Among conscious activities, the unique characteristic of self-observation cannot exist in any type of machine. Human thought has a mechanism that computers cannot compute or be programmed to do."

Song also goes on to illustrate that consciousness itself is not like known physical systems, like neural pathways in the brain. "If consciousness cannot be represented in the same way all other physical systems are represented, it may not be something that arises out of a physical system like the brain. The brain and consciousness are linked together, but the brain does not produce consciousness. Consciousness is something altogether different and separate. The math doesn't lie."

The neuroscience community has been working for many years to replicate consciousness in a machine by increasing the number of pathways between memory chips, but now it appears that, no matter how large the machine brain, it will never be self aware. A general assumption among scientists is that consciousness is a side-effect of brain activity, but Dr. Song's math suggests that this cannot be true. If he is correct, then a fundamental change not just in science is implied, but also in the way we view ourselves. It would appear that consciousness may be something that the brain accesses, but does not generate.

This is consistent with a new theory of consciousness being advocated by physicist Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff. Penrose and Hameroff a;sp suggest that consciousness is something applied to the brain, not generated by it.

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. "This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

Read the original source: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/quant...z3akOu1U00

[Yazata]

"A quantum physicist at Chungbuk National University in Korea has provided mathematical evidence that consciousness cannot be simulated in or replicated by a computer, and in turn that it cannot be the byproduct of neurological activity in the brain.

A "quantum physicist"? My bullshit detector is beeping. In layman's-speak, "quantum physics" translates to "deepest cosmic secrets" where "anything goes", especially if it's entirely counterintuitive.

Professor Daegene Song has provided mathematical proof that human consciousness cannot be simulated by a computing device, due to self-observation being a unique mechanism in the process of consciousness. In his paper, "Non-computability of Consciousness," Song shows consciousness as a mathematical representation, and in the process that it is not compatible with mechanical systems.

"Mathematical proof"? How wonderful. In layman's-speak, that means that this guy's opinions are logically necessary and must simply be accepted, purely on faith.

All the rhetorical buttons are being pushed and all the buzz-words employed. My bullshit detector is sounding like a klaxon now.

This "quantum physicist" appears to be doing philosophy instead of physics. So how does one do philosophy mathematically, with proofs? Nobody has succeeded in doing that in all of human history. (Early moderns like Spinoza tried too, hoping to produce theories with the apodeictic certainty of Euclid's geometry.)

It seems to me that would only be possible to mathematize philosophy if one makes all kinds of implicit assumptions, defining poorly understood concepts with misleading precision in ways that almost certainly beg crucial questions. How does one define "self-observation" and then reduce it to mathematical form? Then what kind of formal relationships (with what else?) should this mathematical object be plugged so as to generate the desired lemmas and conclusions?

[C C]

[...] "Among conscious activities, the unique characteristic of self-observation cannot exist in any type of machine. Human thought has a mechanism that computers cannot compute or be programmed to do." [...] Song also goes on to illustrate that consciousness itself is not like known physical systems, like neural pathways in the brain. "If consciousness cannot be represented in the same way all other physical systems are represented, it may not be something that arises out of a physical system like the brain. The brain and consciousness are linked together, but the brain does not produce consciousness. Consciousness is something altogether different and separate. The math doesn't lie."

Clearly not everything subsumed under "consciousness" is being referred to, so it's ridiculously careless from a critical reception standpoint to use that umbrella term with respect to the general public. There shouldn't be any problem with one program in a robot's AI being devoted to monitoring what the rest of the system is doing; and leeching off its own "personal" accumulating memory for a summarized cognition / understanding of the whole's processes and behavior. If either Song or the writers of these articles mean such self-observation correlating to experiences, rather than dynamic mechanistic relationships simply transpiring in the usual "nothingness" of matter existence without being sentiently shown, then they should specify that.

It's been known for some time that the manifested events of consciousness are a brute addon to the brain's biochemical activity. They don't fall out of any ascending-order combination of the basic ontological entities and their properties currently accepted in physics, as the cells and tissues of a living body incrementally emerge from. There's also the division into private and public experiences; the extrospective appearance of the brain is accessible to others but not the introspective appearances of some of its neural activity.

This is consistent with a new theory of consciousness being advocated by physicist Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff. Penrose and Hameroff suggest that consciousness is something applied to the brain, not generated by it.

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. "This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

That's not placing it outside the brain, then; but only well below the stratum of neural connections, of that being fundamentally responsible. Any attempt to exonerate experience's origins from a current status of being magical-like conjuring would have to posit there being primitive, generic, undeveloped versions of it and other the features subsumed under the C-word. Such as memory arising from the capacity for information to be stored by matter structure (the potential for memory, or proto-memory, is available throughout the universe).

[Magical Realist]

I tend to think that while consciousness initially ARISES in the brain, it develops an independence such that it subsists outside of it. I use the example of light, which begins as a totally material emission of photons from matter, but then goes on to acquire its own properties, laws, and emergent nature external to matter. Consciousness exists outside of matter like light exists outside of matter, even though it begins as a phenomenon of it. And just as our view of the material universe is constructed primarily out of the optical characteristic of light, its brightness, its colors, its opacity and transparence, its tints and shadings, so our conceptual model of material reality is also made of the properties of consciousness itself--geometric form, solidity, texture, mass, force, motion, etc. Consciousness arises out of matter, but also envelopes it and defines it for us. A strange loop indeed!

“In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop