Consciousness: And relation to quantum mechanics (General)

by dhw, Monday, February 20, 2017, 16:04 (2831 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is a very long review article which takes us from the realization that what we decide to do in quantum experimentation affects how the particles themselves react as if our consciousness is related directly to the particles. He then goes on to discuss the way quantum activity might be present in cells, in neurons, and thus somehow create consciousness:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-qua...

Thank you for this article, which as you say leaves us “as confused as ever about consciousness.” I’ll cherrypick some quotes:

QUOTE: “These ideas are speculative, and it may turn out that quantum physics has no fundamental role either for or in the workings of the mind.”

Yep. Both materialism and dualism are speculative too. Nobody has a clue.

QUOTE: In other words, Jordan said, "we ourselves produce the results of measurements."…"If that is so, objective reality seems to go out of the window.”

Even if it is so, I suggest for the umpteenth time that all of these quantum physicists should do another test and step in front of a moving bus.

Quote: "Beginning in the 1980s, the British physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the link might work in the other direction. Whether or not consciousness can affect quantum mechanics, he said, perhaps quantum mechanics is involved in consciousness.”

Might or might not, perhaps or perhaps not.

"Penrose first proposed that quantum effects feature in human cognition in his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind. The idea is called Orch-OR, which is short for "orchestrated objective reduction". The phrase "objective reduction" means that, as Penrose believes, the collapse of quantum interference and superposition is a real, physical process, like the bursting of a bubble."

Give something a name, and you give it scientific credibility. Multiverse, string theory, dark energy and dark matter, Orch-OR… Except (let me put on my theist’s hat for a moment) if you theorize that life and the universe are the product of design and you call the designer God, you will lose all scientific credibility.

Quote: “Penrose and Hameroff argue that vibrations of microtubules can adopt a quantum superposition…But there is no evidence that such a thing is remotely feasible.”

As the bard put it, then: Much Ado About Nothing.