(2023-01-09, 11:26 AM)David001 Wrote: My feeling is that at the time he wrote "Shadows of the Mind", Roger Penrose was very close to embracing a non-material explanation for consciousness. He was showing how extremely hard it is to come up with a materialistic explanation.
I remember looking through the index to see if I could find any word relating to the paranormal - there was none. The academic taboo against mentioning that subject was obviously too great for him to risk - even as a joke.
That is the real value of his book, not the Orch Or theory.
IIRC he's on record for doubting the paranormal, but this was also years ago though he was still an advocate for Platonism. Rather recently he pondered whether there was decision making even at the quantum level of particles.
I suspect he's more open to it privately than publicly, though likely wary of saying too much given the state of academia.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
- Bertrand Russell