Orch-OR discussion

Hammeroff has talked about "quantum souls", consciousness as spread throughout the universe in a panpsychic fashion, Bem's precognitive work.

Penrose has talked about Platonism, even suggesting in one of his books that the Platonic realm may hold ethical and moral values.

[Both have discussed possible panpsychic aspects of the universe that are being explored by others.]

The tricky thing is Penrose also talks about being a materialist sometimes, though I get the feeling what he means is a bit different than what others  more mechanistically inclined mean as he also talks about possible "proto-decisons" made at the quantum level.

But given Hammeroff seems to strongly believe in at the least some kind of Ur-Mind, if not personal Survival, I'd say Orch-OR can be read many ways.

Can quantum effects in the brain explain consciousness?

Thomas Lewton

It is heady stuff, but if pulling together quantum mechanics, gravity and consciousness in one fell swoop sounds too good to be true, it might be. Orch OR’s critics argue that any quantum coherence inside microtubules would fall apart in the warm and noisy environs of grey matter long before it could have any effect on the workings of neurons.

Yet in one tantalising experiment last year, as-yet unpublished, Jack Tuszynski at the University of Alberta in Canada and Aristide Dogariu at the University of Central Florida found that light shone on microtubules was very slowly re-emitted over several minutes – a hallmark of quantum goings-on. “This is crazy,” says Tuszynski, who set about building a theoretical microtubule model to describe what he was seeing.

Gregory Scholes, a biochemist at Princeton University, is studying microtubules for signs of similar quantum effects. Initial experiments point to long-lived, long-range collective behaviour among molecules in the structures. Both groups plan to test whether anaesthetics, which switch consciousness on and off, have any impact on microtubules.

Two recent experiments, one for Orch Or and one apparently against ->

Experiment Suggests That Consciousness May Be Rooted in Quantum Physics

This breakdown of superpositions then allows consciousness to exist, the theory known as Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) suggests.

Many scientists dismissed the idea. But the theory, according to New Scientist, has been gaining new traction lately.

In one recent experiment, it reported, a team led by Jack Tuszynski at the University of Alberta in Canada found that anesthetic drugs allow microtubules to re-emit trapped light in a much shorter time than originally thought.

They found that light caught inside an energy trap was re-emitted after a mysterious delay, a process they propose could be of quantum origin, New Scientist explains.

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Collapsing a leading theory for the quantum origin of consciousness

At the heart of the theory is the idea that gravity is related to quantum wavefunction collapse and that this collapse is faster in systems with more mass. This concept was developed in a number of models by various physicists in the 1980s. One of those was Lajos Diósi, at the Wigner Research Center for Physics and at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, who has co-authored the new paper with Curceanu, Maaneli Derakhshani of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Matthias Laubenstein also at INFN, and Kristian Piscicchia of CREF and INFN. Penrose independently approached this idea a few years later and it became the core of his consciousness theory with Hammeroff.

The two theories are often referred to by the umbrella term, the "Diósi-Penrose theory." But behind the joint name there is an important difference, notes Curceanu. Diósi's approach predicts that collapse would be accompanied by the spontaneous emission of a small amount of radiation, just large enough to be detected by cutting edge experiments.

In their new paper they have explicitly examined the repercussions of their finding for Penrose and Hammeroff's Orch OR theory of consciousness. After reanalyzing the most plausible scenarios set out by Hammeroff and Penrose, in light of their recent experimental constraints on quantum collapse, they were led to conclude that almost none of the scenarios are plausible. "This is the first experimental investigation of the gravity-related quantum collapse pillar of the Orch OR consciousness model, which we hope will be followed by many others," says Curceanu. "I am very proud of our achievement."

But all is not lost for Orch Or, adds Curceanu. "Actually, the real work is just at the beginning." she says. In fact, Penrose's original collapse model, unlike Diósi's, did not predict spontaneous radiation, so has not been ruled out. The new paper also briefly discusses how a gravity-related collapse model might realistically be modified. "Such a revised model, which we are working on within the FQXi financed project, could leave the door open for Orch OR theory," Curceanu says.

I have to admit that the timing seems a bit unusual to me, though Curceanu doesn't seem incredible hosticle to Orch Or...But we have actual research of from neuroscience suggesting some aspect of the theory may be true, and then some study done outside of neuroscience entirely ruling out a part of it? Perhaps the issue is more with some of the pop-sci stuff I've seen about the second study that challenges Orch Or, with no proper mention of the first that looked at the brain.

Ultimately I do suspect Orch Or may be too extragavant in its attempts to bring in quantum gravity and very specific conditions for collapse...OTOH the theory never seems to be given the proper credit for a physicist looking at the non-computability of consciousness + a doctor looking at conscious agency in microbes predicting quantum biology in defiance to so many naysayers. Even if Orch-OR's exact claims regarding the physics is wrong, I do think Penrose and Hammeroff have helped paved the way for future discoveries in quantum biology + neuroscience...

My feeling is that Paul C. Anagnostopoulos made an important comment on this thread back in 2019. The big thing that is missing with OR-ORCH is that it doesn't answer Chalmers' Hard Problem.

I think the real question is whether QM has something to tell us about the nature of consciousness - obviously I think it does. I think Stapp's contribution comes closest, but even it doesn't tell us what consciousness is, but only how it interacts with matter (or with this realm).

David

My feeling is that Paul C. Anagnostopoulos made an important comment on this thread back in 2019. The big thing that is missing with OR-ORCH is that it doesn't answer Chalmers' Hard Problem.

I think the real question is whether QM has something to tell us about the nature of consciousness - obviously I think it does. I think Stapp's contribution comes closest, but even it doesn't tell us what consciousness is, but only how it interacts with matter (or with this realm).

David

Wouldn't you agree there is no solution to the Hard Problem, if by solution one means how Materialism can accommodate consciousness? This isn't the fault of theory but rather that Materialism itself is not possible.

But while the theory isn't explicit about a metaphysical position necessarily, Penrose and Hammeroff have talked about Panpsychism and Platonism.

In that way I'd say it's somewhat akin to Integrated Information Theory, where the major advocates have leaned more and more toward some kind of Panpsychism. (Hammeroff has gone further, speculating about immortal souls and objective morals written into the fabric of reality...he humorously calls himself the "skunk at the atheist convention".)

Quantum Brain theories, IMO, are an important step in understanding consciousness in part because they will help open the doors to parapsychology. This is probably why there has been such resistance to Orch Or going far back, meanwhile outright nonsense like Multiple Worlds Interpretation is acceptable because it claims to challenge Fine Tuning.

Wouldn't you agree there is no solution to the Hard Problem, if by solution one means how Materialism can accommodate consciousness? This isn't the fault of theory but rather that Materialism itself is not possible.

Agreed!

But while the theory isn't explicit about a metaphysical position necessarily, Penrose and Hammeroff have talked about Panpsychism and Platonism.

In that way I'd say it's somewhat akin to Integrated Information Theory, where the major advocates have leaned more and more toward some kind of Panpsychism. (Hammeroff has gone further, speculating about immortal souls and objective morals written into the fabric of reality...he humorously calls himself the "skunk at the atheist convention".)

Quantum Brain theories, IMO, are an important step in understanding consciousness in part because they will help open the doors to parapsychology. This is probably why there has been such resistance to Orch Or going far back, meanwhile outright nonsense like Multiple Worlds Interpretation is acceptable because it claims to challenge Fine Tuning.

Well I hope that is true, but I guess that is a bit like justifying organised gambling because some people get really interested in statistics as a result! The sad part is that in all probability neither of them will really explore the actual evidence - NDEs etc - basically because the scientific culture would crush them if they did.

Well I hope that is true, but I guess that is a bit like justifying organised gambling because some people get really interested in statistics as a result! The sad part is that in all probability neither of them will really explore the actual evidence - NDEs etc - basically because the scientific culture would crush them if they did.

But Hammeroff already has talked about Psi and IIRC also NDEs? He has discussed the possibility of a "quantum soul" and even, IIRC, wrote a paper about it.

If Orch-OR was established the neural basis of consciousness, it would probably be a bigger leap for parapsychology becoming mainstream than any of the other consciousness theories out there. Sadly, personally I don't think the theory as originally conceived will prove to be true, but rather some variation of quantum basis for consciousness will - IMO anyway - come to fruition.

Wouldn't you agree there is no solution to the Hard Problem, if by solution one means how Materialism can accommodate consciousness? This isn't the fault of theory but rather that Materialism itself is not possible.

But while the theory isn't explicit about a metaphysical position necessarily, Penrose and Hammeroff have talked about Panpsychism and Platonism.

In that way I'd say it's somewhat akin to Integrated Information Theory, where the major advocates have leaned more and more toward some kind of Panpsychism. (Hammeroff has gone further, speculating about immortal souls and objective morals written into the fabric of reality...he humorously calls himself the "skunk at the atheist convention".)

Quantum Brain theories, IMO, are an important step in understanding consciousness in part because they will help open the doors to parapsychology. This is probably why there has been such resistance to Orch Or going far back, meanwhile outright nonsense like Multiple Worlds Interpretation is acceptable because it claims to challenge Fine Tuning.

I agree. It seems to me that the Orch-OR theory still doesn’t resolve the Hard Problem of consciousness, so Orch-OR isn't such a big deal and there isn’t a priority need to confirm it by experiment.

Penrose and Hameroff are saying that an ultimately physical subatomic process is giving rise to totally immaterial subjective conscious awareness or qualia. This is tantamount to magic, transforming one existentially separate and unique substance (physically measurable phenomena of physical reality) into another fundamentally different, unique, and totally immaterial and unmeasurable “substance” (consciousness).

This is just as much a violation of the principle of the Hard Problem as is the common materialist notion that consciousness is one and the same as the “emergent” (or otherwise) collective physical activities of billions of neurons in the brain.

Penrose and Hameroff are saying that an ultimately physical subatomic process is giving rise to totally immaterial subjective conscious awareness or qualia. This is tantamount to magic, transforming one existentially separate and unique substance (physically measurable phenomena of physical reality) into another fundamentally different, unique, and totally immaterial and unmeasurable “substance” (consciousness).

This definitely isn't what Hammeroff is saying, nor Penrose explicitly saying.

Hammeroff is pretty open to Orch-OR localizing consciousness. Penrose still has materialist leanings tho he's also talked about Platonism and the possibility of conscious decisions even at the subatomic level.

Orch-OR, IMO, is like Integrated Information Theory. The people who've come up with these theories are shifting away from, at the least, traditional materialist readings of the world. If either theory gains traction it would, IMO, largely be a positive for parapsychology.

This definitely isn't what Hammeroff is saying, nor Penrose explicitly saying.

Hammeroff is pretty open to Orch-OR localizing consciousness. Penrose still has materialist leanings tho he's also talked about Platonism and the possibility of conscious decisions even at the subatomic level.

Orch-OR, IMO, is like Integrated Information Theory. The people who've come up with these theories are shifting away from, at the least, traditional materialist readings of the world. If either theory gains traction it would, IMO, largely be a positive for parapsychology.

From article on Orch-OR theory:

In 1990s, physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff suggested that tiny microtubules, hollow tubes that form the "skeletons" of plant and animal cells, could allow for a breakdown in the structure of space-time that interrupts quantum superposition, the fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that posits a physical system can exist in two states at the same time.

This breakdown of superpositions then allows consciousness to exist, the theory known as Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) suggests.

It seems to me, that as Paul A. has apparently already commented, Orch-OR doesn't even attempt to resolve the Hard Problem - it is still claiming that consciousness is the essence of "something" related to space-time physical system structural information. "Information" either in the abstract or as embodied in something physical is worlds away existentially from whatever is the essence of the qualia of subjective experiential consciousness. IIT looks to also have the same problem. A whole library of information on what it is like to experience the color red and on the neurological processes involved and on the physics of the elecromagnetic waves couldn't possibly be conscious and actually aware of and perceive red.