Stuart Hameroff's ideas.

Penrose seems to only believe in Mathematical (and maybe Moral) Platonism as his only deviation with Materialism.

If anything I'd say Penrose has influenced Hammeroff into thinking a complete physics would extend, at least to some degree, even to "deeper planes of existence".

If that is so, I can't imagine Penrose liking the direction of Hameroff's more recent ideas. There must be some tension between the two.

David

If that is so, I can't imagine Penrose liking the direction of Hameroff's more recent ideas. There must be some tension between the two.

David

I think Penrose is ok with speculation and people having different ideas than his own. He’s just firm on his own position which is why he calls it the “prejudiced view”.

I mean the very idea Objective Collapse has to be associated with consciousness relies on certain - incorrect IMO - beliefs about physics & causal closure. The better path, IMO, is to realize there just isn’t physical closure because there is [no] good explanation for causation in physics’ study of relations.

Has Hammeroff stated that any of the empirical evidence for the afterlife should be seriously considered and deserves further investigation?

For example, spirit communication through mediums, or NDEs, shared death bed visions, or reincarnation studies such as those done by Ian Stevenson?

Or is he just saying theoretically, according to his theory, disembodied consciousness might be possible?

What does he say about ESP?

I am trying to find some reason to say he is doing something good by helping society make progress toward universal acceptance our spiritual nature. 
If he is just saying that there could be a physicalist explanation for the afterlife, I see that more as trying to save materialism/physicalism than trying to promulgate spirituality.

Spirituality has implications of purpose and morality, it makes life meaningful in a positive way. I see physicalists/materialists like Hammeroff and Radin as preserving the meaningless, nihilist, negative aspects of materialist philosophy and therefore they are doing more harm than good. Their false beliefs if spread might take away the benefits from people who are inclined to spirituality.

I think we already went over this back in Jan. 2024. At that time I made the following remarks (at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-o...9#pid56129):

Hameroff in his own website describing the Orch-OR theory makes it pretty clear he is talking about the physical Orch-OR process generating consciousness, not receiving, transducing and transmitting it. See the following excerpt, from https://hameroff.arizona.edu/research-ov...20to%20the :

"In the mid-1990s Hameroff teamed with British physicist Sir Roger Penrose to develop the controversial theory of consciousness called “orchestrated objective reduction” – Orch OR theory – in which consciousness derives from quantum computations in microtubules inside brain neurons, quantum computations connected to the fine- scale structure of spacetime geometry.
...................................
In the mid 1990s we published the Penrose-Hameroff theory of ‘orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’) which suggests consciousness arises from quantum vibrations ‘orchestrated’ in microtubules inside brain neurons, orchestrated vibrations which are proposed to interfere, ‘collapse’ and resonate across scale, control neuronal firings, and generate consciousness."

This is still in his website, so he evidently still basically believes in a scientifically sophisticated way that the brain generates consciousness as the liver generates bile.

Has Hammeroff stated that any of the empirical evidence for the afterlife should be seriously considered and deserves further investigation?

For example, spirit communication through mediums, or NDEs, shared death bed visions, or reincarnation studies such as those done by Ian Stevenson?

Or is he just saying theoretically, according to his theory, disembodied consciousness might be possible?

What does he say about ESP?

I am trying to find some reason to say he is doing something good by helping society make progress toward universal acceptance our spiritual nature. 
If he is just saying that there could be a physicalist explanation for the afterlife, I see that more as trying to save materialism/physicalism than trying to promulgate spirituality.

Spirituality has implications of purpose and morality, it makes life meaningful in a positive way. I see physicalists/materialists like Hammeroff and Radin as preserving the meaningless, nihilist, negative aspects of materialist philosophy and therefore they are doing more harm than good. Their false beliefs if spread might take away the benefits from people who are inclined to spirituality.

He's mentioned NDEs positively, and in a paper noted his acceptance of Bem's findings.

From my reading I would say he thinks there is a structural component to every aspect of existence, but these aspects go beyond the physical world and instead include planes of existence where Survival would be experienced.

For example, from the Quantum Soul paper he wrote with Chopra:

Unable to explain consciousness in the brain, conventional science ignores apparent evidence for NDEs/OBEs, rejecting even the possibility of their occurrence. There are, however, unconventional but scientifically valid approaches to consciousness, which may...accommodate NDEs/OBEs as well as possible conscious awareness after bodily death.

Such approaches explore strata of nature at an even finer scale than the chemical reactions and electrical signals relied upon by neuroscience, seeking convincing answers at the quantum level instead.

0:00 - Introduction
1:04 - Defining Consciousness
4:15 - Microtubules & Anaesthesia
9:00 - Where it began with Sir Roger Penrose
15:13 - Patricia Churchland's hilarious critique on Hameroff & Penrose
25:45 - Objective Reduction Explained
37:27 - Quantum Biology
40:47 - Philosophical Implications (Hard Problem, NDEs, OBEs, Afterlife & Reincarnation)
46:00 - Time Crystals & Life
54:20 - Spectrum of Consciousness (plants to humans)
57:37 - "Cartoon Neurons"
1:00:31 - IIT vs GNWT vs Predictive Processing vs Higher-Order Thought vs Orch OR (Battle of Consciousness Theories!)
1:07:23 - Ethical/Practical Implications (Healthcare)
1:10:40 - Transcranial Ultrasound Explored
1:18:10 - How Does Anaesthesia Affect Consciousness?
1:22:10 - The Science of Consciousness Conference & Festival of Consciousness
1:28:00 - Astrobiology & Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
1:30:20 - The Microtubule Maestro's future
1:36:32 - Conclusion

For example, from the Quantum Soul paper he wrote with Chopra:

I do wish that people writing about such subjects would realise that less is more!

What I mean is that anything that can be explained by a physical theory such as QM is either deterministic or has a random component. Neither possibility seems to be a likely place to encapsulate spirit/soul!

I think the split between science and spirituality starts at that point.

To put this another way, you could describe a piece of 'hardware' with a soul, but then ask what that soul would be like. Would it be a loving soul or a devil or something in between. For example, I guess the soul of our cat would lie somewhere in between depending on which creatures you asked!

My point is that the important part of the soul/spirit must be independent of the hardware. By analogy, the contents of a computer memory are independent of the details of its hardware.

David

I do wish that people writing about such subjects would realise that less is more!

What I mean is that anything that can be explained by a physical theory such as QM is either deterministic or has a random component. Neither possibility seems to be a likely place to encapsulate spirit/soul!

I think the split between science and spirituality starts at that point.

To put this another way, you could describe a piece of 'hardware' with a soul, but then ask what that soul would be like. Would it be a loving soul or a devil or something in between. For example, I guess the soul of our cat would lie somewhere in between depending on which creatures you asked!

My point is that the important part of the soul/spirit must be independent of the hardware. By analogy, the contents of a computer memory are independent of the details of its hardware.

David

Agree on some of what you said, disagree on some ->

QM is neither deterministic nor random?

It's predictable in the aggregate, not in the individual events. See also the paper @stephenw recently posted on a possible way Reason is embedded into reality.

It's only the mistaken mechanistic philosophy that suggests even "physical" causation is deterministic or random IMO.

That said I do agree that Hammeroff provides a useful inroad to a lot of parapsychological ideas given his support for NDE & Reincarnation evidence, especially if the research he hints at publishing this year with Bandyopadhyay will be as strong as he seems to think, but his insistence that there's some Structure correlated with even the highest levels of Mind seems to be a partial mistake. He seems to miss the point that correlation is arbitrary, and this is one of the strongest arguments against Physicalism/Materialism.

Personally I don't think Orch-OR will "go the distance" but there is something worthwhile in examining the link between microtubules and the embodiment of consciousness...[Because] there has to be some explanation for Mind/Body interaction. 

If proponents just claim it to be magical or the will of God that won't get us very far. To even say mind is extensionless raises a lot of questions about how something that has no extension exists within the extended world. The Idealist will say extension is arbitrary/illusory, but this will only get you so far in STEM academia as well as public opinion.

IMO the best bet is to [adopt] Sheldrake's idea that Consciousness is akin, but not exactly like, fields. A field can be simple, in the sense it has no internal mechanisms which mirrors the non-composite simplicity of Mind. Fields can overlap, each providing influence to regions of Space. So at least a field is analogous to some of the important aspects of Mind. Yet fields also exist in extended space, and so can influence and be influenced by the Structure of the "physical". This can help explain why a Mind that is immaterial, in the sense that it has aspects no physical thing can have, is also able to be filtered/transmitted so that Consciousness ends up localized into a body.

I never fully appreciated Sheldrake's deep understanding of the scientific and philosophical problems until I started listening to his Dialogues with Mark Vernon. I long admired the man, but my admiration has gotten deeper.