Stuart Hameroff's ideas.

He does comment on what makes red. @ 21 minutes.

This is all about what an individual believes about what objects are real and how they work in a model of unfolding events.  Jim, do you think that qubits are real?

You will not "get" Orch-or if you don't see it as critical measurement tool to see how information evolves.
 
25 years ago when discussing Orch-or most responders made fun of qubits as important in reality.  Now we can build and control them, but I think that their role in science research is not understood.

I think Hammerof is on the forefront of thinking about mind works.

Going to @21 minutes, I hear that the redness of a rose is a particular pattern in spacetime geometry.

That explanation makes me pretty uneasy - does it mean anything?

I got the feeling that at that point SH was summarising his old view, before opening up to some new ideas.

David

I'll make the comment myself. Orch-or lacks explanatory power. How does wave function collapse make blue look like blue or happy feel like happy? 

Hammerof is saying orch-or explains consciousness, but it doesn't explain consciousness. At the current time the best explanation for the evidence is that consciousness is fundamental - it can't be explained in terms of anything else. It seems to me that this is objectively true and people who disagree do so because of their personal opinion rather than empirical evidence. They are entitled to have opinions but they ought to be clear about it.

I might take Hammerof more seriously if I understood why he prefers orch-or to idealism. Does he explain it somewhere?

Oh I would agree with your criticisms here. I don’t think Orch-OR explains consciousness and yes if I had to pick between Orch-OR and Idealism I’d say the latter makes more sense.

I don’t immediately recall Hammeroff saying anything about Idealism. He has talked about the soul going to deeper planes existence, but he seems to think even these planes of existence will be tied to QM in some way. Admittedly he may have just been trying to put a spin on ideas like “planes of existence” that would make them more amenable to STEM academia.

At the very least I’d venture he’s a functional dualist, in that there is a soul/body distinction and the soul continues to have experiences/adventures after the body dies.

Going to @21 minutes, I hear that the redness of a rose is a particular pattern in spacetime geometry.

That explanation makes me pretty uneasy - does it mean anything?

I got the feeling that at that point SH was summarising his old view, before opening up to some new ideas.

David

This is where it gets odd. Judging by his talks/essays/etc he genuinely seems to feel there is a structure akin to physics at all levels of reality, and that this structure is also tied to qualia.

My problem with this is it ultimately seems like "magic" in the negative sense of something nonsensical that has to be accepted as brute fact. Why would any particular structure correspond to Redness?

OTOH when he posts stuff like this:



https://x.com/StuartHameroff/status/1798355327630586286

I can't help but wonder if he believes some transcendent Consciousness precedes the assignment of qualia to particular structures of space-time geometry...but if he thinks Brahman has some kind of space-time structure he's badly misunderstood what Brahman is referring to.

You seem to fail to realise that here is a scientist working together with a Nobel laureate on a problem which they thought could be solved by the strange features of QM - superpositions - but now SH at least seems to be thinking outside the box.

Almost all of us have gone through a transition of that sort at some point in our lives (didn't you?), and it takes time!

Quibbling over the fact that RP got his prize for something different, doesn't touch the fact that RP has what it takes to get a Nobel in physics, and he knows that consciousness is a deep mystery.

David

It realize it, I am not encouraged or impressed by it. 

I had unusual intuitions and synchronicities since childhood. I never thought consciousness could be produced by a biological brain. Even during my materialist phase (a result of a scientific education) I was never dogmatic about it, and looking back if anyone had confronted me I would have found out I had contradictory views - there is only the physical universe, but conscious is not really part of the physical universe. I don't know how I would have resolved that conflict if I had been conscious of it at the time. When I came across the empirical evidence that conscious is not physical I dropped belief in materialism. It was somewhat of an emotional experience not because I was attached to materialism but because it opened a new world view involving purpose and morality and entities.

I was not quibbling, I made a mistake reading the article and corrected my mistake, that's all I meant to do.

I get the impression that you are more sympathetic because you can relate to their experiences more than I can. I have a different opinion. I don't think epicycles help get us to a new paradigm. 

From my point of view the problem is not that they need to go through the process of science to get to the eventual truth. The problem is that they are not going through the process, they are ignoring hypotheses (idealism) and evidence. If they would at least recognize the hypothesis and explain by what empirical evidence they reject it, I might have more respect for them. But from my point of view they are not really open minded truth seekers, they are opinion bound, biased, dogmatists trying to foist their cherished religion on the rest of us - leading many other people to ignore idealism and the evidence for it, when they could be explaining it.

But from my point of view they are not really open minded truth seekers, they are opinion bound, biased, dogmatists trying to foist their cherished religion on the rest of us - leading many other people to ignore idealism and the evidence for it, when they could be explaining it.

Like you I come from the position of someone who had childhood experiences, though not to the same degree as yours. And this does place one in a different position than those who lack any experiential reason to doubt Physicalism.

But regarding dogmatism I can see this in the case of the materialist fundamentalists and their faith, but I wouldn't put Hammeroff in the same camp given his openness if not belief in Survival and some kind of Ur-Mind.

The central disagreement that I can see between his view and Idealism is that he seems to believe every conscious experience and experiencer must have some kind of grounding in structure. We could call this Panpsychism or Neutral Monism, but surely the guy arguing for "quantum souls" traveling to "deeper" planes of existence is not the same as a dogmatic believer in the illogical materialist faith?

He does comment on what makes red. @ 21 minutes.

This is all about what an individual believes about what objects are real and how they work in a model of unfolding events.  Jim, do you think that qubits are real?

You will not "get" Orch-or if you don't see it as critical measurement tool to see how information evolves.
 
25 years ago when discussing Orch-or most responders made fun of qubits as important in reality.  Now we can build and control them, but I think that their role in science research is not understood.

I think Hammerof is on the forefront of thinking about mind works.

He says red is a pattern in space time.  Anyone can suggest some physical process in the brain is the cause of qualia, but no one can explain why red looks like red or happy feels like happy. Would knowing the pattern in space time help you to explain red to someone who is color blind? That's the hard problem. That is why I believe consciousness is fundamental. It can't be explained by anything else.

Like you I come from the position of someone who had childhood experiences, though not to the same degree as yours. And this does place one in a different position than those who lack any experiential reason to doubt Physicalism.

But regarding dogmatism I can see this in the case of the materialist fundamentalists and their faith, but I wouldn't put Hammeroff in the same camp given his openness if not belief in Survival and some kind of Ur-Mind.

The central disagreement that I can see between his view and Idealism is that he seems to believe every conscious experience and experiencer must have some kind of grounding in structure. We could call this Panpsychism or Neutral Monism, but surely the guy arguing for "quantum souls" traveling to "deeper" planes of existence is not the same as a dogmatic believer in the illogical materialist faith?

I already explained why I think Hameroff is a physicalist. He is trying to explain panpsychism and souls with physicalist science. 

I think you are implying that belief in pansychism and souls is sufficient to exclude one from being a physicalist.

I am saying a physicalist is someone who believes the only things in the cosmos are physical and if they believe physical laws can explain pansychism and souls they are still physicalists.

Can you explain specifically what you have in mind that is illogical about materialist faith that is not true of orch-or?

Thanks

Can you explain specifically what you have in mind that is illogical about materialist faith that is not true of orch-or?

If Orch-OR is a production hypothesis than yes it is [as] illogical as the materialist faith in Something (Mind) coming from Nothing (Matter that has no Mental characteristics).

If it's more Neutral Monist than it is, IMO, likely wrong in the idea that Objective Collapse - itself a possible but unproven interpretation of Wave Function Collapse - is the key correlative structure to conscious experiences.

However we do know that structure - in regards to our brains and bodies - does affect consciousness even if there are no structures that can really explain Mind's key aspects of Subjective First Person Experience, Thoughts About Things, Use of Reason, and Memory.

So Orch-OR is wrong, even as a Panpsychic or Neutral Monist theory, but it isn't as wrong as the Materialist religion with its fatal Something-from-Nothing problem.

OTOH, Kastrup is an Idealist who is a determinist that rejects Survival. Is it better to have that kind of Idealist, or someone like Hameroff who seems to think physics extends all the way to the afterlife but argues for "quantum souls" and mental causation?

I  believe that last bit is what @David001 is getting at - that while Hameroff is wrong on some points he does provide a better path forward for parapsychology than many other STEM academics.

I  believe that last bit is what @David001 is getting at - that while Hameroff is wrong on some points he does provide a better path forward for parapsychology than many other STEM academics.

Thanks - that just about nails it!

I mean he talks about materialist ideas (i.e. QM and chemical ideas) but he stacks those ideas along a variety of non-materialist ideas

I don't know if he has always been that way, but I had always assumed he was primarily devoted to his microtubule ideas.

I'd love to know if he is taking RP with him.

David

I'd love to know if he is taking RP with him.

David

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".