The Impossibly Hard Problem of Consciousness

I would love to see a bit of discussion about Stapp - particularly with StephenW - because I think I have shown that Stapp isn't really supporting the argument that creatures can evolve in some complex organic way from non-conscious matter.

Stapp and VN seem to see a role for a mind which is outside space-time.

To me this makes woo explanations far more real!

David,

My take on this may be boring.  VN did have ideas about information that were intuitive and cracked open computing, along with Turing, Shannon and Weiner.  VN personally help shepherd Turing to Princeton and credited Turing and his advisor Church - for inspiring the math in his computational worldview.

Von Neumann suggested to logicians Carnap and Bar-Hillel that thermodynamics, logic and information theory form a "triple identity".  I see that as an insight. Methodologically they are separate, but active in a different environment to a physics and material environment. 

Woo is such a loaded word.  Do you think that Henry Stapp would appreciate your comment?  He might!

As for me - possible events - measured with a non-zero probability for manifestation are real and evolve in math patterned ways.  Mind can detect these possible events and change their actual probabilities.

Woo is such a loaded word.  Do you think that Henry Stapp would appreciate your comment?  He might!

Well it is, and to some extent I used it tongue in cheek. I want it to mean any theory that contains the idea of a mind outside space-time (i.e. outside of physical reality).

As for me - possible events - measured with a non-zero probability for manifestation are real and evolve in math patterned ways.  Mind can detect these possible events and change their actual probabilities.

Possibly, but I think both VN and Stapp are saying that this mind is woo by my definition above. I mean such a mind doesn't run on any hardware!

David

David,

My take on this may be boring.  VN did have ideas about information that were intuitive and cracked open computing, along with Turing, Shannon and Weiner.  VN personally help shepherd Turing to Princeton and credited Turing and his advisor Church - for inspiring the math in his computational worldview.

Von Neumann suggested to logicians Carnap and Bar-Hillel that thermodynamics, logic and information theory form a "triple identity".  I see that as an insight. Methodologically they are separate, but active in a different environment to a physics and material environment. 

Woo is such a loaded word.  Do you think that Henry Stapp would appreciate your comment?  He might!

As for me - possible events - measured with a non-zero probability for manifestation are real and evolve in math patterned ways.  Mind can detect these possible events and change their actual probabilities.

Nima's work has revealed really important hidden structures of scattering amplitudes within the spacetime bulk where we live, not in some other esoteric space.

If you generalise the mathematical observations of our physical experience within the spacetime we inhabit, by forcing yourself to work only with what we observe ( scattering amplitudes ), and ridding yourself of made-up stuff like virtual particles. The resulting geometric structure is revealed.... two infinitely extending helix-like cylinders, whose positive and negative winding boundaries are connected by delta - the star of the show - a wormhole.



As I've said on another thread today... it's appeared to me for some time, that the mathematical relationships we use to describe our physical observations, are really a description about the architecture, from which those physical observations emerge.

Perhaps people don't see it, or perhaps I'm mistaken, but the Nima's kinematical spacetime diagram, and the hidden structures from which it has been built, may have similarities with some highly conserved biological structure, that resides within the organism 'apparently' making the observations.

I've been reading and thinking about cilia, centrioles, dendrites, dendritic spines, microtubules etc., of organisms that share and navigate spacetime for so long, that it just seems so obvious to me now.

For years now, some hidden mechanism that can add-up non-classically, within these classical structures, is the only way I've been able to reconcile unexplained human experiences we've labelled as... past-lives, NDE's, OBE's, telepathy, Ouija board, hypnosis, brands, fashion, art, language/writing, learning differences between age groups, premonitions, apparitions, psychotherapy, locality, memory etc... etc...

Matching classical patterns add-up non-classically. Therefore, only matching patterns can be shared non-classically. The result of that humongous non-classical calculation is this shared classical experience. And so it loops.

From this, tumbles lots of different explanations that give new insight into our human condition.