Over at Dembski’s blog you will find him commenting on neuroscience.
My good friend and colleague Jeffrey Schwartz (along with Mario Beauregard and Henry Stapp) has just published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society that challenges the materialism endemic to so much of contemporary neuroscience. By contrast, it argues for the irreducibility of mind (and therefore intelligence) to material mechanisms.
Unfortunately for Dembski, this is completely wrong. The paper, “Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology: a neurophysical model of mind-brain interaction” Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Henry P. Stapp, Mario Beauregard, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 2005 argues for a quantum mechanical approach to the problem of mind-brain interaction. Quantum mechanics may seem really weird to the non-physicist, and involve things like “spooky action at a distance” but quantum mechanics is part of the material world in the sense that both scientists use it and Schwartz et al., are using the this paper [1].
…brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. (Emphasis added)
An electron is no less material in quantum mechanics for it being described as a probability distribution. What Schwartz et al. are arguing for is a non-mechanistic description (in the classical physics sense) of mind-brain interaction, not a non-materialist one (in Dembski’s sense). Furthermore, it is not “irreducible” in Dembski’s sense either.
Now, a few caveats. Firstly, I’m a neuropharmacologist, I grow pretend nerve cells in dishes and try to unravel the molecular basis of nerve function and survival. So I’m at the “reductionist” end of the neuroscience spectrum (and the Paleyists have a thing about reductionism) and my comments on psychology are those of an interested lay-person. On the other hand I’ve spent a lot of my professional career working on neuronal calcium channels in one way or another, so when I talk about ion channels, it’s in a professional capacity. Secondly, the mind-body problem is hard; really, really hard. And there have been no end of books by eminent philosophers and neuroscientists on it (see the end of this post for some suggested reading). We are far from understanding the biological basis of consciousness, and it is one of the top 25 questions in the journal Science’s 125th anniversary issue.
However, there is a general consensus that the “mind” [2] is intimately associated with the brain. Brain damage affects the mind. Stroke can affect personality, the ability to associate words with images. Brain tumours can induce extreme personality changes that are reversed when the tumour is removed. A wide variety of drugs, acting solely on brain structures, influence our minds. What is contentious is whether the “mind” is solely generated by the brain (either directly or emergently), or whether “mind” exists in some sense separately from the brain. Also, how can the “mind” influence the brain if it is a construct of the brain?
The latter seems to be the starting point of Schwartz et al. They observe that people can be trained to regulate their emotions or overcome phobias. “Change the mind and you change the brain” is the title of a paper from one of the authors. One of their claims seems to be that as “mental effort” is experiential and cannot be described exclusively in material terms, we cannot use “classical physical” explanations to describe how “mind” can change the brain. Thus they turn to quantum mechanics. This is not new; Roger Penrose articulated a quantum mechanical view of consciousness some time ago. However they have looked at a quantum mechanical description of brain action in more depth than Penrose did.
I have two issues with their approach. Firstly, there is no need for some new principle to describe what happens when people learn to overcome social phobias. The key is that it is learning. We have known for a long time that learning changes brain structure. Nerve firing rates are changed through use dependent changes in nerve chemistry, new connections between nerves are forged and existing ones re-enforced. New firing circuits are produced. This happens in all learning, from unconscious learning of motor skills to conscious learning of more complicated cognitive tasks. Directed attention of the sort used in the phobia paper is also seen in non-human primates as well: it is not only a human domain. Interestingly, there is a type of mental retardation associated with fragile X syndrome that involves “executive attention”, one of the processes Schwartz et al. talk about. A single gene disorder, it causes these people’s brains to be normal
macroscopically, but with fewer nerve connections than normal. Learning has a basis in remodeling the brain.
Learning in stroke patients can produce new nerve pathways to replace the damaged ones and restore some degree of function. This doesn’t require quantum mechanics to explain, so why should learning which circumvents phobias be any different to learning that circumvents stroke damage? And it is learning. In the spider phobia paper, people are repeatedly exposed to spiders in an environment where they learn that spiders can’t harm them. The title of the paper should have been “Change the brain and you change the mind”.
Secondly, the way they describe the quantum mechanical processes in the brain is problematic. For nerve cells to fire, calcium must enter the nerve cell in response to a stimulus. They correctly state that the ion channels that let calcium into nerve cells are very narrow (0.086-0.158 nm). They claim this will result in a calcium ion to be laterally confined, so that its velocity must become large by the quantum uncertainty principle, a cloud of probability spreads out from the ion channel. The spreading of the ion wavepacket means that it may or may not interact with the calcium-binding proteins that will result in neurotransmitter release, which will mean that the nerve may or may not fire and so on until the brain is one mass of probability and requires a quantum process to collapse it.
There are a number of problems with this. Firstly, lots of excitable tissues have narrow calcium channels and multiple connections. Exactly the same process occurs in the heart, where clouds of ions spread out from a calcium channel until a large mass of cells are firing, the same goes with blood vessels. We need no appeal to quantum mechanics to understand the heart beat, so why is the brain in principle any different (the brain will have more quantum superimposed states, but the heart will have several billion as well). Schwartz et al. claim there is a minimum complexity where quantum effects will begin to dominate, but don’t provide an indication of what this minimum size is. We can have a stab at it by looking at the minimum brain size in a conscious organism. New Caledonian Crows are tool makers and users. When presented with a unique problem, they can create a new tool to help them solve it. By all definitions of the word consciousness, New Caledonian Crows are conscious entities like chimps and us.
Yet they have a brain the size of a walnut. So Schwartz et al.’s quantum processes must take place at these levels of cell number and connectivity. This means that the quantum mechanical processes do occur in the heart if Schwartz et al’s interpretation is right. They will also occur in the enteric nervous system, a thick layer of nerves that lie between two muscle layers in the gut. Highly branching and interconnected, the enteric nervous system has been termed a “second brain”. The quantum processes that underlie Schawrtz et al.’s model of mind-brain interaction must underlie enteric nervous system-gut interaction.
The other implication is that these processes are not confined to humans (pace the New Caledonian Crows above), and must apply to monkeys, marmosets and mollusks. So the quantum mechanical processes cannot be an “irreducible” barrier between humans and animals, as Dembski hopes. Furthermore, it is not “irreducible” in Dembski’s sense. In Schwartz et al.’s model, the conscious mind-brain interaction is an emergent property that occurs when the number of connections are high enough for quantum properties to dominate. Biologists are perfectly happy with emergent phenomena, and connectivity-related emergence has been suggested to explain brain phenomena before.
Finally there is the problem of quantum decoherence. Schwatz et al. largely dismiss it.
The brain matter is warm and wet and is continually interacting intensely with its environment. It might be thought that the strong quantum decoherence effects associated with these conditions would wash out all quantum effects, beyond localized chemical processes that can be conceived to be imbedded in an essentially classic world. Strong decoherence effects are certainly present, but they are automatically taken into account in the von Neumann formulation employed here. ….
I think the decoherence effects are a lot stronger than they suspect. A calcium ion has to run the gauntlet of many, many molecules before it reaches a binding site, it repeatedly bounces off water molecules and protein molecules. If there is any meaningful quantum effects left by the time calcium binds to synaptogamin, I’d be very surprised. I’ve measured calcium transients in nerve cells (and so have many other people), the spread of the calcium in the nerve terminal is at the standard diffusion rate, so it looks like the quantum effects have been largely removed (allowing of course for the fact that we are observing these systems, which collapses their quantum properties). Also, Schwartz et al. talk of a single ion channel and a single calcium ion and a single calcium binding target. But in realty in a single nerve terminal, there are many ion channels that will be activated, letting in many calcium ions (typical nerve terminal concentrations of calcium during a nerve impulse is around 100 nM), which will bind to many binding sites. The statistical effects of these many interacting calcium ions should wipe out any quantum indeterminacy.
There are many aspects of this paper that don’t seem to hang together for me outside of the issues outlined above. However, I must emphasize again that I am a neuropharmacologist, not a physicist (I don’t even play one on TV). Even though I have forced my way to the end of both “The Emperors New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” my grasp of quantum mechanics remains very basic.
But the main issue is that, even if Schwartz et al. are completely correct, this is still a physical theory, and is still “materialist” in the sense that scientists use the word.
To summarise:
1) Schwartz et al.’s model is a materialistic model; it uses a quantum mechanical rather than a classical approach, but it is no less materialistic for that.
2) Schwartz et al.’s model applies to all large concentrations of interacting, excitable cells, not just conscious brains. Consciousness is not unique in this model.
3) Schwartz et al.’s model applies to conscious non-humans. It provides no distinguishing barrier between humans and non-humans.
4) Schwartz et al.’s model is not “irreducible” in Dembski’s sense, it is a version of emergence.
5) It is not clear if Schwartz et al’s model is really needed to explain the phenomena they need to explain.
[1] It needs to be noted that there are several different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. The most familiar will be the “many worlds” interpretation. Another common one is a Bayesian statistical approach. The interpretation used in this paper is Stapp’s own, and is not very widespread.
Further reading:
The Skeptic’s Dictionary entry on Mind
Blackmore, Susan. Consciousness: An Introduction (Oxford University Press 2003).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Consciousness explained illustrated by Paul Weiner (Boston : Little, Brown and Co., 1991).
Penrose Roger, The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics, (Oxford Paperbacks. 1997)
Acknowledgements: Many thanks to the Panda’s Thumb crew for help discussion, particularly Erik for helping me with some Quantum Mechanical concepts.
133 Comments
qetzal · 16 July 2005
Duane · 16 July 2005
Very helpful and interesting post. I've often thought the ID creationists should actually read the articles they discuss. Even the Abstract is clearly talking about natural phenomenon and not the "irreducibility of mind (and therefore intelligence) to material mechanisms." As you pointed out, quantum phenomenon are material mechanisms. And non-local quantum mechanisms are as material as local mechanisms.
On another point, I suspect that your criticisms of the article are well founded.
Matt McIrvin · 16 July 2005
Actually, I think Daniel Dennett recently opined that only species with a grasp of language sufficient to refer to the self have a self-symbol and are truly conscious. So he'd disagree with your statement about the crows, I guess. Of course he'd disagree strongly with all the quantum consciousness stuff too.
I wrote some remarks about their characterization of quantum mechanics in general.
Engineer-Poet · 16 July 2005
My education in QM ended with the QM/relativity course in the EE curriculum, but I'd add one more thing to the above evaluation: Experiments which test quantum behavior of particles (like the two-slit experiment) change their outcomes when the state of the system is collapsed by e.g. measuring which slit the particle passed through. If the behavior of the neuron is not changed when the spread of calcium ions is measured vs. not measured, it is not exhibiting QM behavior.
Mike Walker · 16 July 2005
Jaime Headden · 17 July 2005
But continuous energy can. If matter and energy are universal and interchangeable, thus the same elementary essence, then all matter and energy ARE connected. At least in theory.
Michael Hopkins · 17 July 2005
SEF · 17 July 2005
Even if they were all biologists that doesn't absolve them of their responsibility as scientists and reviewers to recognise that they needed a QM competent physicist to advise as well. Is this sort of thing (ie philosophy to judge by the name) habitually done on the cheap without the ability/money/time to drag in extra people with relevant competence?
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Dene Bebbington · 17 July 2005
ts wrote:
"This is like asking how a process running on a computer can influence the computer if it is a construct of the computer. Or how the digestion can influence the stomach if it's a construct of the stomach. The simplest answer is that all processes, including the mind and digestion, are timewise dynamic feedback systems or rather, we interpret a series of state changes in a physical object, such as a brain, computer, or stomach as such a system. Any apparent metaphysical problem in re the brain and the mind is illusory."
Indeed. Also, I was thinking of self-modifying code as a software example of a process changing itself.
ts · 17 July 2005
"Also, I was thinking of self-modifying code as a software example of a process changing itself."
From a physical point of view, there's nothing interesting about "self-modifying code". The distinction between code and data is strictly abstract, a matter of our conceptualization. In the computer, there's a bunch of silicon going through state transitions. The computer is constantly changing, and to the degree that we conceptualize the computer as an agent, it is constantly changing itself.
Pete Dunkelberg · 17 July 2005
See Red State Rabble's post for friday 15 July, comment # 1. The paper follows standard QM up to a point then uses the second author's (Stapp's) QM.
The paper is argumentative. It presents no data and no experiments, and ends by saying that none are planned. They argue that neither classical physics nor QM as usually understood can fully explain consciousness, therefore their QM is required. They quote at length from William James on psychology and argue that they have a QM justification of James' ideas.
NelC · 17 July 2005
I wonder how you can state so categorically that crows (New Caledonian or otherwise) are lacking in awareness of their environment, existence, sensations or thought? I'd guess that the first three are non-controversial, but the last seems difficult to prove either way.
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Also, the claim that crows are aware of their existence most certainly is controversial, to say the least. As is the claim that they are aware of their sensations, unless you're confusing *having* sensations with being aware of them.
Steven Thomas Smith · 17 July 2005
Flint · 17 July 2005
Ian Musgrave · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
It's also useful remember that Julian Jaynes argued, in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind",
that humans weren't conscious as recently as 3000 years ago. Even if you consider this absurd, clearly Jaynes offered a definition of consciousness by which crows aren't conscious. To claim that they are by any definition indicates a lack of familiarity with a large body of work and large schools of thinkers concerning consciousness.
Ian Musgrave · 17 July 2005
Matt McIrvin · 17 July 2005
It wasn't an article, more an expression of his gut feelings in edge.org's World Question Center roundup: "What do you believe even though you cannot prove it?"
Several other people they talked to expressed vehement disagreement with Dennett.
ts · 17 July 2005
BTW, there are computer programs that produce novel mathematical proofs, and programs that, operating in virtual worlds, figure out how to solve physical problems such as stacking blocks. These programs do forward planning, invent tools, and execute constructed models (I don't use the word "mental" here to avoid begging the question). It is at least arguable that such programs (properly, computers running these programs) aren't conscious. Heck, many philosophers would and do argue that even computers with complete self models would not be conscious; John Searle is a notable example of such a philosopher. I'm not saying that I agree with Searle (I emphatically don't) or any of the others I've mentioned, I'm simply arguing that the claim that it's definitionally uncontroversial that tool inventing crows are conscious is argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Matt McIrvin · 17 July 2005
Right... personally I'd regard the crows as conscious, but it's actually a controversial assertion.
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
BTW, deception is common in the throughout the biological world, plant as well as animal. Deception doesn't prove self-awareness; not even close. There's a lot of anthropomoric projection here. I could sometimes swear that silverfish are as conscious as I am, as good they are at staying still at the right time and moving at the right time and always knowing exactly which way to run to evade me. But it's illusory.
Keith Douglas · 17 July 2005
Matt McIrvin: You're right about Dennett. He makes it quite clear in Consciousness Explained and elsewhere.
Jaime Headden: mass (the property) and energy are exchangable under some circumstances. Not matter (a stuff) and energy - that would be a confusion
of categories.
Steven Thomas Smith: Hofstadter doesn't quite say that we are intelligent because we are inconsistent. Rather, he (sort of) says we are capable of error, which makes us intelligent. Penrose's answer is his conviction that mathematicians are sound, and that an inconsistent mathematical theory is worthless because of contradictions implying every proposition. (There are many, many things wrong with Penrose's position, but that's the view.)
ts: I don't know of any neuroscientist who would take Jaynes seriously: after
all, 3000 years ago humans had already spread into many areas of the world
independent of each other - what could happen to all these isolated
communities at once? Of course, that doesn't change the fact that according
to his view, yes, crows wouldn't be conscious.
All: There is an article about the futility of quantum mechanics as applied to
the brain by Patricia Churchland and Rick Grush. It applies to Penrose rather
than Stapp, but the points are often the same. ("Gaps in Penrose's Toilings",
available in On the Contrary)
ts · 17 July 2005
"It's true of chimps but not gorillas."
I should amend that; it's generally true of chimps, but not generally true of gorillas, although it is true of Koko. The claim that "Gorillas all pass" looks like just making stuff up on the fly to try to bolster a position. The same goes double for self-recognition in photographs, for which I'm not aware of any evidence, and which strikes me as quite implausible, given how mirror self-recognition tests are structured.
cs · 17 July 2005
Are there *numbers* in this paper? I would have to reject it outright if there were no calculations of feasability, no matter how good their idea sounded. I presume their idea is that the ion channel acts as some kind of diffraction grating for the calcium ions? I doubt that there is much quantum mechanics at the length scales we're talking about at *room temperature* and I'd need to see detailed calculations to prove that there would be.
By the way, Penrose's mechanism for introducing quantum mechanics into brain function, as I understand it, has to do with some kind of localization transition in the electron states of microtubules that's coupled to some protein conformational transition. I never understood what that had to do with brain function but, should such a thing occur to the electrons, it could be within the realm of quantum mechanics. If someone has a better idea of what Penrose's proposal is, I'd like to hear about it because I'm not very familiar with it.
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Jim Anderson · 17 July 2005
Pete Dunkelberg · 17 July 2005
Jim Anderson · 17 July 2005
Steve · 17 July 2005
irreducible,
complex,
specified,
information
Lest the paper become hi-jacked and paraded about as an example of ID science. I always thought Dembski has reached the lowest possible point, then he goes and proves me wrong again, and again.Brian · 17 July 2005
This thread took a turn to an area that I will be studying in grad school, namely "tool use." In ecological psychology, James J. Gibson took a radical view in visual perception and tried to show that organisms perceive their world directly (i.e. without mediating concepts). What he showed in his 1979 book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (and previous articles leading up to the book) is that organisms perceive affordances. Gibson defines an affordance of the environment as "what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, eith for good or for ill. It implies the complenmentarity of the animal and the environment" (127). He gives an example of an affordance: "If a terrestrial surface is nearly horizontal (instead of slanted), nearly flat (instead of conves or concave), and sufficiently extended (relative to the size of the animal) and if its substance is rigid (relative to the size of the animal(, then the surface affords support" (127). He adds another stipulation to what affordances are, "An important fact about the affordances of the environment is that they are in a sense objective, real, physical, unlike values and meanings, which are often supposed to be subjective, phenomenal, and mental. But, actually, an affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both if you like. An affordance cuts across the dictonomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a facts of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychial, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer" (129). The important thing to realize is that the natural world is both changing and persistent. The persistent qualities is what Gibson calls an invariant. An invariant is both formless and timeless since, considering form, the object can be changing but the affordance remains constant, and, considering time, memories do not have to be rejected on to it to perceive it. These invariants are what organisms pick up in order to perceive. Take for instance Turvey, Shaw, Reed, Mace's article (1981) Ecological Laws of Perceiving and Action: In Reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn, they state, "...[For] each kind of change of the body with respect to the surroundings (e.g., turning one's head, descending, hopping backwards) there is a corresponding, unique global transformation of the light to the eyes; and, moreover, that it is reasonable to suppose that there are properties of optical structure that remain invariant over these transformation and which correspond with the persisting properties of the surroundings" (273). In other words, an organism's perceptions are natural laws and do not require any mentalistic imposing.
Now to consider the definition of consciousnes." Gibson shows that having awareness of one's own sensations is insufficient to studying perceptions since, if this was true, we would never have any knowledge of the environment, only our own physiological make-up. But, as was shown above, peceptions are based on bothenvironmental and organismic properties, or natural laws. In Christine Skarda's article The Perceptual Form of Life [in Reclaiming Cognition:: The Primacy of Action, Intention, and Emotion Ed. by Rafael Nunez and Walter Freeman (originally published in Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, No. 11-12, 1999)}, she defines consciousness as "a form of whole organism use...a 'structure of behavior', a field of action defined by a specific form of use that itself generates both the perceiver as subject and the percept as object" and is "the precondition for subjectivity and objectivity and thus should not be identified with the subjective sphere, as idealism claims, or with the objective sphere (which is ultimately defined as material reality) as materialism and scientific realism claim. It is a form of use engaged in by the whole organism in which a gap is introduced that generates the perceiver as subject and the percept's objective status" (91).
There is also another theory that uses Gibson's approach, namely autopoietic systems. This description of organisms postulates that, continuing the theme of organimic holism, perceptions occur through " "self-organizing neuronal networks that couple sensory and motor surfaces, which determine about how the animal can be modulated by environmental events and how sensory-motor activity participates in animal-environmental events (Thompson, Palacios, and Varela, Ways of Coloring: Comparative Color Vision as a Case Study for Cognitive Science in Vision and Mind: Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception Ed. by Alva Noe and Evan Thompson [Originally published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1992)]). This neural network organization was defined neural mass action (Freeman and Skarda, 1985; Spatial EEG Patterns, non-linear dynamics and Perception: The Neo-Sherrington View in Brain Research Reviews 10).
What these views show is that consciousness cannot simply be defined as "Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts." This is simply a mentalist interpretation and does not exhaust all credible research. One must realize that studies of consciousness are still sorting out their philosophical ideas (you can easily trace back ideas to Platonic, Cartesian (as Ian has shown), Kantian, etc. interpretations). There are numerous studies that are delving into the phenomenological tradition of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. To consider the consciousness as the above definition is only using one paradigm and ignoring all others. However, in a e-mail correspondence with Paul Cisek (see website below for credentials) he stated that Gibson's ideas will soon become the mainstream in the next 50 years (scientific revolutions do indeed take a long time to occur).
Brian
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/FreemanWWW/manuscripts/wjfmanuscripts.html
http://consc.net/chalmers/
http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/varela/human_consciousness/articles.html
http://edisk.fandm.edu/tony.chemero/papers/index.html
http://www.cisek.org/pavel/cv.html
Ginger Yellow · 17 July 2005
"That doesn't sound right to me. Do you have a reference to the article? That would mean only humans are conscious, and many ethologists working with non-human primates would vocally disagree with that. "
Isn't it more that Dennett argues human consciousness requires language. He argues for a spectrum of consciousness, so that the crows have some trappings of consciousness, including some we do not have, while chimpanzees have others. I find it hard to understand why anyone would disagree, but Searle probably does.
Qualiatative · 17 July 2005
steve · 17 July 2005
steve · 17 July 2005
I love how Divine Design--without a single accomplishment in the bag--is now involved not only in disproving evolution, proving the 'tuning' of the universe and the existence of a tuner, but now in establishing scientifically Cartesian Duality.
How long until the Paul Nelsons, or the Del Ratzschs, ID(DD)ers with some modicum of integrity, jump ship?
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
harold · 17 July 2005
The main point here is that Dembski is being disingenuous and inaccurate, and dishonestly self-promoting. This is true whether or not New Caledonian Crows, Koko, or hypothetical computers have consciousness.
Dembski wrote -
"My good friend and colleague Jeffrey Schwartz (along with Mario Beauregard and Henry Stapp) has just published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society that challenges the materialism endemic to so much of contemporary neuroscience."
But this is dishonest on two levels. First of all, the paper rightly or wrongly makes reference to the role of QM for explaining some issues in neuroscience. QM is part of physics and part of science. The paper proposes that neuroscience draw on QM to explain some issues in neuroscience. It is squarely within the bounds of using methodological materialism to address scientific problems - the opposite of Dembski's claim. (Some might even make, perfectly honestly, the exact opposite claim of Dembski - that the paper attempts too ambitious a reduction, relative to current neuroscience data and the current state of QM.)
On a deeper level, Dembski is implying that the authors of the paper reject "materialism" IN THE SAME WAY HE DOES, that they ENDORSE his ID methodology. But there is nothing here to suggest that the authors wish to argue that brain processes should not be studied, and instead declared to be due to magic, as ID in essence argues for every scientific issue it touches on. Whether their science is good or bad science, Dembski's implication that they support HIS "approach to science" problems is false.
Dembski goes on -
"By contrast, it argues for the irreducibility of mind (and therefore intelligence) to material mechanisms."
As usual, this is mainly tossing around buzzwords which sound impressive but are hard to define. Both terms - "mind" and "intelligence" - are blanket terms which cover a vast number of issues, some of which may be barely related. Whether true "intelligence" has been shown by machines is a very open question, and may ultimately hinge on arbitrary definitions (my arbitrary opinion is some types of intelligence have). However, Dembski's motivation is clear here. He wants to imply that the "designer" is "intelligent", "intelligence" is irreducible, therefore the "designer" is irreducible, therefore school children must be taught that the bacterial flagellum can't have evolved naturally, and that this somehow favors one particular US political movement.
The idea that "intelligence" alone motivates and defines human behavior, and that human motivations and emotions will emerge if "intelligence" is created, is a widespread false idea. The public is somewhat conditioned to assume that other "intelligent beings", if they existed, would be sympathetic to humans. The high degree of parallel evolution of emotional responses between humans and other intelligent* species, such as dogs, fuels this misperception (*yes, I have used "intelligence" as a term of convenience here). Dembski implicitly endorses (or more likely, exploits) this naive view, to augment the commercial value of his output. The "designer" is "intelligent", so the "designer" must be like humans, he seeks to insinuate.
Some, including many cognitive and behavioral scientists, might argue that much paper, ink, electricity and electronic data storage media is wasted on difficult-to-test, trendy-sounding hypotheses of "consciousness", in the absence of a good scientific definition of the term. This is not the same thing as arguing against scientific or philosophic study of consciousness, and not remotely the same thing as arguing against scientific study of either the human brain, or human cognition and behavior. It's just a criticism that overambitious, hard-to-test hypotheses on this particular issue appear with an annoying frequency. The paper cited above may be vulnerable to this criticism.
ts · 17 July 2005
Reed A. Cartwright · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Brian · 17 July 2005
Brian · 17 July 2005
Zim · 17 July 2005
Dr. (not Prof.) Temple Grandin is probably the person implied. She's autistic, and has designed slaughterhouses.
www.grandin.com
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Zim · 17 July 2005
No, she wasn't intended to be. She wrote a book called "Thinking in Pictures", describing her autism and how it helps in her work. There was a programme here a few months ago about her, otherwise I wouldn't have recognised the reference.
Correction - apprently she is an Associate Professor at Colorado State University.
ts · 17 July 2005
Zim · 17 July 2005
ts - I haven't waded through all the posts on this thread, no. I was merely providing additional information regarding the possible identity of the person to whom Reed was referring, without taking sides on the issue of consciousness requiring language. Got that?
My real interest in this thread was the original post, particularly the use of quantum mechanics to explain "mind". I'm generally suspicious of any attempts to use QM for philosophical purposes, but in this case I'm sceptical, to put it mildly, about the paper's claims that the narrowness of the channels through which the Ca ions flow can affect cell-firing rate due to the resulting lateral Fermi momentum.
However, I'll refrain from further comment until tomorrow, when I will hopefully have a computer with a functioning mouse, which makes posting here (and just about everything else) that bit easier. So you'll have to find someone else to try to argue with until then.
ts · 17 July 2005
NelC · 17 July 2005
ts, are you trying to make up for the lack of creationists in this thread by being contrary with everyone?
You don't have to try so hard.
ts · 17 July 2005
Ian Musgrave · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
And about photos -- how would you determine that a chimp has recognized him/herself in a photo? As I said, I find it implausible, given how the mirror test is structured. At best, it seems, a chimp could recognize that it's a photo of a chimp, or express familiarity. I believe there have been studies that indicate kin recognition in photos.
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
"And just how many is all?"
I meant "just how many is enough". But I guess I got hung up on the word you actually used, "all", not the word that you now say you used, but in fact didn't. My bad, I guess.
Brian · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
I meant "And not all ad hominem arguments are fallacious"; sorry about that.
ts · 17 July 2005
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 17 July 2005
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 17 July 2005
Brian · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Brian · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Brian · 17 July 2005
ts · 17 July 2005
Ian Musgrave · 17 July 2005
Ian Musgrave · 17 July 2005
Matt McIrvin · 17 July 2005
Actually, I'm not so sure that Schwartz, Stapp and Beauregard are being as materialistic as Penrose is. Penrose claimed to have found a physical mechanism for consciousness. This paper, on the other hand, I don't think claims that; in Stapp's interpretation of QM consciousness is a primary thing that is assumed rather than explained, and this calcium-channel mechanism is supposed to be the place where consciousness reaches in and affects the material brain, sort of like the way Descartes thought the soul drove the brain through the pineal gland. Near the end they openly embrace dualism
The quantum model of the human person is essentially dualistic, with one of the two components being described in psychological language and the other being described in physical terms.
and in the conclusion they explicitly reject materialism:
Materialist ontology draws no support from contemporary physics, and is in fact contradicted by it.
So I'm not so sure that Dembski is misreading the paper. However, I do think that Schwartz et al. are seriously misreading modern physics, repeatedly blurring the distinction between QM and their own dualist gloss on it. A hypothesis reducing consciousness to quantum particle interactions would be materialistic, but that is not what they do; rather their hypothesis reduces volition to an interaction between nonphysical consciousness and the physical world, through Stapp's rather nonstandard personal version of quantum mechanics.
Matt McIrvin · 18 July 2005
...Another way of saying it is that Penrose thinks "process 2" is materialistic, but Schwartz et al. do not.
hal · 18 July 2005
Ian Musgrave · 18 July 2005
Marek14 · 18 July 2005
I have a simple question to ask:
Is the consciousness currently thought to be "digital" (i.e. a being either IS conscious or IS NOT) or "analog" (i.e. different beings can have different degrees of consciousness and there is no clear line between "conscious" and "non-conscious")?
Ian Musgrave · 18 July 2005
Engineer-Poet · 18 July 2005
Just for my own edification, here's an estimate of the de Broglie wavelength of a calcium ion in an ion channel.
First, λ = h / p (where p = mv)
m is the easy one: ~40 AMU, or 6.64e-23 g.
h = 6.626e-27 erg-sec.
v is the tough one. The velocity of calcium ions probably follows a thermal distribution. Call it 270 meters/sec (2.7e4 cm/sec) as a first approximation.
So, λ = 6.626e-27 erg-sec / (6.64e-23 g * 2.7e4 cm/sec)
= 3.696e-9 cm = 0.037 nm
The wavelength of the ions appears to be smaller than the channel width, though not overwhelmingly so.
Boronx · 18 July 2005
Consciousness is the story we tell ourselves about what we're doing.
qetzal · 18 July 2005
I'm still unclear why it matters if a particular calcium ion is in a quantum indeterminate state.
Neurons don't fire based on a single calcium ion, right? That involves many ions interacting with many ion channels, IIRC. So even if the interaction is indeterminant at the level of any single ion, it won't be indeterminant at the 'population' level, nor at the level of neuron firing.
Doesn't this make the whole discussion of whether individual ion/channel interactions are indeterminant interesting but relatively pointless? If my ignorance is showing here, will someone please explain what I'm missing? TIA.
Unsympathetic reader · 18 July 2005
Quick reality check: Aren't the channels dynamic? Do the openings change in size as ions pass through?
Ian Musgrave:
"The point is to generate a quantum indeterminate state which will put the whole brain into a quantum indeterminate state (like the famous cat of Schrodinger, rather than a mere probabilistic description of calcium ion action)."
Hey, we're loaded with unstable potassium atoms that decay all the time. Who is to say that the resulting trail of ionization from a potassium decay couldn't trigger a neuron? Maybe they're looking at the wrong atomic species...
Lee J Rickard · 18 July 2005
A press release from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies throws a fascinating complication into this discussion. One of the key elements of the Schwartz et al article is the assertion that the structure of the synapse is so small that QM effects are important. Yet a study appearing in this week's Science suggests that a lot of neurotransmitter release is "ectopic", i.e. away from the synapse itself. For those without subscription access to Science, there is a press release with significant detail at http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/513043/.
Nick · 18 July 2005
Ginger Yellow wrote:
Isn't it more that Dennett argues human consciousness requires language.
In her autobiography, Helen Keller claimed to have memories of the period before she was taught sign language, and those memories includes purposeful actions. If she didn't have "human" consciousness, it would be interesting to know what sort of consciousness she did have.
Alan · 18 July 2005
Having "waded" through some of the previous comments, I wonder why there is a tendency for some posters to appear as humourless pedants with egos the size of Kansas. What happened to wit?
Ginger Yellow · 18 July 2005
"In her autobiography, Helen Keller claimed to have memories of the period before she was taught sign language, and those memories includes purposeful actions. If she didn't have "human" consciousness, it would be interesting to know what sort of consciousness she did have."
Well, indeed. There are plenty of people who lose language ability as adults, and they clearly have consciousnesses. But from what I've read they're different in many ways from a "normal" human consciousness. There's probably some fruitful research to be done on synaesthesia as well, since some forms affect language.
Gav · 18 July 2005
Reed A. Cartright wrote "I'd say that most humans contemplate with language
(i.e. auditory memory)."
Does this mean that children can't contemplate until they learn to speak? Aren't conscious even?
Does anyone out there actually think in words? It's (evidently) a struggle
for me to put my thoughts into words at the best of times, but I guess from the exchanges here that there must be some people who do it ass-backwards (from my point of view) and turn their words into thoughts. How do you manage it? I mean, do you hear a voice in your head, like Homer's brain (say)? That's really spooky.
Ginger Yellow · 18 July 2005
"Does anyone out there actually think in words? It's (evidently) a struggle
for me to put my thoughts into words at the best of times, but I guess from the exchanges here that there must be some people who do it ass-backwards (from my point of view) and turn their words into thoughts. How do you manage it? I mean, do you hear a voice in your head, like Homer's brain (say)? That's really spooky."
When I'm contemplating, yeah. Most people do. There's little difference between turning thoughts into words (talking) and contemplating - it's just that you do one with your mouth shut.
Flint · 18 July 2005
Maybe if you don't articulate the word "ouch" in your mind, it won't hurt? So far I've determined that it always hurts, but I can't be sure I completely failed to articulate it. The harder I try not to use words, the more focused I am on the words I'm trying not to use.
Maybe Zen would help?
SEF · 18 July 2005
"children can't contemplate until they learn to speak"
I can't vouch for the rest of you but I was properly conscious as a baby. I remember the content and context of some of my thoughts and "photographic memory" images which I took (can't say much for my framing at times!). I also learned to read and write very early though. So you could argue that I must have already acquired significant language skills before this (ie language in which I was doing my thinking).
However, I know that some of my thinking even now is outside language and I "translate" it into a language (eg English or a computer language). While other bits of thinking are in other languages I learned and which then have to be consciously internally translated into English to be sure I'm thinking what I think I might be thinking.
Qualiatative · 18 July 2005
Alan · 18 July 2005
Qualiatatative
Here's another enormous ego.
ts · 18 July 2005
ts · 18 July 2005
ts · 18 July 2005
SEF · 18 July 2005
ts · 18 July 2005
ts · 18 July 2005
Rupert Goodwins · 18 July 2005
Comtemplation sometimes - perhaps mostly - involves internal dialogue, but not always. Musical improvisation is fully involving of the conscious mind but involves no words, as are other creative acts. Even writing is, I think, more a matter of pattern manipulation than straightforward transcription of the inner voice. (I'm aware as I write of the rhythm, structure and tone of the piece, and not in ways that are easy to express in words. And I'm simultaneously aware of the radio on in the background - I can't be decoding the words there by a process involving other words, can I? That's right back to the infinite series of homunculuses as a theory of mind) - and the wind blowing the door outside, and very aware of the cold beer that's waiting for me to finish this sentence. I hear the Voice of Homer.
[there will now be a short intermission]
Mmm.
The most dramatic evidence for high levels of non-verbal conscious processing, in my experience, is paradoxically during discussion. In the flow of a really good argument with someone with whom one is in tune, the reception and processing of ideas happens very fast - to the extent that you become an observer, riding the conceptual white water that crashes towards the confluence. Of course, there's a lot of verbal processing going on in all directions, but it's not the source of the ideas.
R
ts · 18 July 2005
Qualiatative · 18 July 2005
Stuart · 18 July 2005
Ts wrties "Also, how can the "mind" influence the brain if it is a construct of the brain?
This is like asking how a process running on a computer can influence the computer if it is a construct of the computer. Or how the digestion can influence the stomach if it's a construct of the stomach. The simplest answer is that all processes, including the mind and digestion, are timewise dynamic feedback systems or rather, we interpret a series of state changes in a physical object, such as a brain, computer, or stomach as such a system. Any apparent metaphysical problem in re the brain and the mind is illusory."
Certainly no surpise to anybody who has used the Windows operating system in its myriad variants.
Rupert Goodwins · 18 July 2005
ts · 18 July 2005
ts · 18 July 2005
Reed A. Cartwright · 19 July 2005
ts · 19 July 2005
SEF · 19 July 2005
"I have no idea whether infants* contemplate."
I'd say they do (or at least one of them did) but it's borderline (both in time-frame and in detail) - especially since you seem to be insisting by your use of contemplate that they use words for the internal concepts yet not have any (spoken) words.
Rupert Goodwins · 19 July 2005
Keith Douglas · 19 July 2005
About real numbers and Turing machines:
Actually, since a "real" real number requires infinite precision they cannot be dealt with on a (U)TM either since they deal with finite precision values. There are so called "hypercomputers" or "super-Turing" computers which can deal with infinite strings (rather than unbounded) but there is good reason to suppose that these are useless as models of computation.
Moses · 19 July 2005
SteveF · 19 July 2005
According to the trackback at the bottom of the page, Ian hasn't even read abstract let alone the paper!
http://dualisticdissension.blogspot.com/2005/07/pt-watch-3_17.html
Gerhard · 19 July 2005
Gav · 19 July 2005
If consciousness does depend on language and language is something that is learned, then is consciousness something that is learned?
As language is something that can be taught, is consciousness something that can be taught?
Dene Bebbington · 19 July 2005
steve wrote:
"How long until the Paul Nelsons, or the Del Ratzschs, ID(DD)ers with some modicum of integrity, jump ship?"
I don't think Paul Nelson is a good example to hold up in this regard, at least if the following report of a conversation with him is correct:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/b2feedebd7b0d94c/cec192dd3ac11fc8?q=group:talk.origins+paul+nelson+conference&rnum=1#cec192dd3ac11fc8
The relevant bit:
'I asked Dr. Nelson: "when dinosaurs started tampering on earth, were they millions years ago..?" "You believe Young Earth ? -"Yes." Nelson said to latter "question". I said that I'd somehow comprehend in biology if God is filled into holes of our knowledge. (With left hand as axes I was chopping holes in my right hand). But I don't get how PhD-guys believes young earth. Paul Nelson was very open-minded, honest. He admitted "I am young Earth Creationist". He has to believe so due to basis of biblical belief, science tells old earth. His many (ID-)friends believe on old earth. There exist signs on young earth and some work for these (he means YEC-"scientists") but it does not assure him. He admits permanent tension inside him. (He pointed his right hand to one direction) "I have belief on young earth" (then he pointed his left
hand to another direction) "I know science tells other, old earth".
"This is tension I just have to live with".'
In other words, his YEC beliefs based on a particular reading of the Bible trumps the scientific evidence.
"Steviepinhead · 19 July 2005
Fair disclosure: this is a moderately long post. So, FWIW, if you're looking for the concise one-liners, scroll on!
Pace, ts, but I'm not convinced that Helen Keller, with her extremely limited sensorium, is the best model for what an "ordinary" infant's consciousness may (or may not) be like, though I agree the reference to her experience--representing perhaps one pole of the possibilities--was a fair and interesting one.
I don't have a definition of consciousness to offer, and I recognize that an anecdote (particularly a personal one) does not a scientific datum make, but I'll offer one anyway. (And not feel too bad about it, since an "anecdote" is essentially what HK's self-report was.)
I have several distinct pre-language memories from babyhood. I have certainly revisited and probably remodeled and refined these memories over the years (and I also remember that I used to have many MORE of them, but those sectors of the hard disk have gradually been rewritten.)
The earlier they are, the less like the integrated memories of a "personality" they are--simple images which certainly had to be "contemplated" later (post-language aquisition) to figure out what the heck they (most likely) were memories OF--for example, the five fingers of my own hand silhouetted against a light background or a memory of a friendly hairy thing posting himself between myself and a drop off the edge of a porch (an old dog named Regen that I have no "conscious" memories of and a porch attached to a house I lived in during my first year, which I never saw again till decades later, after extensive remodelling and repainting).
Sometime during my second year (that is, between twelve and twenty-four months), when I could stand and say a few words (momma, dada, dat [that]), I remember holding extensive discussions with my crib-bound baby sister, in our own private babble language. Perhaps more remarkably (if you are suspending your disbelief so far), my sister (then perhaps only six to nine months old) later claimed to "remember" her end of these "conversations."
I also remember various scenes from the farmhouse we lived in at that time in the Central Valley of California (a different location than the house-with-porch above). In these slightly later memories, I have "contemporary" knowledge of the identity of actors in the scenes (all family members, grandparents and the like). I could still sketch the rough layout and appearance of that house and yard (to which I have never returned since my second birthday), its direction from the small town the gp's lived in, etc. This is all unlike the earlier house, where I only retain the one glimpse of a portion of the front porch.
Even these later infant-memories are largely unverifiable, and conceivably confabulated later, if you wish to be skeptical.
Somehow, many years later during a visit with my dad, the subject of how early in childhood we could remember came up, with my father strongly doubting that I "really" remembered anything prior to three years of age.
I described to him a recollected sequence where he and I went to a farm outbuilding, he put me on his lap on the seat of a green tractor, and we used the tractor to view slumped-in ditches of some sort, all for reasons utterly mysterious to me at the time (I was just enjoying hanging with my pops).
My dad happened to have a Sunset magazine publication about earthquakes handy (unbeknownst to me) and he flipped it open to the discussion of the Tehachapi earthquake of July 1952, a strong temblor which he remembered well. (He still doesn't independently remember the sequence I have described, but he does remember having to survey the irrigation ditches for earthquake damage.)
Blocked irrigation ditches were a common problem in the farmlands of the Central Valley, with numerous causes. While I had probably discussed this memory with others before, I had never attempted to "verify" it with anyone in a position to do so or to "research" it--I was just hoping my dad might remember this particular episode in which he had starred, without knowing in advance that it might tie in to any kind of "dateable" event.
I was born in April 1951, so this "verified" memory (once only one of many from the same timeframe) is from my sixteenth month.
I won't claim "consciousness" for the early, Helen Keller-like isolated images. But, at least at one time--when I retained more of them--the more-highly-detailed and contextual memories from my second year formed part of that relatively "continuous" stream of memories that I think most of us associate with our personal history and sense of self.
I also learned to read fairly early, by age four or so. Neither the early memories or the early reading led to my becoming the next Einstein, as is all too obvious, but I've always been fascinated by the "wolf" children, by stories of private childhood "languages" (the Bronte sisters, for example), and the like.
steve · 19 July 2005
Dene, I had a hard time reading that stuff you posted, but it seems to confirm the basis of my statements--Paul Nelson, unlike some IDers, has a measure of honesty. When i wondered if he and/or del Ratzsch would jump ship, I was thinking they'd do so after seeing their colleagues lie one too many times. Not that they'd be convinced by the evidence. The fact is that many IDers try to stay afloat by lying. Nelson and others with any integrity may someday separate themselves from these liars.
ts · 19 July 2005
ts · 19 July 2005
Henry J · 19 July 2005
At the risk of being slightly off topic, how is it that the first reply in this thread was posted the day before the parent note was posted?
Henry
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 19 July 2005
Ian Musgrave · 19 July 2005
Ian Musgrave · 19 July 2005
Dene Bebbington · 20 July 2005
steve wrote:
"Dene, I had a hard time reading that stuff you posted, but it seems to confirm the basis of my statements--Paul Nelson, unlike some IDers, has a measure of honesty. When i wondered if he and/or del Ratzsch would jump ship, I was thinking they'd do so after seeing their colleagues lie one too many times. Not that they'd be convinced by the evidence. The fact is that many IDers try to stay afloat by lying. Nelson and others with any integrity may someday separate themselves from these liars."
If Nelson can't even be honest with himself (his religious YEC belief despite the evidence he knows about) then I don't see why he's going to worry about fellow DIers telling liars. Really, if this guy had the integrity you talk about then he'd have left the DI already.
SEF · 20 July 2005
"he'd have left the DI already"
It may not apply in this case but it occurred to me that the DI and other creationist organisations may not be the sort of place you really can leave. Since they have no qualms about telling lies, misquoting people and trying to spin their beliefs or trick them into agreeing with relatively neutral things which they then spin in their publicity into something quite different; I would have thought they would just go on citing someone as a prominent DI scientist even if they did "leave" (or weren't a scientist anyway!) and issued statements repudiating the DI's position.
Flint · 20 July 2005
SEF:
A good point. Creationists at lectures continue to sell the Paluxy Footprint stuff, Coso Artifact literature and other long-discredited materials. Not even AiG's "Don't say this anymore" list has had any effect. They say they're only selling existing literature and won't repeat these claims, but the new literature (unsurprisingly) continues to make them.
This has important connections with Leonard's PhD defense at OSU as well. Once OSU has been tricked into granting a PhD for fallacious religious doctrine, that "official academic ratification" will live forever, and nothing OSU ever says about it again will be noticed.
So I suspect the DI's list of "members" includes anyone who can be effectively quote mined. They don't actually SAY these people aren't associated with the DI, but they imply this association: "The DI is composed of scientists who find Darwinism seriously questionable, such as Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote..." Uh, wait, didn't they just say Gould was part of the DI? Well, not quite, exactly, specifically, they only compared a quote-minded statement of Gould's with the position of DI scientists. He's not a *member*, see, he just *agrees* with the members...doesn't he?