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Quantum Mechanical Effects in the Brain?

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I’ve been seeing евтини мебелиPenrose’s quantum mind theory gain more and more traction lately. Every time I turn around there’s a new discussion about it, a new paper published, or a new blog entry… all proposed by intelligent people that I respect.

It brings to mind a theory that I heard a long while ago, that throughout history we’ve always used the latest technology and science to talk about the brain.

The ancient romans said the brain was like a catapult. Later, people have compared the brain to a hydrolics system, a telephone switchboard, or a calculator. And, now we say it’s like a computer, Turing-complete with a Von-Neumann architecture.

This is by no means evidence that there aren’t quantum effects, entanglement, what not, going on in the brain… but it does increase my skepticism whenever I hear “Oh, the brain is just a system that can be represented by $theory_du_jour “.

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One Comment

  1. I’m way late commenting on your post, but we are fairly aligned in our doubts. I stopped following Penrose after Emperor’s New Mind, partially because I thought it was nonsense, but largely because I found it infuriating. It was like reading a Steven Pinker book (wrote “novel” accidentally the first time – hmm): the modus seems to be to propose an idea, wank around for ten to twenty pages, and then pretend like you’ve made your case. I would page back and read — more carefully — until I convinced myself that, no, I was not just being dense, their logic didn’t follow (The Far Side, “Then a miracle occurs?) Penrose’s “quantum mind” bothers me for a couple of reasons. One is your objection, and is how I fell about Daniel Dennett, who wrote (embarrassingly recently) that brains had to be computational systems because, and I paraphrase, “there is nothing else in the world that could do what a brain does.” And the rejoinder has to be something like, “do you mean nothing you personally have thought of?” Aren’t we back to muscles being pneumatic, then, because “nothing else” could move limbs? Chalmers likely infurates me. When I was studing metaphysics at college (math/philosophy double major who designed a “cognitive science” degree program that got faculty approval and that I never actually did — long story) I was much more in line with the Churchlands, and recently have become enamored of Susan Blackmore, way late to the party.

    My second objection is more visceral, and basically boils down to, if consciousness is, in some way, quantum amplification of some sort, is that really what we’d want anyway? I mean, does that do anything for a desire for agency that a mechanistic argument doesn’t? It seems we’ve swung all the way around. If we don’t like determinacy, why would we want mega-scale inderterminacy? I’m saying “want”, because I think a lot of consciousness thought cycles are spent chasing desires.

    OK, I’m going to go back composing an email to you, but I thought I’d post this part publically. :-)

    Posted on 24-Aug-09 at 19:40 | Permalink