The Collective Placebo Effect? Collective Belief & Disbelief?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

It is foolhardy to attach too much objectivity to the linguistic description of "wvaefunction collapse". Some interpretations do not assign an objective reality to the wavefunction. Some interpreations do not involve a "collapse". All interpreations are mathematically equivalent.

Well first, I am not alone in thinking about what collapses the wave function. Also, the only interpretation (to my knowledge) that does not require a collapse is the many worlds interpretation. This interpretation duplicates the entire universe to avoid a collapse. After avoiding N collapses is has made 2^N-1 new universes - I would sooner believe in purple farting unicorns (but lets not go there again) than that! Unless you go for that interpretation of QM, the wave function collapse is real!

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

This still doesn't solve the fundamental problem dualism it just tries to hide it with smoke and mirrors. You can't have your woo and eat it too. If mind stuff can interact with physical stuff then it is physical too.

I have admitted to Paul that there is a sense in which this is a fair criticism - you move consciousness off into another realm and then free it from all constraints. However, mental stuff could obey vastly different laws which might allow (for example) for some mixing of consciousness and account for many of the phenomena discussed on Skeptiko. If consciousness is just an elaborate electrochemical process going on in the brain, then it is constrained by the ordinary laws of physics, and there is a surprising amount of evidence to the contrary - think of the presentiment experiment, or indeed any Ψ phenomena.

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

If nobody understands what conciousness is then why are you so sure that physical science cannot explain it?

Because the failure to understand consciousness is not for want of trying. Enormous sums of government money were poured into Artificial Intelligence at one stage, on the assumption that consciousness was essentially equivalent to a computation, and very little came out of all that effort. The speculations that people are making here are to a large extent a response to that failure. Read Roger Penrose's books, Particularly 'Shadows of the Mind' for more perspective on this.

David

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Well first, I am not alone in thinking about what collapses the wave function. Also, the only interpretation (to my knowledge) that does not require a collapse is the many worlds interpretation. This interpretation duplicates the entire universe to avoid a collapse. After avoiding N collapses is has made 2^N-1 new universes - I would sooner believe in purple farting unicorns (but lets not go there again) than that! Unless you go for that interpretation of QM, the wave function collapse is real!

Wikipedia has a nice table listing the alternatives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpr...ntum_mechanics

You still do not seem to have understood that both Heisenberg and Bohr did not think of the wavefunction as being real. In "Physics and Philosophy" Heisenberg discuuses in details the problems in trying to understand what "really" happens.

You could also add the "Shut up and calculate" interpretation which is also experimentally indistinguishable from any other interpretation.

I have admitted to Paul that there is a sense in which this is a fair criticism - you move consciousness off into another realm and then free it from all constraints. However, mental stuff could obey vastly different laws which might allow (for example) for some mixing of consciousness and account for many of the phenomena discussed on Skeptiko. If consciousness is just an elaborate electrochemical process going on in the brain, then it is constrained by the ordinary laws of physics, and there is a surprising amount of evidence to the contrary - think of the presentiment experiment, or indeed any ? phenomena.

I politely disagree with the strength of the evidence for "psi" whatever "psi" is.

Because the failure to understand consciousness is not for want of trying. Enormous sums of government money were poured into Artificial Intelligence at one stage, on the assumption that consciousness was essentially equivalent to a computation, and very little came out of all that effort. The speculations that people are making here are to a large extent a response to that failure. Read Roger Penrose's books, Particularly 'Shadows of the Mind' for more perspective on this.

David

Conciousness is hardly a trivial problem. You are sounding a bit like the ID proponents again who complain that we still don't understand 100% of the details about how life evolved on Earth. They seem to be blind to the huge amounts of progress that has been made. Declaring it a failure is hardly honest. Likewise you are too harsh and too premature in declaring the scientific exploration of conciousness to be a failure. I also suspect that if scientific research does not yield the explanation of conciousness that you want then you will not be satisfied.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Chris

I also suspect that if scientific research does not yield the explanation of conciousness that you want then you will not be satisfied.

I daresay that no matter how much progress is made in neurophysiology, it will always be possible to say "Yes, but those are just the neural correlates of consciousness."

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I daresay that no matter how much progress is made in neurophysiology, it will always be possible to say "Yes, but those are just the neural correlates of consciousness."

~~ Paul

Obviously people vary on this. Personally, if AI had turned up something plausible (or if it does in the future) I would take that as nearly conclusive evidence of purely physical consciousness.

Of course, judging an AI might be difficult - particularly if it had access to the whole internet in order to make its responses.

David