You wrote…

This of course does not absolutely disprove panpsychism of any and all sorts, but it certainly makes it very implausible.

What are your thoughts on "panexperientialism"

From link…
"However, Rosenberg's panexperientialism is different from traditional panpsychism in several important respects. First, while traditional panpsychism says that everything has mental states, Rosenberg says that only certain things, but not limited to cognitive systems, have mental states. …while traditional panpsychism says that everything has mental states without restriction on their kind, which could in principle include beliefs, desires, emotion, and so on, Rosenberg's panexperientialism focuses only on consciousness."

Which leads in to thought that things with microtubules have varying degrees of consciousness but not necessarily "human-like cognitive abilities".

Mike has put up a new thread. I will expand on this more there.

Regards,
TP

Kenward B, Weir AAS, Rutz C, Kacelnik A (2005) Tool manufacture by naive juvenile crows. Nature 433:121."

Of course some animals have been shown to have rudimentary human-like cognitive abilities, as also example chimpanzees and parrots. I was not specific enough. What I was referring to was living organisms without complex brains that allow at least rudimentary thought and logic as with human beings. The point is still that the only known form of intelligence able to design complex systems is human intelligence, which manifests in the physical world via complex brains. Certain lower animals are able to accomplish some simple "design" tasks, but with these it still requires intelligence as manifested via very specialized neural structures, namely complex (though lesser than human) brains. Life in general does not seem to contain specialized neural structures at all (unicellular life) or of sufficient complexity (metazoans other than higher mammals and some birds).

This of course does not absolutely disprove panpsychism of any and all sorts, but it certainly makes it very implausible.

At the risk of making you wet yourself, I should point out that Hameroff also appeals to quantum retrocausality (albeit short-term) to explain Libet's gap.

Thanks for pointing that out.

I had noticed that earlier. And yes, I thought it was interesting.

Thanks again,
TP

One more before bed.

Here is a Penrose slide illustrating the difference between computer AI and pattern recognition of humans. In this chess game, any reasonably well versed player would see that black can't possibility win as long as the pawns continue to form a wall.

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/onl...

The next step is a little more complicated, but not much…

http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/onl...

A good human chess player would know to move the bishop to complete the "wall" (as in the previous example with the pawns).

I could see how difficult this would be for an algorithmic Turing machine.

The fact that Deep Blue can beat just about every human in the world but can't see this relatively simple pattern probably means something.

Provoking Thought

If you can't tell, I am very excited by all of this.

TP,

At the risk of making you wet yourself, I should point out that Hameroff also appeals to quantum retrocausality (albeit short-term) to explain Libet's gap.

I hope you are happy. You have managed to give me a headache that just keeps getting bigger and bigger the more I look into this. This Penrose stuff is HARD.

Have you read Penrose's The Road to Reality?

It is apparently 1100 pages of non-stop headache material.

I think I need to go the book store tomorrow and buy it.

The more I look into this, the more it seems like Penrose is on to something.

In the Hawking/Penrose debate. Hawking doesn't answer the point Penrose is making about the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. I think I am beginning to see Penrose's point. There is something there and, apparently, he thinks he can show it experimentially with his FELIX experiment.

He talks about this in his new book, The Road to Reality.

I am babbling, but I need to tell someone who can understand. I can actually see this completely turning the ID/Darwin debate on its head. Nobody is going to know where anyone stands (except maybe the YECers).

It could all start with an innocent sounding announcement…
"NASA announces the successful completion of an experiment confirming Quantum Mechanic predictions made by Dr. Robert Penrose".

Will E= h/T replace E=mc^2 as the new paradigm?

I can see the tee-shirts now…

"E= h/T therefore I am"

"E= h/T means I don't have to"

If you can't tell, I am very excited by all of this.

Thank you Joy.

Regards,
TP

You wrote…

You quoted Grush and Churchland's summary of the Penrose/Hameroff argument, but you left off the best part…

First of all, I read and reread the Grush and Churchland's paper to the point where I understand it well enough I could make their arguments in my own words. I am wondering if you understand things well enough to make the counter-argument without simply quoting verbatim.

I echo Joy's sentiment that it appears you haven't done your homework. This stuff is HARD. Rocket science is simple compared to this. I know, I test missile parts for a living.

However, I am interested in fermenting discussion on this so I will do some of your work for you in hopes others will join in.

As I indicated in my previous comment. Grush and Churchland point to the weakest link, A1. Of course this "undercuts the case for A5" and turns the whole exercise into a might-be-for-all-we-know "campfire possibility". Trying to prove the existence of "Free Will" isn't easy. It is down right hard, and this is just the "A1" assumption. Being philosophers, Grush and Churchland had no trouble using up seven pages rehashing and restating old arguments. Frankly, I am impressed they exercised restraint in limiting it to ONLY seven pages.

As good as Penrose is, he hasn't solved a riddle that has eluded solution for thousands of years. I'm willing to cut Penrose a little slack here.

Now to the "B3 is almost certainly false". While Grush and Churchland spent seven pages saying "Free Will is an illusion" they spend only a page and a half saying "The discovery of quasicrystals wasn't significant."

Think about this. Penrose is one of the world's top mathematicians. He uses his math skills to model things based on the nonalgorithmic properties of quantum mechanics. IOW, he builds mathematical models based on things that are impossible to model mathematically. What Penrose does is HARD. It borders on being impossible.

Modeling the existence of Black Holes is an example of what Penrose does. I suggest that if Black Holes were accidentally discovered shortly after being predicted by Hawking/Penrose there would have been "it's just a coincidence" attitude. I suggest this is what is Grush and Churchland is trying to do with "B3 is almost certainly false".

After Hao Wang/Berger proved aperiodic tilings exist in 1966, people tried to find them. "The first such set…consisted of 20,426 Wang tiles". Other people reduced the minimum set to fewer and fewer tiles. In 1974 Roger Penrose demonstrated it could be done with only two. For his efforts (he called it a "hobby") the set was thereafter referred to as "Penrose Tilings".

Meanwhile in the world of crystals. It was firmly understood that all natural crystal formations must conform to certain rules, one of which was periodicity. Any other crystal formation was thought impossible, until such a crystal was found in 1982. It took two years for those in the established field to recognize the impossible was possible but even then they balked at just calling them "crystals", thus the name "quasicrystals". So how do we model something that appears to be impossible to mathematically model? Sounds like a job for PENROSE! Oh, he already did it? Hmmm, thanks but it's just a coincidence. Penrose really doesn't know what he is talking about. "B3 is almost certainly false".

In this case, I wouldn't even call it cutting Penrose slack. If anyone can know, Penrose most certainly knows about nonalgorithmic things in nature.

Finally to the third part ("Part C looks tenuous"). This is where Grush and Churchland attempt to fight the battle on ground that clearly includes fundamental properties of quantum mechanics (or as Hameroff says "funda - mental").

For this, I will take a page out of Joy's book. Do your own homework. Here is Hameroff's response to this…
More Neural Than Thou (Psych-B)

Provoking Thought

What nonhuman living organisms and human designed machine systems lack is conscious awareness and the concomitant ability to create solutions to new engineering problems.

New Caladonian Crows refute your claim:

Kenward B, Weir AAS, Rutz C, Kacelnik A (2005) Tool manufacture by naive juvenile crows. Nature 433:121.

You quoted Grush and Churchland's summary of the Penrose/Hameroff argument, but you left off the best part, at the end, where they explain exactly why it is so flimsy:

Briefly, our analysis of this argument indicates that A1 is most likely false, and Section III below provides some reasons for denying it. This undercuts the case for A5, and hence Part A. B3 is almost certainly false (this is the subject of Section IV), and given its falsity, B2 is entirely speculative as well. This undercuts the case for B4, and hence the conclusions of Part B are exposed as entirely speculative. C1 is quite speculative, C2 is no more than a guess, and C5 is simply a bad inference (these are discussed in Section V), and hence Part C looks tenuous. In short, it appears to us that even if D did happen to be true, the argument embodied in parts A, B and C provides no reason to believe that it is. In Section VI, we provide independent reasons for thinking that D is probably false.

They weren't exaggerating when they said that

…the argument consists of merest possibility piled upon merest possibility teetering upon a tippy foundation of 'might-be-for-all-we-knows'"¦we judge it to be completely unconvincing and probably false.