Re: Penrose's nonsense

bjflanagan writes:
What if a mind/brain identity theory holds?

>It doesn't; the mind and experience are subjective, while the
brain is objective.

The "objective" is the result of intersubjective agreement.

"I believe that the first step in the setting of a "real external
world" is the formation of the concept of bodily objects and of bodily
objects of various kinds. Out of the multitude of our sense experiences
we take, mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occurring
complexes of sense impression (partly in conjunction with sense
impressions which are interpreted as signs for sense experiences of
others), and we attribute to them a meaning-the meaning of the bodily
object. Considered logically this concept is not identical with the
totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary
creation of the human (or animal) mind. On the other hand, the concept
owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of
the sense impressions which we associate with it." (Einstein)

R
>The brain and the mind are different things for the
reason they they are very obviously different things.

Flanagan
Just as it is obvious that the sun goes around the earth.

R
>At best you can say that there's a correspondence
of some kind between them, which isn't very strong or
very deep.

Flanagan
No, I can say that an identity obtains between them. If you think this
is neither strong nor deep, one might suspect that your comments
reflect more nearly on your understanding.

>Here is what Chalmers, a philosopher, wrote in Sci Am:
>"The abstract notion of information, as put forward by Claude E.
>Shannon of MIT, is that a of a set of separate states with a basic
>structure of similarities and differences between them."

R
No it isn't; as Shannon introduced it, information had to do
with strings of symbols which were sent as messages.

Flanagan
You might want to contact Hawking & Bekenstein, who are suffering under
the illusion that information theory applies to black holes.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/info_loss.html


>We can also find information embodied in conscious experience. The
>pattern of color patches in a visual field, for example, can be seen
as
>analogous to that of pixels covering a display screen. Intriguingly,
it
>turns out that we find the same information states embodied in
>conscious experience and in underlying physical processes in the
brain."

R
It didn't turn out; it was assumed. There are no scientists in white
coats examining "information states embodied in conscious experience".

Flanagan
You might want to read Grassmann, Maxwell and Schrodinger on the
subject:

http://www.spie.org/web/abstracts/oepress/MS77.html


>"The three-dimensional encoding of color spaces, for example, suggests
>that the information state in a color experience corresponds directly
to
>an information state in the brain."

R
Why does three dimensions have anyting to do with it? Would one
dimension, or none, be any less or more suggestive? Why does
an "encoding of color spaces" suggest anything about the brain?

Flanagan
Maxwell makes this point. If one assigns R, G & B to the principal axes
of a unit sphere, then combinations of the associated vectors
"generate" all the other colors. Using the unit ball, one can account
for weights assigned to the vectors.

Where A is any color, -A is then "A rotated 180 degrees" or "A
reflected through the origin." If zero is assigned to "no light" or
"darkness," then we recover a familiar fact from phenomenology: A +
(-A) = 0. (This also applies to sound, of course, since there also two
waves 180 degrees out of phase cancel one another.) This interpretation
completes the vector space and recapitulates the group behavior of
colors under mixing. I am rather pleased to have figured out the former
point, as it seems to have escaped Schrodinger, who was more of a
mathematician than I will ever be.


>"We might even regard the two states
>as distinct aspects of a single information state, which is
>simultaneously embodied in both physical processing and conscious
>experience. "

R
Here we find why Chalmers introduced the term "information state".
By considering the information which is (presumably) common to
the brain and the mind, and calling it an information state,
he invokes the idea of a Something which it is the state of.
We have no idea what this something is supposed to be, except
that it has something to do with the information in the
brain and the mind. The reader who confuses mystery and profundity
will be suitably impressed.

Flanagan
When the path forward seems obscure, experience has shown that
following the math often turns out to be fruitful. Chalmers is no
mystery monger, and your dismissive remarks impress no one.

>Flanagan
>In another Sci Am article, Freeman Dyson states quite clearly that,
>from the perspective of quantum field theory (QFT) everything in the
>physical universe is a quantum field: "There is nothing else except
>these fields: the whole of the material universe is built of them."

R
If he states it "quite clearly" then it must surely be true.

Flanagan
Similarly, knocking down straw men is of no interest whatever.

>It follows by a ready consequence that the brain, being a part of the
>material universe, just is a collection of [quantum] fields.

R
Even beginning to disentangle the web of confusion here is a daunting
task. You are relying on an argument from authority (in the
form of Freeman Dyson) to establish a point ("There is nothing else
except
these fields: the whole of the material universe is built of them")
which is little more than poetry, and is furthermore conditioned
of a specific "perspective" (quantum field theory).

Flanagan
I am not relying on authority. Dyson simply made the point with
beautiful clarity. To say that all material things consist of fields is
to clarify the situation quite radically, and so I suggest the
confusion is all on your end. To say that QFT is little more than
poetry is really quite interesting and I must congratulate you on your
degree of intellectual probity.

R
Let me explain something about quantum field theory. It is a
collection of mathematical techniques which attempt to extend
the formalism of quantum mechanics to deal with systems
which have continuous degrees of freedom. It is not the absolute
final truth about what exists, and even when physicists
talk about this or that quantum field as though it were
a physical object, what they are in fact referring to is
a purely mathematical object [...]

Flanagan
O, so the EM field is a purely mathematical object. What a very
interesting point of view. Funny, that this object should correspond so
well with the world of observation.

.

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