Re: [asa] Quantum quackery

George wrote in part:

>
> With all due respect to Penrose & Smolin, I'm dubious of any claims that
> consciousness can be derived from QM. However, a case can be made for the
> idea that the reduction of the wave packet (i.e., a definite result of a
> measurement) occurs when consciousness comes into the picture. (E.g., the
> cat lives or dies when a conscious observer opens the box & looks.) Note
> that that there consciousness is *assumed* in order to *interpret* QM (&
> not that it is derived from QM).
>

I'd be interested to know what your own thoughts and speculations about the
nature of consciousness might be, and how they relate to science/faith.
There seem to be two camps of thought:

(1) The "Strong AI" hypothesis - that consciousness will be an emergent
property of a sufficiently large neural network that can be simulated on a
computer algorithm. People such as Doug Hofstadter and Ray Kurzweil are
proponents of this idea. Also an aquaintance of mine who is a Prof. at
Oxford University in statistical pattern recognition who stated
(semi-seriously) that a research objective was "to download my brain into a
computer so I don't have to die".

(2) The opponents of "Strong AI", of whom Roger Penrose is one of the chief
proponents, who argue that an algorithm will never be conscious, and that
there are bits of fundamental physics that we've not yet understood that
would be at the heart of it. Penrose maintains it is due to quantum
gravity, but I'm not sure how much this is because that, too is an unsolved
area.

What are your thoughts on this, George? If we could transplant our
consciousnesses onto a computer, for instance, would there be theological
implications?

Iain

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Thu Sep 20 08:41:40 2007