tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8148573551417578681.post3185496593221425647..comments2024-03-27T19:47:13.475-07:00Comments on Dark Buzz: Carroll rejects panpsychismRogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03474078324293158376noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8148573551417578681.post-5633086126318033832020-01-20T10:46:39.153-08:002020-01-20T10:46:39.153-08:00Dear Roger,
Interesting write-up.
1. True, a con...Dear Roger,<br /><br />Interesting write-up.<br /><br />1. True, a conscious living being is an integration of the soul/mind/consciousness and the body. (Here, for simplicity, let's take consciousness, mind and soul synonymously.)<br /><br />But can we therefore say that everything physical (say a fundamental particle) also must come with some consciousness? Any one who adopts this position quickly runs into difficulty when you ask: What is it that differentiates a corpse from a living being? The most complex parts in the body, for instance the neuronal circuits in the brain, do continue to retain most (if not all) of their complexity (configurational, morphological, local chemical profiles, etc). But why does the same "chunk" of material object now cease to be conscious?<br /><br />I am not outright denying the idea that the physical plenum might possibly also act as a plenum for consciousness. My point is, you would still not be able to ascribe a distinguished instance of consciousness to each physically distinguished particle. You would have to posit how is it that a complex enough a structure/configuration begins to experience the consciousness. Most important, the two attributes of the physical and the conscious, even if pertaining to the same plenum, would still have to be regarded as two distinct, separate, attributes. You couldn't use one as being explanatory of the other. Not at least with the level of total knowledge that we have currently.<br /><br />2. As to the >2-slit experiments, I don't know, but do anticipate, that it all is a bit of an oversell. I think that the main claim here, while original, still rather relies on physicists not having enough of an intuition when it comes to the field-theoretical simulations. Such a state of affairs, in turn, exists because physicists work with too abstract terms (infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, Dirac formalism, etc.) when it comes to QM. That's why the results appear so unexpected. They probe not so much on a new fundamental aspect of reality as how physicists hold their understanding.<br /><br />But ask any computational engineer how he thinks through the following simple question:<br /><br />Consider a perfectly isolated system, a box, for the interference chamber. A perfectly impermeable wall in the middle divides the chamber into two halves. Slits can be cut on this middle wall.<br /><br />Consider five different configurations, one each corresponding to: no slit, single slit, 2 slits, 3 slits, n > 3 slits (with n to be specified).<br /><br />Assume that both the halves are filled with a perfectly still and colorless continuum. Assume that a blob of ink is then introduced in the middle of of one of the two halves, but without disturbing the fluid in any way. Assume that the ink diffuses through the continuum. <br /><br />The problem is to predict the diffusion pattern after the lapse of a sufficiently long but finite amount of time. <br /><br />(Over infinite time, there will be uniform distribution of the diffusing species in all the five cases; in the first case (no slit), the ink would be confined to the half where it was introduced.)<br /><br />It would be very obvious to the computational engineer that the solution for the 2-slit case isn't going to be a superposition of two 1-slit solutions. <br /><br />Once this fact is pointed out, even the physicist would agree. (If he doesn't show enough interest right away, mention harmonic analysis, uniqueness theorem, etc., to get him interested. Go ten times as abstract and mathematical than what I just mentioned. Then he will get interested. After NSF grants for 10 years, he would come to agree.) <br /><br />A somewhat similar reasoning applies also for the QM wavefunction. It's just that physicists don't have already well-developed intuitions for such things.<br /><br />And, if the Sorkin parameter captures something beyond these simple considerations, I would like to know about it. The research would become interesting only in such a case. I think it does not.<br /><br />Best,<br />--Ajit<br />PS: It might be a good idea to move these items to my blog later on.<br />Ajit R. Jadhavhttps://ajitjadhav.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com