Most assume that matter is fundamental, and that consciousness arises out of the complexity of matter. But Nobel Prize winning quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger does not share that assumption. For him, the universe contains a single mind, writes Robert Prentner and Donald D. Hoffman.
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claudio elgueta 27 July 2022
The turning point PE is looking for occurs in the child brain between the ages of 18 and 24 months, according to exhaustive experiments carried out by Gordon Gallup's team with the Mirror Self-Recognition Test. What we still don´t know is how this happens, but it does. All sentient animals are conscious, but not self-aware. So, depending on how you define consciousness - and the likes of Chalmers, Sheldrake, Penrose, Hoffman and many other universalists have so far been unable to do so - it resides in the brain of all sentient animals or in that of self-aware animals. The test above has also been passed by adult monkeys, elephants, dolphins and octopuses.
claudio elgueta 27 July 2022
You are absolutely right, PE. There is no single experiment that conclusively proves that this critical mass (CM) Susan Greenfield refers to produces the effect of acquiring self awareness (SA). Even more importantly it is to show HOW, if it does. and that hasn't happened. All she has managed to demonstrate in her work with the evolution of a child's brain is that before that CM is there the is no SA and after, there is. But the difference between the work of neuroscientists who maintain that, in their opinion, consciousness only resides in the brain of animals like us and the affirmations of those who claim the universality of the process is that the latter group has even less to show for convincing us, other than appealing to the vulnerable tendency of the "spiritual" human. Sheer philosophical speculation will lead nowhere until science can effectively assert with evidence any claim about the nature of consciousness and, for my money, the scientists are ahead on this race.
Paul Entwistle 26 July 2022
CE (below) states that consciousness emerges 'once the brain acquires a critical mass of neuronal clusters'. I am aware that this argument is widely used, and also extended (in my view erroneously) to AI.
My question is: are there any experiments demonstrating this effect - and eg establishing a threshold below and above which consciousness is not - and then is - observed? This seems to me to be a key question in drawing any such conclusion. We cannot just assume it because we can now observe neurological activity.
claudio elgueta 26 July 2022
Shroedinger, like Descartes before him, did not know that thoughts are NOT immaterial, but a set of electro-chemical impulses that, once the brains acquires a critical mass of neuronal clusters, they provide for us what we assume to be, and thus call, self-awareness and realise the existence of ourselves and our consciousness. This is nothing more than the mental process of our brain and nobody has hitherto proven anything to the contrary. Therefore, consciousness is individual, subjective and, as far as we can tell, exclusive of the human species. The universe has no mind because it doesn't have a brain. We do.
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