[Melchior]

Originally Posted by joelr

Well the thing is that you ARE saying what consciousness is as a general idea (game of life, nothing special, emergent property). That thesis does suggest that consciousness should not be displaying any special abilities beyond other phenomenon.
Now that it IS showing unexplained abilities to resort to saying "we don't really know what it is" is closer to MY position.

I'm not sure what you mean about studying the brain. Quantum experiments and brain studies are very different. The experiments cannot be blamed on equipment. The wave function for machines, toasters and people is still a reality but the wavelength is ridiculously smaller. A 2 particle system in Hilbert space is much more complicated although in a macroscopic object all of the particles are entangled (one system). But the object (toaster) would have to pass through the detector at a slow speed, longer than the age of the universe.

There are also other routes that consciousness must effect reality other than wave collapse, some have been indirectly seen in other experiments.
For now the simple idea that consciousness forcing a 1 particle system into a definite state with only "awareness of a fact" is enough to show consciousness is more than reductionists believe.

Hrm... Perhaps I was a bit unclear... I wasn't trying to imply that it is something altogether different from what we already know, just that we don't know what consciousness is exactly (i.e. it 'could' be due to something or some property we haven't discovered before).

Also, I wouldn't be so sure that it is only this thing that we call consciousness that can collapse the wavefunction. It is my belief that any interaction between two different wavefunctions (not exactly interference) causes wavefunction collapse for both parties although perhaps not for the rest of the world (because there has not yet been an interaction, although it would be hard to keep that interaction from occurring sooner or later I would think). That interaction causes one to be 'aware' of the other and vice versa. In other words, I would propose that if an electron detector in an experiment could detect and record both the electron in it's starting slit and the screen where it would see a clumping pattern but the experimenters destroyed all data of the detector so that they could not gather this information, then the experimenters would see an interference pattern instead. (Alternatively, you could replace the electron detector with a conscious human being and get the same results, but there would probably be ethical reasons against that experiment. Hmm... this sounds surprisingly similar to Schrodinger's Cat doesn't it?)

In other words, the information is there, but you might just not be able to obtain it. I know I'm guessing here, but I think that consciousness is something of a mechanism for sharing known (obtained) information so that a combined group of wavefunctions (such as yourself) can do something useful (such as move around, perhaps even replicate, similar to the spaceship or spaceship gun in Conway's Game of Life). If that is the case, then consciousness would indeed be an emergent property.

What makes us so special compared to a detector or computer in this experiment? We create the wave/partical collapse! What more would one need?

The detector HAS the information but that does not cause a collapse. So inert matter "knowing" something cannot effect matter. Yet our inert matter (brain) can. We have to actually learn the information for anything different to happen. Part 2 of the problem - how the hell is this interaction possible? There is no exchange of information here? For now it is "magic". And it is caused by the influence of one thing only. Conscious knowledge.

I suppose I answered that above didn't I? ^_^
We're fundamentally no different from a detector or computer in the experiment. What do we know of what the detector or computer thinks it sees in its reality?

Unfortunately, with this, I'm now once again questioning the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many Worlds Interpretation... and things haven't yet resolved. I think I'm overlooking something, something related to the interconnectedness of the universe... >.>
At this point I did a bit of googling using some keywords you used (in the next bit); came up with: Transactional Interpretation and the Afshar Experiment. Maybe I'll get back to you on this, although if I do, it probably won't be for a good while as I let some things digest for now and see if I can make something of a better understanding of what's going on. For now, I will simply thank you.

As for your second question about the exchange of information, how does an electron know that it is in an electric field accelerating it? how does inert matter feel gravity? those interactions are exchanges of information just as much as us seeing what is up with the electron at the end of the double slit experiment. In the end, we still have to rely on some form of detector (whether it is visual, auditory, etc) to relay that information to our brain. If we don't get that information, we don't consciously know what is going on, but the particles making up our body might, 'unconsciously'. (of course, this is still coming from someone that does not sharply distinguish between the duality of consciousness and unconsciousness )

I know what you mean but in the Copenhagen Interpretation which says matter does not exist independently of the observer there are no actual formulas yet. BUT the parts dealing with consciousness are probability law and the state vector, a mathematical representation of "our knowledge of the system" and are characterized by complex quantities (uses imaginary i) and can mean that consciousness is OUTSIDE of the system.

Imaginary rules are becoming very common.
Time has also turned out to be imaginary. The time vector in 4D does use complex numbers unlike the other 3 dimensions.


So there are 2 things that transcend the rules, entanglement and consciousness. In 1900 physics was believed to be almost "wrapped up", they just needed to figure out 2 things - is light a wave or particle and what causes black body radiation?
The answer opened a vast and unthinkable world beyond anyones imagination.

I think I had jumped ahead of myself again... for now, I'll leave you with something that came to me as a response, partly due to me running across Godel's Incompleteness Theorems sometime quite recently for whatever reason, heh. There is nothing that transcends the rules, except perhaps for that last statement. Also, I don't think that there is anything 'outside' the system. If the two interact, then it is all one system.

That's why the physical model has less power. Experiments show that consciousness does have this ability and no parts of anything else hold these qualities. Alternate models do not explain away the leading interpretation which gives consciousness this power.
Hidden variables has been proven to be impossible. Block time with Many-Worlds could be a possible deterministic system but it's not going to override the Copenhagen theory.

Right now many physicists are not aware that the interpretation of modern physics implies that matter does not exist independently of the observer.
Almost all physicists are concentrating their efforts on calculating predictions using mathematical formalism or finding useful applications, very few scientists think about these things so they are not as mainstream as they should.

If that power is unwarranted, then I see no reason why that interpretation is useful then. But perhaps you are correct, and it would make my life perhaps a bit more complicated, for a while at least. One more thing while I'm at it, I'll bet that there are even less engineers that think about these things.
(the quote "Shut up and calculate!" comes to mind)