sophiaserpentia | (no subject)

My mind keeps coming back to the "Big Wow" Hypothesis put forward by Paola Zizzi. It follows from the "orchestrated objective reduction" quantum consciousness hypothesis put forward by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Stated technically, the abstract of this idea is as follows:

...[D]uring inflation [the period just after the Big Bang when the spacetime continuum expanded rapidly], the universe can be described as a superposed state of quantum registers. The self-reduction of the superposed quantum state is consistent with the Penrose's Objective Reduction (OR) model. The quantum gravity threshold is reached at the end of inflation, and corresponds to a superposed state of 10^9 quantum registers. This is also the number of superposed tubulins-qubits in our brain, which undergo the Penrose-Hameroff's Orchestrated Objective Reduction, (Orch OR), leading to a conscious event. Then, an analogy naturally arises between the very early quantum computing universe, and our mind.

Paraphrased, it is proposed that (a) proto-consciousness is a natural quality of existence, (b) conscious awareness arises from self-orchestrating quantum events in the brain, and (c) the universe, during the period of inflation shortly after the Big Bang, experienced a moment of conscious awareness that is analogous to the conscious awareness that we as human beings experience.

There is a certain "neatness" in this. If there is any truth to this at all, what are the theological, cosmological, and anthropological (using the term in its theological sense) implications?

Addendum. It is suggested that the law of entropy may not necessarily apply on microcosmic scales. Evidence of this sort would seem to bolster the idea that conscious awareness and perhaps even volition have their roots in quantum-level an-entropy. Stuart Hameroff has proposed a testable hypothesis he has called "quantum vitalism" that suggests that life is a special kind of quantum superconduction. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Schwartz and Harry Stapp have proposed the concept of "mental force" to explain a way volition (or free will) may be reconciled with materialism.

crossposting to

religiousdebate.

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Thanks for all 4 really great links!

I came to your journal because of the link you posted on

real_philosophy, and I was floored by this post, because at least part of it basically is exactly the topic that has been driving me for the last couple of weeks. (I friended you to make sure I don't miss anything good!)

nanikore had described to me the Taoist description of a void as, instead of nothingness, as "there is no ripple." This sounded to me like a pretty good definition of maximum entropy. I really like the idea of the inverse relationship between entropy and existence. (Also, I find that Genesis 1:2 seems to give the same definition of "pre-existence," just in case you were interested.)

What's your understanding of consciousness being a "threshold value" of complexity? What relationship does that have to entropy, if any? I'm inclined to think as complexity goes upward toward this threshold value, entropy goes down, but now I may be confusing myself with a poor analogy rather than a useful metaphysics.

There is a certain 'neatness' in this.

I like that statement--lately I've been focusing on aesthetics as a possible foundation for my personal philosophy. Not art per se, but just the nature of beauty and subjective experience itself. "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." (Genesis 1:31)

Your user info page tells me you may be of like mind. Nice to meet you.

There's alot of problems with this whole area right now. Not the least of which is that it's purely speculative: nearly every premise in the proposed theory is an assumption. This isn't to say nothing will come of it; interdisciplinary consciousness research is exciting and promising.

One of the main problems with Orch OR models is that they're so withdrawn from psychological and neurological findings on the topic. For instance, consciousness isn't evenly distributed throughout the brain, and we can, at least in some cases, demonstrate with considerable confidence where consciousness is compared to where it is not. It would be promising if microtubule composition could be correlated with these conscious zones, but I've never heard of such a thing proposed. This alone is fairly damning.

Regarding the panpsychist theory, a serious conceptional problem with this approach is that it completely ignores features which many researchers believe to be primary to consciousness - such as intentionality and self.

Generally, in both cases we have theories that can, at best, offer a speculative description of how consciousness arises. However, the standard reductive neuroscience approaches can do this as well. The difficult issues in consciousness (the ones where the standard reductive approaches fall short, impelling us to look for alternatives) are not how it can be generated, but how it becomes associated with precisely those features these theories ignore (eg. intentionality and self).