Connectionists: Physics and Psychology (and the C-word)

[Richard Loosemore]

On 1/27/14, 11:30 PM, Brian J Mingus wrote:
> Consciousness is also such a bag of worms that we can't rule out that 
> qualia owes its totally non-obvious and a priori unpredicted existence 
> to concepts derived from quantum mechanics, such as nested observers, 
> or entanglement.
>
> As far as I know, my litmus test for a model is the only way to tell 
> whether low-level quantum effects are required: if the model, which 
> has not been exposed to a corpus containing consciousness philosophy, 
> then goes on to independently recreate consciousness philosophy, 
> despite the fact that it is composed of (for example) point neurons, 
> then we can be sure that low-level quantum mechanical details are not 
> important.
>
> Note, however, that such a model might still rely on nested observers 
> or entanglement. I'll let a quantum physicist chime in on that - 
> although I will note that according to news articles I've read that we 
> keep managing to entangle larger and larger objects - up to the size 
> of molecules at this time, IIRC.
>
>
> Brian Mingus
> http://grey.colorado.edu/mingus
>
Speaking as someone is both a physicist and a cognitive scientist, AND 
someone who has written papers resolving that whole C-word issue, I can 
tell you that the quantum story isn't nearly enough clear in the minds 
of physicists, yet, so how it can be applied to the C question is beyond 
me.  Frankly, it does NOT apply:  saying anything about observers and 
entanglement does not at any point touch the kind of statements that 
involve talk about qualia etc.   So let's let that sleeping dog lie.... (?).

As for using the methods/standards of physics over here in cog sci ..... 
I think it best to listen to George Bernard Shaw on this one:  "Never do 
unto others as you would they do unto you:  their tastes may not be the 
same."

Our tastes (requirements/constraints/issues) are quite different, so 
what happens elsewhere cannot be directly, slavishly imported.


Richard Loosemore

Wells College
Aurora NY
USA