I understand it. Does it make sense? That's a different question. But at least I can understand what you're getting at.

So, here's my question: are you saying the electric fields of the brain are effected? Or is it the quantum fields that register changes? Or the entangled particles?

So, here's my question: are you saying the electric fields of the brain are effected? Or is it the quantum fields that register changes? Or the entangled particles? — counterpunch

The field generated by massive electrical flux in the brain is the subjective medium, a binding agent for the mind's perceptual "space". This electric field mutually interacts with quantum fields of entangled molecules (qualia) by the same mechanism as additive wavelength to result in the substance of qualitative experience, what philosophy has traditionally referred to as "ineffable" (but not any more!).

The key points are that qualia can exist outside the brain, perception extends beyond the confines of the head, and qualia together with experiencing can be embodied in forms completely different than carbon-based tissue.

Electric field of brain as registered by EEG interacts with quantum fields of entangled particles (qualia) in additive way (like wavelengths of the visible light spectrum), to produce qualitative experience (sounds, images, feels) in the head. — Enrique

Why does entanglement generate qualia? This also exists in a laboratory and in a much purer form. And every high-voltage line generates more electric fields than a brain. Consequently, a laboratory that studies entanglement and is under a high-voltage line would have to have qualia.

My opinion is that an account of subjective consciousness based on quantum physics will not diminish the sense that subjective experience is real or important in any way because subjective experience is nonetheless a causal aspect of reality. If anything, it will dissolve the sense that mind is intangible and objects are tangible to create a synthetic concept of tangible substance as both mind and matter. It overcomes an antiquated philosophical duality that gives rise to our materialist/spiritualist divide, not the cognizance of causal multiplicity and separate theoretical/practical domains. If anything, it will be a cool additional facet of self-knowledge. — Enrique

I think it is fair to talk about a divide within theories of consciousness that runs parallel to that within cognitive science in general . On one side are those writers, like Daniel Dennett , who adhere to a representationalist or computationalist model of cognition. On the other are researchers in autopoietic self-organizing systems theory( Francisco Varela, Thompson) and 4EA cognitive psychologists (embodied, enactive,embedded, extended and affective).

The latter group abandons representationalism
and computationalism for a more radically interactionist foundation. Their inspirations are phenomenologists like Husserl , Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger , and Wittgenstein. This group doesn’t belei e that subjective experience is a causal aspect of reality because they reject the very model of causation that is implied by talking in this way about the relation between the subjective and the objective.

Heidegger pointed out that quantum theory rests on philosophical pre-suppositions that amount to a method originating with Galileo establishing what is knowable empirically as what is objective , and establishing objectivity on the basis of identities in motion within a time-space frame, a geometrical mathematical space. Even though what constitutes objective entities for physics has changed much since Galileo, the field has maintained these pre-suppositions , which is why almost all physicists today declare themselves to be realists, and many of them still believe that time is only a added human subjective dimension that isnt intrinsic to the physical world in itself.

key questions concerning what it is that consciousness does, what are its variations and its biological origins , how to understand pathologies of consciousness ( aphasia, autism, amnesia , etc) , how to model the relation between affect and cognition : these are all determined by which model of cognition one adheres to.
Penrose almost completely ignores the most vital and promising work by people like Damasio, Gallagher and Noe, which isnt surprising given that his background is not psychology. What we would end up in terms of a model of consciousness by following Penrose’s route is what we started out with , a quantum calculating machine.

From the vantage of enactivist thinking. , you cannot understand consciousness in all its richness without recognizing its bias in the dynamics of the self-organization of living systems , the fact that body-environment interaction has the feature of structural coupling in which the organism alters its world
at the same time that the world affects the organism. This reciprocity between inside and outside not only is key to understanding of consciousness but indicates that at some point physicists will find it necessary to alter their own models of the ‘physical’.

Why does entanglement generate qualia? This also exists in a laboratory and in a much purer form. And every high-voltage line generates more electric fields than a brain. Consequently, a laboratory that studies entanglement and is under a high-voltage line would have to have qualia. — SolarWind

My preliminary guess is that additive wavelengths of entangled particles are qualia, existing everywhere, but usually flit in and out of existence so rapidly as matter moves that they don't get much perceived. It requires a higher order of organization such as that found in the brain to convert this into experience. The range of possible qualia is hugely vast, and the brain is tailored for responding to many specific kinds and tuning out the rest. The electrical field of a high-voltage line for instance must be mostly beyond the portion of the spectrum that registers and does not substantially disrupt perception.

quantum fields of entangled molecules — Enrique

Molecules are two or more atoms. Does entanglement occur in molecules? I didn't know you could just hop over the quantum/macroscopic fence like that! That changes everything!!!

you cannot understand consciousness in all its richness without recognizing its bias in the dynamics of the self-organization of living systems , the fact that body-environment interaction has the feature of structural coupling in which the organism alters its world
at the same time that the world affects the organism. This reciprocity between inside and outside not only is key to understanding of consciousness but indicates that at some point physicists will find it necessary to alter their own models of the ‘physical’. — Joshs

A constructive feedback certainly exists between physical modeling and introspective phenomenology: each new development in either domain gives its complement a better idea of what to look for on the psychological level. They should be collaborators, not rivals, and may one day merge.

Molecules are two or more atoms. Does entanglement occur in molecules? I didn't know you could just hop over the quantum/macroscopic fence like that! That changes everything!!! — counterpunch

If you're interested, you should look at the research on photosynthetic reaction centers, entanglement systems spanning many chlorophyll molecules which produce an emergent quantum architecture responsive to light. That's where I got the idea of additive wavelengths taking effect on a large scale in the brain.

Its not simply an utter dissolution of the quantum/thermodynamic barrier. Organisms as we know them are trillions of pockets of quantum machinery in a thermodynamic chassis saturated by nonlocal reality.

My preliminary guess is that additive wavelengths of entangled particles are qualia, ... — Enrique

I do not understand the connection between additive wavelengths and the subjective impression of the smell of roses.

I do not understand the connection between additive wavelengths and the subjective impression of the smell of roses. — SolarWind

No one understands that yet, but additive wavelengths or "quantum resonances" must exist in ways that are not entirely visual, and that's the substance of our nonoptical sensations. Some of the quantum mechanisms involved are no doubt located in the sense organs themselves as in magnetoreception.

A constructive feedback certainly exists between physical modeling and introspective phenomenology: each new development in either domain gives its complement a better idea of what to look for on the psychological level. They should be collaborators, not rivals, and may one day merge. — Enrique

I certainly agree with that sentiment.

In response to a participant who denied the possibility of objective knowledge (in the case of consciousness).

In that case, the question is: Can consciousness be studied as an object (similar to a stone)? The answer is: obviously not. Where is the difference: the behaviour of a stone is predictable, that of a consciousness is not.
Can any objective - partial - knowledge about consciousness be obtained? The answer is yes. And the final question: how far does our objective knowledge of consciousness go? This is the question. All the rest is muddling along.

So how can we scientifically explain consciouness? — alphahimself

Yes, but not yet.

Maybe an optimal science of brain might be able to say what areas of the brain are responsible for consciousness. But we've mapped all 300 or so neurons of a nematode, and nobody understand why it does what it does.

Prospects don't look much better for human beings. Also, what sense does it make to say that you are objectively explaining something subjective? Something's missing in that idea.

Maybe an optimal science of brain might be able to say what areas of the brain are responsible for consciousness. But we've mapped all 300 or so neurons of a nematode, and nobody understand why it does what it does. — Manuel

We understand what a nematode does in terms of the physiology of behavior, its simply stimulus and response between cells. What we don't understand is how or to what extent qualitative experience maps onto cells, what the mechanisms of subjectivity are. A vast spectrum of subjectivity must exist that corresponds to different arrays of nervous tissue within differing organisms and during discrepant cognitive states. Its all got to be molecular, but we haven't identified the correct molecules and their collective functions.

Maybe we should give mice LSD or shrooms and then study their brains, what do you think, good idea? lol

Ha. Maybe, I don't have any moral problems with that. :p

The issue, as I see it, is what does it even mean to say that an experience "maps" on to cells, or to brain matter even? Maybe an optimal science will say something like, the basal ganglia interacting with brocas area at time T3 causes the prefrontal cortex to activate in this specific pattern when it sees a Blue Jay.

Ok, fine. But the experiential quality of the blue jay is not explained by these types of brain experiments. When someone looks at a brain at T3, there is nothing blue about it, there isn't a bird inside and so on. Sure, it sounds silly, but that's the problem. It's like the difference between seeing a red rose and then speaking about light waves. Sure, light waves are involved in me seeing the rose, but they say nothing about that colour I see in the world, which we call "red".

Though to be fair, science can't explain gravity, it's a given. It's behavior is studied and predicted, but what it is, we don't know. From this perspective, it's all a mystery.

From this perspective, it's all a mystery. — Manuel

You know, I think one of the reasons the Dennetts of the world want to deny the reality of conscious experience, is BECAUSE it's a mystery. I mean, they sense that, deep down, their own being, their own mind, is actually very mysterious - and they hate that! That's why they're also 'evangelical atheists' - they want a world in which every little thing has a 'scientific explanation', it's what they think 'being rational' is. :wink:

Sure, light waves are involved in me seeing the rose, but they say nothing about that colour I see in the world, which we call "red". — Manuel

But what if red isn't light waves bouncing off the rose, interacting with neurons (which are decidedly nonredlike), but rather light waves bouncing off a quantum wave rose, perturbing qualia waves in the brain, which are redlike! That's a profound difference. It smacks of a unified theory of reality, which is exciting. Sure, its not going to describe a form of experience that proves to be indescribable, but being optimistic, it might just explain EVERYTHING on some level!

Well, that would be an interesting option. How far would the qualia waves go? It's one thing to say that it is redlike would it also be roselike? Depending on how far this goes, you'd end up with the "two worlds" problem of naïve realism: a world "out there" and a similar one in my head.

It does sound much better than NCC though.

I think so too. I still have trouble believing that he (and the Churchlands', etc) actually think that consciousness is an illusion. It's a bit like insisting human beings are horses or something.

Saying they are a mixture doesn’t make things clear.
Objectivity is a matter of intersubjective agreement on events which appear in different guises to each of us. We learn to treat our own vantage on an event as just an aspect of the ‘objective’ object , the ‘same’ object for all of us, when in fact it is never ‘same for all’ except as an abstraction, albeit a very useful abstraction. What is certain is that for each of us experience of that world is shaped by constrains and affordances such that some ways of interacting with the world are more useful relative to our purposes that others. The criteria of objectivity change over time as cultural an scientific practices change. — Joshs

But then, what is the bottom line? For me, there was a good reason Wittgenstein both denied talk about ethics at the foundational level, yet posited divinity (admitting it was indeed odd to do so. Kierkegaard taught him how odd this was).
Rick Roderick turned to his psychiatrist once and asked, "Why are we born to suffer and die?" An excellent question, to which the psychiatrist replied, "?!#$%&&$#."
It is THE question of consciousness. All others "beg" this question implicitly, the question being, why bother at all even asking? Our metaphysical haunt is not, good lord!: Dualism or Monism or whether ideas subsist in the Real, or if human consciousness is reducible or derivative; it is value and its meta-value consummation. Buddhists essentially understood this long ago. I suspect the Hindus and their mysterious metaphysics, sans the mythology, were closer to the truth, though: there is much, much more to our consciousness, or if you like, to heaven and earth than in your philosophy, Horatio.

cannot be observed — alphahimself

You seem to have hit the nail on the head there. Consciousness is, for each and everyone, wholly a first person experience, information gathered thence serving as a benchmark for deducing its presence beyond the self.

If so, the problem is are we sure that what we believe are the physical correlates of consciousness are really that? Does a man walking into a bar imply that he's thinking about having a drink? Not necessarily, right? If so, how deep does the rabbit hole go? If behavior can be incongruous with thoughts, can it also be that behavior can occur in the total absence of thought?

Are p-zombies possible?

I'm going to argue that they are and it goes like this: Take into account the fact that if the complexity of calculus is real and actual then the simplicity of arithmetic too is real and actual i.e. a certain level of complexity implies a lower level simplicity. Since p-zombies are simpler (they're lacking consciousness) than normal humans, they should be possible. It follows then that physicalism is false.

Since science, as of now, is limited to the physical, current scientific paradigms won't be able to explain consciousness.

Our metaphysical haunt is not, good lord!: Dualism or Monism or whether ideas subsist in the Real, or if human consciousness is reducible or derivative; it is value and its meta-value consummation. — Constance

Yea, but these are inseparably intertwined. Value isn’t an ineffable internality, it’s a function of intersubjective patterns of relation , and questions concerning dualism and monism, the real and the relative are directly relevant to questions of value.

Yea, but these are inseparably intertwined. Value isn’t an ineffable internality, it’s a function of intersubjective patterns of relation , and questions concerning dualism and monism, the real and the relative are directly relevant to questions of value. — Joshs

But then, the "meta" end of value is just this ineffable "property" or as Moore put it, non natural property. Putting value into its contexts, theoretical, practical, invites discussion about everything BUT value. Is value Real? Then, what is real, and then follows the categorial move to "totalize" (Levinas borrowed from Heidegger, I think) which is away from the truly mysterious nature of value (that is, the pains, joys, miseries, celebrations, fascinations, interests, anxieties, terrors, and so on).

Perhaps value is effective in evolutionary accounts. No doubt. But what IS it that we are talking about that is so good for reproduction and survival? What are the descriptive features of, say, being tortured, qua the tortuous experience itself?

But then, the "meta" end of value is just this ineffable "property" or as Moore put it, non natural property. Putting value into its contexts, theoretical, practical, invites discussion about everything BUT value. Is value Real? Then, what is real, and then follows the categorial move to "totalize" (Levinas borrowed from Heidegger, I think) which is away from the truly mysterious nature of value (that is, the pains, joys, miseries, celebrations, fascinations, interests, anxieties, terrors, and so on). — Constance

Value is not ineffable any more than the ‘objective ‘ is transcendentally true. Moore was a Kantian, still caught up in a subject-object , feeling-thinking split. Value cannot in any shape or form be separated from that which would supposedly be understandable or existent independently of it. The same is true of the relation between affectivity and intentional meaning, which is what we’re really talking about here anyway. Heidegger realized precisely this, which is why he didn’t think of ‘value’ as mysterious in some way that cognition or perception is not. Value is befindlichkeit, how we find ourselves in the world, how things have pragmatic meaning and significance for us.

Value is not ineffable any more than the ‘objective ‘ is transcendentally true. Moore was a Kantian, still caught up in a subject-object , feeling-thinking split. Value cannot in any shape or form be separated from that which would supposedly be understandable or existent independently of it. The same is true of the relation between affectivity and intentional meaning, which is what we’re really talking about here anyway. Heidegger realized precisely this, which is why he didn’t think of ‘value’ as mysterious in some way that cognition or perception is not. Value is befindlichkeit, how we find ourselves in the world, how things have pragmatic meaning and significance for us. — Joshs

I think it is right to say things are, as I take Heidegger to claim, of a piece: concepts, pragmatics, value, meaning (Dewey said the same); and it is not my intention to take metavalue as some kind of impossible ontology apart from all entanglements (which would the worst kind of dualism I suppose). I put matters of drawing ontological lines between things in suspension, but would like to take an analytical look at experience just to see what is there, plainly. Take a lighted match, apply it to the finger, and observe, apart from all presuppositions that would make a claim to it (which of course would remind one of Husserl, or perhaps of analytic philosophers' concept of qualia, or see Dennett's rather stark use of 'phenomenon' in his paper on qualia, and so on).

I mean, what is it As pain, and I care not at all how hermeneutically entangled it is otherwise, or whether belongs to a temporally structured event in which existence is predelineated, preconceptualized, or whether knowledge is inherently pragmatic. All off the board. It is the screaming pain I wish understand for what it is. I find this: When I break Wittgenstein's maxim to "pass over in silence" the whole affair, I find language that does not speak what value is any more than it can speak the color yellow as yellow. But there is one thing that does issue from the pain, and that is an injunction not to inflict this on to others nor myself. It is an injunction that is not contingent, as if "the world" were speaking, as if it were written on tablets by God.

I suspect this, contradicting myself from earlier, is the only Real ontology.

For me, the consciousness question will always be subjective. Each of us, to our knowledge, exist as a single consciousness. We are not beings of multiple consciousness or part of an assembly or hive. We can digress into the wisdom of crowds which seems to have anecdotal evidence at least, or spiritually digress in that many of us feel we are connected by the universe we share. Twins have often been found to share thoughts from a subjective point of view. We perceive our own consciousness according to our own objective reality but even that is ultimately only shared with others through what we would call subjective means. It is beyond science I feel.

What is not beyond science is more constrained and formal approximations to consciousness.
We can develop an artificially intelligent life form. The goal would be to use the simple building block and parallelize enough neurons and various types of neural networks so that we can some day be asked the question from this being:

"What makes me conscious?" (or something to that effect)

Then we could answer at least at an empirical level that it's n^r of this neural net conjoined with this that and the other, but perhaps still not really know what it exactly it is in the formula that makes a being understand its own sentience.

When did you first ask yourself this question might be one question? As humans, I don't believe we know. The will to survive has been empirically shown to exist before a baby emerges from the womb (most graphically demonstrated in late term abortions). So it happens early and we don't remember how or why. Some of us believe it's a spiritual thing. Kind of like you are aware that you are part of the canvass of the universe and you have something to paint. I do feel the word 'connection' is ultimately vital to consciousness. That we are connected to something greater.

I'm not sure every human necessarily retains full consciousness to remain a "productive" member of society. Some of us kill our own consciousness at least to some degree, and reduce ourselves to be more like an algorithm. I think we can all relate to that on some level. Consciousness may be more of a degree than an absolute value. We should consider that too.

What do we even mean when we say the minimum threshold that constitutes consciousness?
That can be subjective too. A being can be self ware that it got bitten but not self aware it is sad. Or it could be self aware that its sad but not self aware enough to ponder what sadness is. Ultimately, I would consciousness is introspection which is essentially self evaluation of those parts of us we ourselves do not understand. The ability of a being to evaluate itself?

In attempting to define what is is, that's my answer for now. The degree of which a being can self evaluate it's condition, it's emotion state, what it knows and maybe more importantly evaluates what it doesn't know and can speculate on the unknowns of all these things.