QUOTATIONS #4

Piero Scaruffi --: It is certainly true that all current neurobiological descriptions of the brain are based on Newton's Physics, even if it is well known that Newton's Physics has its limitations. First of all, Newton's Physics is an offshoot of Descartes division of the universe in matter and spirit, and it deals only with matter. Secondly, neurobiologists assume that the brain and its parts behave like classical objects, and that quantum effects are negligible, even while the "objects" they are studying get smaller and smaller. What neurobiologists are doing when they study the microstructure of the brain from a Newtonian perspective is equivalent to organizing a trip to the Moon on the basis of Aristotle's Physics, neglecting Newton's theory of gravitation. No wonder most neurobiologists reach the conclusion that Physics cannot explain consciousness, since they are using a Physics that 1. was designed to study matter and leave out consciousness and that 2. does not work in the microworld. Not surprisingly, it has been claimed that all current neurobiological models are computationally equivalent to a Turing machine.

Piero Scaruffi --: Similarities between mind and quantum theory undoubtedly abound. The unity of consciousness is a favorite example. A conscious state is the whole of the conscious state and cannot be divided into components (I can't separate the feeling of red from the feeling of apple when I think of a red apple). Newton's Physics is less suitable than Quantum Theory for dealing with such a system, especially since Bell's Theorem proved that everything is always interacting. Indeterminate behavior (for example, free will) is another favorite, since Heisenberg's principle allows for some unpredictability in nature that Newton's Physics ruled out. And, of course, the mind/body duality reminds Physicists of the wave/particle duality. Quantum Physics also solves, to some extent, Descartes' dualism: in Quantum Physics, matter is ultimately not a solid substance.

|||||||| --: It must be kept in mind that qualitative values find no place in physical mathematics for the simple reason that they (e.g., odors, tastes, etc.) are not reducible to mathematical formulae. Hence it becomes necessary to distinguish between quantitative elements (expansion, weight, motion) and qualitative elements (odors, tastes, etc.). The first are called objective, having a reality distinct from the subject; the second will be called subjective, being modifications of the subject and devoid of any objective reality. This theory, proposed by Galileo and afterwards followed by John Locke in his noted distinction between primary and secondary qualities, was to become part of modern thought.

Daniel Dennett --: I describe three stances for looking at reality: the physical stance, the design stance, and the intentional stance. The physical stance is where the physicists are, it's matter and motion. The design stance is where you start looking at the software, at the patterns that are maintained, because these are designed things that are fending off their own dissolution. That is to say, they are bulwarks against the second law of thermodynamics. This applies to all living things, and also to all artifacts. Above that is the intentional stance, which is the way we treat that specific set of organisms and artifacts that are themselves rational information processing agents. In some regards you can treat Mother Nature--that is, the whole process of evolution by natural selection--from the intentional stance, as an agent, but we understand that that's a façon de parler, a useful shortcut for getting at features of the design processes that are unfolding over eons of time. Once we get to the intentional stance, we have rational agents, we have minds, creators, authors, inventors, discoverers and everyday folks interacting on the basis of their take on the world.

W. Daniel Hillis --: Fundamentally, he's [Daniel Dennett] a reductionist, and he does believe that the phenomena we see in the mind are the result of fundamental physical principles. That's a philosophical standpoint I'm basically comfortable with. It maybe makes him more popular among the scientists than among the philosophers, because if he's right then all philosophy is just a matter of science that hasn't been done yet. Dennett's ideas are compatible with the notion of science that there's a reality out there; it's understandable; it's based on some simple underlying laws, and we just need to understand what those laws are and the connection between them and what we see. Philosophers have always felt that there's a set of things that don't fit that paradigm. People used to say, "Well, the laws may apply on Earth, but they're not true for the heavenly bodies." Then, after Galileo, they said, "Well, that might be true for physical bodies, but it's not true for biological organisms." After Darwin, they said, "Well, that might be true for our bodies, but it's not true for our minds." And so on. We are backing the philosophers into a corner and giving them less and less to talk about. In some sense, Dennett is cooperating with the enemy by helping us back the philosophers into a smaller and smaller corner, and I like that.

Steven Pinker --: I enjoyed, but disagree in some ways with, Dan's discussion of consciousness in "Consciousness Explained". I like it because Dan challenges us to come up with an argument for why we should believe that there exist some kind of raw feelings, or qualia, or subjective experience. He argues that there isn't any substance to the idea: a person with what we think of as consciousness and a zombie who behaved in the same way would be indistinguishable, as far as science is concerned. ....I read Dan as saying that we've been misled into thinking there's a real question there. According to Dan, there isn't. That's where I disagree: I suspect there's a real question and that it's not just an error in the way we conceptualize the problem. Perhaps our minds are simply not designed to be able to formulate or grasp the answer —a suggestion of Chomsky's that I know Dan hates. But the intuition that qualia exist is real, and as yet irreducible and inexplicable. For one thing, all our intuitions about ethics crucially presuppose the distinction between a sentient being and a numb zombie. Putting a sentient being's thumb in a thumbscrew is unethical, but putting a robot's thumb in a thumbscrew is something else. And this isn't just a thought experiment; the debates over animal rights, euthanasia, and the use of anesthetics in infant surgery depend on it.

J J O'Connor & E F Robertson --: The special theory of relativity still has absolutes. Absolute space-time is a feature of special relativity which, contrary to popular belief, does not claim that everything is relative. Although velocities, distances, and time intervals are relative, the theory still sits on a postulated absolute space-time. In special relativity observers moving at constant velocities relative to each other would not agree on the velocity of a bucket moving through space, nor would they agree about the time that has elapsed in the bucket experiment, but they would all agree on whether the bucket was accelerating or not.

CNRS --: Mathematics operates in two complementary ways. In the 'visual' one the meaning of a theorem is perceived instantly on a geometric figure. The 'written' one leans on language, on algebra; it operates in time.

Aldous Huxley --: The scientific picture of the world is inadequate for the simple reason that science deals only with certain aspects of experience in certain contexts. All this is quite clearly understood by the more philosophically minded men of science. But most others tend to accept the world picture implicit in the theories of science as a complete and exhaustive account of reality.

transcript --: Roger Penrose: The question of the passage of time is something the scientists have rather set aside, and taking the view that its not really physics, it's a subjective issue; and subjective questions are not part of science. Now when you start talking about phenomena like one's own perception of the passage of time, then that is a subjective thing. And that's almost a taboo subject for science because it's subjective. The physical world at least according to Relativity, is out there, and there is no flow of time, it's just there; whereas our feeling (we have this feeling of the passage of time) are intimately connected to our perceptions.

Physicist: We have this subjective feeling, that time goes by, but physicists would argue this is just an illusion.

Roger Penrose: Yes I think physicists would agree that the feeling of time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real. It has something to do with our perceptions.

Narrator: Illusion or not, our perceptions emerge somewhere between the cosmic scale of Relativity where the flow of time is frozen and the quantum scale, where flow descends to uncertainty. Our world is on a scale governed by a mixture of chance and necessity.

Roger Penrose: My view is that there is some large scale quantum activity going on in the brain. Physics does not say that Quantum Mechanics takes place in small areas, but also takes place over larger areas. I think this has to do with the consciousness. I think we need a new way to look at time, not either Quantum Mechanics or Relativity.

Narrator: If Quantum Mechanics is taking place in the brain then the same randomness of outcome and unpredictability might explain our ability to make sometime random choices. Opening up the future to the possibility of change would provide the first step of restoring to physics the flow of time it currently denies.

Physicist: I don't think time flows, I feel that time flows, but I feel we can only understand this if we have a better understanding of how consciousness works. I think human consciousness probably has the secrets as to how and why we think of time as going by.

Roger Penrose: I don't think we have the tools, I don't think we have the physical picture to accommodate these things yet. We're not very close to it.

David Hume --: It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants-nay infants, nay even brute beasts-improve by experience, and learn the qualities of natural objects, by observing the effects which result from them. When a child has felt the sensation of pain from touching the flame of a candle, he will be careful not to put his hand near any candle, but will expect a similar effect from a cause which is similar in its sensible qualities and appearance. If you assert, therefore, that the understanding of the child is led into this conclusion by any process of argument or ratiocination, I may justly require you to produce that argument, nor have you any pretence to refuse so equitable a demand. You cannot say that the argument is abstruse, and may possibly escape your enquiry; since you confess that it is obvious to the capacity of a mere infant. If you hesitate, therefore, a moment, or if, after reflection, you produce any intricate or profound argument, you, in a manner, give up the question, and confess that it is not reasoning which engages us to suppose the past resembling the future, and to expect similar effects from causes which are, to appearance, similar. This is the proposition which I intended to enforce in the present section. If I be right, I pretend not to have made any mighty discovery. And if I be wrong, I must acknowledge myself to be indeed a very backward scholar, since I cannot now discover an argument which, it seems, was perfectly familiar to me long before I was out of my cradle.

Charles Darwin --: To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.

Judith Shklar --: Skepticism is inclined toward toleration, since in its doubts it cannot choose among the competing beliefs that swirl around it, so often in murderous rage. Whether the skeptic seeks personal tranquility in retreat or tries to calm the warring factions around her, she must prefer a government that does nothing to increase the prevailing levels of fanatacism and dogmatism.

Albert Einstein --: Since there exist in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.

transcript --: Roger Penrose: Space-time is certainly different stuff from space because it's 4 dimensional instead of 3-D, which is a big difference. Time really has to be brought into the picture; this one thing which is space/time.

Physicist: Just imagine what this might be like: 3-D space implies a volume, and you can move any where in that volume. Once you add time as a 4th dimension, another axis, then this block of space/time would contain within it past, present and future, all at once. Time is frozen, all times exist together; so just as you can say "over here, over there" in 3-D space, you can talk about "over then", in 4-D space/time.

Roger Penrose: It's a way of looking at things if you like which physically we seem to be forced into. I say physically from the point of view of what the theory of relativity tells us. And Relativity is remarkably well tested, I mean, 14 places of decimal, it's just incredible. So we know that this theory does describe the universe to an extraordinarily precise degree, so we have to take it seriously. And that theory tells us that we have to regard space and time as one thing, it's all out there, its one thing. In the same sense that space is out there, time is out there.

Narrator: Like the Medieval God's-view of time, Einstein's physics says that the future is already out there. The moments of our lives are just waiting for us to step into them.

Roger Penrose: But there's no more problem about the future being out there than saying that space is out there. You say, "Mars is out there", but why is that more comprehensible than saying "next week is out there"? It's just as far away in a certain sense.

Bertrand Russell --: I maintain an opinion which all other philosophers find shocking: namely, that people's thoughts are in their heads. The light from a star travels over intervening space and causes a disturbance in the optic nerve ending in an occurrence in the brain. What I maintain is that the occurrence in the brain is a visual sensation. I maintain, in fact, that the brain consists of thoughts --using thought-- in its widest sense, as it is used by Descartes. What I maintain is that we can witness or observe what goes on in our heads, and that we cannot witness or observe anything else at all.

Michael Lockwood --: Do we therefore have no genuine knowledge of the intrinsic character of the physical world? So it might seem. But, according to the line of thought I am now pursuing, we do, in a very limited way, have access to content in the material world as opposed merely to abstract casual structure, since there is a corner of the physical world that we know, not merely by inference from the deliverances of our five senses, but because we are that corner. It is the bit within our skulls, which we know by introspection. In being aware, for example, of the qualia that seemed so troublesome for the materialist, we glimpse the intrinsic nature of what, concretely, realizes the formal structure that a correct physics would attribute to the matter of our brains. In awareness, we are, so to speak, getting an insider's look at our own brain activity.

William James --: One great splitting of the whole universe into two halves is made by each of us; and for each of us almost all of the interest attaches to one of the halves; but we all draw the line of division between them in a different place. When I say that we all call the two halves by the same names, and that those names are 'me' and 'not-me' respectively, it will at once be seen what I mean. The altogether unique kind of interest which each human mind feels in those parts of creation which it can call me or mine may be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychological fact. No mind can take the same interest in his neighbor's me as in his own. The neighbor's me falls together with all the rest of things in one foreign mass against which his own me stands cut in startling relief. Even the trodden worm, as Lotze somewhere says, contrasts his own suffering self with the whole remaining universe, though he have no clear conception either of himself or of what the universe may be. He is for me a mere part of the world; for him it is I who am the mere part. Each of us dichotomizes the Kosmos in a different place.

Jacques Maritain --: The great German idealist systems took their point of departure from the Kantian revolution. But the critical philosophy of Kant was for them only a kind of chrysalis, to be shed once philosophy had found its wings. Their inspiration was fundamentally different. If the Kantian revolution had freed the mind from the regulation exercised upon it by things, it had done so, originally, in order to limit the field of knowledge and restrain the ambitions of reason. Now it was necessary to bring this revolution to its logical conclusion, enable it to bear its full fruit, and, by freeing the mind of the regulation exercised upon it by things, to break down every barrier restricting the domain of philosophic knowledge, in short, to liberate the metaphysical ambitions of reason at last from any possible limitation. For this to be accomplished, the Kantian dualism of phenomena and the thing-in-itself had to be overcome, since the thing-in-itself, by virtue of its very unknowability, still belonged to the world of extra-mental being and remained a reality independent of the mind. No more "things"! The mind itself was to abolish the thing-in-itself by taking its place, whereupon phenomena would become manifestations of mind.

Bradley Dowden --: Philosophers of time are deeply divided on the question on what sort of ontological differences there are among the present, past and future. Assuming it is a mistake to say time is not real, presentists argue that necessarily only present objects and present experiences are real; and we conscious beings recognize this in the special "vividness" of our present experience. The growing-universe theory is that the past and present are both real, but the future is not yet real. The most popular view is that there are no significant ontological differences among present, past and future. This view is called "eternalism" or "the block universe theory."

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