
Roger Penrose Discusses Consciousness (2017) - howard941
http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/roger-penrose-on-why-consciousness-does-not-compute
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danbruc
I share most if not all of the objections mentioned in the article. But even
if one grants that quantum physics or quantum gravity or even undiscovered
physics plays a role, I still fail to see how this can be of much help in
explaining consciousness. Quantum mechanics can be simulated classically with
an exponential slowdown. Not that I want to belittle an exponential difference
but in some sense it does not bring anything fundamentally new to the table.
Quantum mechanics is - setting all the still unsolved problems aside - still
just a set rules dictating - or describing - how things have to behave. And
even undiscovered physics would have to have a very different character than
known physics in order to provide something truly new and capable of bridging
the perceived gap between physics and consciousness.

Personally I changed my mind quite recently and the following quote from the
article now resonates very much.

 _Minsky called consciousness a “suitcase word” that lacks the rigor of a
scientific concept. “We have to replace it by ‘reflection’ and ‘decisions’ and
about a dozen other things,” he said. “So instead of talking about the mystery
of consciousness, let’s talk about the 20 or 30 really important mental
processes that are involved._

Just sit down and try to nail down what you mean when you say, you are
conscious or you feel pain. Try to make precise what you think distinguishes
you from a philosophical zombie. When the voice in your head says that this
was not the best decision and next time you should do something else, is that
really any different from one system monitoring and controlling another
system? When you are experiencing pain, when you try to get away from its
source, when you maybe scream, is that really any different from you car
turning on the low oil pressure warning light?

Of course it is! Or is it? Maybe your brain just turned the I-am-special
indicator light on...

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zwkrt
Re: systems of monitoring and control. The even crazier thing is that upon
only the lightest of introspection you can find that there isn’t even some
“ego” system controlling or reigning in some other “id” system. It’s just one
thing! The “you” that decides to have one cookie and write a novel feels
different than the “you” that would otherwise eat the whole box of cookies and
watch YouTube all day. But you don’t get to decide when your supervising self
will be in charge, or to what degree your animalistic self will be reigned in.

There is just one you that does things by whimsy all the time, and at the same
time tries to make a coherent story about your immediate behavior in a way
that is consistent with your past. A naive stoic might say that one should not
become too upset about things outside your control. But in truth the best you
can do is take the emotions and thoughts you feel in-stride because even those
are outside your control—the stoic’s decision to follow stoicism in the first
place is after all ineffable.

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barberousse
>Re: systems of monitoring and control. The even crazier thing is that upon
only the lightest of introspection you can find that there isn’t even some
“ego” system controlling or reigning in some other “id” system. It’s just one
thing!

I'm sorry, but because you're using the terms, I have to interject and inform
the wider audience that this claim is not at all an accurate reading of Freud.
Freud makes it extremely clear in his text The Ego and The Id that Ego/Id is
_one thing_. The perceptible boundary is whether a mental process is available
to being represented in language.

~~~
zwkrt
I agree! But I don’t think this is how the average person thinks about it.

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millettjon
Penrose was on Joe Rogan last December:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEw0ePZUMHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEw0ePZUMHA)

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14263842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14263842)

