A Princeton prof attempts to explain consciousness. Hush, we may be hearing answers now.

15 Replies to “A Princeton prof attempts to explain consciousness. Hush, we may be hearing answers now.”

1. 1
   awstar says:

   October 16, 2014 at 4:40 pm

   OF the three most fundamental scientific questions about the human condition, two have been answered.

   Don’t scientific questions require scientific answers? (i.e. experiment and observe)
2. 2
   bornagain77 says:

   October 16, 2014 at 5:15 pm

   As to:

   “First, what is our relationship to the rest of the universe? Copernicus answered that one. We’re not at the center. We’re a speck in a large place.”

   Actually, as General Relativity has now shown, each one of us is at the center of a 4-Dimensional expanding hypersphere:

   “There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a “Big Bang” about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell.”

   Centrality of The Earth Within The 4-Dimensional Space-Time of General Relativity – video
   https://vimeo.com/98189061

   Thus from a 3-dimensional (3D) perspective, any particular 3D spot in the universe is to be considered just as ‘center of the universe’ as any other particular spot in the universe is to be considered ‘center of the universe’. This centrality found for any 3D place in the universe is because the universe is a 4D expanding hypersphere, analogous in 3D to the surface of an expanding balloon. All points on the surface are moving away from each other, and every point is central, no matter where you live in the universe.
   Moreover, the ‘circle’ of the CMBR that is found by modern science to encompass the Earth, from the remnant of the creation event that brought the entire universe instantaneously into being, was actually predicted in the Bible centuries earlier:

   Proverbs 8:27 (King James Version)
   “When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he drew a circle upon the face of the depth:”

   Proverbs 8:27 (New International Version)
   “I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,”

   Job 26:10
   He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.

   Moreover, as if that did not overturn the Copernican principle by itself, quantum mechanics goes even further and states that each conscious observer is central in the universe,,,

   Quantum Enigma:Physics Encounters Consciousness – Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics – John Hopkins University
   Excerpt: It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.
   And yet, have you ever before read a sentence having meaning similar to that of my preceding sentence? Likely you have not, and the reason you have not is, in my opinion, that physicists are in a state of denial…
   http://www.uncommondescent.com.....-designer/

   Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger by Richard Conn Henry – Physics Professor – John Hopkins University
   Excerpt: Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the “illusion” of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism (solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist). (Dr. Henry’s referenced experiment and paper – “An experimental test of non-local realism” by S. Gröblacher et. al., Nature 446, 871, April 2007 – “To be or not to be local” by Alain Aspect, Nature 446, 866, April 2007 (Leggett’s Inequality: Verified, as of 2011, to 120 standard deviations)
   http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html

   I find it extremely interesting, and strange, that quantum mechanics tells us that instantaneous quantum wave collapse to its ‘uncertain’ 3D state is centered on each individual conscious observer in the universe, whereas, 4D space-time cosmology (General Relativity) tells us each 3D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. These findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by a omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time. These findings certainly seem to go to the very heart of the age old question asked of many parents by their children, “How can God hear everybody’s prayers at the same time?”,,, i.e. Why should the expansion of the universe, or the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe, even care that you or I, or anyone else, should exist? Only Theism, Christian Theism in particular, offers a rational explanation as to why you or I, or anyone else, should have such undeserved significance in such a vast universe.

   Psalm 33:13-15
   The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.

   The Galileo Affair and “Life/Consciousness” as the true “Center of the Universe”
   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BHAcvrc913SgnPcDohwkPnN4kMJ9EDX-JJSkjc4AXmA/edit

   Moreover, from a slightly different angle, ‘Life’, with a capital L, is also found to be central to the universe in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides a very credible reconciliation to the most profound enigma in modern science. Namely the unification of General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics/Special Relativity (Quantum Electrodynamics) into a ‘Theory of Everything’:

   The Center Of The Universe Is Life (Jesus Christ) – General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy and The Shroud Of Turin – video
   http://vimeo.com/34084462

   Of Related Note:

   Two very different ‘eternities’ revealed by physics:
   Special Relativity, General Relativity, Heaven and Hell
   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_4cQ7MXq8bLkoFLYW0kq3Xq-Hkc3c7r-gTk0DYJQFSg/edit

   The following site is also very interesting to the topic of ‘centrality in the universe’;

   The Scale of The Universe – Part 2 – interactive graph (recently updated in 2012 with cool features)
   http://htwins.net/scale2/scale.....olor=white

   The preceding interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality (not just ‘nearly’ in the exponential center!). i.e. 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle.

   supplemental notes,,,

   Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky? – Ashok K. Singal – May 17, 2013
   Abstract: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies (directionally dependent observations), which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic\cite {20,16,15}. The latest data from the Planck satellite have confirmed the presence of these anisotropies\cite {17}. Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR catalogue, one of the oldest and most intensively studies sample of strong radio sources\cite{21,22,3}. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. Further, even the distribution of observed radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. Two pertinent questions then arise. First, why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon.
   http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4134.pdf

   17a. Why is the solar system cosmically aligned? BY Dragan Huterer – 2007
   The solar system seems to line up with the largest cosmic features. Is this mere coincidence or a signpost to deeper insights?
   Caption under figure on page 43:
   ODD ALIGNMENTS hide within the multipoles of the cosmic microwave background. In this combination of the quadrupole and octopole, a plane bisects the sphere between the largest warm and cool lobes. The ecliptic — the plane of Earth’s orbit projected onto the celestial sphere — is aligned parallel to the plane between the lobes.
   http://www-personal.umich.edu/.....uterer.pdf
   Of note: The preceding article was written before the Planck data (with WMPA & COBE data), but the multipoles were actually verified by Planck.

   A Large Scale Pattern from Optical Quasar Polarization Vectors – 2013

   Testing the Dipole Modulation Model in CMBR – 2013
3. 3
   aqeels says:

   October 16, 2014 at 5:36 pm

   With regards to below:

   But the argument here is that there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device. When we look at a red apple, the brain computes information about color. It also computes information about the self and about a (physically incoherent) property of subjective experience. The brain’s cognitive machinery accesses that interlinked information and derives several conclusions: There is a self, a me; there is a red thing nearby; there is such a thing as subjective experience; and I have an experience of that red thing. Cognition is captive to those internal models. Such a brain would inescapably conclude it has subjective experience.

   Explaining consciousness away seems to be a growing trend among our atheistic friends, such is the inexpiable nature of it. We need to face up to our ignorance and stop clutching at straws.

   Let us approach the subjective with optimism that one day, maybe just one day, we will have a shard of light illuminate our understanding of what consciousness is, and maybe some bright spark might give us a tenuous schematic of how it could arise from physical matter.
4. 4
   Mapou says:

   October 16, 2014 at 5:48 pm

   News:

   Okay, if we are just a twig on the tree, why is there no twig anywhere near like us?

   Indeed. Where are those reptilian rocket scientists and those philosophising insectoids? They have been around much longer than humans or mammals, no? Inquiring minds and all that.
5. 5
   ppolish says:

   October 16, 2014 at 6:00 pm

   That “Odd Alignment” that seems to indicate a special place for Earth is called the “Axis of Evil” by Scientists who subscribe to the “insignificant Earth” hypothesis. They don’t like to talk about it. Hoped it was just dust or something. But the Planck telescope confirmed it.

   In a week or so the movie “The Principle” opens in Chicago for a limited showing, How well it does there will determine if it gets a wider release. Hope it does well:)
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ata_player
6. 6
   jstanley01 says:

   October 16, 2014 at 6:39 pm

   Yet another academic who has talked himself into blithering idiocy.

   So when he performs this diatribe live-and-in-person, at the end, does his head start spinning around 360 degrees? Faster and faster until the centrifugal force pops his eyeballs out of their sockets? Held only by the two optic nerves? Triumvirate with his waggling, spittle-spewing tongue?

   “Go Princeton!”
7. 7
   bornagain77 says:

   October 16, 2014 at 7:18 pm

   ppolish at 5, and let’s not forget ‘Privileged Species – How the cosmos is designed for human life’ is soon to be released too:

   Privileged Species – How the cosmos is designed for human life – website
   http://privilegedspecies.com/

   A few more notes that support the overturning of the Copernican principle:

   The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis – Michael J. Denton – February 25, 2013
   Summary (page 11)
   Many of the properties of the key members of Henderson’s vital ensemble —water, oxygen, CO2, HCO3 —are in several instances fit specifically for warm-blooded, air-breathing organisms such as ourselves. These include the thermal properties of water, its low viscosity, the gaseous nature of oxygen and CO2 at ambient temperatures, the inertness of oxygen at ambient temperatures, and the bicarbonate buffer, with its anomalous pKa value and the elegant means of acid-base regulation it provides for air-breathing organisms. Some of their properties are irrelevant to other classes of organisms or even maladaptive.
   It is very hard to believe there could be a similar suite of fitness for advanced carbon-based life forms. If carbon-based life is all there is, as seems likely, then the design of any active complex terrestrial being would have to closely resemble our own. Indeed the suite of properties of water, oxygen, and CO2 together impose such severe constraints on the design and functioning of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems that their design, even down to the details of capillary and alveolar structure can be inferred from first principles. For complex beings of high metabolic rate, the designs actualized in complex Terran forms are all that can be. There are no alternative physiological designs in the domain of carbon-based life that can achieve the high metabolic activity manifest in man and other higher organisms.
   http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/.....O-C.2013.1

   The Privileged Planet – video playlist
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnWyPIzTOTw&list=PL61BE8DBE544FE20C

   “The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole.”
   – Jay Richards

   “The same narrow circumstances that allow us to exist also provide us with the best over all conditions for making scientific discoveries.”
   – Guillermo Gonzalez – Astronomer

   The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability – Robin Collins – March 22, 2014
   Excerpt: The most dramatic confirmation of the discoverability/livability optimality thesis (DLO) is the dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) on the baryon to photon ratio.,,,
   …the intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio, (??b), which is the ratio of the average number of photons per unit volume of space to the average number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) per unit volume. At present this ratio is approximately a billion to one (10^9) , but it could beanywhere from one to infinity; it traces back to the degree of asymmetry in matter and anti – matter right after the beginning of the universe – for approximately every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particles of matter.,,,
   The only livability effect this ratio has is on whether or not galaxies can form that have near – optimally livability zones. As long as this condition is met, the value of this ratio has no further effects on livability. Hence, the DLO predicts that within this range, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers.
   According to my calculations – which have been verified by three other physicists — to within the margin of error of the experimentally determined parameters (~20%), the value of the photon to baryon ratio is such that it maximizes the CMB. This is shown in Figure 1 below. (pg. 13)
   It is easy to see that this prediction could have been disconfirmed. In fact, when I first made the calculations in the fall of 2011, I made a mistake and thought I had refuted this thesis since those calculations showed the intensity of the CMB maximizes at a value different than the photon – baryon ratio in our universe. So, not only does the DLO lead us to expect this ratio, but it provides an ultimate explanation for why it has this value,,, This is a case of a teleological thesis serving both a predictive and an ultimate explanatory role.,,,
   http://home.messiah.edu/~rcoll.....osting.pdf

   as well,

   We Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History (To see the Cosmic Background Radiation) – Hugh Ross – video
   http://vimeo.com/31940671

   Hugh Ross – The Anthropic Principle and The Anthropic Inequality – video
   http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8494065/

   At the 38:10 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Huterer speaks of the ‘why right now? coincidence problem’ for dark matter and visible matter:

   Dragan Huterer – ‘coincidence problem’ – video
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qTJc1Y7duM#t=2290
8. 8
   ppolish says:

   October 16, 2014 at 9:37 pm

   BA77, have I told you lately how much I love your posts? I love them:) I’m going to purchase the “Privileged Species” DVD when it’s released, thanks.

   Jeff, “Go Princeton” lol. I clicked on your Biblical Research website and now look forward to some reading. Lol again.
9. 9
   Dionisio says:

   October 16, 2014 at 11:13 pm

   How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information?

   I think that’s a very interesting question that brings up three important issues:

   First, it raises a very important question (yes, a question raises another question): how does the brain process information? We know serious scientists are working hard trying to figure out that. This is an ongoing research. Let’s keep an eye on it.

   Second, once we figure out how the brain works, then maybe we could try to figure out how we got it to begin with. This question demands a whole separate discussion, so let’s put it on a shelf for now.

   Third, the above quoted question implies a very controversial assumption: that the brain is a subject that has awareness. How do we know that it’s true? What is the proof? That’s another big discussion. However, is this science of philosophy?

   Wouldn’t it make more sense to try to resolve the first issue first?
10. 10
    kairosfocus says:

    October 16, 2014 at 11:47 pm

    H’mm:

    Materialism leads to the grand delusion thesis . . . yet again:

    How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t. The brain has arrived at a conclusion that is not correct. When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong. The machinery is computing an elaborate story about a magical-seeming property. And there is no way for the brain to determine through introspection that the story is wrong, because introspection always accesses the same incorrect information.

    Any scheme of thought that entails a general delusion is inescapably self-referentially incoherent and self refuting. For instance, are we looking at/ perceiving/ feeling/ whatever floats your boat on what “thinking” seems to be like as one thinks thusly of materialistic views of mind and brain?

    Thence, shipwreck as Haldane put it so aptly in terms of sawing off branches on which one sits:

    “It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [[“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]

    CRAAAAAAACK!

    Time to think again . . .

    KF
11. 11
    Dionisio says:

    October 16, 2014 at 11:54 pm

    Any scheme of thought that entails a general delusion is inescapably self-referentially incoherent and self refuting. For instance, are we looking at/ perceiving/ feeling/ whatever floats your boat on what “thinking” seems to be like as one thinks thusly of materialistic views of mind and brain?
12. 12
    tjguy says:

    October 17, 2014 at 6:53 am

    First, what is our relationship to the rest of the universe? Copernicus answered that one. We’re not at the center. We’re a speck in a large place.

    Yes, it can be said that we are not at the exact center of the universe, but actually, evidence points to us being very near the center!

    Dr. Russ Humphreys wrote an article entitled Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ redshifts show here:
    http://creation.com/our-galaxy-is-the-centre-of-the-universe-quantized-redshifts-show

    The first paragraph of the article reads like this:
    Over the last few decades, new evidence has surfaced that restores man to a central place in God’s universe. Astronomers have confirmed that numerical values of galaxy redshifts are ‘quantized’, tending to fall into distinct groups. According to Hubble’s law, redshifts are proportional to the distances of the galaxies from us. Then it would be the distances themselves that fall into groups. That would mean the galaxies tend to be grouped into (conceptual) spherical shells concentric around our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The shells turn out to be on the order of a million light years apart. The groups of redshifts would be distinct from each other only if our viewing location is less than a million light years from the centre. The odds for the Earth having such a unique position in the cosmos by accident are less than one in a trillion. Since big bang theorists presuppose the cosmos has naturalistic origins and cannot have a unique centre, they have sought other explanations, without notable success so far. Thus, redshift quantization is evidence (1) against the big bang theory, and (2) for a galactocentric cosmology, such as one by Robert Gentry or the one in my book, Starlight and Time.

    Copernicus was not a Big Bang proponent. His findings have been hijacked by the Big Bang crowd and his good name smeared to support something he would not have supported. For an accurate understanding of what he did believe and what his findings actually mean for us, try this article:
    http://crev.info/?scientists=nicolas-copernicus

    Here is the first paragraph:

    Perhaps no revolution in science has been more far-reaching than the Copernican Revolution. It led to the modern Copernican Principle, the idea that the earth occupies no preferred place in the cosmos (though the cosmos of Copernicus was very different from that revealed since the invention of the telescope). Revisionist history has portrayed Copernicus as a secretive scientist hiding his views from the church for fear of being condemned as a heretic. We are told also that Protestants of the Reformation scorned his views. In recent years, however, that revisionism itself is being revised, thanks largely to the research of historian and astronomer Owen Gingerich of the Harvard– Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

    What did Gingerich find about Copernicus the man, his views, his readers and the church’s reaction? And what new discoveries are calling into question the central claim of the Copernican Principle, that Earth occupies no special status in the grand scheme of the cosmos?

    …..

    Read on to find out!
13. 13
    tjguy says:

    October 17, 2014 at 7:58 am

    From Dr. Humphries’ article entitled “Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ redshifts show”
    (http://creation.com/our-galaxy.....hifts-show)

    Since big bang theorists presuppose the cosmos ….. cannot have a unique centre, they have sought other explanations, without notable success so far.

    Is this a valid presupposition to make?

    Does the Standard Model of Cosmology actually rest on this assumption that may or may not be accurate?

    What do you think? Why or why not?
14. 14
    logically_speaking says:

    October 17, 2014 at 8:19 am

    Just before someone starts having a go at the quantized redshift please read http://www.creationwiki.org/Quantized_redshift

    Where the conclusion says,

    “The available studies of galactic redshifts seem to support a quantization effect when precise enough data is placed in the galactocentric frame of reference. Since the studies on which the criticism is based seems to ignore both the Earth’s motion and the needed precision of measurements, that criticism seems to be invalid. As a result at this time the best conclusion is that the quantization effect is real. This effect is consistent with a galactocentric universe with the Milkyway at the center and there by placing the Earth near that center. It is also an affront to the Big Bang assumption that we are no in a special place in the universe. It is however fully consistent with a bounded universe with the Milkyway at its center”.
15. 15
    ppolish says:

    October 18, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    Oldest known star in Universe is a nearby neighbor in Milky Way.
    http://mobile.extremetech.com/.....p?origref=