What is neuroquantology?
Stephan Schwartz tells us that science is hindered and plagued and obstructed by three kinds of denialism
actively engaged in trying to impede the free development of science: the Creationists (e.g., Hornyanszky and Tasi, 2002), the climate change deniers (e.g., Lomborg, 2008), and the consciousness deniers who cannot, or will not, consider consciousness as anything other than materialistic processes.
Yes that’s right. Creationists deny evolution, climate change deniers deny climate change (that’s an easy one), and consciousness deniers…deny that consciousness is something that floats around the universe independent of brains or brain-like organs inside bodies that sustain them.
This is bad. They are breaking science.
…progress in understanding the nature of consciousness, particularly that aspect, the nonlocal that has not been explained by physiology, but is addressed by nonlocality and quantum processes, has a very direct social consequence. The nonlocal aspect of consciousness may very well account for the insight of genius, for religious epiphany, as well as for psychic experiences.
I’m so curious about nonlocal consciousness. Is it like soup? Oxygen? Ectoplasm? Weather? Energy?
I don’t know, but maybe if I read NeuroQuantology regularly I will eventually find out. Yes, NeuroQuantology. What are you laughing at?
Where’s Deepak Chopra? I heard he was into quantum woo and souls.
We need the nonlocality of quantum mechanics (which does not work the way the neuroquantologists say it does) to explain psychic phenomena (which do not exist). Good to know.
The physicist Murray Gell-Mann once wrote,
[From The Quark and the Jaguar (1994).]
For neuroquantological flimflammers, “nonlocality” is one of these words. Trying to explain the actual physics — even trying to work up to the technicalities by slow, deliberate degrees — is pointless, because they take any occurrence of the word “quantum” as an excuse to start jawing on.
In the past week, Eric MacDonald referenced an book review by Simon Blackburn that talked about the first person illusion that conscious beings like humans experience. (We don’t notice all the manifold physical processes that occur subconsciously from which consciousness emerges or whatever the word is, and instead of saying we don’t know what causes consciousness, we say there is no physical cause for consciousness). I think Blackburn was right that this is the source of religious ideas of the afterlife/soul and now neuroquantological ideas.
Blake Stacey #2 wrote:
That may be your truth, but Einstein proved that “everything is relative” — so their truth is just as valid.
From the paper:
Oh, well, yes, that is one little minor difference between the first two examples and the third. Creationists and Climate-change deniers are going against the mainstream consensus of the vast majority of experts in the relevant fields, whereas the “consciousness deniers” are the mainstream consensus of the vast majority of experts. But let us trip quickly over that part, shall we?
Ophelia wrote:
It is like all that, and more … sunlight, smoke, breath, fire, and sparkles — and it is nothing like anything else at all. Nonlocal consciousness can’t be measured or weighed; it occupies no space or time; it is immaterial and inaccessible to scientific observation. And yet, like a butterfly, it will light upon your brain when you sit very quiet and still. It is everywhere and yet … glimpses of it are few, and rare, and precious.
What Eric said the other day about theology is so relevant here.
Religion is not the only such language.
I love you, Sastra – “sunlight, smoke, breath, fire, and sparkles” – heehee.
it is immaterial and inaccessible to scientific observation
If it’s immaterial, how does it affect the material? Somebody? Is it just magic? Can I have a sparkly pony if so?
I coined a word a while back (at least I hope I did coin it) that might be aposite:
bollocktical: (adj) of or pertaining to bollocks.
usage: I think that neuroquantology is quite bolocktical. That neuroquantology paper was a bolocktical mess, but I repeat myself.
And that was bollocktical not bolocktical. Can’t even spell a word I claim to have coined!
I suck at orthography.
I am not a denier! I want it to be true. I want to be able to jump around the universe, cloaked only in the garb on non-locality. I want to go to the bottom of the sea! I want to sit on the edge of a black hole and watch matter get sucked in. I want to pirouette on the tip of a GRB as it plunders the universe!
These guys and their neurantology promise, but they don’t deliver and here I am, stuck holding the bag of reality.
I just had to click it. Hooooo boy:
* would have been a dandy place for a reference–just one of those hundreds of studies, you know. Alas, none were forthcoming. Didn’t take long to get to the real meat of it, though, here:
Ah. There you have it. Link the detractors of your personal brand of woo to some well known denialist cranks and allege a common denominator of irrationalism. Except I think it’s a tremendous overstatement to suggest that *research* into evolution or climate science is being made more difficult by the actions of denialists. Widespread acceptance of the findings are another matter–clearly this has been adversely impacted by ‘teach the controversy’ movements and such. But I would be very surprised indeed if any specific funding cuts to either of these fields had been made as a result of denialist opposition. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the ‘nonlocal consciousness’ research was having a bit of a rough go trying to justify funding; hence the need for the strenuous bootstrapping in this article (and, I suspect, the journal as a whole).
Are they working up values for the quanta of neuroses? That might be handy ;-)
Seems like a curious twist on the “they laughed at Einstein” and “they suppressed Galileo” meme. If there are nutters out there denying good science then they must be right because scientists are denying their their blather?
I see Persinger also contributed a paper. Seems like a good vehicle for him; I always figured he was fringey, at best.
Brian @8: I initially read that as “bollococktail”, which seemed quite appropriate also. It’s a veritable mélange of bollocks.
Damn. I’m currently in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, about halfway through a very long backpacking trip from Mexico to Antarctica. And now I find out I could have done it all from home…
Article on the Samueli Institute.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101140.html
Top 25 articles in the ‘peer-reviewed’ journal, Explore
http://top25.sciencedirect.com/subject/medicine-and-dentistry/17/journal/explore-the-journal-of-science-and-healing/15508307/
“and consciousness deniers…deny that consciousness is something that floats around the universe independent of brains or brain-like organs inside bodies that sustain them.”
Well, that’s hilarious.
Personally, I don’t have a closed mind about that. If anyone can come up with actual evidence, I would give it consideration. But I won’t hold my breath waiting.
This started with Penrose and his quantum microtubules which, in his view, account for such things as free will (I kid you not). Had this gobbledygook been anywhere near reality I’d have been ecstatic, since I work on a molecule that organizes microtubules. This woo has been taken at full face value by many transhumorists in their efforts to ‘xplain how they’re going to upload their minds into immortal non-carbon containers. So it’s not just Chopra.
Ghost in the Shell: Why Our Brains Will Never Live in the Matrix
“Keeping an Open Mind is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out.”
I’m surprised to see that you all are not nearly harsh enough in this thread! These neuroquantologists are into remote viewing and telepathy. It’s not merely some mystical philosophy taken too far; they really believe that human beings have
magicalcompletely natural quantum parapsychological powers to see across the world and into other people’s minds. I know it’s a cheap shot, but that looks like the prime target, more than allusions to Cartesian dualism.(On a side note, as someone who is quite well-acquainted with what quantum entanglement actually is, and how it doesn’t allow the direct transmission of useful information either in theory or in practice, it’s quite dispiriting to listen to these people blather. I imagine it’s something like a climatologist having to hear a thousand times about how carbon levels lag climate change, or an evolutionary biologist… oh wait, I forgot, these people have already played the denialist card, on the wrong side…)
Hrmm, formatting didn’t quite work. The word “magical” was supposed to be struck through.
Wait. Let me handle this. I speak woo:
(Clears throat…)
Oh, you know, man. Something totally nonlocal ‘n quantum ‘n stuff…
I mean, geez, Mr. Schwartz, as you yourself are clearly an avid student of quantum woonamics, you must realize that you could never possibly observe me actually laughing at your delicious lil’ bit o’ woo, specifically… or not and also know my velocity…
Yea, clearly, since all woo is like, everywhere in space and time at once, and we are not this frail flesh, I was clearly metalaughing at the totality of woo–a mighty fugue of which you, yourself, are but this one, small thread in perfect universal harmony.
(/Be honoured. It was a moment of deep reflection for all concerned. Incredibly entangled. My nanoparticle thingies were like, totally popping, man.)
Sean is right – look up Stephan Schwartz, and you quickly get:
I’m confused (yet again). If consciousness is not a construct of physiological processes, how can quantum physics have any relevence to it?
I note one article in “Neuroquantology” that calls for every medical centre to have quantum computer facilities to support improved diagnostics etc. despite the fact that quantum computers are only at the very earliest experimental state and practical machines may never be available……oh,well – can’t let reality spoil a good story can we?
BTW DeepQuest (the submarine) is now a house boat at Block Island – true! I guess the remote viewing thing didn’t work out! Oh well it was good for a movie anyway (“men who stare at goats’)…
Dualists accusing others of being deniers? Well, at least they’re providing evidence for psychological projection…
I keep wondering where this immaterial consciousness recedes to during sleep, and, like Brian, I wonder how it interacts with matter. Neuroquantology really doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Wow….. Two things that interest me are that any hint of his education is missing from all the biographical sketches I could find and that the Department of Defense is funding the Samueli Institute. Perhaps, they are looking for homeopathic treatments for PTSD or a way of using “nonlocal energy” as a weapon.
themann1086 (#24):
That’s the best part. The people who demand that mystical influences be part of neuroscience accuse the actual neuroscientists of being denialists like the creationists, who insist that mystical influences be part of biology.
On that note, I think I’ll post something I don’t seem to be able to post over at Thoughts from Kansas. (Probably just a gitch.)
—
Josh,
I disagree—that’s a major case where NOMA is false and the theological and philosophical issue is clearly not distinct from the scientific issue. The science pretty clearly shows that popular religious views—not just fundamentalist ones—are factually in error. (Maybe God exists and guided evolution, but if so, He did it in a very peculiar way that suggests a pretty weird God.) I agree that for some purposes it’s important to know how many people “accept” evolution of either the scientific (unguided) variety or the theistic (guided) version. For other purposes, it’s more interesting to know the fraction of people who accept the actual scientific theory of evolution as understood by most evolutionary scientists. The issue of guidedness is actually quite crucial. The major scientific appeal of Darwin’s theory is precisely in its unguidedness. It explains how non-teleological things like brute matter can result in interesting things, like plants and animals that grow, respond to their environments, reproduce, and think and plan. If you resort to theistic evolution, you are giving away the single most important aspect of the theory—how really interesting stuff emerges bottom-up from uninteresting stuff, rather than top-down by an intelligent agent imposing a plan on it.
Revising the theory to make it “neutral” about guidance is neutering the theory.
It is very much like pretending vitalism still makes sense in light of modern physiology and cellular and molecular biology. The basic explanatory paradigm is undermined, because the single most important fact we’ve learned in biology is that biological entities are natural, material machines, without an irreducible teleological essence—contradicting what almost everyone thought for tens of thousands of years.
You can leave out the utter unguidedness of evolution and still call it a “scientific” theory of evolution, I suppose, but that’s like calling a steer a bull: “He’s thankful for the honor, but he’d much rather have restored what’s rightfully his.”
Removing the “unguidedness” from evolutionary theory isn’t just sanitizing it; it’s sterilizing it.
BTW, Blake, sorry for referring to physics as “uninteresting stuff.” :-)
Oooh, these folks can look into the future? Quickly now, who can think of a rather big event happening somewhere in the world in the past few days, indeed still unfolding as I write, that apparently was not predicted by anybody as far as I know?
@30: by the laws of retrofuturotemporology, give it a couple of days and the event will have been predicted by ever so many people.
Some of them tried to alert the authorities but were ignored until it was too late, and now of course the authorities will deny ever having been warned.
Some of them knew, sadly, that they would not be believed and/or making their prediction public would merely have caused a panic even worse than the actual disaster; thus they remained silent. How noble they are.
Some of them had a deep premonition that something big was going to happen, but only know do they realise what it was going to be.
Anyway, that’s why you didn’t see the predictions until, let’s see, I’d give it until Wednesday.
To turn this into a really scientific piece, you need put in a poll, Ophelia.
I myself will be voting for the ectoplasm option, with some of Sastra’s sparkles in. My consciousness tells me that this is true.
Ectoplasm with sparkles; would you like french fries with that?
A brain necessarily contains randomness, simply because it has no devices for preventing it. Random thoughts, combined with the ability to change them into something useful, inevitably provide an advantage to solving difficult problems; so nothing suppressing them can ever evolve.
The ability to think and act randomly has always been scary to authorities, and the traditional answer is that something will punish us for using this freedom. Now that this is no longer widely believed, authorities have started a new approach of denying that the freedom of randomness even exists.
There is no such thing as “nonlocal consciousness”. However, each of us has an individual, local freedom of thought. Not because of anything weird that allows it, but because there isn’t anything weird that forbids it. The laws of physics are approximate, and everything is random at a small scale.
Sastra, Einstein didn’t “prove” (or in the modern vernacular “verify”) anything. He discovered relativity. It was the experimental physicists after him who verified it.
Columbus discovered America, and he also took slaves. Now we know slavery is wrong, and it’s been outlawed (at least in the USA). But the continent Columbus discovered still exists.
Einstein discovered relativity, and he stated many opinions about it. But he isn’t famous for his opinions. He’s famous because his math, as refined by later physicists, turned out to be facts.