Afternoon.
You worked on pitching papers from basement files. Carol made chili for lunch;
you had two bowls. You are reading an article in the March 2018 Discover;
"Down the Quantum Rabbit Hole" by Steve Volk. The article is about
Stuart Hameroff's quantum consciousness theories. - Amorella
1403 hours. I have similar
thoughts on the quantum mind though there has to be a quantum trigger in the
brain bio-chemistry itself. That's what this article focuses on. I have not
completed it however.
Let's see what we can find online. - Amorella
** **
Afternoon.
You worked on pitching papers from basement files. Carol made chili for lunch;
you had two bowls. You are reading an article in the March 2018 Discover;
"Down the Quantum Rabbit Hole" by Steve Volk. The article is about
Stuart Hameroff's quantum consciousness theories. - Amorella
1403 hours. I have similar
thoughts on the quantum mind though there has to be a quantum trigger in the
brain bio-chemistry itself. That's what this article focuses on. I have not
completed it however.
Let's see what we can find online. - Amorella
** **
Overview [of quantum consciousness] by SH
The nature of
consciousness remains deeply mysterious and profoundly important, with
existential, medical and spiritual implication. We know what it is like to be
conscious – to have awareness, a conscious ‘mind’, but who, or what, are ‘we’
who know such things? How is the subjective nature of phenomenal experience –
our ‘inner life’ - to be explained in scientific terms? What consciousness
actually is, and how it comes about remain unknown. The general assumption in
modern science and philosophy - the ‘standard model’ - is that consciousness
emerges from complex computation among brain neurons, computation whose
currency is seen as neuronal firings (‘spikes’) and synaptic transmissions,
equated with binary ‘bits’ in digital computing. Consciousness is presumed to
‘emerge’ from complex neuronal computation, and to have arisen during
biological evolution as an adaptation of living systems, extrinsic to the
makeup of the universe. On the other hand, spiritual and contemplative
traditions, and some scientists and philosophers consider consciousness to be
intrinsic, ‘woven into the fabric of the universe’. In these views, conscious
precursors and Platonic forms preceded biology, existing all along in the fine
scale structure of reality.
My research involves
a theory of consciousness which can bridge these two approaches, a theory
developed over the past 20 years with eminent British physicist Sir Roger
Penrose. Called ‘orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’), it suggests
consciousness arises from quantum vibrations in protein polymers called
microtubules inside the brain’s neurons, vibrations which interfere, ‘collapse’
and resonate across scale, control neuronal firings, generate consciousness,
and connect ultimately to ‘deeper order’ ripples in spacetime geometry.
Consciousness is more like music than computation.
Colleagues
Travis Craddock and Jack Tuszynski and I also study how anesthetics act in
microtubules to erase consciousness, and with Jay Sanguinetti, John JB Allen
and Sterling Cooley, we are studying how transcranial ultrasound (TUS) can be
used noninvasively to resonate brain microtubules and treat mental, cognitive
and neurological disorders.
Many
thanks to my assistant Abi Behar-Montefiore and Ed Xia for maintaining this
website.
STUART R. HAMEROFF,
MD
Director,
Center for Consciousness Studies
Professor
Emeritus
Department
of Anesthesiology, College of Medicine,
University
of Arizona and Department of Psychology
Banner
– University Medical Center Tucson
Selected from http://www dot quantumconsciousness dot org/
content/overview-sh
** **
1417 hours. I am
particularly interested in this aspect (below) from the article above.
** **
On the other hand,
spiritual and contemplative traditions, and some scientists and philosophers
consider consciousness to be intrinsic, ‘woven into the fabric of the
universe’. In these views, conscious precursors and Platonic forms preceded
biology, existing all along in the fine scale structure of reality.
** **
Yes, I agree. This is indeed your view -- "Platonic forms preceded
biology,". This brings you to wonder how close, if at all, am I, the
Amorella, to a Platonic-like form?
** **
Theory of forms
From Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
The theory of
Forms or theory of Ideas is Plato's argument that non-physical (but
substantial forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate reality. When used in
this sense, the word form or idea is often capitalized. Plato
speaks of these entities only through the characters (primarily Socrates) of
his dialogues who sometimes suggest that these Forms are the only objects of
study that can provide knowledge; thus even apart from the very controversial
status of the theory, Plato's own views are much in doubt. However, the theory
is considered a classical solution to the problem of universals.
The early Greek
concept of form precedes attested philosophical usage and is represented by a
number of words mainly having to do with vision, sight, and appearance. The
words, εἶδος (eidos) and ἰδέα (idea) come from the Indo-European
root root *weid-,
"see" Eidos (though not idea) is already attested in
texts of the Homeric era, the earliest Greek literature. This transliteration
and the translation tradition of German and Latin lead to the expression
"theory of Ideas." The word is however not the English
"idea," which is a mental concept only.
Forms
The meaning of the
term εἶδος (eidos), "visible form", and related terms μορφή (morphē),
"shape", and φαινόμενα (phainomena), "appearances",
from φαίνω (phainō), "shine", Indo-European *bhā-,
remained stable over the centuries until the beginning of philosophy, when they
became equivocal, acquiring additional specialized philosophic meanings. The
pre-Socratic philosophers, starting with Thales, noted that appearances change,
and began to ask what the thing that changes "really" is. The
answer was substance, which stands under the changes and is the actually
existing thing being seen. The status of appearances now came into
question. What is the form really and how is that related to substance?
Thus, the theory of
matter and form (today's hylomorphism) was born. Starting with at least Plato
and possibly germinal in some of the presocratics the forms were considered as
being "in" something else, which Plato called nature (physis).
The latter seemed as carved "wood", ὕλη (hyle) in Greek, corresponding
to materia in Latin, from which the English word "matter" is
derived shaped by receiving (or exchanging) forms.
The Forms are
expounded upon in Plato's dialogues and general speech, in that every object or
quality in reality has a form: dogs, human beings, mountains, colors, courage,
love, and goodness. Form answers the question, "What is that?" Plato
was going a step further and asking what Form itself is. He supposed that the
object was essentially or "really" the Form and that the phenomena
were mere shadows mimicking the Form; that is, momentary portrayals of the Form
under different circumstances. The problem of universals – how can one thing in
general be many things in particular – was solved by presuming that Form was a
distinct singular thing but caused plural representations of itself in
particular objects. For example, Parmenides states, "Nor, again, if a
person were to show that all is one by partaking of one, and at the same time
many by partaking of many, would that be very astonishing. But if he were to
show me that the absolute one was many, or the absolute many one, I should be
truly amazed." p129 Matter is considered particular in itself.
For Plato, forms, such as beauty, are more real than any objects that imitate
them. Though the forms are timeless and unchanging, physical things are in a
constant change of existence. Where forms are unqualified perfection, physical
things are qualified and conditioned.
These Forms are the
essences of various objects: they are that without which a thing would not be
the kind of thing it is. For example, there are countless tables in the world
but the Form of tableness is at the core; it is the essence of all of them.
Plato's Socrates held
that the world of Forms is transcendent to our own world (the world of substances)
and also is the essential basis of reality. Super-ordinate to matter, Forms are
the most pure of all things. Furthermore, he believed that true knowledge/intelligence
is the ability to grasp the world of Forms with one's mind.
A Form is aspatial
(transcendent to space) and atemporal (transcendent to time). Atemporal
means that it does not exist within any time period, rather it provides the formal
basis for time. It therefore formally grounds beginning, persisting and ending.
It is neither eternal in the sense of existing forever, nor mortal, of limited
duration.
It exists
transcendent to time altogether. Forms are aspatial in that they have no
spatial dimensions, and thus no orientation in space, nor do they even (like
the point) have a location. They are non-physical, but they are not in the
mind. Forms are extra-mental (i.e. real in the strictest sense of the word).
A Form is an
objective "blueprint" of perfection. The Forms are perfect themselves
because they are unchanging. For example, say we have a triangle drawn on a
blackboard. A triangle is a polygon with 3 sides. The triangle as it is on the
blackboard is far from perfect. However, it is only the intelligibility of the
Form "triangle" that allows us to know the drawing on the chalkboard
is a triangle, and the Form "triangle" is perfect and unchanging. It
is exactly the same whenever anyone chooses to consider it; however, the time
is that of the observer and not of the triangle.
Terminology
The English word
"form" may be used to translate two distinct concepts that concerned
Plato—the outward "form" or appearance of something, and
"Form" in a new, technical nature, that never...assumes a form like
that of any of the things which enter into her; ... But the forms which
enter into and go out of her are the likenesses of real existences modelled
after their patterns in a wonderful and inexplicable manner....
The objects that are
seen,
according to Plato, are not real, but literally mimic the real Forms.
In the Allegory of the expressed in Republic, the things that are
ordinarily perceived in the world are characterized as shadows of the real
things, which are not perceived directly. That which the observer
understands when he views the world mimics the archetypes of the many types and
properties (that is, of universals) of things observed.
Intelligible realm
and separation of the Forms
Plato often invokes,
particularly in his dialogues Phaedo,
Republic and Phaedrus, poetic language to illustrate the mode in which the Forms
are said to exist. Near the end of the Phaedo, for example, Plato
describes the world of Forms as a pristine region of the physical universe
located above the surface of the Earth (Phd. 109a-111c). In the Phaedrus
the Forms are in a "place beyond heaven" (huperouranios topos)
(Phdr. 247c ff); and in the Republic the sensible world is
contrasted with the intelligible realm (noēton topon) in the famous
Allegory of the Cave.
It would be a mistake
to take Plato's imagery as positing the intelligible world as a literal
physical space apart from this one. Plato emphasizes that the Forms are not
beings that extend in space (or time), but subsist apart from any physical
space whatsoever.
Thus we read in the Symposium
of the Form of Beauty: "It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an
animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself
with itself," (211b).
And in the Timaeus
Plato writes: "Since these things are so, we must agree that that which
keeps its own form unchangingly, which has not been brought into being and is
not destroyed, which neither receives into itself anything else from anywhere
else, nor itself enters into anything anywhere, is one thing,"
(52a, emphasis added).
Ideal state
[Check sources as this is new
material.]
According to Plato,
Socrates postulated a world of ideal Forms, which he admitted were impossible
to know. Nevertheless, he formulated a very specific description of that world,
which did not match his metaphysical principles. Corresponding to the world of
Forms is our world, that of the shadows, an imitation of the real one Just as
shadows exist only because of the light of a fire, our world exists as,
"the offspring of the good". Our world is modeled after the
patterns of the Forms. The function of humans in our world is therefore to
imitate the ideal world as much as possible which, importantly, includes
imitating the good, i.e. acting morally.
Plato lays out much
of this theory in the "Republic" where, in an attempt to define
Justice, he considers many topics including the constitution of the ideal
state. While this state, and the Forms, do not exist on earth, because their
imitations do, Plato says we are able to form certain well-founded opinions
about them, through a theory called recollection.
The republic is a
greater imitation of Justice:
Our aim in founding
the state was not the disproportional happiness of any one class, but the
greatest happiness of the whole; we thought that in a state ordered with a view
to the good of the whole we should be most likely to find justice.
The key to not know
how such a state might come into existence is the word "founding" (oikidzomen),
which is used of colonization. It was customary in such instances to receive a
constitution from an elected or appointed lawgiver; however in Athens,
lawgivers were appointed to reform the constitution from time to time (for
example, Draco, Solon. In speaking of reform, Socrates uses the word
"purge" (diakathairountes) in the same sense that Forms exist
purged of matter.
The purged society is
a regulated one presided over by philosophers educated by the state, who
maintain three non-hereditary classes as required: the tradesmen (including
merchants and professionals), the guardians (militia and police) and the
philosophers (legislators, administrators and the philosopher-king).
Class is assigned at
the end of education, when the state institutes individuals in their
occupation. Socrates expects class to be hereditary but he allows for
mobility according to natural ability.
The criteria for
selection by the academics is ability to perceive forms (the analog of English
"intelligence") and martial spirit as well as predisposition or
aptitude.
The views of Socrates
on the proper order of society are certainly contrary to Athenian values of the
time and must have produced a shock effect, intentional or not, accounting for
the animosity against him.
For example,
reproduction is much too important to be left in the hands of untrained
individuals: "... the possession of women and the procreation of children
... will ... follow the general principle that friends have all things in
common, ...." The family is therefore to be abolished and the children –
whatever their parentage – to be raised by the appointed mentors of the state.
Their genetic fitness
is to be monitored by the physicians: "... he (Asclepius, a culture hero)
did not want to lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or have weak fathers
begetting weaker sons – if a man was not able to live in the ordinary way he
had no business to cure him ...."
Physicians minister to the healthy rather than
cure the sick: "... (Physicians) will minister to better natures, giving
health both of soul and of body; but those who are diseased in their bodies
they will leave to die, and the corrupt and incurable souls they will put an
end to themselves." Nothing at all in Greek medicine so far as can
be known supports the airy (in the Athenian view) propositions of Socrates.
Yet it is hard to be sure of Socrates' real
views considering that there are no works written by Socrates himself. There
are two common ideas pertaining to the beliefs and character of Socrates: the
first being the Mouthpiece Theory where writers use Socrates in dialogue as a
mouthpiece to get their own views across.
However, since most
of what we know about Socrates comes from plays, most of the Platonic plays are
accepted as the more accurate Socrates since Plato was a direct student of
Socrates.
Perhaps the most
important principle is that just as the Good must be supreme so must its image,
the state, take precedence over individuals in everything. For example,
guardians "... will have to be watched at every age in order that we may
see whether they preserve their resolution and never, under the influence
either of force or enchantment, forget or cast off their sense of duty to the
state."
This concept of
requiring guardians of guardians perhaps suffers from the Third Man weakness
(see below): guardians require guardians require guardians, ad infinitum. The ultimate
trusty guardian is missing. Socrates does not hesitate to face governmental
issues many later governors have found formidable: "Then if anyone at all
is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the state should be the
persons, and they ... may be allowed to lie for the public good."
Plato's conception of
Forms actually differs from dialogue to dialogue, and in certain respects it is
never fully explained, so many aspects of the theory are open to
interpretation.
Forms are first
introduced in the Phaedo, but in that dialogue the concept is simply referred
to as something the participants are already familiar with, and the theory
itself is not developed.
Similarly, in the
Republic, Plato relies on the concept of Forms as the basis of many of his
arguments but feels no need to argue for the validity of the theory itself or
to explain precisely what Forms are.
Commentators have
been left with the task of explaining what Forms are and how visible objects
participate in them, and there has been no shortage of disagreement.
Some scholars advance
the view that Forms are paradigms, perfect examples on which the imperfect
world is modeled. Others interpret Forms as universals, so that the Form of
Beauty, for example, is that quality that all beautiful things share.
Yet others interpret
Forms as "stuffs," the conglomeration of all instances of a quality
in the visible world. Under this interpretation, we could say there is a little
beauty in one person, a little beauty in another—all the beauty in the world
put together is the Form of Beauty.
Plato himself was
aware of the ambiguities and inconsistencies in his Theory of Forms, as is
evident from the incisive criticism he makes of his own theory in the
Parmenides.
Evidence of Forms
Plato's main evidence
for the existence of Forms is intuitive only and is as follows.
Human perception
We call both the sky
and blue jeans by the same color, blue. However, clearly a pair of jeans and
the sky are not the same color; moreover, the wavelengths of light reflected by
the sky at every location and all the millions of blue jeans in every state of
fading constantly change, and yet we somehow have a consensus of the basic form
Blueness as it applies to them. Says Plato:
But if the very
nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be
no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and
nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is known exist
ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I
do not think that they can resemble a process of flux, as we were just now
supposing.
Plato believed that
long before our bodies ever existed, our souls existed and inhabited heaven,
where they became directly acquainted with the forms themselves.
Real knowledge, to
him, was knowledge of the forms. But knowledge of the forms cannot be gained
through sensory experience because the forms are not in the physical world.
Therefore, our real knowledge of the forms must be the memory of our initial
acquaintance with the forms in heaven. Therefore, what we seem to learn is in
fact just remembering.
Perfection
No one has ever seen
a perfect circle, nor a perfectly straight line, yet everyone knows what a
circle and a straight line are. Plato utilizes the tool-maker's blueprint as
evidence that Forms are real:
... when a man has
discovered the instrument which is naturally adapted to each work, he must
express this natural form, and not others which he fancies, in the material
....
Perceived circles or
lines are not exactly circular or straight, and true circles and lines could
never be detected since by definition they are sets of infinitely small points.
But if the perfect ones were not real, how could they direct the manufacturer?
Criticisms of Platonic Forms
Self-criticism
Plato was well aware
of the limitations of the theory, as he offered his own criticisms of it in his
dialogue Parmenides. There Socrates
is portrayed as a young philosopher acting as junior counterfoil to aged
Parmenides. To a certain extent it is tongue-in-cheek as the older Socrates
will have solutions to some of the problems that are made to puzzle the
younger.
The dialogue does
present a very real difficulty with the Theory of Forms, which Plato most
likely only viewed as problems for later thought. These criticisms were later
emphasized by Aristotle in rejecting an independently existing world of Forms.
It is worth noting
that Aristotle was a pupil and then a junior colleague of Plato; it is entirely
possible that the presentation of Parmenides "sets up" for
Aristotle; that is, they agreed to disagree.
One difficulty lies
in the conceptualization of the "participation" of an object in a
form (or Form). The young Socrates conceives of his solution to the problem of
the universals in another metaphor, which though wonderfully apt, remains to be
elucidated:
Nay, but the idea may
be like the day which is one and the same in many places at once, and yet
continuous with itself; in this way each idea may be one and the same in all at
the same time.
But exactly how is a
Form like the day in being everywhere at once? The solution calls for a
distinct form, in which the particular instances, which are not identical to
the form, participate; i.e., the form is shared out somehow like the day to
many places. The concept of "participate", represented in Greek by
more than one word, is as obscure in Greek as it is in English.
Plato hypothesized
that distinctness meant existence as an independent being, thus opening himself to the famous third man argument of Parmenides,
which proves that forms cannot independently exist and be participated.
If universal and
particulars – say man or greatness – all exist and are the same then the Form
is not one but is multiple. If they are only like each other then they contain
a form that is the same and others that are different. Thus if we presume
that the Form and a particular are alike then there must be another, or third
Form, man or greatness by possession of which they are alike.
An infinite
regression would then result; that is, an endless series of third men. The
ultimate participant, greatness, rendering the entire series great, is missing.
Moreover, any Form is not unitary but is composed of infinite parts, none of
which is the proper Form.
The young Socrates
(some may say the young Plato) did not give up the Theory of Forms over the
Third Man but took another tack, that the particulars do not exist as such.
Whatever they are,
they "mime" the Forms, appearing to be particulars. This is a clear
dip into representationalism, that we cannot observe the objects as they are in
themselves but only their representations.
That view has the
weakness that if only the mimes can be observed then the real Forms cannot be
known at all and the observer can have no idea of what the representations are
supposed to represent or that they are representations.
Socrates' later
answer would be that men already know the Forms because they were in the world
of Forms before birth. The mimes only recall these Forms to memory. The
comedian Aristophanes wrote a play, The Clouds, poking fun of Socrates with
his head in the clouds.
Aristotelian
criticism
The topic of
Aristotle's criticism of Plato's Theory of Forms is a large one and continues
to expand. Rather than quote Plato, Aristotle often summarized. Classical
commentaries thus recommended Aristotle as an introduction to Plato. As a
historian of prior thought, Aristotle was invaluable, however this was
secondary to his own dialectic and in some cases he treats purported
implications as if Plato had actually mentioned them, or even defended them.
In examining
Aristotle's criticism of The Forms, it is helpful to understand Aristotle's own
hylomorphic [the doctrine that physical objects result from the combination of
matter and form] forms, by which
he intends to salvage much of Plato's theory.
In the summary
passage quoted above Plato distinguishes between real and non-real
"existing things", where the latter term is used of substance. The
figures that the artificer places in the gold are not substance, but gold is.
Aristotle stated that, for Plato, all things studied by the sciences have Form
and asserted that Plato considered only substance to have Form.
Uncharitably, this
leads him to something like a contradiction: Forms existing as the objects of
science, but not-existing as non-substance. Scottish philosopher W.D. Ross objects
to this as a mischaracterization of Plato.
Plato did not claim
to know where the line between Form and non-Form is to be drawn. As Cornford
points out, those things about which the young Socrates (and Plato) asserted
"I have often been puzzled about these things" (in reference to Man,
Fire and Water), appear as Forms in later works. However, others do not, such
as Hair, Mud, Dirt. Of these, Socrates is made to assert, "it would be too
absurd to suppose that they have a Form."
Ross also objects to
Aristotle's criticism that Form Otherness accounts for the differences between
Forms and purportedly leads to contradictory forms: the Not-tall, the
Not-beautiful, etc. That particulars participate in a Form is for Aristotle
much too vague to permit analysis. By one way in which he unpacks the
concept, the Forms would cease to be of one essence due to any multiple
participation.
As Ross indicates,
Plato didn't make that leap from "A is not B" to "A is
Not-B." Otherness would only apply to its own particulars and not to those
of other Forms. For example, there is no Form Not-Greek, only particulars
of Form Otherness that somehow suppress Form Greek.
Regardless of whether
Socrates meant the particulars of Otherness yield Not-Greek, Not-tall,
Not-beautiful, etc., the particulars would operate specifically rather than
generally, each somehow yielding only one exclusion.
Plato
had postulated that we know Forms through a remembrance of the soul's past
lives and Aristotle's arguments against this treatment of epistemology are
compelling. For Plato, particulars somehow do not exist, and, on the face of
it, "that which is non-existent cannot be known". See Metaphysics III 3-4.
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
** **
1808
hours. This article's content lights up my soul. - rho
Post. - Amorella
2225 hours. I finished the Discover
article earlier. It was well worth the read for the questions it asks?
1855
hours. Earlier, I did wonder how close you are to a Platonic-like form, but
after reading and thinking on the articles in Discover and Wikipedia
I no longer do because consciousness is not a Platonic=like form, it has
particulars. Consciousness in higher thought, exists because it is observed
through living human beings via combinations of thought, reason, intuition and
imagination. In my mind the Amorella is a form of passive or secondary consciousness.
This is how you appear to me 'in form' this evening.
Fair enough. - Amorella
You both had 'snack' suppers
and watched NBC and ABC News as well as the most recent episode of "Blue
Bloods". Carol then went up to read and you watched this week's latest "X-Files".
- Amorella
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