Tam Hunt — Could consciousness all come down to the way things vibrate?

Over the last decade, my colleague, University of California, Santa Barbara psychology professor Jonathan Schooler and I have developed what we call a “resonance theory of consciousness.” We suggest that resonance – another word for synchronized vibrations – is at the heart of not only human consciousness but also animal consciousness and of physical reality more generally. It sounds like something the hippies might have dreamed up – it’s all vibrations, man! – but stick with me.

The Conversation
Could consciousness all come down to the way things vibrate?
Tam Hunt | Affiliate Guest in Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara

Eric Schliesser — Dennett as Synthetic Philosopher

Weekend reading for those of wide-ranging interests. It's on Daniel Dennett's contribution to the study of consciousness and his synthetic approach that blends many fields, biology and evolutionary theory in particular.

Digressions&Impressions
Dennett as Synthetic Philosopher
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Science Daily — Discovery of Quantum Vibrations in 'Microtubules' Inside Brain Neurons Supports Controversial Theory of Consciousness

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. "This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

"Consciousness depends on anharmonic vibrations of microtubules inside neurons, similar to certain kinds of Indian music, but unlike Western music which is harmonic," Hameroff explains.

Science Daily
Discovery of Quantum Vibrations in 'Microtubules' Inside Brain Neurons Supports Controversial Theory of Consciousness

Brandon Keim — A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious

On the cutting edge of consciousness studies.

Wired
A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious
Brandon Keim

(h/t Mark Thoma at Economist's View)

There is little disagreement that what we call being conscious is an emergent property of matter, specifically, an organism with sufficient neurological complexity. There are two contending approaches to a theory of consciousness. The first assumes that consciousness as conscious experience is produced by greater neurological complexity, which emerges from that complexity. The second approach is that  consciousness is a ubiquitous field and emergent neurological complexity creates the conditions necessary for reception, as for instance, electronic devices receive and interpret signals, and that this is the basis of conscious experience. 

These are now new views. The former is the view of realism and the latter the view of idealism historically. The difference historically is that now we tend to approach the question scientifically rather than the philosophically, but the issues are ancient. The contemporary realistic appraoch is grounded in biology, having to do with neurophysiology and biochemistry, while the contemporary idealistic view is based on quantum physics.

Jim Holt — The Mind of a Rock

The doctrine that the stuff of the world is fundamentally mind-stuff goes by the name of panpsychism. A few decades ago, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel showed that it is an inescapable consequence of some quite reasonable premises. First, our brains consist of material particles. Second, these particles, in certain arrangements, produce subjective thoughts and feelings. Third, physical properties alone cannot account for subjectivity. (How could the ineffable experience of tasting a strawberry ever arise from the equations of physics?) Now, Nagel reasoned, the properties of a complex system like the brain don’t just pop into existence from nowhere; they must derive from the properties of that system’s ultimate constituents. Those ultimate constituents must therefore have subjective features themselves — features that, in the right combinations, add up to our inner thoughts and feelings. But the electrons, protons and neutrons making up our brains are no different from those making up the rest of the world. So the entire universe must consist of little bits of consciousness.

Nagel himself stopped short of embracing panpsychism, but today it is enjoying something of a vogue. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose have spoken on its behalf. In the recent book “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature,” the British philosopher Galen Strawson defends panpsychism against numerous critics....

Take that rock over there. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock’s innards “see” the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers’s slogan, “Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.” 

Quantum Activist
The Mind of a Rock
Jim Holt | New York Times

Deepak Chopra, Menas Kafatos and Rudolph E. Tanzi — A Consciousness-Based Science

This is nothing new, but it is a pretty clear popular presentation of a trend in science that has been growing for the past hundred years at least, actually more, if one counts William James, for instance.

What it says is that the current way of doing science makes huge ontological assumptions that cannot be true based on what is now known scientifically and has been known for some time.

This is hardly new knowledge historically, since it is found in the oldest extant human records, the Vedas, and anthropological studies suggest that this POV is much more primitive than the dawn of recorded history. This is also suggested by the early records, where the view is already well developed in terms of its articulation.

This view in no way contradicts solid scientific knowledge, only certain philosophical assumptions that underlie the POV. Adopting a consciousness-based framework leaves all existing knowledge largely as it is but opens the door to a new way of looking that enables a broader and deeper perspective and allows for the integration of the spectrum of human knowledge and creativity — science, art, humanities, idealistic philosophy, and spirituality-based religion.

What would the effect on economics be? One effect would be less emphasis on "objectivity," that is, quantity, and more on subjectivity, that is quality, value, and creativity. Practically speaking, it would mean less emphasis on on the mainstream "orthodoxy," and greater openness to fresh ideas (which may not be new but merely excluded) and new thinking.

The Huffington Post
A Consciousness-Based Science
Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital

Leo Foresta on reason and intuition

Almost all university departments and research institutes are now financed directly or indirectly by big business or governments entirely controlled by multinationals through their lobbies and networks.

A key point to grasp is that the mechanistic world vision suits big business, whereas the alternative holistic subtle vision does not.

Read it at Leo Foresta on spirituality and the global crisis

Physics shedding light on the crisis (Part I)

by Leo Foresta

Holism is an extremely important trend that has been developing in the mainstream since the Sixties, when Abraham Maslow successfully overthrew B. F. Skinner's behavioral approach to psychology and established, first, humanistic psychology and then transpersonal psychology. We have come a long way since then, baby, and many people have no clue about it. 

Holism is going to one the dominant trends in this century, and it will replace mechanism. Neoclassical economics is chiefly mechanistic and it will be replaced with a holistic economic paradigm, such as suggested by E. F. Schumacher and Kenneth Boulding.

It is important to distinguish between methodological individualism and ontological individualism, between methodological holism and ontological holism, and between methodological individualism and methodological holism. Adopting a methodology does not necessarily require adopting the corresponding ontology, but it is easy to conflate methodology and ontology if one is not careful.

See also:

Wray, L. Randall. "Kenneth Boulding's Reconstruction of Macroeconomics", Review of Social Economy, vol. LV (Winter 1997): 445-463.

Wray, L. Randall. "Kenneth Boulding's Grants Economics," Journal of Economic Issues, 28 (December 1994): 1205-1225.

Wray, L. Randall. "Boulding's Balloons: A Contribution to Monetary Theory," Journal of Economic Issues, 25 (March 1991): 1-20.