Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules?

Chemical reactions and according to Roger Penrose this phenomenon begins to become expressed even at quantum scale.

As I understand it, a quantum event is a threshold event. A limit has been exceeded and a corrective "action" takes place. While non-sentient particles cannot feel, they do in fact experience a "bing", a threshold event.

An earthquake is experienced by all objects in its range of influence. They just don't know this, except for organic biology. It is what sets organics apart from inorganics, in the world of chemicals.

But quantum is responsible for chemical action and reaction in both in-organic (elemental) chemicals and in organic (living) objects.

IMO, Organic matter has evolved in acquiring a cognitive "sensitivity" to quantum events which translates quantum "bings" into sentient and emotional chemical reactions.

This is the area Hameroff and Penrose are currently exploring. Micro tubules are tiny quantum computers.

 

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That's quite a mental exercise. So, having said all that, do you still feel like an accident?

 

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Yes, or rather it was a matter of time, it's a probabilistic system.

In view of the incomprehensible number of quantum events, probability alone will eventually fill every possible mathematically permittive spacetime configuration and expression.

Just look at a simple fractal with a few hundred thousand iterations. From a simple iteration command follows a developing artistic masterpiece, becoming more complicated and beautiful as iterations continue. The Fibonacci Sequence is but one such fractal function. It's just mathematically allowed by space itself. And most importantly, it is efficient. That's what makes it a constant. The exponential function is another constant which governs the growth rate of all things.


Mandelbrot fractal


Sierpinski Triangle

 

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There is no evidence that microtubules are tiny quantum computers.

The notion is mere speculation. The Orch-R concept of Penrose and Hameroff has made a number of false predictions and is fairly thoroughly discredited. I quote from the Wiki article on "Quantum Mind":

" Hameroff provided a hypothesis that microtubules would be suitable hosts for quantum behavior.[20] Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimer subunits. The dimers each have hydrophobic pockets that are 8 nm apart and that may contain delocalized pi electrons. Tubulins have other smaller non-polar regions that contain pi electron-rich indole rings separated by only about 2 nm. Hameroff proposed that these electrons are close enough to become entangled.[21] Hameroff originally suggested the tubulin-subunit electrons would form a Bose–Einstein condensate, but this was discredited.[22] He then proposed a Frohlich condensate, a hypothetical coherent oscillation of dipolar molecules. However, this too was experimentally discredited.[23]

However, Orch-OR made numerous false biological predictions, and is not an accepted model of brain physiology.[24] In other words, there is a missing link between physics and neuroscience,[25] for instance, the proposed predominance of 'A' lattice microtubules, more suitable for information processing, was falsified by Kikkawa et al.,[26][27] who showed all in vivo microtubules have a 'B' lattice and a seam. The proposed existence of gap junctions between neurons and glial cells was also falsified.[28] Orch-OR predicted that microtubule coherence reaches the synapses via dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs), however De Zeeuw et al. proved this impossible,[29] by showing that DLBs are located micrometers away from gap junctions.[30]

In January 2014, Hameroff and Penrose claimed that the discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules by Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan in March 2013[31] corroborates the Orch-OR theory.[15][32]

Although these theories are stated in a scientific framework, it is difficult to separate them from the personal opinions of the scientist. The opinions are often based on intuition or subjective ideas about the nature of consciousness."

It's not doing very well, is it?

 

Apparently not.....

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But I don't give up hope just yet. Somehow, this sounds so right.

 

Penrose proposes that quantum is a threshold event and as such would present a physical reaction in non-sentient objects, but also a sentient reaction in organic life.

Is change not what drives all thing in the universe, including the emergence of time? If so, would this not have to begin at the quantum level?

When a particle manifests from a field, is that not a "bing" event?

 

They look and seem to act like they could be?

Does the wave function have to be an EM wave or can any wave function induce a quantum response?

Hameroff sees all wave collapse in the micro tubules as a true quantum event ("bing")

 

That is a faith-based, rather than evidence-based, view, which you are entitled to.

Just don't present it as an accepted scientific theory. "Microtubules are tiny quantum computers" is not a true statement, based on the evidence to date.

 

I reserve the right to decline to respond to any enquiry from you that includes the word "function". History shows you have no idea what this word means and that you cannot be taught.

 

Well, I'm not praying this is true.
I was relying on Hameroff's very specific knowledge of micro-tubules as anesthesiologist and his prior experimentations which led him to the idea that microtubules are tiny computers.
The extension into quantum computer came later, after he read Penrose's book.

I stand corrected. That should have read "This is the area Hameroff and Penrose are currently exploring. If micro tubules are tiny quantum computers".
We do know they are organic computers......

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No, that is untrue as well.

Microtubules are pervasive in cells:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtubule and no role for them in the neural processing of the brain is acknowledged.

The only computer idea involving them is Hameroff's quantum computing idea, and that has been rubbished even by your own favourite guru, Shapiro/Tegmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff

 

Being that you have never asked me to explain my understanding of the wave function, allow me to try. I have no problem understanding the following formal explanations

i.e. A probabilistic dynamical state.

I see the term "observation" as applicable to all forms of interaction. When a photon strikes a photographic plate the wave function will collapse and manifest as physical reality. This would happen even if there was no sentient observer. i.e. observation = dynamical event.
Now that I think of it; human observation causes wave function collapse inside our sensory systems. This requires quantum computing, no? (I see chemical interaction as a form of quantum computing). Is Hameroff looking in the right direction?

And also includes real time organic computations (chemical interaction) ?

Am I on the right track so far?

 

Have you actually watched the link I posted in #141 ?
Seems you do have a tendency to ignore links I provide.

Yes I read that and I tentatively disagree with him on that. I think he is approaching this from a wrong perspective. After all Tegmark is a mathematician, whereas Hameroff is an anesthesiologist

(bracketed mine)
Wikipedia
The question of neural decoherence is Hameroff's specific area of research in connection to his research on neural decoherence in Alzheimer's patients' brains!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

https://neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/263

Wikipedia

It shows that I am not a blind "believer", but reserve judgement and continue to follow the debate until more is known. I lean toward Tegmark's mathematical interpretation, but that does not necessarily negate Hameroff's proposition, in fact it may reinforce and strengthen both propositions, if the full scope of quantum computing can be solved.

If Tegmark is correct in his "mathematical universe", then it would follow that the evidence shows the universe also has a mechanism to process mathematical values and I believe we call that computing, no?

At quantum level this is called quantum computing and nothing is exempt from this universal function, IMO.

Is that not the great debate about the question if the Universe is a sentient processor (God) or if the Universe is a pseudo-sentient processor (computer) ?

 

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A cytoplasmic dynein motor bound to a microtubule.

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A kinesin molecule bound to a microtubule.

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Image of the mitotic spindle in a human cell showing microtubules in green, (chromosomes (DNA) in blue, and kinetochores in red).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtubule#Development

It seems that microtubules are involved in just about every dynamic aspect of organics.
Are they processing information? Hint?

The fact that they are pervasive throughout the body could be indicative of their importance, both in biological growth control and conscious awareness of information processing.

What is the mechanism that translates DNA coding? Micro-tubules?

 

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This diagram depicts the organization of a typical mitotic spindle found in animal cells. Chromosomes are attached to kinetochore microtubules via a multiprotein complex called the kinetochore. Polar microtubules interdigitate at the spindle midzone and push the spindle poles apart via motor proteins.Astral microtubules anchor the spindle poles to the cell membrane. Microtubule polymerization is nucleated at the microtubule organizing center.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtubule#Development

 

Very perceptive.

 

Then you are missing important information provided by an expert in his field.

I don't post links to woo.......

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p.s. might even help putting my posts in perspective.......

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As you ought to understand by now, I regard you as a one-track obsessive who cannot use scientific concepts properly, and I don't buy this Implicate Order stuff. I'm just not going to waste time reading this crap.

 

Now you're talking about David Bohm (as in deBroglie-Bohm Pilot Wave), not microtubules. Does not compute, does not compute...

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p.s. Implicate Order(s) are stages of extant probabilistic potentials. The emergence of an interference pattern in a double slit experiment is an expression of an Implicate Order, IMO.

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p.p.s. If I need a brain operation , I'll go see Hameroff, not you. I have read his stuff and he knows what he is talking about, not you. You are being prejudicial the moment I mention a name. Not conducive to Dialogue and acquiring new knowledge.
Blind negativity is as bad as blind positivity. Neither is open to change, kinda like religion.