bascule

I don't think you understood the question. Classical physics is typically sufficient to describe the behavior of physical systems on the scale of neurons. These systems are so large and composed of so many particles that the quantum behaviors are averaged out and do not impact the system in ways which are inconsistent with classical physics. What part of the brain do you think cannot be adequately described by classical physics? The idea that mind does not exist in space or time is a common property of all theories of mind, including dualism, monism, and emergent materialism. As I mentioned earlier, the only theory that argues otherwise is reductive eliminativism, which suggests that mind is completely reducible to matter and therefore does not exist as something separate and distinct from the brain.

If consciousness is emergent from physical phenomena, then it is not a physical phenomena itself, and therefore is most certainly not a quantum phenomena. I've read two of Penrose's books: The Emperor's New Mind and Shadows of the Mind. I'd certainly consider myself well versed in the subject. Any attempts to put the quantum mind hypothesis on scientific footing have been fraught with failure. The only serious one I've seen has been the Penrose/Hameoff proposal, which has been repeatedly demonstrated to be incorrect, particularly by Max Tegmark's refutation involving quantum decoherence time. Can you detail for us exactly what type of nonclassical behavior you propose the brain exhibits? This is the start of how you would begin to link quantum physics with mind. Penrose proposed that the brain evolved quantum mechanical behavior in the microtubles of neurons, however that proposal has been rejected by the scientific community.

It hasn't. Physicists study physical systems, not the mind. If you'd like to argue that physicists are performing scientific investigations into the nature of the mind, perhaps you can find a paper on the matter in the peer reviewed scientific literature. I'd argue it's an appeal to authority, which is a logical fallacy. Consciousness isn't contained in spacetime. It's an epiphenomenon of physical systems and exists at a layer of abstraction above them. That's a total and complete non-sequitur. You've just claimed that consciousness does not exist in spacetime and therefore is beyond the scope of quantum theory, then go on to claim that it exists "through the appearance of quantum behavior". Is consciousness a physical system or not? If your answer to that question is no, then consciousness cannot be studied by physics, and that's all there is to it.

Computer programs also arise from physical systems, however they operate at a level of abstraction above physical system: they are tree structures of symbols, not collections of physical components. While the execution of computer programs ultimately takes the form of physical phenomena which ultimately rely on quantum mechanical behavior, this is completely irrelevant, as the execution also operates at a level of abstraction above physical systems. This occurs at the level of the Universal Turing Machine, which specifies how computer programs provide descriptions of particular behaviors. When a phenomenon is emergent from a physical system, rather than part of one, the rules which govern the physical system become irrelevant to the emergent system's behavior, because the emergent system is abstracted from the underlying physical system. If this ever ceases to be the case, and the rules of the physical system begin to have an effect on the emergent system's behavior (e.g. your CPU overheats, or your brain has a stroke), then the emergent system ceases to function properly because the abstraction level at which it's operating has been violated. Time and physical systems are tied inexorably. Mind and physical systems are abstracted from each other.

I can only guess they feel frustrated by the lack of progress in the field by neuroscience and cognitive science. However, while these physicists, particularly Penrose, have published many excellent papers on physics, you won't find them publishing in cognitive science or neuroscience journals, simply because their papers wouldn't get accepted. Psychophysics is a subdiscipline of cognitive science and bears no relation to physics. In Kant's semantics, it studies the relationships between phenomena and noumena. None of the individuals study psychophysics. If you'd like to read some truly excellent writing on the subject, I suggest Dennett's Consciousness Explained. You're describing epiphenominalism, which is more or less equivalent with functionalism. Functionalism proposes that as consciousness is emergent yet distinct from the underlying system, and as such it can be realized in multiple ways and thus is not bound to any one particular configuration of a physical system. Your argumentation, however, proposes the opposite: mind is inexorably tied to particular physical phenomena. This really seems to be the problem: you pay lip service to epiphenomenalism, then go right back to arguments which describe mind as a physical system.

Consciousness is a metaphysical construct regardless of how you're studying it. The only philosophical school which proposes otherwise is reductive eliminativism, which essentially conjectures that consciousness does not exist. Physics explains physical systems. Consciousness is not a physical system, therefore physics can't explain consciousness any better than it can explain poetry, music, or the architecture of computer software.

Understanding the mind is the job of cognitive scientists and neuroscientists, not physicists. The mind is a metaphysical construct and thus outside the realm of physics, which deals with physical systems.

What article? Did you link an article? If so, I didn't see it. What about federal tax benefits for married couples?

Having gone to Laser Floyd many times, I can certainly attest to the problem of visible laser beams being thoroughly solved with fog machines.

House and senate votes here: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/house/2/votes/315/ Both my representative and senator voted for it

Graviphoton: There's a pretty big non-sequitur in everything you're saying Consciousness is a metaphysical phenomenon Quantum mechanics describes physical phenomena There's absolutely no reason to jump from consciousness to quantum mechanics, especially if you agree that the content of consciousness is determined completely by brain activity, as there's no evidence of the brain using quantum mechanical behavior.

They don't Isn't marriage the joining of two people who love each other? Why should gays be treated as second class citizens? How is allowing gays to marry "encroaching on the bastion of marriage"? Why is it any skin off your nose?

I would guess it has something to do with campaign (or other) contributions from the farm lobby... Personally I think these sorts of subsidies wreak havoc both on the health of the American people and on the international food market and should be completely abolished

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=70de402de83dc11609bd It's every creationist argument compressed down to a few minutes. You can't create "new genetic information" (oh wait, polyploidy). Radiometric dating is so inaccurate that scientists don't use it anymore, and they use circular reasoning to date the ages of fossils! Dinosaurs were so too mentioned in the Bible! The missing link between man and ape has never been discovered! REPENT!

I prefer the Robocop-inspired "I'd buy that for a dollar!"

Mass transit in America, at least around here, isn't all that great either. In 2014 we're going to get light rail between Denver and here... finally! Only 6 years to go!

It's an Inspiron 1526, and to be fair Hardy didn't support a lot of the hardware (WiFi, Ethernet, the USB host controller)

NECROMANCER casts revival and summons this thread back to life from the grave! So I'm working on my own language now. It's a lot of fun. If you have the requisite knowledge, it's something I'd suggest you try. If you don't, it's something I'd suggest you learn.

where's the obligatory "Is it hot in here, or is it just you?"

I received a new laptop today! Along with my coworkers. It's preloaded with Vista... One of my coworkers bluescreened his about 10 minutes after receiving it (note: these are Dell laptops, not some generic crap). My experience wasn't that bad but... Ugh, the stupid spinning circle... Vista sure makes my brand new dual core 2.8GHz laptop with 3GB RAM feel like a 100MHz Pentium. YES VISTA, YOU MAY MOLEST MY COMPUTER. Can I do anything without it prompting me that it might be potentially dangerous? And it's not like I'm installing a bunch of crappily written 3rd party applications... this is just to use the things that came preloaded. Why is my computer constantly using ~50% of its CPU when I don't have any applications? What's it doing? Compositing windows? I guess it's running a bunch of crappy Dell-provided shovelware. That said... bye bye Vista, I'm installing Ubuntu Hardy as I type this...

This is only a subset of the capabilities they've been touting for quite some time. Namely, they're aiming to provide "natural language search", to where you can phrase a specific question and receive answers, e.g. "When did Albert Einstein die?" What they've launched is interesting, but not what they advertised. In the meantime, Google has done an excellent job providing answers to those sort of semantic inquiries, e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=when+did+albert+einstein+die

I apologize omitting an "other" option

Well, that's pretty much that... Obama is the Democratic nominee. But with Hillary being such a psycho bitch, I really think it's unlikely she'd ever agree to be Obama's running mate (although it wouldn't surprise me if Obama would accept her as his running mate) Who do you think will end up being Obama's running mate? A handy dandy poll is attached!

Long long ago, in the days of Kurt Cobain, the intarwebs were invented by Al Gore... err... Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, that science place where they collide particles and stuff. So it's little surprise that one of the first images to end up on tha intarwebs was this early design of LHC's ATLAS detector: http://info.cern.ch/NextBrowser1.html Yes, unfortunately it's covered with crap, but compare with this rendering of the final version: Pretty cool, eh? Also: YAY NeXT!

Why is it highly unlikely that it is even possible? I'm on the opposite side of that: as a functionalist, I think it's highly unlikely that it's not at least possible.