In retrospect, I think this would have been a better order of exposition for the monadology article:
Start with a general discussion of the wavefunction of the brain, implicitly within a many-worlds framework, i.e. nothing about collapse. Most of us here will agree that this ought to be a conceptually valid enterprise, though irrelevant to biology because of decoherence.
Next, bring up the possibility of quantum effects being relevant to the brain’s information processing after all. In the absence of specific evidence, readers might be skeptical, but it’s still a logically valid concept, a what-if that doesn’t break any laws of physics.
Next, try to convey the modification to the quantum formalism that I described, whereby fundamental degrees of freedom (such as string-theoretic D0-branes) become entangled in island sets that are disentangled from everything else. (The usual situation is that everything is entangled with everything else, albeit to a vanishingly small degree.) There might be a few more frowns at this point, perplexed wondering as to where this is all leading, but it’s still just mathematics.
And finally say, these island sets are “monads”, and your subjective experience is the inner state of one big monad, and the actual qualities and relations which make up reality (at least in this case) are the ones which are subjectively manifest, rather than the abstractions we use for formal representation and calculation. This is the part that sounds like “woo”, where all these strange ologies like ontology, phenomenology, and monadology, show up, and it’s the part which is getting the strongest negative reaction.
In privately developing these ideas I started with the phenomenology, and worked backwards from there towards the science we have, but an exposition which started with the science we have and incrementally modified it towards the phenomenology might at least have made 3/4ths of the framework sound comprehensible (the three steps where it’s all still just mathematics).
Then again, by starting in the middle and emphasizing the ontological issues, at least everyone got an early taste of the poison pill beneath the mathematical chocolate. Which might be regarded as a better outcome, if you want to keep woo out of your system at all costs.
Next, try to convey the modification to the quantum formalism that I described, whereby fundamental degrees of freedom (such as string-theoretic D0-branes) become entangled in island sets that are disentangled from everything else. (The usual situation is that everything is entangled with everything else, albeit to a vanishingly small degree.)
I don’t see why you need to bring in quantum mechanics or D0-branes here. What you’re describing is just a standard case of a low-entropy, far-from-equilibrium island, also known as a dissipative system, which includes Benard cells, control systems, hurricanes, and indeed life itself.
They work by using a fuel source (negentropy) to create internal order, far from equilibrium with their environment, and have to continually export enough entropy (disorder) to make up for that which they create inside. While the stabilizing/controlling aspect of them will necessarily be correlated with the external “disturbances”, some part of it will be screened off from the environment, and therefore disentangled.
In fact, the angle I’ve been working is to see if I can come up with a model whereby consciousness arises wherever natural, causal forces align to allow local screening off from the environment (which we know life does anyway) plus a number of other conditions I’m still figuring out.
We could of followed it better that way but there is still no reasoning in those steps. The right way to structure this discussion is to start with the problems you want to solve (and why they’re problems) and then explain how to solve them. This outline still has nothing motivating it. What people need to see is what you think needs explaining and how you theory explains it best. Its true that the math might be acceptable enough but no one really wants to spend their time doing math to solve problems they don’t think are problems or for explaining the behavior of things they don’t think exist.
It is as if someone showed up with all this great math that they said described God. Math is fun and all but we’d want to know why you think there is a God that these equations describe!
Yes, as a strategy to convince your readers, the new ordering would likely be more effective. However, re-ordering or re-phrasing your reasoning in order to be more rhetorically effective is not good truth-seeking behavior. Yudkowsky’s “fourth virtue of evenness” seems relevant here.
The counterargument that Mitchell Porter’s critics bring is recognizable as “Argument From Bias”. Douglas Walton describes it in this way:
Major Premise: If x is biased, then x is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A
Minor Premise: Arguer a is biased.
Conclusion: Arguer a is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A.
In this case, the bias in question is Mitchell Porter’s commitment to ontologically basic mental entities (monads or similar). We must discount his conclusions regarding the deep reading of physics that he has apparently done, because a biased individual might cherry-pick results from physics that lead to the preferred conclusion.
This discounting is only partial, of course—there is a chance of cherry-picking, not a certainty.
In retrospect, I think this would have been a better order of exposition for the monadology article:
Start with a general discussion of the wavefunction of the brain, implicitly within a many-worlds framework, i.e. nothing about collapse. Most of us here will agree that this ought to be a conceptually valid enterprise, though irrelevant to biology because of decoherence.
Next, bring up the possibility of quantum effects being relevant to the brain’s information processing after all. In the absence of specific evidence, readers might be skeptical, but it’s still a logically valid concept, a what-if that doesn’t break any laws of physics.
Next, try to convey the modification to the quantum formalism that I described, whereby fundamental degrees of freedom (such as string-theoretic D0-branes) become entangled in island sets that are disentangled from everything else. (The usual situation is that everything is entangled with everything else, albeit to a vanishingly small degree.) There might be a few more frowns at this point, perplexed wondering as to where this is all leading, but it’s still just mathematics.
And finally say, these island sets are “monads”, and your subjective experience is the inner state of one big monad, and the actual qualities and relations which make up reality (at least in this case) are the ones which are subjectively manifest, rather than the abstractions we use for formal representation and calculation. This is the part that sounds like “woo”, where all these strange ologies like ontology, phenomenology, and monadology, show up, and it’s the part which is getting the strongest negative reaction.
In privately developing these ideas I started with the phenomenology, and worked backwards from there towards the science we have, but an exposition which started with the science we have and incrementally modified it towards the phenomenology might at least have made 3/4ths of the framework sound comprehensible (the three steps where it’s all still just mathematics).
Then again, by starting in the middle and emphasizing the ontological issues, at least everyone got an early taste of the poison pill beneath the mathematical chocolate. Which might be regarded as a better outcome, if you want to keep woo out of your system at all costs.
I don’t see why you need to bring in quantum mechanics or D0-branes here. What you’re describing is just a standard case of a low-entropy, far-from-equilibrium island, also known as a dissipative system, which includes Benard cells, control systems, hurricanes, and indeed life itself.
They work by using a fuel source (negentropy) to create internal order, far from equilibrium with their environment, and have to continually export enough entropy (disorder) to make up for that which they create inside. While the stabilizing/controlling aspect of them will necessarily be correlated with the external “disturbances”, some part of it will be screened off from the environment, and therefore disentangled.
In fact, the angle I’ve been working is to see if I can come up with a model whereby consciousness arises wherever natural, causal forces align to allow local screening off from the environment (which we know life does anyway) plus a number of other conditions I’m still figuring out.
We could of followed it better that way but there is still no reasoning in those steps. The right way to structure this discussion is to start with the problems you want to solve (and why they’re problems) and then explain how to solve them. This outline still has nothing motivating it. What people need to see is what you think needs explaining and how you theory explains it best. Its true that the math might be acceptable enough but no one really wants to spend their time doing math to solve problems they don’t think are problems or for explaining the behavior of things they don’t think exist.
It is as if someone showed up with all this great math that they said described God. Math is fun and all but we’d want to know why you think there is a God that these equations describe!
Yes, as a strategy to convince your readers, the new ordering would likely be more effective. However, re-ordering or re-phrasing your reasoning in order to be more rhetorically effective is not good truth-seeking behavior. Yudkowsky’s “fourth virtue of evenness” seems relevant here.
The counterargument that Mitchell Porter’s critics bring is recognizable as “Argument From Bias”. Douglas Walton describes it in this way:
Major Premise: If x is biased, then x is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A
Minor Premise: Arguer a is biased.
Conclusion: Arguer a is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A.
In this case, the bias in question is Mitchell Porter’s commitment to ontologically basic mental entities (monads or similar). We must discount his conclusions regarding the deep reading of physics that he has apparently done, because a biased individual might cherry-pick results from physics that lead to the preferred conclusion.
This discounting is only partial, of course—there is a chance of cherry-picking, not a certainty.