No you don’t. Penroses theory is totally abstract computability theory. If it were true, then so what?
I have to say, I can definitely see it, and I even think it’s obvious why. Penrose’s theory assures that consciousness is the special phenomenon we feel it is, it assures the unity of the mind through a special unity of consciousness, it assures human exceptionality over any automata (we would be, in a relevant sense, NOT automata), and it rescues the idea of (libertarian) ‘free will’ in the most satisfactory way possible given the basic commitments coming from physics (and this distinguishes us from mere programmed automata).
I always thought that I would prefer his theory to be true, I dont feel bad about it but it’s true.
It is pretty obvious that Penrose has pre-commitments to human exceptionality and the specialness of consciousness (and he has shown them pretty explicitly, by appealing to incompleteness theorems against AI and saying that “it can’t just be natural selection”), and that’s what motivates the theory. It’s not a coincidence.
Suppose human brains turned out to be hypercomputers. (They really really aren’t) But imagine the world where they were.
We describe what is going on with equations. It’s some complicated thing involving counterpolarized pseudoquarks or something. We can recreate this phenomena in the lab. Recent experiments with sheets of graphine in liquid xenon produce better hypercomputers.
A halting oracle doesn’t seem to contain magic “free will” stuff. It’s behaviour is formally specified and mathematically determined. A quantum coin toss can already make random data, something no turing machine can do. (Yet the universe is computable, because a reality goes both ways) Is a quantum coin conscious? No, it’s just a source of randomness.
As soon as the magic mysterious essence of consciousness that Penrose hopes for is actually discovered, it will stop being magical and mysterious, and will be demoted to the dull catalogue of common things.
A halting oracle doesn’t seem to contain magic “free will” stuff
I know, although that’s really what libertarian FW entails in physicalist terms. In fact, funnily enough, I read yesterday Turing’s paper Computer Machinery and Intelligence (mostly just to be amused at his theological and ESP counter-arguments) and he literally said that some people describe machines with randomness oracles as having ‘free will’.
Regardless, a major point of Penrose’s theory is that the mind works as a cohesive whole thanks to a quantum superposition of the brain, it’s a much more remarkable feature than just having any form of LFW. I don’t even get the appealing of LFW anymore.
Well, there’s one thing that I miss of the idea of having LFW (being an indeterministic system). Whenever I think about alternate history scenarios, no matter how plausible they look, the actual probabilities of having happened are 0, and that’s just boring.
Late reply, sorry if it’s a bother.
I have to say, I can definitely see it, and I even think it’s obvious why. Penrose’s theory assures that consciousness is the special phenomenon we feel it is, it assures the unity of the mind through a special unity of consciousness, it assures human exceptionality over any automata (we would be, in a relevant sense, NOT automata), and it rescues the idea of (libertarian) ‘free will’ in the most satisfactory way possible given the basic commitments coming from physics (and this distinguishes us from mere programmed automata).
I always thought that I would prefer his theory to be true, I dont feel bad about it but it’s true.
It is pretty obvious that Penrose has pre-commitments to human exceptionality and the specialness of consciousness (and he has shown them pretty explicitly, by appealing to incompleteness theorems against AI and saying that “it can’t just be natural selection”), and that’s what motivates the theory. It’s not a coincidence.
Suppose human brains turned out to be hypercomputers. (They really really aren’t) But imagine the world where they were.
We describe what is going on with equations. It’s some complicated thing involving counterpolarized pseudoquarks or something. We can recreate this phenomena in the lab. Recent experiments with sheets of graphine in liquid xenon produce better hypercomputers.
A halting oracle doesn’t seem to contain magic “free will” stuff. It’s behaviour is formally specified and mathematically determined. A quantum coin toss can already make random data, something no turing machine can do. (Yet the universe is computable, because a reality goes both ways) Is a quantum coin conscious? No, it’s just a source of randomness.
As soon as the magic mysterious essence of consciousness that Penrose hopes for is actually discovered, it will stop being magical and mysterious, and will be demoted to the dull catalogue of common things.
I know all of that, believe me.
I know, although that’s really what libertarian FW entails in physicalist terms. In fact, funnily enough, I read yesterday Turing’s paper Computer Machinery and Intelligence (mostly just to be amused at his theological and ESP counter-arguments) and he literally said that some people describe machines with randomness oracles as having ‘free will’.
Regardless, a major point of Penrose’s theory is that the mind works as a cohesive whole thanks to a quantum superposition of the brain, it’s a much more remarkable feature than just having any form of LFW. I don’t even get the appealing of LFW anymore.
Well, there’s one thing that I miss of the idea of having LFW (being an indeterministic system). Whenever I think about alternate history scenarios, no matter how plausible they look, the actual probabilities of having happened are 0, and that’s just boring.