[UCI-Calit2] Human Complexity -- 1:30 Today

Anna Lynn Spitzer aspitzer at calit2.uci.edu
Fri Feb 26 11:19:02 PST 2010


Title:                      Human Complexity: Conjectures on
Consciousness

 

Time:                     1:30-3:20 p.m.

 

Date:                     Today: Friday, February 26, 2009

 

Speaker:              F. Eugene Yates, M.D., scientific advisor, The
John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation; UCLA Crump professor
(emeritus) of medical engineering;

                            editor, SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEMS, Plenum
Press.

 

Location:              3030 Anteater I&R Building (AIRB)

                                Multi-campus event. Other locations
include: 285 Powell Library, UCLA;  260 Galbraith Hall, UCSD; and 250
Olson Hall, UC DAVIS.

 

Abstract:              Understanding consciousness challenges normal
science so brutally that we have to wonder if it is within reach of our
logical/mathematical and empirical methods.  How do we "map" from
objective, physical situations to subjective (conscious) experiences of
them? To approach this question, I begin by asking another, viz., "If we
had means to construct a 'consciousness-detector' (even just as a
thought experiment), what would we ask it to measure (observe) that
would not give false positives?" Failing to provide even an approximate
answer would indicate that we are unfit for the quest for consciousness.
I review some of the attempts to define and identify conscious
"mind-states."  They are various and descriptive, and all stumble with
the issue of causality. Do mind states "emerge" from brain states? I
show the weakness behind the concept of emergence and reject it as
useful in the quest. Are "minds" and brains in different worlds? If you
are a monist - as I suspect most scientists hope to be - you are likely
to find the "two-world" view physically unsatisfactory. I reject it. To
set the scene for my analysis of the problem, I present some tests for
consciousness, and indicate what entities in the biosphere show any
signs, and comment on their evolutionary histories. Carefully pruning
the evidence, retaining only the strongest, I argue that consciousness
did not appear anywhere on Earth, at any time, until Mammals (~ 200
million years ago) and, as an instance of convergent evolution, in a few
birds. Curiously both classes are warm-blooded. Is that a requirement
for consciousness, or an mere coincidence? I draw a sharp distinction
between conscious behaviors and instinctive behaviors. In leading to my
conclusion that everything that happens in mind or body arises from
brain-states (not an original claim), I introduce (metaphorically) a new
quantum-mechanical perspective based on both Bohr complementarity and
superposition, that eliminates both the need for the concept of
"emergence" and of "interactions" in discussing conscious phenomena.

 

UCI host: Laurent Tambayong,

      

 

Streaming videos for all past talks (2005-2009) are at
http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Current_events#HSC_Past_talks

 

 

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