“Structures built from a very large number of units can exhibit sharp transitions from one state to another state, which physicists call phase transitions,” said Cowan, a Professor in Mathematics and Neurology at Chicago. “Strange and interesting things happen in the neighborhood of a phase transition.” (http://www.physorg.com/news122310241.html)
CIRCUITS in the brain can pick up the senses just like a living FM radio, scientists in Israel claim. They think that we can feel textures because the brain tirelessly monitors the changing frequencies of neurons(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15621052.800-radio-head--the-brain-has-its-own-fm-receiver.html)
The question I pose here is
IS BRAIN A Quantum Mechanical System??
i'm a fool. Penrose is full of shit.
Not that that is entirely his fault. Often the greatest minds in physics and mathematics make craptastic philosophers. Einstein was mentioned in another thread, as an example.
It's hard for a human to admit we're a chunk of motile meat with a brain not much bigger than a monkey's or a dolphin's, and that all of our culture, art, science and everything we think, feel and perceive personally is just the product of some chemical reactions pushed along by a few millivolts of electro-motive force. It's especially hard for really bright people who can see and understand just how absolutely amazing and incredible our species, its accomplishments and its potential are.
But for dim bulbs like myself, i can see what they're doing - simply making up excuses to avoid admitting they're just animals with a well-developed brain. Quantum mechanics is the latest quasi-mystical explanation that they can use to get around this admission... only it's actually science, not really mysticism, so you get all the non-specificity and warm fuzziness of mysticism with none of the guilt for being obviously irrational.
His micro-tubules are just the phlogiston of the 21st century study of mind.
No, the brain is not a quantum mechanical system any more than any other system is. Everything is quantum, eventually, and everything follows the laws of quantum mechanics. But after you cross a certain threshold of size, the correspondence principle dictates that even though it's technically still quantum mechanics, it looks like classically deterministic mechanics. Every functionally-important part of the brain is way bigger than what is normally considered the quantum limit, and even then the brain works on massive paralleliaztion and redundancy to further smooth out any hypothetical quantum hiccups.
Did you guys see the movie " Oxford Murders"
anything can be a pattern for the brain!?
Penrose was he respected as mathematician or a biologist
That sure is interesting about the "quantum mind"....thanks for the link.
