![]() See also: Aired on BBC: Consciousness no different than our ability to digest Why? Won’t crackpot theories work as well as they do for human consciousness? What’s different? On the other hand, just for fun, start with, Claim: Science is afraid of animal consciousness. Challenged, will Penrose retreat back to the safe little warren of nonsense theories about consciousness? A few are offered below, just to get you started, but we don’t especially recommend it. One can’t help wondering if this is suckerbait. Purpose-what does that mean?” He chuckled. “So, yes, we want to see the purpose of it. ![]() Why aren’t we in one of those rather than this one where it seems to be a rather uncommon activity? “You could imagine a universe with a lot more consciousness that’s peppered all over the place. “Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here.” So does he think there’s intelligent life-or consciousness-somewhere else in the cosmos? “Yes, but it may be extremely rare.” But if consciousness is the point of this whole shebang, wouldn’t you expect to find some evidence of it beyond Earth? “Well, I’m not so sure our own universe is that favorably disposed toward consciousness,” he said. Naturalism could be just plain bunk.Īs I wondered why Penrose keeps hammering away at his theory on consciousness after all these years, I asked him if he thinks there’s any inherent meaning in the universe. No one quite knows what to make of this theory, developed with the American anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, but conventional wisdom goes something like this: Their theory is almost certainly wrong, but since Penrose is so brilliant (“One of the very few people I’ve met in my life who, without reservation, I call a genius,” physicist Lee Smolin has said), we’d be foolish to dismiss their theory out of hand. He believes we must go beyond neuroscience and into the mysterious world of quantum mechanics to explain our rich mental life. Once you start poking around in the muck of consciousness studies, you will soon encounter the specter of Sir Roger Penrose, the renowned Oxford physicist with an audacious-and quite possibly crackpot-theory about the quantum origins of consciousness. Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flipboard Print Emailįrom Steve Paulson of Wisconsin public broadcasting at Nautilus:
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