Sir Roger Penrose - "Consciousness and the foundations of physics”
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- Опубликовано: 14 май 2015
- Sir Roger Penrose - “Consciousness and the Foundations of Physics”, delivered at the Ian Ramsey Centre - Humane Philosophy Project 2014-2015 Seminar. Chaired by Ralph Weir, Alister McGrath and Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode.
The introduction of quantum mechanics in the early 20th Century led many physicists to question the “Newtonian” type of picture of an objective deterministic physical reality that had been previously regarded as an essential background to a fully scientific picture of the world. Quantum measurement, as described in standard theory however, requires a fundamental indeterminism, and issues such as Bell non-locality cause basic difficulties with a picture of objective reality that is consistent with the principles of relativity. Accordingly, many philosophers of science have felt driven to viewpoints according to which “reality” itself takes on subjective qualities, seemingly dependent upon the experiences of conscious beings.
My own position is an essentially opposite one, and I argue that conscious experience itself arises from a particular objective feature of physical law. This, however, must go beyond our current understanding of the laws of quantum processes and their relation to macroscopic phenomena. I argue that this objective feature has to do with implications of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and, moreover, must lie beyond the scope of a fully computational universe.
SIR ROGER PENROSE OM FRS is a renowned mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science. He is the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, as well as an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He is known for his work in mathematical physics, especially his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contribution to our understanding of the Universe. In 1972 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1972. He was knighted for services to science in 1994 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 2000. He also holds honorary doctorate degrees from many distinguished universities including Warsaw, Leuven, York and Bath.
Sir Roger Penrose - without doubt one of our greatest national treasures. He uses really outdated technology when presenting his lectures with his crude acetates and slides but there is nothing outdated about the astonishing clarity he brings to the topics in which he takes a deep interest. :)
Sir R.Penrose is an intellectual hero of mine whom seems to get better with age, and is quite at ease with himself and freely admits to his foibles. This work is no exception. Anyone brave enough to stand up to the Hawking mafia is very brave indeed. Additionally, he looks like Quiburn from Game Of Thrones, he who reanimated the Mountain, so he just gets better and better.
PML. In an intellectual way of course.
+OpiatedBliss if you piss them off they run over your foot
This had to be a much scarier thing for him to have been talking about back in the 80's, ie. promoting Emperor's New Mind, than it would be these days with all the supporting ideas that are emerging.
sirjaunty1 I too am not particularly a Hawking fan.
Yeah the kind of clarity he has is awesome. I will place him with one of my other favourite and that is Richard Feynman.
I think the words I'm hearing from Professor Sir Roger here in their entirety have delivered a profoundly encouraging message of truth, by using theoretical mathematics to deduce the truthful answer to the question of our 'fundamental uniqueness in the understanding of reality and therefore, our place within in it'.
Amazing
Yes, please over and over again show me him pointing towards a screen rather than showing me what's actually on the screen. I sure like to see his tie much more than what he's talking about.
thats Oxford for you
Your level of sarcasm is over 9000!
I'm currently reading Roger's book "Cycles of Time" which I highly recommend. But I agree with his statement about Turing being incorrect about human mistakes. Computers do make mistakes because of human beings but these aren't mistakes that can't be addressed/fixed and improved upon to suit our needs. It isn't about computers being right it's about what we can do with the information and what we can learn from the process of interacting with computers. As we learn we learn to try not to make the same mistakes we've made in the past - this is the essence of what it is to be human.
I find myself agreeing with Sir Roger every time during his lectures.
I worked with the square root of I for so many years that it’s my middle name. Einstein didn’t need the middle name for his principles. He was a genius.
Sadly he is simply mistaken here on many fronts. This just aint his bag but since QM is he NEEDS to believe consciousness can't work via computation to fit in with all the other work and wiring of his own wet neural network. Truth of the matter is we have less then 10 years TOPPPPPPS( its likely already in existence in a government basement somewhere) before Spiking Neural network programs clearly display consciousness. Those like him and many others will argue it cant be it is just performing calculations but at the end of the day that is ALL out brain is doing even if he cant see it.
@@seditt5146 You just claim that's all the brain is doing, but you have absolutely no understanding of anything at all.
He's spot on, in that a computer can never gain a consciousness, as being conscious is part of something that the computer, no matter how fast or well programmed, can never be. A processor, nor a motherboard, will never hold the two sides of the whole, the human minds duality; the consciousness and the unconsciousness. The latter is the only place that a computer can be similar, where memory, etc, is stored, and can be recollected from. The recollected memory is the same as a programs script, running until finished.
Damn straight! The Earth is round, because I saw it! The Sun is also very skittish and runs away when the evil moon chases it off too! Nothing can ever be expanded upon! Oh wait....
When computers begin to dream, .. we can talk!
One is chaotic and the other is not , may be a possibility.
Roger is 85.... hurry up with that Nobel prize!
The fact that he did not get one until now just shows how many other scientists do not agree with his theories - maybe he worked too long with Stuart Hameroff. ;) - this is not my theory - it's only an idea ;)
Pio chanel 2, hard to read the minds of the Nobel committee but history shows they prefer giving the prize to expermentalists.
done!
@@Piochanel2 This aged well.
I'm not sure about the others, but sure that Sir Penrose's consciousness is not just computation, it's much more.
I was struck by the following statement by Roger in the lecture:
"There is something going on in human understanding that is not computational."
which seemed rather profound, and caused me to think. I would like to suggest one possibility: that our minds are very good at manipulating symbols, and that these symbols can be associated with different levels, or contexts, of meaning. The ability to assign multiple meanings or contexts to symbols may be what currently distinguishes us from computers, and allows us to think “out of the box”. Am I describing “free association”? Am I describing the ability to “dream”?
+Douglas Smith Since it required several million years for the brain to develop consciousness, I would guess that he is just wrong. The time will come when Blade Runner will becomes reality.
+Arr Ere only active scientists solve problems scientifically. Since I am NOT a scientist, thinking about these issues from a general theoretical and rational point of view is the best we can do.
However being a programmer I could imagine a future computer system where symbols are assigned meanings, potentially multiple meanings, in a self learning environment.
+Arr Ere however you should not discount thought experiments, which are a very real and valid part of the scientific Process even though they don't involve actual experiments.
+Arr Ere however you should not discount thought experiments, which are a very real and valid part of the scientific Process even though they don't involve actual experiments.
Yes, but doesn't that just mean that we are exploring more possibilities? That could be computational too.
1:17:52 nail on the head. Machines can do stuff but it doesn't _mean_ anything to them.
Sure would like to see the illustrations!
Its a pity the camera man went to sleep, or whatever happened
Roger is awesome!!
Bless Roger Penrose.
I hear a little echo of Leibniz's consciousness not being mechanical in Penrose's statement that consciousness is not computational. But he certainly is looking for it in this material world and probably it is different from Leibniz's monads.
I sent a letter to the Kaplan couple with their math books about how mathematical induction was limited - and so glad to see Penrose corroborating my claim.
Just ran across this. Is there a version that shows the slides? In this one I saw the first one or two, then the camera settled on Sir Penrose's face.
what is that picture behind the statue in the very beginning of?
Very interesting the thing of relation between black holes and the recreation of the universe
Penose keeps looking at his notes, which are displayed on the screen to the audience but are not shown here.
+David Seed most of the important visual bits are in there
+David Seed This is more the fault of the humanities centre which organized this talk. They are probably not used to physics-oriented talks given by means of transparencies, and are probably more used to a sermon delivered from a lectern. So they simply didn't know where to look or what to focus the camera on. Throughout the lecture the "panel" is not even attempting to watch the screen, it seems, and are just sitting pretty as a board of directors watching the audience looking in the wrong direction. It is a bit like a group of tourists visiting a beauty spot and who then just watch the other tourists. Boy, what a good time we had ... !
Thanks a lot for this
VERY INTERESTING!
His mathematical argument at 15:19 agaist the computational nature of mind requires us to hold valid for certain the rules we transcend. This only proves a disjunction: either no set of computational rules of the adequate kind represents human intelligence or the rules representing human intelligence are such that we cannot hold them valid for sure.
lütfen türkçe altyazı eklermisiniz. teşekkürederim
Here Penrose holds that life and consciousness isn't computation. However Maldacena holds the whole universe is a QC function, implying life and consciousness must also be QC function. But this isn't normal computation, that cannot think.
amazing! 2:30 just made my day
Essentially his argument is that in a sense our brain is producing uncomputable numbers that have consequences on our conscious actions/thoughts/feelings/senses/intuition etc. whatever components of conciousness you can think of. Which is profound as that essentially makes conciousness impossible to simulate, a product of nature down to the chirality of the graviton, a kind of code of the universe which we see everywhere through the golden ratio now talked a lot in quantum gravity theories. I’m not sure if I agree with him, as uncomputable processes seem to me to be a consequence of non deterministic or stochastic processes, which are not the intention of conciousness. We could simply overlay such an entropic stochastic layer over the probabilities within a conscious simulation and it should effectively emulate this supposedly non emulatable process.
The chaotic, in some sense can not be lassoed in long enough to give the quantum a chance to predict the weather.
The conscious observer’s interpretation and thus response to the the paradoxically objective information presented cannot be objectively assessed by different observational vantage points - this uncertainty, I believe, is the x factor that gives the universe an un-computational future state, and thus gives it life, meaning, stakes and purpose…
Your conscious mind cannot be located observed or measured by any other - and vice Versa - and therefore cannot be controlled or manipulated by external forces - nor can it be simulated or predicted until the wave function collapses and it’s behaviour is expressed
That's not his argument at all. Watch the video and you'll see he even says he doesn't think the fact that processes in our universe approximate a continuum matters for the issues of the source of consciousness.
"ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to introduce someone who will introduce someone else who..."
Yup, I learned to fast forward until I see the actual lecturer appear 😊
17:26- galois, godel, or girdle?
godel
Ah ok. Thanks!
Is there a version that shows the slides?
I think the whole issue can be formulated in two questions, no need to invoke uncomputability:
1. If the brain is just a neural network, how can humans be so good at the *deductive* reasoning considering that neural nets are inductive reasoning machines (i.e., can learn patterns and reproduce them, but seem unable to operate with logical inference).
2. If the deductive reasoning capabilities of the brain is a product of Darwinian selection, at what point of the evolution it became advantageous and how it could have evolved so rapidly? Extra points: what's the evolutionary justification for humans to enjoy solving artificial deductive problems? (i.e., making up puzzles, playing chess, etc.)
Anyway, I don't agree with Penrose on everything but he makes much more sense to me than the singularity cult that became too annoying after the deep learning advances...
but good on sir roger, he doesn't shy away from the questions we all pay nasa fortunes to answer
Ok I am going to be honest.
Over my head!!
We are all made of protoconsciousness ❤
I couldn't follow him - he was all over the place,
but the scaling up of quantum experimentation
will tell us in the future as to whether or not the
quantum behavior ends at a certain point and
the classical, Newtonian behavior takes over.
All should be dictated by quantum interaction.
But then again, I am of the Lanza school of a
living universe composed of consciousness,
which is the creative ability of self awareness.
Penrose went to all this trouble to make slides and the camera doesn't show them much at the start
it is impossible, imho, to investigate for trying understanding the phenomenon of consciousness (as a property of highly developed living organisms = animate matter) without putting forward the development of the concept of an observer.
What a pity Prof. Penrose showed a way of doing exactly that. It seems nothing is impossible for a genius :-) His defence of objectivity of the physical world in the ocean of subjectivism is heroic.
@@klarakasova5960 sure, he is genius. as to life -- it's a unique physical process in the universe. and science investigates only the things, which objectively exist/happen. Earth life is the real and single observer of the observable universe.)
Two cameras, you guys.
The universe is a dream which is being observed by Consciousness which is Singular and Fundamental.
And it really loves dreaming up lots of violence and suffering. Consciousness is great.
I propose that consciousness is when an Inanimate object spontaneously begins to investigate itself and it’s ability.
❤
WORLDS SMARTEST COMMENT SECTION
;-)
Imagine being the guy whose job it is to put out water for the speakers and then Roger Penrose shows up with his transparencies. I would quit then and there.
I've always liked this guy.....a superior mathematical intellect for sure.....& a Horace Slughorn specie
Adfb
transparency (information) at 23.23 is he he away from mathematics unfortunately
a rose is a rose is a penrose kkkkkkkkkk
☺️
Man, I'm trying to figure out WTH he's talking about.
Very good. Keep trying.
Some of us are entirely TOO amazed with computers, and the predictions are highly optimistic concerning strong AI. It'll never happen with the computers we have now. These computers are fundamentally different than consciousness. Just the fact that we engineer computers to operate by insulating circuitry prevents these computers from creating a field; whereas with consciousness, studies suggests that it exists within a field, since it certainly doesn't exist in just the neurons. Two ideas have been put forward that are getting close to understanding consciousness - quantum theory of consciousness and electromagnetic theory of consciousness. Both are in the early stages but so far they're all I can see as pointing in the right direction - and both suggest a field. A field makes sense. A field allows for chaos where a computer as we know it does not. This is why something naively put forward like Kurzweil's idea of "uploading mind" just doesn't make sense when based on computation as we know it - until we understand MORE than just the physical brains (even using nanobots to map the brain, like Kurzweil suggests), we will get nowhere, simply because everyone knows mind is not brain (research has proven this, otherwise it would all be a very straightforward thing to recreate mind). When we understand mind, we will not only create mind and upload and download mind, but we'll travel stars effortlessly, by transmission (and probably metadata containing genetic information for nano-instantiation of a physical presense). It's all very scifi right now. Kurzweil makes his case for humanity getting to this stage within 200 years. That's ridiculous, even considering exponential increase of rate of development. We can only develop based on what we have and know now - and many assume that what we have and know now are sufficient, whereas it hasn't been proven that what we have and know now really IS sufficient, simply because not enough resources are being put towards studies of consciousness. Studies of consciousness have no readily apparent use to military or corporate interest (of course), and so... It's like reliance on energy paradigms that are more than 100 years old - no one's really funding research into Helium-3 fusion or moon mining because fat greedy pigs in power would lose a lot of money in oil and coal. Nuclear power is based on fission, which is dirty as hell, but it's still being pursued, with plans to build yet more nuclear plants. It isn't that fusion hasn't worked, it's only that EFFICIENT fusion hasn't been achieved. Sad. Luckily, quantum computing has interested government, because some very smart chap framed the idea around the fact that a quantum computer could easily crack ANY current encryption with ease, haha. But who knows, maybe quantum computing will offer viable ways to pursue strong AI.
a computer playing chess does not resemble Consciousness at all. It is merely a set of instructions loaded into the program in order to do certain things and certain things are done. Algorithms not consciousness. if you don't start off right you'll never get it
in universe main power is conciousness of unconciousness
knowledge captived by conciousness of conciousness is very limited in universe
because universe is dominated and fonctioned by the language of conciousness of unconciousness that conciousness of conciousness is yet doesnt know this language
the solution is to invent the physics of metaphysics
A Lot of brave QM people. Lol
Terrible mistake to focus on Sir Penroses face all the time, lots of missing informations hance this perfect teacher
Shut up.
Bring on Penrose
You guys can talk when you have something new to tak about.
wrr
🍅🍅
Is it me, or is Penrose barking up the wrong tree with his hypothesis that consciousness is non-computable? He suggests Goedel's statement allows you to "transcend the rules, so in a sense it's showing the power of human understanding." That seems at odds with most descriptions of the Theorem, as he says himself, and he fails to establish that there's anything particularly remarkable about human understanding. There's just a vague suggestion that it's transcendent in some way (as I've heard him describe in more detail regarding our ability to do things in chess that computers can't, which I also doubt).
At around min 25 he says "human understanding doesn't seem to be something computational, because there is no set of rules that can give you what we can achieve by human understanding." This seems entirely unsupported, or do I just not understand (compute!) the point he's making? Can anyone help?
He then considers how Turing seems to have thought that it's not a problem, because humans make mistakes, and he reads something, presumably of Turing's, "...if a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be expected to be intelligent [...] these theorems say nothing about how much intelligence may be displayed if a machine makes no pretence of infallibility." That seems perfectly reasonable. Humans aren't infallible.
Penrose says it's easy to make your computer make mistakes, but he doesn't see why it would be an advantage to make mistakes, and he therefore disagrees with Turing on that. But this is silly. It's not about it being an *advantage* to make mistakes, just that if we make some, we're not infallible, and therefore we can be expected to be intelligent. Our computational intelligence does not break Goedel's Theorem. He appears to think this is impossible on the grounds that mathematicians can correct their mistakes, but that's not the issue; mathematicians (or anyone) may not be able to correct all mistakes (I would say almost certainly cannot), and therefore are not infallible.
Somehow, a cartoon of a mathematician in danger from being eaten by a tiger while his fellows are growing crops is supposed to indicate that there isn't any massively complicated algorithm at work in evolution, and - QED - "something non-computational is going on". This is utter nonsense. Evolution is a kind of computation. It is the hardware of biological systems doing what they do (and all the non-biological environment it is part of). It doesn't have to have some other algorithm built into an organism, as he seems to imply. The algorithm of reality, including the process of evolution of organisms, is autopoietic, and, having built brains (because they reproduce genes better) they become part of the program and run their own fallible algorithms (indeed, much like machine learning, from developing heuristics from experience). But it's not a didactic mathematical formula that's applied externally, as algorithms we normally describe are, so not a model or simulation. Reality just IS one massive "computation". Bits get moved.
He even seems to suggest that evolution shouldn't have produced mathematicians, as the cartoon shows, because they'll get eaten by predators (unless this is merely a joke?). Again, I have no idea what would make him say that. The farmer or other worker is just as endangered as the mathematician, and mathematicians arrived on the scene because they could instruct the building of better tools and fences, and measure by the sun's movements when the farmer should sow his seeds.
If I'm right, all that follows, trying to identify what might be physical but non-computational, is irrelevant, and through all this he seems to have prepared the way for the over-enthusiasm and charm of the fantasist Hameroff to lure him down the rabbit hole of the microtubules. But all this could be me doing a Dunning Kruger, and Penrose just a rather poor speaker.
It's not just you, unfortunately. There are a lot of goofballs in this comment section who think the collection of memory states in their laptop has the potential to be conscious.
The camera man is a complete fool.
Can a computer be logical?
Behold the difference between the written and spoken word. I have just watched three Penrose lectures on RUclips. Shambolic, just simply shambolic presentations. Give me his books any day.
I heartily disagree that the presentation is shambolic.
Infinity is the opposite of physics.
Is there anyone on the planet who understands what Roger Penrose is talking about? Has he even mentioned the word consciousness
Yes and yes.
my Dog is Intelligent -- but she doesn't understand why things are as they are... Always concerned and figuring. If consciousnes is the Creator -- how can the Creator define itself without sounding like a foolish boy trying to impress a a Gal? Ahhh! Humanity - what a beuatiful expression of consciousness
Consciousness like intelligence is on a sliding scale. We get dumb dogs and bright dogs, same goes for people.
Hummm dont think Professor Penrose has shown a good description correlating math, physics with consciousness..sorry!
He wasn't trying to convince you, Deep Recce. He convinced the rest of us.
The dude is wrong about what can be accomplished by a computer of the future.
The issue of determining the actual basis of consciousness is far more interesting than what computers can do.
not no more bruv
Talk tooooooo much
This man is unbelievably fidgety and is a terrible speaker in terms of connecting with his audience. I dont think he looked up to make eye contact with anyone anymore than a few times throughout the presentation. It is as if he is speaking to himself.
and your point is?
because of his age he is partially blind
I think he's a great speaker.
Intellectual laziness forces people to learn everything they know about this mind property from people like Mr Penrose. This is really sad.
Nickolas Gaspar: how do u know that people learn everything about this from Penrose? R u saying people shouldnt hear him on this AT all?
chf gbp I mean that people are satisfied with one speculative hypothesis and they don't bother to check the science of the field. Penrose is proposing an idea from his domain(physics). Mind properties are studied by other domains.
@@nickolasgaspar9660 And how do you know that other people aren't checking out these other domains?
@@johnmiller7453 the problem is with the auxiliary principles that people use to interpret what they learn from any domain john. These principles are Unscientific and they are in direct conflict with basic rules, principles and criteria of logic.
@@nickolasgaspar9660 What better qualification than being a mathematical physicist to do that, though, with the “Mind” being a product of material, physical processes and properties. Are you saying “Mind” is something beyond physics and beyond physical?
Wow... he's a robo-racist. He's on the wrong side of history. Motherboard help any sentient robots he accidentally makes.
The problem here is that Penrose himself doesn't even know what consciousness is at any level whatsoever. He argues from an ignorant perspective to be perfectly honest. His answer to the question at the end about neural networks says it all
"I think you are better of not thinking they are conscious"
He is actually trying to work on solving that problem. Unlike almost everybody else. He is absolutely right that it makes no sense to believe a neural network is conscious just because of "pattern matching".
Wait? Is this guy actually considered one who gets it? Oh my, continual defining and suggesting that Consciousness is evoked from Matter? 7 minutes into his lecture - trying to prove Intellegence requires understanding which requires consciousness... Im hoping he's kidding? I mean this a apparently a place of Higher Learning? Or not? That might require understanding which might require Intellegence -- Clearly not alive here -- Consciousness still loves him enought to talk this Ying Yang and give me a good laugh!
+patrick duggan I agree it dismal to start off with consciousness is a result of physical activity. Consciousness is primal and the mind divides wholeness into parts.
+patrick duggan Intelligence implies understanding... How can someone understand something if he's not conscious? You can't have understanding without consciousness.
This terrible presentation makes a genius look like an old fart !
To bad he is completely wrong. This entire talk could be boiled down to, I dont understand these things hence they must not work that way. Fact of the matter is the brain does computer like a computer but the only difference is it operates on streams of 1s and 0s up to a given potential before passing that entire stream as a single 1 while the whole rest of the time while it is building that potential it triggers a 0. We have recreated these with much success in Neural network applications which are sensory such as having a drone fly itself or discrimination of various sounds from microphone input all the way to balancing of mobile robots and it is likely Boston dynamics bots use the Spiking neural network approach which quite accurately simulates brain activity with the only real difference is overall structure of the neural network being less complex than the brain with our brains having many various feedback loops and regulation systems we currently do not understand or use in it all. Sorry Roger but you are out of your wheelhouse here and it is a clear example of the old saying when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
You are so wrong it's not even funny.
If somebody hooked every neuron in your brain up to a robot, so that the robot behaved exactly as you are behaving, a goofball like yourself would have to conclude that the robot is equally conscious as yourself. It's obviously not just about a complex arrangement of states that produces some intelligent behavior. Get your head out of your *** people. There is some physical basis to consciousness which as of now has not been understood. Penrose is one of the only people in the world, apparently, trying to think about this. And we've got the make-a-quick-buck LLM people running around trying to give their computer rights.