As Arcanum puts it, "And now for something completely ridiculous, Stuart Hameroff." Hameroff's talk is noteworthy for the ridiculous concept, the speed at which he talks, and the reactions to his talk. Fortunately, Hameroff is followed by someone well worth viewing, V.S. Ramachandran.
The talks comprised session 4 of the Beyond Belief 2006 conference: "Science, Religion, Reason and Survival"
4 comments:
One wonders whether yours is merely a pseudonym for Hameroff-ite.
Admittedly, the academic establishment sometimes resists what later proves to be true. Most neuroscientists and physicist think that such is not the case here.
When it comses to explaining consciousness, Penrose should stick to physics and Hameroff to passing gas.
Further, there is nothing obvious about linking quantum indeterminacy to organized "organismic behavior."
The element of neural behavior that could be misleadingly labelled "indeterminate" results from neural complexity and technical, experimental difficulties. This is utterly different than quantum indeterminacy, which reflects physicists' probabilistic characterization of quantum states.
Quantum states operate beneath the level of chemical interactions, which is why quantum chemistry is a legitimate area within the field of chemistry. This is helpful, for example in understanding neutrophilic substitution reactions or intermolecular interactions, but it is many orders of magnitude too fine-grained to explain consciousness.
Linking unrelated "puzzle pieces" together is never a step in the right direction, but thanks for the link.
I have moved Heresiarch's comment, stripped of its link to his site, to here.
Why?
Heresiarch appears to have been promoting his website. This is not normally something that bothers me. However, a quick blogsearch revealed that Heresiarch appears to troll for the P-H topic.
I am dubious about anyone who hides their IP address, so I conclude that he may be directly connected with Hameroff, who is a prof at University of Arizona. I say this particularly because soon after the comment, someone in Mesa used google-reader to view this site. (I have not promoted this site and it gets very little traffic, largely I'm sure because there are happily much better neuroscience blogs out there – where do they find the time?) Do I sniff a sockpuppet?
If a scientist has a valid theory that is likely to ultimately yield experimental validation, then that scientist has no need to self-promote across non-peer-reviewed websites and blogsites. This misuse of the Internet is employed by IDiocy-promoters such as Dembski.
Another parallel with ID creationism lies in the fact that the Orch OR theory has been out there for more than a decade without validation.
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