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| Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness
Paperback
Author: Roger Penrose
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date: 1996-08-22
ISBN-10: 0195106466
ISBN-13: 9780195106466
List Price: $23.95
Average Customer Rating:
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A New York Times bestseller when it appeared in 1989, Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind was universally hailed as a marvelous survey of modern physics as well as a brilliant reflection on the human mind, offering a new perspective on the scientific landscape and a visionary glimpse of the possible future of science. Now, in Shadows of the Mind, Penrose offers another exhilarating look at modern science as he mounts an even more powerful attack on artificial intelligence. But perhaps more important, in this volume he points the way to a new science, one that may eventually explain the physical basis of the human mind.
Penrose contends that some aspects of the human mind lie beyond computation. This is not a religious argument (that the mind is something other than physical) nor is it based on the brain's vast complexity (the weather is immensely complex, says Penrose, but it is still a computable thing, at least in theory). Instead, he provides powerful arguments to support his conclusion that there is something in the conscious activity of the brain that transcends computation--and will find no explanation in terms of present-day science. To illuminate what he believes this "something" might be, and to suggest where a new physics must proceed so that we may understand it, Penrose cuts a wide swathe through modern science, providing penetrating looks at everything from Turing machines (computers programmed from artificial intelligence) to the implications of Godel's theorem maintaining that conscious thinking must indeed involve ingredients that cannot adequately be stimulated by mere computation. Of particular interest is Penrose's extensive examination of quantum mechanics, which introduces some new ideas that differ markedly from those advanced in The Emperor's New Mind, especially concerning the mysterious interface where classical and quantum physics meet. But perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in Shadows of the Mind is Penrose's excursion into microbiology, where he examines cytoskeletons and microtubules, minute substructures lying deep within the brain's neurons. (He argues that microtubules--not neurons--may indeed be the basic units of the brain, which, if nothing else, would dramatically increase the brain's computational power.) Furthermore, he contends that in consciousness some kind of global quantum state must take place across large areas of the brain, and that it within microtubules that these collective quantum effects are most likely to reside.
For physics to accommodate something that is as foreign to our current physical picture as is the phenomenon of consciousness, we must expect a profound change--one that alters the very underpinnings of our philosophical viewpoint as to the nature of reality. Shadows of the Mind provides an illuminating look at where these profound changes may take place and what our future understanding of the world may be.
No other book tackles this subject so clearly
| Customer Rating: | Just opening this book to a random page and reading that page - sets one's mind on fire.
The basic thread running throughtout the book is that of 'what is computable and what is not'. The process of 'Understanding' as humans know it - Penrose argues - is NON-COMPUTABLE. He provides brilliant examples of how computers can 'solve' any problem - without 'understanding' what they are solving (e.g. DeepThought and the simple chess move which stumped it).
This theme in itself would make this a worthwhile read. However - this book offers further gems from Quantum Physics - with perhaps the simplest and best explanation of lesser known quantum paradoxes such as the 'delayed choice' experiments. Godel's theorem is also dealt with lucidly.
Few authors can tackle the issue of 'mind and conciousness' without stepping into some mystical/unscientific goo. Penrose stays scientific - and works from facts and well known experiments.
I do not know of any other book that tackles this subject so clearly - and in such an exciting fashion. From my perspective - this clearly deserves 5 stars. |
Physics of the mind
| Customer Rating: | Penrose, while more famous, does not do as well at popularizing the heady physics and mathematics in this area as Barrow in Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being and Tipler in The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (see my reviews there). His reasoning is too tortured and formula-heavy for me, and I consider myself an advanced popular reader.
However, he does reach the deep conclusion that "whatever brain activity is responsible for consciousness . . . It must depend upon a physics that lies beyond computational simulation (p. 411)." Instead of resorting to the mind as mystical or mysterious, Penrose postulates that consciousness, while incalculable, is still physical, perhaps in an interaction in the brain between classical physics and quantum physics not yet discovered or understood. Penrose points to the possibility of "microtubules" (part of the cytoskeleton that exist even in single-cell paramecium--and seem to give that cell some level of understanding!) that form neurons at the quantum level being the answer to this current quandary:
"Accordingly, the neuron level of description that provides the currently fashionable picture of the brain and mind is a mere shadow of the deeper level of cytoskeletal action--and it is at this deeper level where we must seek the physical basis of mind!"
That Penrose only gets to this statement on p. 376 of this heavy tome is part of the problem with this book. |
Mind's Shadows illuminated
| Customer Rating: | Another stunning book by Sir Roger Penrose. It's really a five star book discounted here by one star because those lacking physics and mathematics will find some passages hard work, even though the author is being as kind as possible in a book of this calibre.
The book is a neat sequel to his "The Emperor's New Mind", extending the central theme that our little-understood human consciousness allows us to think way beyond the computational and mindless world of artificial intelligence.
In doing so, we have a marvellous survey of classical and modern physics, including the mysteries of the quantum world.
Sir Roger raises the question 'Will we ever be able to truly understand our own Nature-provided brain and its processes in terms of our own science?', and argues that, somewhere out there beyond our present reach, there is a unifying Platonic view of the Universe.
This book is a tour de force on several planes. Highly recommended. |
Penrose has an agenda
| Customer Rating: | Roger Penrose is confident that consciousness can't be explained without some kind of "new physics". He's not very explicit here, as to what this "new physic" should be.
Penrose spends a lot of effort describing paradoxes of quantum physics, so we should assume that "new physics" would have something to do with those paradoxes. He also spends a lot of effort trying to prove that consciousness can't be produced by any kind of Turing machine. He presses this point very hard, giving examples of non-computable problems, but I do not find him to be really persuasive.
Here's a good example of his style, on pg. 290: "I am going to suppose that detector itself can also be assigned a quantum state... This is the usual practice in quantum theory. It is not altogether clear to me that it really makes sense to assign a quantum-mechanical description to a classical-level object, but this is not normally questioned in the discussions of this kind."
What's this "not normally questioned"? I don't think he can persuade anybody with this kind of non-logic. Another problem with his book - Roger Penrose is really fighting windmills. He has invented some stupid AI person who says "ok, here's our wonderful Big Iron and our wonderful team of hackers - they would feed their Beautiful Macaroni Code into this Big Iron - and voilà! you got a real smart strong AI robot to chat with about everything you like. No Turing test needed"
Whereas everybody in AI, strong or not, understands that just as life itself is a process - so is an intellect, and consciousness and awareness. It has to grow, and develop, and learn. May be it can grow and develop fast, but still - it needs to grow, and learn. And yes - make mistakes, like Turing said.
The book is very vague (except chapters on Goedel theorem, where Penrose at least stays within his area of expertise). Also it reads more like a religious tract where the author has a preconception and would try anything and everything to confirm it.
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An illuminated exposition on the nature of consciousness and how it emerges from certain properties of the nervous system
| Customer Rating: | | This book explains how personal consciousness develops from processes of the nervous system. There are structures along nerves and brain cells that have superconductive properties which can process information consistent with how the mind works. The magician will gain an understanding of what the aura is and how magical phenomena follow from the nature of these properties of the nervous sytem. |
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