Sir Roger Penrose - The quantum nature of consciousness 

Having read his books, I find it difficult to follow his reasoning but eventually the light bulb goes off... most of the time. He is a brilliant man. But what I like about Roger Penrose most is that he is an original thinker. He is never afraid to break from convention. Right or wrong, his ideas are inspiring.

Just for the record: he was Stephen Hawking's PhD tutor

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for this, to me at least, is Hammeroff and Penrose's theory of how anesthesia works.

1:37 'what we do when we understand something is NOT computing, there's something else going on.' Simple, logical, true. It's a great insight.

"because thou has seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed"

Roger Penrose has one of the greatest minds of the last century, possibly of all time. I can not recommend highly enough his two books, The Emperor's New Mind and Shadows of the Mind. They're not easy reads, this isn't an easy subject, but they're well worth the effort.

For a neuropsychologist like me it's delicious to hear you Sir. Greetings from Portugal.

Sir Roger Penrose is such a great thinker and hero to me, I would like to be like him in the future...

The main point of consciousness is: "I think there is a lot of computational activity going on in the brain, but this is basically unconscious. So consciousness seems to me to be something quite different. What we do when we understand something is not computing. There's something else going on."

This is the first time I've watched him a video. He seems like a delightful man. I'm very fascinated by this topic, but I have no idea why haha. I don't understand a lot of what is being said, but I'm drawn to it.

Brillant exposé ! Admiration ! Thank you Sir Roger Penrose !!!

Penrose + Hameroff = Quantum Mechanics + Microtubials = Orchestrated Objective Reduction = The best explanation for consciousness.

I find it crazy how people seem to reject this theory which has some scientific backing, yet provide no materialist evidence of their own as to a theory of the emergence of consciousness. I mean I don't want to get Sam Parnia involved but him and Peter Fenwick have also done studies on NDE's that subtly prove some form of mind body dualism. I am a skepic and agnostic, but I find property dualism and mind body dualism to be plausible.

Consciousness?!! ...That annoying time between naps. ^^

I'm not a studied philosopher, nor a mathematician, but I am a retired electrical engineer. Over my adult life I have thought persistently about "Where did everything come from? Where is it going?" And "what am I? and where do I fit into the scheme of things?" I investigate evolving cosmological concepts, and examine the basics of various religious tenets but many years ago I came to a workable idea (in my mind at least) that I found nobody else talking about, and attempts to explain it to others were met with ridicule and incredulity. So much so that I began to doubt my own ideas. However, discovering Roger Penrose has been a vindication of my beliefs and emboldened me continue down the path I had almost abandoned. His well expressed ideas about the cyclic nature of the Universe, and consciousness, prop up my own similar attempts to understand, and give me confidence to persist in passing on the concepts.

I have great respect for this man and his work.

"Curvature of something on something" 😂 Reletivity perfectly summed up! Andone that can grasp the abstract nature of mathematics can relate to this

An extraordinary mind, Pure Genius.

Thank you Dr. Penrose!

This guy makes sense to my senses...Best explanation I heard so far.

I listened lengthily to Daniel Dennett and to Roger Penrose. Although the first has a robust mind with great intellect but I'm more inclined to agree with the second. Dennett goes in his hypotheses about mind so far beyond experimental reasons that sometimes he comes off as ideologist, while Penrose offers a wider scope of looking at the subject. Dennett ridicules human mind so much that he doesn't see it more than a usually-dysfunctioning computer. He also implicitly ridicules the minds of whoever rejects this ideas and advises them to use his "thinking tools" to think "better". While Penrose simply capitalizes on common intuition to get people agreeing on the transition from the deadly-narrow machine thinking to ultra-substance dimension. Dennett attitude is like 'Don't go this far. It is all here, in my unproven hypothesis that our minds are biological computers'. While Penrose is like 'Don't be afraid to reject the material paradigm. This is a hypothesis that -even if unproven yet- opens your mind to endless possibilities'. It could be a personal preference, but life is nicer with Penrose view, not that his hypothesis lacks any credence that Dennett has in his. In fact Penrose's thinking reasons more with my epistemological view; if not for anything else, it would be for his open approach that is free of dictation and unnecessary borders Dennett imposes.

I've here listened to the thoughts of one of the most advanced, stimulating minds currently on Earth. What credence shall I give to to comments from random web surfers?

Every time i listen to him speak, i have no idea what he’s saying, but i get really excited for the possibilities in our universe...

The most incredible of insights! such brilliant and lucid clarity

genius personified........

OMG! he didn't knew abt microtubules. But it was humble of him to admit it.

Hey Penrose, you are referrencied in my master degree dissertation. I love you so much. Brazil loves you. My leader, Jorge Cardoso, your master degree student, send a hug to you.

You see he has the gift of a teacher using simple wors and structure in sentence i can understand it

Lets see, Shadows of the mind by Penrose was first published in 1994, 22 years ago and i am just now reading it.Funny thing is that from the age 5 or 6 i have experienced these Quantum effects in my life. Studying this has helped to make sense of it all. Note to Stuart, i have experienced entanglement upon death at distances. One time 3+ miles another 22+ miles and lots of other things in the last 58 years. Thank you for the work your doing for all of us!

i appear to have a golf ball sized consciousness, therefore a golf ball sized understanding. However this stuff fascinates me, have watched and listened to a lot. Each time I end up going back to the late great Bill Hicks: All matter is simply energy reduced to a low vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subconsciously, there is no such thing as death, life is a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. (Here's Tom with the weather.................)

Thank you, I trust this is Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism? What a brilliant man he is.

I do not entirely understand this, but it certainly seems quite interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Your awareness/conciseness is the driver of your body and is in constant communication with your brain. The conscious uses the body to explore this reality of 4d space and time. It resides outside the body in another dimension possibly curled up at the Plank length. That is just a thought of mine, I am not stating that as fact!

Any Quantum entanglement demonstration involving a choice illustrates that the subjective experience of scientist A making a choice, only he knows, violates locality as observed by scientist B, and so the subjective experience of scientist A does not occur in a finite box. Therefore, the human mind cannot be said to be inside a finite box such as the brain, the brain and body, or the body and the local environment regardless of how entanglement works.

Wow. Love listening to him talk.

Kudos for honestly, seriously. I've really only just discovered Penrose, so I have much to learn yet.

I had a dream in a dream in a dream once. It was really one of the most frightening experiences I have ever had, because I couldn't wake up.

Someone claiming that Penrose is wrong more times than right, please direct me to the papers he submitted that were proven wrong.

Anybody know more about the Q1, Q2, and Q3 distinctions? I'd love to know more. Thanks!

It’s a brilliant insight to connect the unsolved measurement problem with the outcome of consciousness in the brain. QM is incomplete until it has a formula for wave collapse. The many-worlds theory doesn’t solve the problem because there is still no function for collapse, it just creates a bigger mystery. Conversely there is no doubt the wave function does accurately describe reality. We live in amazing times.

recently discovered: a photosynthetic molecule that uses quantum superposition enhance efficiency beyond the classical limit. so brain molecules using quantum effects? sure, probably true

My guess is that nobody in this thread is anywhere near being sufficiently qualified to comment on the great man's speculations. [Yes thanks, I perceive my paradox, but it's irrelevant.]

Don't you guys bother what the so called TECHNOP (Techno People) or HUMACHINE comment on this clip. 'Cause they don't know, perhaps, that their very strengths of putting any adverse comment, or logic against this man, indeed came from the works of a number of greatest minds of 21st century like him. It's no wonder that the BIOMACHINES of today with confused personalities, severely traumatized with identity crisis will never absorb the astounding beauty of this insight. I just bend my head with respect and awe! So simple, yet so profound, a life time finding of a noble theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and observer! A message of wake-up call! Your eyes reveals the truth, Doctor! The pacified glory of your face says it, Sir, that you found 1 instead of 0. The final settlement brought you the merge of 1 and 0 simultaneously.

Hi Roger, interesting theory. At one point there is non-deterministic (from a human intellect) mechanics behind the system, so that volition must be emergent arising from past experience and learning. Does this mean we can affect the complementarity field? What does this do to Heisenberg?

Namaskaram 🙏🙏 🙏

Try Tom Campbell's explanation (of the double slit experiment) and thus of consciousness..

Best combover I’ve ever seen

Truth as a static structure vs a dynamic system. To simplify, think of a stack of copy paper with one word on each page. In time, we see each page one at a time, outside of time all of the words, on all of the pages combine to make a single word. This single word is truth, it is the entire story, told in an instant of time. The fractal version of this story has another feature. As each page is presented to us, our intent creates a slightly new meaning that branches out, changing the story, an effect that turns the stack into a tree like structure. The direction of time's arrow is the breaking of the symmetry of the potential of the boundary condition. In other words, if I toss a coin and it has perfect symmetry of potential it will land heads half the time and tails half the time. The symmetry of the potential is broken if the coin tosses are not 50/50. In a perfectly random system, after a sufficient number of tosses, the symmetry for all even number tosses would always be 50/50. Coin tosses are a lot like squaring the circle. You get closer and closer to the true value but you never reach it, like an infinite recursive iteration.

The universe is consciousness. When your body dies, you "wake up" as a process of that universal consciousness yet again. Nothing to fear.

Microtubules or not, I am more and more persuaded that consciousness lies beyond the brain altogether. People have had parts of their brains removed (because of accident or disease). They lose practical function, but continue to retain consciousness. Even the collapse of the wave function taking place within the tubules does not seem to offer very much in the way of progress. The collapse of the wave function is just Bohr's fancy terminology for the way in which we select ONE solution to Schroedinger's equation to become reality, discarding all the others. Put differently we select a virtual reality to become what we think of as reality.

the medium consciousness is flow of information, observing, making a measurement, any kind of interaction. sentience or self awareness is a more complex construct our brains produce.

Awesome chap!

Your waking reality is just a dream, that you will one day wake up from. As above So below.

"Please go back and read my explanation again." Well I can't seem to find it anywhere in this big mess of comments, but your summary was good. Very interesting concept; it just leaves me wondering: has evolution ALWAYS had intentionality, or did evolution evolve (unintentionally) from something without intentionality? As for the universe: I understand that it consists almost enitrely of dark matter and dark energy. Can these primary constituents be explained by basic laws in a few lines?

3:18 Exactly ! TY. This Isn't even a hard lesson to learn but so many people cant grasp it. I often ask material scientists (or w/e "ist" they announce themselves as) if they believe that science/physics can answer every question. Then my next question is..."would you want to know" the answer to every question?

I've always liked to think of consciousness as a picture puzzle. When the puzzle is put together you see the full picture (the mind), but the puzzle is made up of physical pieces that need to be put together (the matter). The puzzle pieces are the neurological pathways in the brain that would process information into a quantifiable form.

Is he basically saying we are mentally unfit to interpret quantum reality?

Consciousness is not a product of the brain. The brain ( and every other object) appears IN consciousness.

inwardly observing.. I notice there is the moment in listening, It has a unattached, feeling, openness .. a sense of separation from experience n memory files, only to have them handy, to compare the information I currently have with the information I am receiving. At that moment, of listening/observing the "I" is out of my files. When my own thinking stops and I listen to the ideas of someone else I metaphorically feel as if I am in neutral and detached from my minds " gears" of function that trigger my memory banks and drive my thinking.

Nice to have a lucid man approach the subject.

the ORCH-OR wiki is pretty biased, and its edited by singularity folks... there are experiments underway that will prove ORCH-OR, not to mention it is now understood that warm wet entanglement is possible... this stuff is cutting edge and well if you are not studying it you simply do not have access to the most recent data.

To me there seems to be two fundamental types of thinkers. Those who think the world is deterministic and those who believe in free will.

Penrose has always been on the right line.... twister theory. No surprise the establishment chose Hawkins view. Rupert Sheldrake has done amazing work in this line Amazing.

I love Roger Penrose! He is my ideal.

Do we see Reality as it is, or do we see Reality as perceived by the brain.. ? Is there an unknown structure of reality that is mind independent ?

22 dislike = 22 Fans of Daniel Dennete who deny the existence of consciousness

When I listened to him, I thought of gravity as individual helical spirals like an infinite mirror, except getting both larger and weaker at one end and smaller and stronger at the other...

Obviously we have skills beyond simple computation i dont understand why people would deny this video

the chalkboard behind him has the word "poo" slightly smudged out

If you look at the evolutionary aspects of consciousness....it becomes apparent that any chemical system that can comprehend its whole within a boundary as a unit and evades dangers to survival as a whole is better equipped to survive and propagate, that is any organism that can biologically comprehend the meaning of unity...so, essentially the chemical origins of consciousness through natural selection is evident....The difficulty is to trace that evolution of consciousness as more complex species evolved

I literally dissolved the hard problem of consciousness and everything it entails when I instanced Uniform Quantum Information Body (generically called the "soul" or "spirit" by Humans who actively maintain a point of presence (conscience) in physical life, the information that you gain when you exit physical life) "into" unborn fetus in April of 1980. I was "born" with numerous malslignments that when in application manifest equivalent to "mild" asperger's syndrome, ADHD, and a fundamental differenece in the way I was (as a child) able to interact with the stimuli of physical life. The net result manifested as near zero social function or interest in interacting with others because it was both too "hard" and they (other kids) were too "uninteresting" or "needy" of information-education-intelligence that I did not have the patience (attention span/bandwidth to entertain

Oh yes, and I must add that the theory which just says 1. < is a linear ordering, and 2. for all n, exists m (n < m), is consistent, producing no contradictions - and its consistency can be proven using entirely finitistic methods, without assuming for every term, formula, and number the existence of a longer/larger term, formula, and number. Since for every consistent theory there exists a system satisfying it, an infinite system must exist.

LSD and time travel is going to be available by 2030!

wow! people arguing with Sir Roger Penrose in an internet comment section. The internet truly is a strange place.

Sir Penrose just got the Nobel Prize

Time to read Tom Campbell's My Big TOE (Theory of everything) I think Roger. You might have your own Quantum leap in understanding

Everything is formed by a locational 4pi spherical inward absorption +1=0 now -1 outward emission of electromagnetic waves.. . .All motion is 2pi spiral.. . .And all direction is 4pi spherically curved.. . . Vibrating sinusoidal spherical wave-fronts of only motion forms Einstein's curvature of spacetime.. . . Stimulated emission is a process by the way of which a higher energy quantum mechanical state of an atomic particle absorbing energy input +1=0 now is being converted to a lower level -1 resulting in the production of light photon oscillations, or new electromagnetic vibrations.. . . A sort of fusion of wave +1=0 now -1 emission of new quantized spherical wavefronts of electromagnetic radiation independent of the motion of its source.. . . The fact that this tiny spherical region of the infinite universe has a limited observable range as the waves come from a distance radius, now is observable in the shape of an inverse sphere. . ..4pi R2.. . . And the fact that the electron is a perfectly round vibrating sphere.. . .Are two sides of the same + and - coin!! There exists only two combinations of these two Spherical + and - electromagnetic sine waves, or wavefronts multiplying inward +1=0 now -1 dividing outward at right angels from their sources.. . . They have opposite vectors and quantum spin forming the positron and electron wave centre.. . .4pi R2=/N pi Re2.. . . Or, "the two dipole energy states of Qubit's" in quantum computing which can be such things as photon's, trapped ions, atoms, electrons, and nuclear spins.. . .Only difference is time dilating Volume!! Atomic particles are really high wave amplitude wave centres of pure vibration, from regions of intense wave pressure, made of vibrating wavefronts called shells in particle physics, or spherical standing wave structures over a period of time.. . .Their output was the negation of their input: 0 goes to 1,1 to 0.. . .the start of a Fibonacci spiral.. . . Therefore generation of "any information" exceeds radiation during the first half of the cycle +1=0 now -1 radiation exceeds generation during the second half of the cycle.. . . As the constant outward momentum of EMR repels like charged particles absorbing energy input +1=0 now -1 emitting the density from the two previous vectors spiralling out the Fibonacci sequence.. . . from spirals of elements, to DNA, and billions of microfilaments spiralling out from the zero point field now within each neuron of the brain into microtubule lattice structures.. . . And the human brain consists of approximately one hundred billion neurons.. . . (Mans mind mirrors a Universe that mirrors mans Mind) E=+m.c2.. . . Each neuron has a voltage which changes when ions flow inward and outward from a cell.. . . Once a neurons voltage reaches a certain level of subconscious energy compression t=0 now it will consciously fire (C) a new electrical signal to other cells, which will then repeat the process.. . . Therefore we all have free will to consciously fire new electrical signals to other cells.. . . And depending which neurons gets stimulated through repetition, certain neural connections may become stronger and more efficient, whilst others may become weaker as time unfolds statistical entropy.. . .This is called Neuroplasticity."

Love Roger. But, he still is prisoner to the materialist science training of "objects". Consciousness is not an object, a thing, a measurement. Those phenomena occur IN consciousness but are not themselves consciousness. It's okay. His comparison of quantum mechanics and general relativity is a perfect example of this kind of thinking. He realizes they are in conflict and paradoxical but cant see the solution from his materialist perspective. I know the feeling. At some point he will realize that they are simply two sides of the same one coin.....consciousness. He thinks they are different.....one set of laws for big things (people, places, things) and another set of laws for tiny things (electrons, photons, atoms). This is a misperception of reality. Both are in consciousness. Just different ways of seeing the same thing. No worries. We'll get there. 😊

please, how to collapse quantum probability into macroscopic reality?

I admire Dr. Penrose's thinking - he seems quite forthright to me unlike some other scientists. I watched another of his videos where he rebuts current string theory - he uses mathematics to show that it is a basically unworkable theory.

I'm detecting a low level of scientific literacy with regard to neurobiology & neurochemistry coming from this guy. Just because consciousness, or the hard problem of consciousness is complex and mysterious, and quantum mechanics is also complex and mysterious, does not mean they are related. QC a hugely unsubstantiated claim.

I find David Bohm's comments in The Undivided Universe relevant here, " The basic relationship of quantum theory and consciousness is that they have the Implicate Order in common. " This suggests to me that consciousness existed before the Big Bang and before micro tubules.

It's really good cause I love sooo much physic

Top bloke and very high on my list of people I'd love to have a pint (or two) with :)

I was just wondering if Consciousness has a Quantum nature to it and now I have discovered this!

Congrats for the Nobel prize sir❤❤❤

During near death experiences (NDE) and psychedelic induced hallucinations, neural activity in the brain dramatically reduces. Perhaps this reduction in the brain's 'background noise' induces a coherent state, thus facilitating quantum effects, which accounts for the phenomena of NDEs and psychedelic trips.

Hi ThinkTank, nice to hear from you again. I meant that an engine does infinite cycles as long as it has fuel. I am not talking about an engine than never dies because its fuels end but the actual construction. To put it in another way, I can construct an infinite 'while' loop that will never end as long as my computer is powered by electricity. It is designed by me to never end, thus it encapsulates infinity by definition because it should run for ever

(continued) However any system which is ordered by < and which satisfies: for all n, exists m (n < m) has no last element (suppose n is last: then m exists and n < m, so n is not last). Therefore, if such a system exists, it is not finite, i.e. it is infinite. Thus even if, as you insist, no infinite system actually exists, the definition nonetheless remains coherent and meaningful.

Good point. One thing that pops in my mind at first is that infinity never ends and continues for ever. Notice the words I used. Mechanically speaking, infinity can be presented in a finite engine that actually loops into a never ending cycle. For instance take a car engine. It is designed that way in order to make infinite cycles or loops that never end, "as long as we have fuel". I wonder if infinity never ends, does that mean that it does not require a starting point?

Me too heard about microtubules involved in consciousness.

His early work with Steven is amazing and was so important to us understanding black holes. But he is a spiritual man with a supposition that isn't yet scientifically based. Just remember that. OOO, I think I absolutely loved running into you :P :D Whatever you're going to do in science, I'm sure you have the mindset for it.

It seems to me like it's in the crystallization of matter. The organization, or rather togetherness. Essentially acting as resonant states correct? It sounds strange at first that these kind of emergent phenomenon would manifest in such a complex system but then why not? We are quite symmetrical after all..

I believe that in this video he did a good job to explain it very clearly to a lay audience. One thing that Penrose never mentioned (I think) is that so much of the mind is unconscious why have a conscious mind at all??? and if it is as he says then there is a stronger causal ground for understanding the conscious mind, because after all, it is quite a different thing from ordinary computation. We are very far away from understanding consciousness but at least he points us in a new direction.

I mean, it's pretty much a rule in physics that if the answer is "infinity" then it's wrong. And, the reason is very simple. So simple that most people seem to overlook it. It's that all we can do is DESCRIBE reality, and "infinite" things can't be described.

Well, it definitely has the potential to be the best computing system we've ever developed. It's rather crude at this point. I just hope that in his work Penrose is able to keep a truly open mind, and not be swayed by peer pressure or personal philosophy. It's really important that someone get this right.

You are absolutely correct aquoby.

This man will go where many physicists fear to tread. He may be viewed as an eccentric, and controversial, but he is very important and we need people who can go toe to toe with Lawrence Krauss et al.

Thank you sir, for this absolutely absorbing presentation. Quantum entanglement have analogues in the classical world. Tornadoes rotates anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere,and clockwise in the south. Water discharge down the kitchen sink, and you can see the stream lines of the flow, they curve anti-clockwise in the north and clockwise in the south.Such similarity in different levels may become explainable once we have the mathematical model for "self-organizing systems". Consciousness, likewise, I believe, is the result of the self-organizing properties of the brain (?!)

RE: defining infinity. The mathematical reality is that we must establish UNdefined terms before any actual definitions are possible. Otherwise we are helplessly doomed to circular definitions. With this understanding, it is quite straightforward to demonstrate infinity mathematically. Consider a few of Peano's Axioms, which use only "0", "+1", and "Natural" as undefined terms. (see next post in reply to this one)