Talk:Hypotheses of consciousness and spacetime

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[edit] Protoscience vs Pseudoscience

Should articles like this be part of Wikipedia? The short answer is: not unless they are hedged about with caveats. Naive readers should not think that these ideas are in any way accepted scientific theories. The reason I have included this article and an article on electromagnetic theories of consciousness is to allow people who have a deep interest in this field to get a quick introduction to current thinking.

That said, scientific purists are often too over zealous to dismiss ideas that are on the boundaries between philosophy and science. Much of 'accepted' philosophy is actually the application of high school scientific reasoning to problems (eg: Galilean relativity + Newtonian mechanics) and what seem like paradoxes to philosophers can sometimes be approached by introducing more advanced ideas (cf: Zeno's paradoxes).

Philosophers who try to inject a bit of science into philosophical reasoning or scientists who try to approach philosophical problems using science often find their work falls between two stools, being too scientific for philosophy publications and too pseudoscientific for scientific publications. It seems that only the 'great men' of science such as Penrose and Linde can get away with talking about the boundary between these two areas of human endeavour.

So I plead for indulgence for this small area of Wikipedia, feel free to write 'don't just believe this stuff! It might be nonsense!' but equally ask the reader to think. If there are solutions to the problem of consciousness they will be provided by science, not argument alone.

The reason I chose Smythies, Green and Rauscher as examples is Smythies is trying to explain dualism, Green is trying to explain indirect realism and Rauscher is trying to explain direct realism. These authors are representative and accessible on the net rather than definitive. Smythies' article shows how this field has been around since relativity was discovered.

[edit] the intent of this page

I agree completely with the intent of this page. Present ideas as ideas, without claiming they are correct. The ideas exist, and can be studied, even though wrong or not. Cf History of ideas, and anthropology. Study ideas of a culture WITHOUT CLAIMING anything about truth. This page seems suitable disclaimed. 67.118.116.145 05:55, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Improper move

A redirect without discussion by someone who has clearly not read about the subject is extraordinarily rude. Read the references to this article and then reconsider the redirect. Discuss it on talk, flag the article with a request to move it and then we can proceed loxley 19:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you are right, but its also important to keep NPOV in mind. This isnt just your wikipedia, or the wikipedia for proponents of various quasiscientific ideas. We have to compromise in all aspects. You could also have simply asked me on my talk what I was doing. I do have a talk page, and at least a little personal info on my user page. -MagnaMopus 19:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The article is already hedged about with caveats, perhaps more than almost any other article on Wikipedia. The idea behind this article is to point to this particular approach to hypotheses about consciousness, not to praise them or support them. Rauscher and Targ's paper about complex space-time is a good starter for the general idea behind these theories. The reason that I did not go into any deep detail about these theories in this article is precisely your concern: we should note that they exist, provide references where possible but leave it at that. Does it need attention from an expert? Given that its purpose is simply to report that such theories exist I doubt it. I regret having added the section on the predictions that the theories make because it goes into more detail than is really needed. As an ex-scientist and a philosopher I can say that these theories are right on the edge as science but probably better than average philosophy. loxley 18:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your basic claim that 'because such theories do exist, there needs to be an article about them.' Some basic points: 1) My renaming the article was of course to assert a proper NPOV usage of the term "theory" as separate from "hypothesis". We could easily use the term "claims" (or ideas) instead, but hypothesis is accurate. 2) We can perhaps argue about whether the term "theory" can be claimed exclusively by science, or whether it can be appropriately used in its generic connotation of simply referring to an idea. 3)Wikipedia's open nature will of course require that any claim of being a theory will have to be checked, and thats of course where the caveats come in. The point of having a Wikipedia article isnt just to say theres something out there called this, and this is what they say about it -- we have to also condense what it is that they are saying, and analyse the idea in part and in whole. If there is any substance to the idea as a scientific concept then this would be interesting to readers, and would need to be highlighted. If there is any gaping hole in the idea which might be obfuscated by fancy science-like language, then scientists are free to make translations to reveal those flaws and contradictions --"caveats" as you say. There is no deadline of course, but anything which claims to be a theory, and claims to be formulated according to the scientific method is wide open to being analysed in accord with that method. Im sure we can agree that there is no doubt some substance to unusual claims --what is of course unusual is the typical claim that the gap between religion and science has somehow been bridged in a formulaic way. -MagnaMopus 18:28, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

In philosophy lectures the lecturer might ask "what scientific theories are there about consciousness?" (write 1000 words). This is where I came into this article, having asked the question. Of course, the student should go to the original sources having used Wikipedia as a pointer.

You wrote: "The point of having a Wikipedia article isnt just to say theres something out there called this, and this is what they say about it -- we have to also condense what it is that they are saying, and analyse the idea in part and in whole.". I think this is true about each individual theory mentioned in this article. This is why I treated the theories as a group. To my mind this article should just contain brief descriptions of each type of theory and point the reader to some sources where they can pursue their enquiries. I think that fleshing out the individual theories would be a step too far and if I were to do so I might warrant the charge of filling Wikipedia with "off mission" material. This article about a group of hypotheses is little different from say, describing Aether theories as a class but an article about an individual aether theory that maintained it was a credible hypothesis might attract a lot of flak.

I am in favour of trimming the article to just mention the basic types of hypothesis and give external references. loxley 20:20, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I just realised that I should have said that, on reflection, I am happy to go along with your (MagnaMopus) move to an article entitled "hypotheses". But I do think that, along with the introduction, this is sufficient to ensure that readers take this article as a pointer to ideas at the edge of science rather than consensus fact. loxley 15:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)