[carapace]

FWIW, this book gave me the idea that consciousness could be some sort of feedback loop involving the whole Universe (including you and me and everybody else) possibly via quantum entanglement. I know that's terribly hand-wavey and soupy, sorry about that, just felt I should mention it.

Related: meditation (at least some kinds) seems to operate by turning the subjective awareness back onto itself, becoming aware of becoming aware of... etc... A little like a camera hooked up to a monitor that it's pointed at, you get an infinite regression.

In the camera-monitor system there is a physical loop of information from the lens-to-screen-to-lens-to...

When you do it with you awareness, there must be something looping somewhere, regardless of the physicality or otherwise of consciousness, eh?

[roywiggins]

I'm not sure you need entanglement. Embedded/embodied cognition runs with the argument that a brain isn't intelligent without a universe, and brains-in-vats models are missing something fundamental, which is all the useful stuff we offload to the body and world around us.

[wyager]

> FWIW, this book gave me the idea that consciousness could be some sort of feedback loop involving the whole Universe (including you and me and everybody else) possibly via quantum entanglement

Then this book sounds like it's not worth reading. There is absolutely no need to invoke pseudo-quantum mumbo-jumbo to investigate consciousness. We don't understand the chemical operation of neurons well enough to say whether quantum effects are necessary for neural functioning (although they probably aren't). Most "quantum-looking" (i.e. obviously non-classical) processes happen at much smaller space and energy scales than the chemical processes we know are involved in cognition.

Quantum entanglement almost certainly isn't involved because it can't be used to transmit information and it requires high degrees of precision to make use of in the first place.

The brain's thermal noise floor is vastly larger than the scale of most "interesting" quantum effects.

[carapace]

Don't pan G.E.B. due to my wild-eyed speculation. I'm the one saying "quantum!" and waving my hands here, not Hofstadter. ;-)