Microsoft Word - ConversationWithAdinaRoskiesMindBodyProblem.doc - ConversationWithAdinaRoskiesMindBodyProblem.pdf
MARCELO GLEISER: Yeah, I always have a problem
with the idea of the supernatural interacting with the natural.
Because from a physicist's perspective, I mean if something's supernatural,
it by definition is beyond the laws of nature, so to speak.
But once you interact, you are exchanging energy.
You're exchanging information somehow.
So you're clearly being very physical about it.
So as soon as the supernatural interacts with the natural, it becomes natural.
But what I can't seem to give you a story about
is why something experiences things visually
or why it is like anything to be the object that does these things.
So we can create computers that do various tasks,
but we don't think that computer has some experience of what it's doing.
It's just crunching numbers.
And so that's what people think of as the hard problem of consciousness.
So we can explain various kinds of cognitive abilities,
at least conceptually, without too much problem.
But really we have no idea how to explain
why it's like anything to be a cognitive agent
or which things have those properties of having consciousness.
Today,
the favored theory for the next step beyond the standard model is
called supersymmetry (which is also the basis for string theory).
Supersymmetry predicts the existence of a “partner” particle for every
particle that we currently know. It doubles the number of elementary
particles of matter in nature. The theory is elegant mathematically, and
the particles whose existence it predicts might also explain the
universe’s unaccounted-for “dark matter.”
As a result, many researchers were confident that supersymmetry would
be experimentally validated soon after the Large Hadron Collider became
operational.