”SHADOWS OF THE MIND” Sir Roger Penrose

     From the Wikipedia: Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contributi- on to our understanding of the universe.  He is renowned for his

work in mathematical physics, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher.

    I am a great admirer of Penrose. As a scientist he pushes boundaries, I find him fascinating. However my admiration
of him as a philosopher went down a few notches after reading “Shadows of the Mind”. After all he is a ‘materialist" and materialism goes so far and no further. It’s interesting to see him trying to wiggle his way out, trying to explain the non-material in a material way.

    Check the following site for a follow-up to the Shadows of the Mind and responses to 9 of his critiques http://web.archive.org/web/20080618195657/http://psyche.csse.monash.edu. au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html

In that follow-up he makes it very clear that physics as we know it cannot make sense of consciousness. But, true to form, he asserts that scientific method needs and will have a revolution that will eventually explain everything we need to know about consciousness.

He says: “An improved science is needed if we are to ever understand consciousness.”
_Is it not too much to ask consciousness to understand itself ?
On page 14. “…persistence of self might have more to do with the preservation of patterns than actual material particles.”
_Perhaps, but the more important question is about the awareness of the ‘persistence of self’.

On page 16. “The problem of conscious awareness is indeed a scientific one, even if the appropriate science may not
yet be at hands.”
_Here we go with the ‘scientific gap’ again.
That sentence just quoted is a philosophical one, not a scientific one. It reflects an insight that is basic to his science.
Yet he admits of only one scientific world of knowledge. However that insight of his (that the appropriate science may not be at hand), only comes by assuming (metaphysically) that our whole nature is ‘material’; and that science, the study of our ‘material’ surroundings, is then our only source of knowledge for everything that is.
How can he ignore the fact that when he philosophizes, he is not doing science. Philosophy explains science, not the other way around.
One who ignores the nature of philosophy, will ignore ‘first philosophy’ or metaphysics, the overall view of knowledge,
whose science is a subset.

On page 38. “Awareness cannot be simulated in any computational way whatever. Intelligence requires understanding, understanding requires awareness.”
_So those who say that a computer is intelligent should carefully define the word ‘intelligence’.
The basis of his argument here, is Gödel’s theorem. I read counter-arguments to Penrose’s approach, but I still think
that Penrose has the best of it here.
He affirms, on page 39, that we must rely on intuitive comprehension of consciousness, then he speaks of consciousness as a scientifically describable phenomenon. Here again, we see that science is the answer for everything.
On page 48.”Mathematical understanding cannot be reduced to computation.”
_That I think a very important insight, indeed.
Finally, on page 50. “…awareness and free will, as yet , eluded physical descripࢢon.”
_ My emphasis on as yet