We show that the name “Lucas-Penrose thesis” encompasses several different theses. All these theses refer to extremely vague concepts, and so are either practically meaningless, or obviously false. The arguments for the various theses, in turn, are based on confusions with regard to the meaning of these vague notions, and on unjustified hidden assumptions concerning them. All these observations are true also for all interesting versions of the much weaker thesis known as “Gö- del disjunction”. Our main conclusions are that (...) pure mathematical theorems cannot decide alone any question which is not purely mathematical, and that an argument that cannot be fully formalized cannot be taken as a mathematical proof. (shrink)

We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the ongoing speculations of many theorists. First, quantum effects do not have the temporal properties required for neural information processing. Second, there are substantial physical obstacles to any organic instantiation of quantum computation. Third, there is no psychological evidence that such mental phenomena as consciousness and mathematical thinking require explanation via quantum theory. We conclude that understanding brain function is unlikely to require (...) quantum computation or similar mechanisms. (shrink)

When Ken Malone investigates a case of something causing mental static across the United States, he is teleported to a world that doesn't exist.

Having, as it is generally agreed, failed to destroy the computational conception of mind with the G\"{o}delian attack he articulated in his {\em The Emperor's New Mind}, Penrose has returned, armed with a more elaborate and more fastidious G\"{o}delian case, expressed in and 3 of his {\em Shadows of the Mind}. The core argument in these chapters is enthymematic, and when formalized, a remarkable number of technical glitches come to light. Over and above these defects, the argument, at best, is (...) an instance of either the fallacy of denying the antecedent, the fallacy of {\em petitio principii}, or the fallacy of equivocation. More recently, writing in response to his critics in the electronic journal {\em Psyche}, Penrose has offered a G\"{o}delian case designed to improve on the version presented in {\em SOTM}. But this version is yet again another failure. In falling prey to the errors we uncover, Penrose's new G\"{o}delian case is unmasked as the same confused refrain J.R. Lucas initiated 35 years ago. (shrink)

The late 19th-century Ignorabimus controversy over the limits of scientific knowledge has often been characterized as proclaiming the end of intellectual progress, and by implication, as plunging Germany into a crisis of pessimism from which Liberalism never recovered. My research supports the opposite interpretation. The initiator of the Ignorabimus controversy, Emil du Bois-Reymond, was a physiologist who worked his whole life against the forces of obscurantism, whether they came from the Catholic and Conservative Right or the scientistic and millenarian Left. (...) Du Bois-Reymond’s doubt that scientists would ever elucidate consciousness must therefore be seen as an endorsement, and not a rejection, of his faith in reason. (shrink)

The paper elaborates an endeavor on applying the algorithmic information-theoretic computational complexity to meta-social-sciences. It is motivated by the effort on seeking the impact of the well-known incompleteness theorem to the scientific methodology approaching social phenomena. The paper uses the binary string as the model of social phenomena to gain understanding on some problems faced in the philosophy of social sciences or some traps in sociological theories. The paper ends on showing the great opportunity in recent social researches and some (...) boundaries that limit them. (shrink)