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Funda-Mentality" Is the Conscious Mind Subtly Linked to a Basic Level of the Universe?
Funda-Mentality" Is the Conscious Mind Subtly Linked to a Basic Level of the Universe?
Summary
Age-old battle lines over the puzzling nature of mental experience are shaping a modern resurgence in the study of consciousness. On one side are the long-dominant "physicalists" (reductionists, materialists, functionalists, computationalists. . ) who see consciousness as an emergent property of the brain's neural networks ("brain = mind = computer"). On the alternative, rebellious side are those who see a necessary added ingredient: proto-conscious experience intrinsic to reality, perhaps understandable through modern physics (panpsychists, pan-experientialists, "funda-mentalists"). It is argued here that the physicalist premise alone is unable to solve completely the difficult issues of consciousness (e.g. experience, binding, pre-conscious conscious transition, non-computability and free will) and that to do so will require supplemental panpsychist/pan-experiential philosophy expressed in modern physics. In one such scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity. The proposed process is Roger Penrose's objective reduction (OR), a self-organizing "collapse" of the quantum wave function related to instability at the most basic level of spacetime geometry. In the Penrose-Hameroff model of "orchestrated objective reduction" ("Orch OR"), OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brain's neurons and links cognition with proto-conscious experience and Platonic values embedded in spacetime geometry. The basic idea is that consciousness involves brain activities coupled to self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality.
Introduction - A Burning Issue
Can conscious experience-feelings, qualia, our "inner life"-be accommodated within present-day science? Those who believe it can (e.g. physicalists, reductionists, materialists, functionalists, computationalists) see conscious experience as an emergent property of complex neural network computation. Others see conscious experience either outside science (dualists), or believe science must expand to include experience (idealists, panpsychists, pan-experientialists, "funda-mentalists"). These philosophical battle lines were originally drawn in ancient Greece between Socrates, who believed the cerebrum created consciousness, and Aristotle, Democritus, Thales and others who argued that mental qualities belonged to fundamental reality. Perhaps both sides were correct.
Brain = Mind = Computer?
The basic physicalist idea is that the mind is a computer functioning in the brain's neural networks. The current leading candidate for a computer-like "neural correlate" of consciousness involves synchronously oscillating feedback loops of thalamo-cortical neurons. Higher frequencies (collectively known as "coherent 40 Hz") have been suggested to mediate temporal binding of conscious experience (e.g. Singer, Gray, Crick and Koch, etc.). The proposals vary, for example as to whether coherence originates in thalamus or resonates in cortical networks, but "thalamo-cortical 40 Hz" stands as a prevalent view of the substrate for consciousness.
But how do synchronized neural firings and synaptic transmissions produce experiential qualia, emotions or free will? Physicalists believe this to be relatively straightforward (brain = mind = computer) however others find the question intractable, or as vexing as trying to coax a reluctant genie from a magic lamp. I see three problems with the brain = mind = computer analogy:
Is consciousness classical computation? In a controversial stance Roger Penrose 1-3 has asserted that essential aspects of consciousness are non-computable. But regardless, classical computers appear to be evolving toward quantum computers. Beginning in the early 1980's Benioff, Feynman and others proposed that states in a system - bits in a computer - could interact while in quantum superposition of all possible states, effecting near-infinite parallel computation. Rather than classical Boolean bit states 1 or 0, quantum computers would utilize interactive "qubits" of 1 and 0. If quantum computers can ever be constructed they will have huge advantages in important applications. As the brain/mind has always been cast as current information technology, consciousness may inevitably be seen as some form of quantum computation.
Are neural firings the "fine grain" of consciousness? Cells and synapses are far more complex than simple onoff switches. Consider the paramecium, a single cell organism which gracefully swims, avoids predators, learns to escape from capillary tubes, and finds food and mates. Observing intelligent behavior in unicellular creatures C.S. Sherrington said in 1951: "Of nerve there is no trace. But the cell framework, the cyto-skeleton, might serve." Lacking synapses, paramecium utilizes its cytoskeleton for communication and organization. Neurons
