Dr. N.L. Kachhara
Bohm and Hiley
Several decades ago David Bohm pointed out many striking similarities between the behavior of our thought processes and that of some quantum processes. For example, while entertaining a vague train of thought, the act of concentrating on one in order to bring it into better focus, changes the original sequence. Like electrons governed by Heisenberg's, uncertainty principle, which are never the same again once they have been looked at or measured, a thought which has been highlighted through attention is different from the vague musing which preceded it. The focused thoughts have "position" like the particle aspect of an electrons' two-sided nature, whereas the vague musing has "momentum" like the electron's wave aspect. We can never experience both simultaneously. This is a characteristic feature of a quantum entity.
Quantum systems are essentially unified, so are our thought processes. Thought processes and quantum systems are analogues in that they cannot be analyzed to much in terms of distinct elements, because the "intrinsic" nature of each element is not a property existing separately from and independently or other elements but is instead a property that arises partially from its relation with other elements.
Bohm'simplicate order applies both to matter and consciousness, and he proposed that it could explain the relationship between them. Mind and matter are here seen as projections into our explicate order from the underlying reality of the implicate order. Bohm claims that when we look at the matter in space, we can see nothing in these concepts that helps us to understand consciousness. Gustav Bernroider thinks that Bohm's implicate - explicate structure can account for the relationship between neural processes and consciousness.
In the latter approach, Bohm and Hiley, the notions of implicate and explicate order mirror the distinction between ontic and epistemic domains. At the level of implicate order, the term active information expresses that this level is capable of "informing" the epistemically distinguished, explicit domains of mind and matter. While the proposal by Bohm and Hiley essentially sketches conceptual framework without further details, the suggestions by Pauli and Jung considers the distinction between epistemic and ontic domains of material reality due to quantum theory in parallel with the distinction between epistemic and ontic mental domains.
David Bohm took the view that quantum theory and relativity contradicted one another, and that this contradiction implied that there existed a more fundamental level in the physical universe. This more fundamental level was supposed to represent an undivided wholeness and an implicate order, from which arose the explicate order of the universe as we experience it.
Recently, Primas has proposed a dual-aspect approach where the distinction of mental and material domains originates from the distinction between two different modes of time: tensed (mental) time, including nowness, on the one hand and tenseless (physical) time, viewed as an external parameter, on the other. Primas conceives the tensed time of the mental domain as quantum correlated with the parameter time of physics via "time-entanglement," though it is still a tentative scheme without concrete indications of how to test it empirically.
David Chalmers
American Philosopher David Chalmers argues that consciousness cannot be explained with a reductionist approach, because it does not belong to the realm of matter. Chalmers distinguishes between a phenomenal concept of mind (the way it feels) and a psychological concept of mind (the way it does). Every mental property is either a phenomenal property, a psychological one or a combination of the two. The mind-body problem is therefore made of two parts, one that deals with the mental faculties, referring to phenomenal consciousness, and one that deals with how/why those mental faculties give rise to awareness of them, referring to psychological consciousness.
Chalmers's dualism is different from Descartes in that it claims that "consciousness is a feature of the world" which is somehow related to its physical properties. It follows from his theory that consciousness is due to the functional organization of the brain. It also follows that anything having the proper functional organization can have consciousness; regardless of the material it is made of. From this view, everything in the universe may have consciousness, at least to some degree.
Chalmers notes:
"Nevertheless, quantum theories of consciousness suffer from the same difficulties as neural or computational theories. Quantum phenomena have some remarkable functional properties, such as nondeterminism and nonlocality. It is natural to speculate that those properties may play some role in the explanation of cognitive functions, such as random choice and the integration of information and this hypothesis cannot be ruled out a priori. But when it comes to the explanation of experience, quantum processes are in the same boat as any other. The question of why these processes should give rise to experience is entirely unanswered."
Karl Pribram
Psychologist Karl Pribram proposed the "Holonomic" model of memory based on the hologram. Many properties of the brain are the same as that of holograms, memory is distributed in the brain and memories do not disappear all of a sudden, but slowly fade away. In Pribram's opinion a sensory perception is transformed in a "brain wave," a pattern of electromagnetical activation that propagates through the brain just like the wave front in a liquid. This crossing of the brain provides the interpretation of the sensory perception in the form of a "memory wave," which in turn crosses the brain. The various waves that travel through the brain can interfere. The interference of a memory wave and a perceptual wave (e.g. visual) generates a structure that resembles a hologram.
Pribram suggested that consciousness may occur primarily in dendritic - dendritic processing and that axonal firing may support primarily automatic, non-conscious activities.
Charles Leadbeater and Annie Besant
According to metaphysicists Charles Leadbeater and Annie Besant information about the relevant subtle body is stored in a "permanent particle" (its composition, frequency, structure and associative memories). In this way the experience that the subtle body has gone through in a particular universe are stored or are linked to this nucleus - which can be transferred more easily to another universe and body through microscopic wormholes. The particle is analogues to DNA in the bio-molecular body. DNA is referred to as a "bio-particle" in the medical literature and it stores or links vast amounts of information about a particular life- form. This physical- etheric nucleus is transferred to higher energy bodies when the subtle body dies - preserving information about a particular life's experiences. This nucleus is also responsible for the life review in a NDE. According to Besant, the permanent particles are used to preserve within themselves as "powers of vibrations" (i.e. different frequencies and waveforms) the results of all experiences through which they have passed. By the end of one life in the physical body the "permanent particle" would have stored up "innumerable powers of vibration" (i.e. a set of wave forms of different frequencies).
A personality is simply a packet of self-organized information. If this information can be transferred from one body to another, that personality "lives" on information stored in the physical-etheric body to be "reconstructed" or "resurrected" in a similar physical-etheric body later - in a process analogous to teleportation. According to plasma metaphysics, the physical- etheric body provides an electromagnetic matrix which plays a critical role in the morphogenesis of the physical - bio-molecular body. The nuclei of the various subtle bodies can carry a large volume of complex holographic information about their corresponding bodies and experiences.
Granville Dharmawardena
Many who research on the brain mind-problem proceed with the a priori assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. They consider consciousness to be another property, emerging as a result of trillions of electrical pulses shuttling across the brain. According to this assumption, consciousness is only a property and not an entity. However, Dharmawardena says that on the basis of practical observations we have to reject these assumptions and regard consciousness as a non-material entity capable of independent existence.
The major stumbling block in solving the brain-mind problem had been how the brain-mind binds together millions of disparate neuron activities into an experience of a perceptual whole. How does the "I" or "Self" or the perceived wholeness of our world emerge from a system consisting of so many parts, billions of neurons. What creates the "oneness" or individuality and "I" ness or "Self?" What creates feelings, free will and creativity?
Observations on Out of Body Experience (OBE) and Near-Death Experiences (NDE) show that while the body is in an anaesthetized or inactive state consciousness can remain disembodied, observe events from outside the body and later relocalize in the brain. After the body renormalizes the person can relate what his consciousness observed and heard from an out of body location while the body was inactive. Other experiments have shown that consciousness can leave a dying person, float around observing things and events and later, as Eccles had pointed out, attach itself to an unborn fetus to start a new existence as another individual. Consciousness is therefore a non-material entity capable of independent existence and not a property, it is not emergent.
Dharmawardena proposed a three-tier model for Body-Brain-consciousness, where the brain is sandwiched between the body and consciousness. Here the brain-body link is mechanical and fairly well understood from classical science considerations. Body and brain operate in Einstein's space-time domain where non-locality is forbidden. The brain-consciousness link is established by the property P which links the brain to the quantum domain where non-locality can operate. Consciousness is a non-material entity in the quantum domain that is capable of independent existence. Consciousness can remain localized in the brain so long as the emergent quantum property P is functional, just as anelectron which a quantum entity is can remain localized in an atom so long as the energy of the electron matches the quantum state it occupies. Whenever the property P breaks down or becomes weak, consciousness can leave the brain and take up a floating existence in the way an electron leaves its atom if it acquires excess energy and starts a floating existence as a free electron. Consciousness can return to the brain if the property P is re-established.
This model explains all the observed properties of consciousness including NDE, OBE and reincarnation. Since all information transfer in a non-local quantum correlation is instantaneous, it explains the speed of human action. It can also be extended to explain phenomena such as telepathy. This explains the individual identity or the "I" ness or self.
Mihai Draganescu
The brain is an information processor. The forms of information in the brain/mind cannot, perhaps, be reduced only to the information carried by bits, even if their organization may carry context and reference significance. There is also a kind of information that has a manifestation in feelings, meaning, in qualia. Both kinds of information may act also together, constituting a mixed type of information. The brain/mind is working like a computer with the first type of information, called structural, which can always be reduced, in principle, to bits. With the other type of information, called phenomenological, the brain/mind is not working as a computer, but still it is processing this second type of information. And when the two kinds of information are working together, the brain/mind is capable of quite genuine performance as are the processes of deep creation. Roger Penrose proved that the brain has really non-computing ways of processing information.
The second type of information of the brain/mind is not yet recognized and explored by science; the information is not a fundamental notion of science. All the electronic computers are processors of structural information.
There are many levels of information processing in the brain:
- The psychological level: the highest level. It comprises behavior, intellectual activities, thinking, sentiments, will and others. Could these be explained only by reduction to the known structures of the brain that is only by levels b and c below?
- The neuronal level that comprises the network of neurons, modules of neurons and the structural organization of the brain.
- The molecular level that comprises the molecular activities inside the neurons and at the synapses between neurons.
- To these levels it may be added
- The quantum level, which was proposed by a number of physicists, and
- The experiential level (phenomenological level) which proved to be a fact of brain and mind reality.
The main scientific attention was given to levels 1,2and 3, although there are still problems referring to their interconnection, especially of level 1 with levels 2 and 3.
The phenomenological level has been studied by Stapp. If the phenomenological sense is a reality, and is a kind of information, it must have a physical substrate. This becomes another serious problem for science. Further, there is a way of coupling (still to be established) between structural processes and phenomenal processes. This is another challenge for science, and there is an explanatory gap.
There is something more, namely the justified inference of the existence of a deep underlying reality of the universe which might be the substratum of the phenomenological senses and a source of primary energy. It is very difficult today to contradict this assertion. This is also a challenge for science.
Many authors consider the brain to be a specific type of quantum device. But all these are lacking an explanation of the manifestation of the phenomenological sense or experience. Draganescu and Kafatos proposed for the necessity of a new quantum-phenomenological theory. They observed "concerning living objects"; it happens that in these objects, from itself, by self-organizations, a coupling of the structural and phenomenological parts emerges as a general property of nature. This coupling may be the basis for explaining the "explanatory gap" of the brain-mind problem. This coupling is different from the coupling of energy and phenomenological information in the deep reality. It seems that there are many forms of coupling of objects and phenomenon in existence.
Two possibilities for quantum - phenomenological theories have been proposed.
- Based on the concept of intra- openness as proposed by Draganescu
- Based on an imbrication of structural and phenomenological properties manifested by some quantum fields and corresponding particles.
The second possibility has been examined by Stapp and Richard Amoroso, dismissing the role of the wave function collapse (reduction) for producing experience, considers the coherent quantum waves to play an important role in mind and consciousness phenomena. Amoroso then presented a Noetic Field Theory making reconciliation of the quantum coherent wave with the phenomenon of experience, a quantum- phenomenological theory. Amorosao shows the possibility of BEC even for protein oligomers in vitro and states that "coherence in biology and mind seems to be rule rather than the exception." Coherent quantum waves are possible in polypeptides, DNA, microtubules, implying water molecules, synaptic connections.
What about the phenomenal experience in connection with quantum wave and BEC in organisms and brain? Is the explanatory gap reduced from the < neuro structure - experience> gap to the < BEC - experience > gap? The way in which experience is presentstill remains the problem.
According to Amoroso "BEC allows the process to go unlocal and couple the Noumenon state of elemental intelligence." To accept this, it means that something in the stuff of the BEC has not only a structural character, but also a phenomenological character; therefore, there are imbrications of type 2. These imbrications are superior to the Stappian imbrications which are declared to have only physical-informational sources for experience.
It seems that the ingredients of physics, biology (both of the classical and quantum physics) and of the present science of information are not sufficient for the study of the brain/mind. There is more in nature: The phenomenological sense (experience in mind and perhaps in any organism) and the deep underlying reality may be, even, a fundamental consciousness. All these may lead us towards a renewed science.
