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New summaries and reviews of papers, articles, books etc.

1.) John Searle - In:- Conversations on Consciousness - Susan Blackmore - added 1 September 2010 (under Philosophy3) - Summaries Chinese room thought experiment

2.) Roger Penrose -   In:- Conversations on Consciousness - Susan Blackmore - added 31 August 2010 (under Penrose&Hameroff8)

3.) Patricia & Paul Churchland - In:- Conversations on Consciousness - Susan Blackmore - added 30 August 2010 (under Philosophy3)

4.) The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of the Mental Force - Jeffrey Schwarz and Sharon Begley   - added 29 August 2010 (under Free Will7) - clinical evidence in favour of freewill

5.) Beyond scientific materialism - Imants Baruss - added 22 August 2010 (under Other Quantum5) - Approach to consciousness close to David Bohm

6.) The unconscious will: How the pursuit of goals operates outside of conscious awareness - Custers, R. & Aarts, H. - added 22 August 2010 (under Freewill6)

7.) David Chalmers: In:- Conversations on Consciousness - Susan Blackmore - added 18 August 2010 (under Philosophy3)

8.) The God Theory - Bernard Haisch - added 13 August 2010 (under Cosmology3) - Ideas on the structure of the quantum vacuum/spacetime

9.) Reflexive monism - Max Velmans - added 6 August 2010 (under Mainstream17) - Attempts uncomfortable merger of consciousness as a fundamental with mainstream views.

10.) Identity theory

11.) Free will, information, quantum mechanics and biology - Peter Schuster

12.) Freewill in scientific psychology - Roy Baumeister - added 30 July 2010 (under Freewill6) - Studies show that use of self control and free choice involves consumption of energy

Other recent reviews:-
1.) Test of Penrose's theory of objective reduction by Dirk Bouwmeester - added 27 July (Penrose & Hameroff1) (2.) Towards quantum superposition of living organisms - Romero-Isart, O. - 22 July (Quantum Evidence6) (2.) The Never Ending Days of Being Dead: Dispatches from the Front Line of Science - Chown, M. - 17 July (under Cosmology3) (3.) Distribution of entanglement in light harvesting complexes and their quantum efficiency - Francesca Fassiolo & Alexandra Olaya-Castro - 22 June (under Quantum Evidence6) (4.) Entanglement and the entangling power of the dynamics in light harvesting complexes - Caruso, F. et al - 16 June (under Quantum Evidence6) (5.) Biophysics: Green quantum computers - Scholes, G. - added 12 June (under Quantum Evidence5) (6.) Explaining the Brain - Craver, C. - added 7 June (under Philosophy3) (7.) Mindware - Clark, A. - added 1 June(under Mainstream 16) (8.) Life cooked up in undersea cauldrons - McAlpine, K. - added 30 May (under Origins ofLife) (9.) Neural mechanisms of autonomic, affective and cognitive integration - Critchley, H. - added 20 May (underEmotion) (10.) Sensitive Souls - Ford, B.J. - added 18 May (under Protein4) (11.) Genes don't reveal all - Snyder. M. - added 9 May (under Protein1) (12.) Introduction to Protein Structure (Part 2) - Branden, C. & Tooze, J. - 4 May 2010 (under Protein4) (13.) Introduction to Protein Structure (Part 1) - Branden, C. & Tooze, J. - added 30 Apr. 2010 (under Protein3) (14.) Life was all but inevitable - (based on research by Di Mauro, Sapienza University - added 28 Apr. 2010 (under Origins ofLife) (15.) The secret power of the cell - Ford, B. J. - added 25 April 2010 (under Neuroscience 4) (16.) Presynaptic neurotransmitter release - Rinetti, G. & Schweizer, F. - added 20 Apr. 2010 (under Protein2) (17.) Structural argument against physicalism - Montero, B. - added 19 April 2010 (under Philosophy3) (18.) Microtubule based quantum models of the mind - Georgiev, D. - added 17 April 2010 (under Danko Georgiev2) (19.) Dynamics of Light Harvesting in Photosynthesis - Cheng, Y. & Fleming, R. - added 5 April 2010 (under Protein) (20.) The role of consciousness in mathematical cognition - Hadley, R. - added 16 March 2010 (under Penrose & Hameroff8)

1.)

John Searle

In:- Conversations on Consciousness

Susan Blackmore

This conversation includes a summary of Searle's chinese room thought experiment, the thing for which he is best known in consciousness studies. Searle used this in his dispute with the artificial intelligence community to try and demonstrate that a computer would never be conscious. There are similarities in concept to Penrose's view that there is a lack of understanding in computers.

In the chinese room demonstration Searle says that he does not understand Chinese. He is, however, confined to a room with a programme for handling Chinese symbols. Questions are sent to the room also expressed in the form of Chinese symbols. When these are received, Searle consults a rule book and sends back the appropriate answer again in the form of Chinese symbols provided by the rule book. This means that he has received Chinese input and provided Chinese output without understanding anything about the Chinese language. His suggestion is that computers are in the same position of receiving input, following certain rules, and producing a resulting output, without any understanding of the subject matter. The computer only needs to manipulate symbols such as sequences of zeros and ones.

The conversation does not attempt to deal with all of the numerous arguments that have been advanced against the chinese room. However, Searle does discuss what he claims to be the favourite counter argument, known as the systems reply. In this argument the whole room as a system, including tables, desks and paper plus Searle is categorised as a system that understands Chinese. He regards this as a desperate attempt to escape the obvious conclusion of the chinese room thought experiment. It is difficult not to agree with him. It is difficult to conceive a world in which paper, desks and tables add any conscious understanding to the brain of a human manipulating unknown symbols according to a rule.

Searle suggests that criticism of the chinese room conclusion is metaphysically based relative to a believe that computation must be all that comprises the human brain, because that is part of a particular world view. He also points out that if a realisation of the limitations of computers became more widespread a lot of research funding in the artificial intelligence area would be threatened. Governments and corporations had been happy to plough money into robotics because of the naive or 'folk' believe since the mid-twentieth century that autonomous robots were just round the corner and essentially only involved strapping a computer onto a mobile electrical appliance.

2.)

Roger Penrose

In:- Conversations in Consciousness

Susan Blackmore

Oxford University Press (2005)

In this conversation there is an early disagreement between Blackmore and Penrose over the meaning of 'understanding'. Blackmore will not have it there is a distinction between an automatic response such as catching a ball, which at the moment of doing it, requires no conscious thought about the balls dynamics and dealing with a problem that requires conscious thought. Blackmore gives the impression of seeing herself make an important point. Maybe she wants to distance herself from Penrose position, because otherwise I find it hard to make sense of her argument.

The main substance of this conversation is a discussion of the Godel theorem, which forms the basis of Penrose's take on consciousness and understanding. He says that with simple mathematical statements, there is no argument as to which are true or false. These statements appear as objective facts. The question is how do we come to the realisation of the truth of these statements. Initially, we have axiomatic rules, which is applied give trustworthy conclusions. Godel shows that given that the rules give truths, it is possible to transcend the rules. If the rules only give truths, they must be consistent, but the statement which asserts the consistency of the rules lies outside the rules. The question is how do you ascertain the truth of the consistency statement or any other statement that transcends the rules. This according to Penrose, comes from understanding, and further to that it is claimed that the rule system is itself only an imitation of what understanding does.

3.)

Patricia & Paul Churchland

In:- Conversations on Conscious

Susan Blackmore

Oxford University Press (2005)

I feel that there's a certain amount of smoke screen in this Churchlands conversation with Blackmore. There's rather too much emphasis on examples of resistance to now established scientific ideas when they were new. This has the effect of putting any opponents of the Churchlands views in the position of the ignorant, or those supposedly too old to come to terms with new ideas, while it is implied that bright young students have no difficulties with their ideas. This is to some extent a substitute for actually substantiating their scientific argument. At the end of the day any argument that happened to be new could be promoted in this way regardless of its merits. There is also a danger to the Churchlands own position from this line. Patricia Churchland has come up with indignant if superficial attacks on quantum consciousness. What if that is the new theory that is too novel for the established players to live with?

The Churchlands argument is essentially an identity theory. Few scientifically orientated people would disagree with the first part of their argument. There are identities in physics. Light is the same as electromagnetic waves. The waves don't cause light or correlate with light, they are light. The problem with this is that the brain state of light bears no resemblance to the particles or waves oscillating in the external world.

Blackmore does try to get the Churchlands to confront this problem, with her asking them to explain what gives us the sensation of the red or the sensation of pain when the brain state is nothing like the external oscillation of photons or external damage to body tissues. The Churchlands seem to sidestep this argument. The colour red is a relative stimulation of different cells. This does not seem to be an answer. Whether one or several cells are involved, the conscious brain still bears no resemblance to the external particles. Similarly pain is said to refer to a mapping of nociceptive stimulations, but the resulting brain still has no resemblance to the damaged tissue on the outside of the body. Maybe it is the pattern of the brain activations that is meant to be conscious. But pattern arises in all non-conscious information systems so we have no reason why these particular patterns should be conscious. The descriptions of internal processing here seem to serve merely to deflect us away from the central question of why these brain states are conscious.

4.)

The Mind and The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of the Mental Force

Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley

Harper Collins (2002)

INTRODUCTION: This book discusses clinical practise that suggests that the conscious will can alter habits or compulsions that are driven by flaws in the structure of patients' brains. It is also suggested that the exercise of the conscious will can mould new structures in the brain to support an altered habituation. The author links this finding to Henry Stapp's version of quantum consciousness, in which the whole brain of the observer is put into superposition.

As a psychiatrist treating patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) Schwartz became critical of the behaviourist based methods of treating OCD in the mid-to-late twentieth century. These methods claimed a 60-70% success rate, but it turned out that this impressive figure excluded up to 30% of patients who refused to undertake the treatment proposed in the first place, plus a further 20% that dropped out during the course of treatment.

Research during the last twenty years has shown that specific brain structures are involved in obsessive compulsive disorder. The orbital frontal cortex, the caudate nucleus and the anterior cingulate gyrus were all found to be over active in OCD patients. Studies, notably those by E.T. Rolls at Oxford University, showed that the orbital frontal cortex acted as an error detector. It became very active when something was not in line with expectations, such as when an expected reward for an action was not delivered. Other studies involving card games showed that patients with damage to the underside of the frontal cortex did not show aversion to decks of cards that consistently produced poor results, in the way that normal controls did. This area of the frontal cortex is described here as an 'intuition generator'. The normal players never rationalised their aversion to the bad decks of cards, they just avoided them. Intuition or literally 'gut feeling', because the aversion could be felt at the visceral level, could in this case prove a better guide than reasoning. In contrast patients with damage to the lower frontal cortex continued to use the bad decks even when they had understood rationally that they were a bad risk.

What was of interest to Schwarz was that error detection by the orbital frontal produced a sense of unease that was exactly the feeling that compelled OCD patients to continually wash their hands etc. The anterior cingulate was also implicated in this. The difference between the subjects of the gambling study and the OCD patients was that the gamblers had an underactive frontal area that failed to give then an intuitive warning, while the OCD patients had an over active area that gave them repeated and largely unnecessary warnings.

Another area that studies showed to be over active in OCD patients was the striatum, comprising the caudate nucleus and the putamen. All areas of the cortex and parts of the thalamus and the brain stem project to the striatum, and notably prefrontal areas concerned with planning behaviour have strong connections here. Small clusters of these prefrontal projections are known as matrisomes and are found near small patches of the striatum known as striosomes. The striosomes receive input from the prefrontal and in particular from the orbital frontal and anterior cingulate that are implicated in OCD, and also receive direct input from the amygdala, which is particularly involved in the experience of fear. Thus the striatum and particularly the caudate nucleus are an area of intermingling of emotional and rational input.

In the mid 1990s researchers discovered specialised neurons referred to as tonically active neurons (TANs) that are situated where matrisomes and striosomes meet, and are therefore well placed to integrate emotional and rational input. TANs respond strongly to reward-linked stimuli. TANs also responded when a previously neutral stimuli becomes associated with a reward. TANs are thought to be involved in the development of habits, with particular environmental cues having emotional meaning and producing particular behaviour.

Schwarz was unusual among 20^th century researchers in thinking that as part of therapy the exercise of the conscious will could alter the responses or gating patterns of the TANs. He explained to OCD patients that their drives to hand wash etc. did not belong to 'them', but were an objective malfunction of part of their brain. This enabled some patients to consciously resist the impulses, because they were now perceived as an alien intrusion. Beyond this patients were encouraged to use the conscious will to refocus attention onto something other than the intrusive urge to a compulsive behaviour. This approach proved quite effective.

The ability to alter such brain-based compulsive behaviour by use of the conscious will to focus on other activities, and to eventually use neuroplasticity to change the actual functioning and structure of the brain raised for Schwarz the whole question of the efficacy of consciousness, against a background where most researchers reject the efficacy of the conscious will.

Schwarz bases his view of the conscious will and its efficacy on Henry Stapp's theory of quantum consciousness. This in turn was influenced by the work of von Neumann. Stapp was particularly critical of the 'don't think, calculate' approach which allowed science to ignore the implications of quantum theory. Stapp's view of quantum theory is that while the output of measuring devices was random, the observer has a role in choosing the questions that are put to nature. The observer's conscious thoughts are instrumental in posing the question without which nothing can happen. This is where the ideas of von Neumann and the way in which he departed from Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation come in. Bohr had assumed that the measuring instruments and the observers could be described by classical physics, but von Neumann proposed that the measuring devices and the human brains of the observers were in superposition as well as the quantum wave. In this theory, the brain of the observer is in a quantum superposition, which collapses when the measurement is made. Here the entire brain of an observer is in a quantum state. The quantum brain state evolves deterministically until a conscious observation of a measurement occurs. The only freedom for the observing brain lies in the initial choice of question to put to nature. Stapp thinks that this choice does affect the dynamics of the brain involved.

I think that the main interest of Schwarz's work lies in the evidence that conscious volition can alter behaviour, and further more alter it through the neuroplasticity of identifiable structures and processes in the brain. I find it quite hard to live with aspects of the Stapp interpretation. Brains and measuring equipments in superposition conflicts with most ideas about decoherence. Even if it is argued that there is no wave function collapse as such, there are observable features of quanta in superposition that are never observed in brain-sized objects. Even if we accept this type of superposition there is a further problem with the question posing function ahead of the deterministic evolution of the quantum wave. What is it that poses the question? Quantum theory as more usually described gives answers about the properties of quanta, but does not provide the questions. In the end there seems to be an over-arching questioner not instantiated in any physical thing, and therefore presumably a dualistic entity, with the philosophical problems that that brings in its train.

5.)

Beyond scientific materialism

Imants Baruss, King's University College, Ontario

Journal of Consciousness Studies 17, No. 7-8, 2010, pp. 213-31

Baruss considers that we need to go somewhat beyond scientific materialism to explain matter itself, and that this means we also need to go beyond scientific materialism to understand consciousness, while at the same time not proposing anything that is inconsistent with physics. He considers the possibility that consciousness could be inserted as a primitive element in quantum theory. But he is more inclined to think that consciousness could be more fundamental than that, involving a 'pre-physical' substrata underlying both mental experience and matter.

Baruss quotes Jerry Fodor (1. 2000) as saying that the last half century of research has demonstrated that there are aspects of human mental processes that are not accessible to the present computational models, theories and techniques. Dennett himself admitted (2. 1978, 3. Giunti, 1995, 4. van Gelder & Port, 1995) that for computationalism to work there needed to be a formal language in the brain, which he called 'mentalese', but evidence of this has never been found, and modern computer scientists do not appear to believe in the probability of such a language.

Baruss refers to Henry Stapp who theorises that mental effort allows the quantum Zeno effect (frequent measurement preventing anything from happening at the quantum level) to hold in place a template that allows our intentions to manifest. Jeffrey Schwarz has invoked Stapp's idea to explain the self-directed neuroplasticity that he found using brain imaging in the right dorsomedial area of the brain (5. Schwarz, 2002).

Baruss is prepared to consider that there may be some truth amongst the various quantum theories of consciousness, but thinks that the real answer to the question lies at a more fundamental level. He suggests a fundamental 'pre-physical' level of reality from which the world of matter and the mental/conscious world arises. He indicates that this is somewhat akin to David Bohm's idea of the implicate order underlying and resolving the differences between quantum and relativity theory, and also provides the level of the universe from which consciousness arose. It is suggested here that consciousness arising from the deepest level could effect the annihilation and creation operators that shape spacetime, and thus influence physical manifestations. It is further suggested here that changes in our intentions could produce changes in the deepest level, which could in turn influence the physical level. Baruss further suggests that some altered states of consciousness involved identification with this deeper level of the universe.

My response to these Bohm/Baruss ideas is to find them interesting, but to wonder whether it is necessary to invoke this extra layer to the universe, for which there is as yet little or no hard evidence. It does seem that consciousness could arise just from the quantum and spacetime, although we are still lacking a properly agreed theory for resolving quantum and relativity theory.

References:-
1.) Jerry Fodor (2000) - The Mind Doesn't Work that Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology - MIT Press
2.) Daniel Dennett (1978) - Brainstorms
3.) Giunti, M. (1995) - Dynamical models of cognition - In:- Mind as Motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition, pp. 549-71, Eds. Port, R. & van Gelder, T.   - MIT Press
4.) van Gelder, T. & Port, R. (1995) - It's about time: An overview of the dynamical approach to cognition, pp. 1-43 - In:- Mind as Motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition, pp. 549-71, Eds. Port, R. & van Gelder, T.   - MIT Press
5.) Schwartz, J. & Begley, S. (2002) - The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the power of mental force

6.)

The Unconscious will: How the pursuit of goals operates outside of conscious awareness

Custers, R. & Aarts, H.

Science, 2 July 2010, vol. 329, no. 5987, pp. 47-50, DOI: 10.1126/science.1188595

The authors claim to demonstrate that goals and motivations can arise unconsciously, and that they can propose a mechanism by which this happens. The main part of the paper discusses experiments involving 'priming'. The authors refer to a study conducted by J. Bargh et al, in which subjects undertook language puzzles. One group was primed with a puzzle referring to winning and achieving, while a control group were not primed in this way. The primed group were found to be more motivated in their puzzle solving. Similar examples are quoted for studies where groups are primed for cooperation, earning money or working in a concentrated way. There are examples of more stringent tests where the priming is subliminal.

There appears to be a lack of coherence in the way in which this idea is developed. The authors claim that goal pursuit is 'influenced and controlled unconsciously', but the studies only appear to substantiate the 'influenced' part of their proposition. In the example of the language puzzles, the experimenters select the goal of solving puzzles, and the subjects implicitly adopt these goals by agreeing to participate in the study. As described, the primed group are more motivated than the control, but they still have the same goal that has been pre-selected by the experimenters themselves. The same goes for the other examples. People could be primed to be more cooperative or more acquisitive in economic games, but the aim of the game remained the same, and only the approach to these aims was influenced. Again the sight of a briefcase on entering the office could make people more work-orientated, but their goal had already been established when they went to the office.

The authors also discuss reward processes in the brain. They point out that people have to take into account the reward potential of particular goals, relative to the effort expected to be invested in achieving them. The authors accept that even of goals have been selected unconsciously, it is still necessary to justify continuing pursuit of these goals. They indicate how neuroimaging has shown that subcortical limbic (relating to emotions) structures in the brain link to prefrontal cortical areas, which in turn respond to various types of reward. Strangely, they do not discuss whether these emotion-based systems might play some part in the initial selection of goals, although common sense would suggest that they were more important in peripheral priming. In fact, the brain systems described appear quite capable of supporting goal-selection without any help from external priming if necessary.

However, the authors' object here is to demonstrate that not even the post-selection assessment of goals is conscious. But once again, they rely on the priming argument. Subjects make more effort in a particular exercise if they receive supportive subliminal signals, but the actual goal is all the time being determined by the experimenters, subliminal signals or not. The evidence that people can be encouraged or discouraged in an activity by peripheral signals is hardly news, and even in these studies, this is not decisive in the retention of the original goal.

There is a certain naive charm to the presentation of this material. Not only is there a confusion between encouraging/discouraging influences and the actual setting and retention of goals, the latter all being done by those running the studies, but there is a general detachment from the real world, and a feeling that the authors need to get out a bit more. In real world situations, people may not be nudged towards a single goal as in these experiments, but may have to decide between disparate and/or conflicting goals. This is the point where the connection between limbic areas and the prefrontal cortex may have to provide a common neural currency with which to make decisions between different goals.

This is not necessarily to argue that is not possible for goals to arise unconsciously, only that it has not been demonstrated at all in these studies. A great part of the brain's processing is unconscious, and it seems quite possible that some trivial goals may arise unconsciously. The problem with wanting to demonstrate the non-existence of freewill is that it sets the bar very high. It is not sufficient to demonstrate some instances where there is no freewill, it is necessary to demonstrate that it can never occur.

7.)

David Chalmers: In:- Conversations on Consciousness

Susan Blackmore

Chalmer's ideas are covered elsewhere on this site, so here we'll simply focus on particular points that come out of Blackmore's interview with Chalmers. Blackmore puts the view that the idea that the existence of subjective experience is a hard problem is analogous to the 19th century theory of vitalism, where an elan vital was required to explain life, as distinct from inanimate objects and chemistry. Chalmers counters by saying that this is a disanalogy. He asks what it is that has to be explained with regard to life. Life metabolises energy from the environment, and uses this to control its behaviour, compete for resources, adapt, grow and finally reproduce. These are functions, and the functions are what have to be explained. The vitalists using the knowledge of the 19th century could not understand how inanimate matter could perform the functions observed in living things, and therefore postulated the idea of an elan vital. However, the progress of science demonstrated that there were mechanisms in living organisms that could perform these functions. However, Chalmers points out that the vitalists were only trying to explain third-person behaviours that they could observe from outside the organism. With consciousness, we are trying to explain the first-person subjective experience, which is quite distinct from the third-person observed behaviours of living organisms.

Further into the interview, Chalmers makes an important distinction between the reducible and the irreducible in physics. He points out that in physics there are irreducible things or properties, such as spacetime, mass and charge. They are just given aspects of the universe, and science does not try to explain them in terms of anything else. These things are taken as fundamental. Chalmers argues that if we cannot derive consciousness from other physical properties, then it must itself be a fundamental. If consciousness cannot be reduced to something else, it must itself be irreducible or fundamental. From this basis, we can look for laws that govern the connection between first-person consciousness and third person behaviour, akin to the laws that prevail in normal physics. He rejects Blackmore's suggestion that the idea of consciousness as a fundamental is necessarily panpsychist. He suggests that consciousness can be fundamental and rare, just as mass is relatively rare in the prevailing vacuum of the universe.

Chalmers argues against the idea of quantum properties being linked to consciousness, but his approach seems rather superficial in this area. His argument is prima facie attractive in asking why a wave function collapse in the brain should produce consciousness there, when wave function collapses occur all over the universe. However, this does not really look at the more detailed question of what might happen if longer-lived quantum coherence and wave function collapse are involved with the sensory processing involved in brains. In this situation the brain could be literally a gate to the background fundamental consciousness of spacetime. Chalmers is in fact himself not so far from that view, where he suggests that the fundamental property of consciousness might only emerge where we have complex information processing as in brains. What Chalmers lacks is any description of the mechanism by which this would happen, something that is provided in some forms of quantum consciousness theory.

8.)

The God Theory

Bernard Haisch

Beginning from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Haisch explains that electric and magnetic fields flowing through space constantly oscillate, as a function of the uncertainty of their position and momentum. The name 'zero-point field' refers to the fact that this is the lowest possible energy state that persists even when the heat/movement of molecules has ceased. Because electromagnetic radiation permeates the whole of space this adds up to an enormous amount of energy. Haisch stresses that there is no such thing in the universe as a void, and that this lowest energy state is still full of this zero point energy. This quantum vacuum is viewed as a sea of energy fluctuations and force perturbations jumping in and out of existence. Haisch treats the zero point energy as a real thing, and concentrates attention on what effect this has. The existence of the zero point energy has long been demonstrated by the Casimir force. At distances smaller than a millimetre metal can be forced together, because long wave length radiation is suppressed between the plates, so more pressure is exerted on the metal sheets from outside than inside. The nearer the plates are brought together, the more radiation is excluded and the greater the external pressure.

Haisch developed ideas about the effects of the zero-point field in conjunction with a colleague, Alfonso Rueda. The assumption since Newton has been that the mass of an object, which is in effect a measure of its inertia, was an innate property of the object itself. Rueda made an opposite proposal that the inertial resistance to acceleration came not from the object itself but from contrary force exerted by the surrounding zero-point field. Further to this, it is suggested that the zero-point field could explain the Pauli exclusion principle, with the buffeting of the underlying electromagnetic field preventing the electron from losing energy and spiraling into the nucleus of the atom.

The astrophysicist, Sir William McCrea has additionally suggested that these vacuum fluctuations are needed not just to overcome the inertia of macroscopic objects, but to generate any action in the universe at all, including radioactive decay and electron transitions, thus making it the key element in the passage of time/the increasing entropy of the universe. If these roles are attributed to the zero-point field, it can be viewed as an underlying reality that sustains the matter that appears in spacetime. Haisch suggests that there should be other zero-point fields besides the electromagnetic zero-point field relating to the other forces of nature such as the strong and weak nuclear forces. Thus it is acknowledged that the zero-point electromagnetic field might be only part of the story.

What is the significance of all this for consciousness studies? 'Fundamentalist' theories try to explain consciousness in terms of fundamental quantum features, which ultimately involves the nature of the quantum vacuum/spacetime. An understanding of this therefore becomes central to an understanding of the physical basis of consciousness. If the quantum vacuum is as central to the material structure of the universe, as these proposals suggest, it becomes the more plausible that it could underlie consciousness.

9.)

Max Velmans: Reflexive Monism

in:- Conversation on Consciousness

Susan Blackmore

This piece takes the form of an interview that Max Velmans gave to Susan Blackmore, as part of a series of interviews with prominent consciousness theorists. Velmans has developed a theory of consciousness called reflexive monism. He starts by thinking in terms of the three dimensional space that surrounds us. He contrasts this approach to both dualism, and to standard reductionist approaches that seek to portray consciousness as a state or function of the brain. The standard view is that sensory inputs to the brain are processed to the point where they become a conscious experience in the brain.

Velmans, however, suggests that the subjective experience is not in the brain, but is the three dimensional world around us. In this theory, there's no split between the three dimensional world and the world in the brain, although he accepts that there is a world outside the brain, which is as described by physics and therefore very different from what we experience. Velman's view is that the history of the universe through the Big Bang and the process of evolution leads to the present situation where we have human organisms each with an individual viewpoint or perspective on the whole universe. The universe is thus differentiated into bits that each have a view of the whole. This idea is labelled as reflexive monism.

Velmans sees consciousness as a fundamental property. He agrees with Chalmers in this although not in other respects. However, he seems, in this interview, uncertain how to develop this concept. He tries to compare the distinction between the objective and subjective view to experiments in quantum mechanics where the description of a particle depends on the arrangement of equipment. Unfortunately, this is a view of quantum mechanics that many have drifted away from. The more modern view might be that the description changes when the quanta interact with the environment, and that particular experimental arrangements produce such an interaction. Velmans, who is not a quantum consciousness theorist, intends only an analogy, but this does place a question mark over whether this whole concept of two unrelated views of the same thing or two aspects of the same thing without any apparent physical connection actually means anything. Velmans suggests here that identical information is being presented in two different ways. In a way, this is likely to be in some sense true of any physical explanation of consciousness in the brain, but without some suggestion of what physical structure might underlie the dual aspects, we really don't have much to go on.

Velmans attempts to further substantiate his view with a thought experiment. There could be an experimental situation where a scientist was looking at a brain scan of relevant neurons in a subject's brain, while the subject was simply looking out and getting a subjective impression of the room they were in. So the scientist is getting an objective impression of the subject's brain state, while the subject is getting the subjective output of the brain state. The scientist and the subject then swap roles, with the scientist looking at the room while the subject looks at a scan of his brain. It is suggested that this somehow doesn't make sense, or blurs the subjective/objective roles. However, the action of looking at a scan of neural processing and of looking at what the neural processing produces are still quite distinct as between objective and subjective, whether the person having the objective experience is a scientist or untrained. There is nothing magical about being a scientist that makes their experience objective, regardless of what they are looking at. Velmans suggests that it is something to do with being in a scientist's role when looking at the scan, but the objectivity is nothing to do with the job description of the observer, and all to do with where they are looking. In the detail of his written material Velmans is one of the most logical and incisive of writers, but in the end this looks like an unsatisfactory merger between ideas of consciousness as a fundamental property of the universe and more conventional views wedded to classical physics.

10.)

A few thoughts on identity theory: Firstly, I think that mind/brain should be replaced by consciousness/brain when discussing anything in this area that requires a certain amount of rigour. Mind is a word that seems peculiar to the English language and appears to cover, the brain, mental processing such as thoughts and response to stimuli and consciousness. It's a useful word, but it does allow a certain amount of fudging where you want to specifically talk about consciousness.

A good example of identity theory is to say that because we accept that H₂0 is the same thing as water, so that there is an H₂0/water identity, we should accept that there is identity between consciousness of for instance pain and the firing of particular neurons. I don't think this works, although it can look superficially attractive. In the first place, why are we convinced by the H₂0/water identity? This is because what we know about the electromagnetic bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms and between the individual H₂0 molecules gives a full explanation of the way the substance known as water behaves, with for instance liquidity at ambient temperature and the ability to interact with biomolecules. The key thing is that the H₂0 understanding explains the behaviour of the water we see both in everyday life and neuroscience. If water regularly did other things than are generally observed, such as brandishing the sword Excalibur all of itself, or defying gravity, the identity explanation would fail because the electromagnetic bonds in H₂0 do not allow for that behaviour.

I think mind/brain identity or more specifically in the example above, consciousness of pain/neuronal activity identity fails on this basis. Identity theorists may invites us to think of the neuronal activity at the detailed level of electrical potentials and molecules. So we ought to be able to see how electrical potentials, molecules and any other details produce the observed characteristics of consciousness in the way that electromagnetic bonds produce the observed characteristics of water. However, it is not possible to do this within classical physics. Kelvin was right, in terms of classical physics, when more than a century ago he said that it had more or less all been done. We know how particular atoms, molecules and electrical potentials interact and what these interactions produce, such as forming compounds or transmitting electrical signals, but conscious experience is nowhere on the list of classical physics. It is no use in this context appealing to special conditions in the brain, because the whole thrust of modern science is to the effect that there is no dualism or vitalism, and that brain obeys exactly the same laws as the rest of the universe.

The failure of most identity theory seems to stem from concentrating explanation at the classical level, which can only produce a known limited range of behaviours. If we do eventually find a physical explanation for consciousness in the brain, it may in fact be possible to speak of an identity between consciousness and some particular brain states.

11.)

Free will, information, quantum mechanics and biology

Peter Schuster, University of Vienna

Complexity, 27 July 2009

This article seems to illustrate some of the difficulties that modern thinkers have in getting to grips with the questions of consciousness and freewill. In the early part of the article the author states baldly that conscious free decisions are a subjective illusion, on the basis of the Libet experiments. Curiously, he goes on to quote at some length parts of Roy Baumeister's interesting 2008 paper, 'Free will in scientific psychology', which argues that the Libet experiments refer to immediate action, but do not concern themselves with more deliberative thinking. The part of the Baumeister's article quoted here refers to the biological cost of the processes associated with freewill. This is developed further with accounts of studies that show levels of glucose in the bloodstream fall when self control or free choice making are being exercised. This evidence of energy consumption looks to argue the process as being purely illusory.

The latter part of the article is in a way hard to discuss, because it seems to discuss the wrong question. The main drive of the argument seems to be that the interactions of biomolecules can be understood in the same way as other chemical reactions, with no need to resort to examining the quantum mechanical underpinnings, just as understanding car mechanics does not require an examination of the electromagnetic forces holding the machine together. This looks true so far as it goes, but does not appear to even approach the main discussion as to whether it might be necessary to look for functional quantum coherence in order to explain consciousness. Furthermore, like most conventional explanations it runs into the sand. Reactions with biomolecules follow similar rules to other chemical reactions, but they are associated with consciousness which other chemical reactions are not. This is what has to be explained.

12.)

Freewill in Scientific Psychology

Roy Baumeister, Florida State University

Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 3, No. 1 (2008)

INTRODUCTION: Baumeister argues for the efficacy of freewill. In particular studies show that the processes of both self control and rational choice deplete glucose in the bloodstream, leading to a deterioration in subsequent performance. This can, however, be at least partly restored by the administration of more glucose. It appears unlikely that evolution would have selected for such a high energy process if it was not efficacious. Consciousness is closely associated to freewill and these studies therefore carry a strong implication that consciousness itself is also a physical thing or process involving energy and being efficacious.

Baumeister discusses freewill in terms of self-regulation, flexibility in behaviour and conscious decision making. He points out that many philosophers, including Kant, have supported the idea of a capacity for freewill, but suggested that it is only used part of the time. P. He examines the reason for the scientific and psychological consensus against the existence of freewill. He suggests a metaphysical element in this, with some scientists feeling that rejection of freewill is part of being a scientist. The fact that Libet and similar experiments have shown that actual movements of the body are not driven by free will is acknowledged, but Baumeister points to researchers such as Gollwitzer (1. 1999), who distinguishes between the decision to act and the action or movement itself. It is suggested that free will may have a role in the deliberative stage. For instance, free will could govern the decision to go for a walk, but the actions of getting up, going out the door and putting one foot in front of the other would be unconsciously driven.

Participants in studies rate others' choice of actions as most free when the choices concerned come after conscious deliberation, and also when the decisions taken were in defiance of either external pressure or short-term interests. Participants who wrote accounts of their own history felt freer when they were pursuing their chosen long-term goals.

Self control, such as the ability to resist short-term benefits in favour of long-term goals and also rational choice based on deliberative thinking are here seen as two of the most important factors associated with freewill. Baumeister argues that reasoning entails at least a limited degree of freewill in that people can alter their behaviour on the basis of reasoning. Similarly self control equates to the ability to alter behaviour in line with some goal. Baumeister cautions that the ability of modern technology to study periods of milliseconds may have blinded some researchers to the importance of processes that take extended periods of time. He wonders why people agonise over decisions if they actually have no influence on them, and also suffer negative stress effects in situations where they lack control over their lives. The implication is that the use of time and energy on such a process should have been selected out by evolution if it had no relevance.

The author argues that while researchers such as Wegner have shown that people are sometimes not aware of the causes of their actions, that is very different from saying that they never determine their actions. The consensus against freewill has set the bar as high as possible in denying that freewill ever has any influence or exists at all. They have to show that none of the apparent occurrences of freewill are real, rather just producing scattered examples of freewill being an illusion, some involving rather contrived conditions.

In Baumeister's own experimental studies, it was found that the performance of self control tasks deteriorated if there had been previous self-control tasks. The implication of this is that some resource is used up during the exercise of self control. The exercise of choice seems to have the same effect. Subsequent to the exercise of either self control or choice, attempts to exercise further self control saw performance deteriorate, in a way that did not occur when participants were just thinking or answering questions. This suggests that self control and rational choice both draw on some form of energy. Gailliot et al (2. 2007) found that self control caused reductions of glucose in the bloodstream, and that low levels of glucose were correlated with poor self control. Administration of glucose counteracted some of this deterioration.

This finding has important implications for the freewill argument. If free choice was only some form of illusion, it is not clear why it would be adaptive for evolution to select for something that consumed a lot of energy, but had no influence on behaviour. There is a rather convoluted suggestion that we have the illusion of freewill because that makes us think that others have freewill and should therefore be punished if they do not make choices that are favourable to the group. However, if freewill is just such a charade, it is surprising that it should require such a noticeable amount of energy. It is much more plausible that the depletion of glucose represents high-energy processing that has a direct impact on the choice of behaviour.

There is perhaps a deeper implication, not discussed in this articles that consciousness which is closely related to the experience of free choice is itself a physical thing or process requiring energy. This should not be a surprise given the nature of the physical laws, but at the moment it looks to be contrary to the scientific consensus. The high energy cost of freewill suggested here also serves to explain why it is used only sparingly, and that is one reason why we rely on unconscious responses for much of our activities.

The scientific consensus against goodwill has created some anxiety that as this 'knowledge' gradually leaks from the laboratory into the popular mind there will be a deterioration in public behaviour. Ingenious arguments have been advanced this, but studies suggest that we should fear such a deterioration. Vohs & Schooler (3. 2008) found that participants who had read a study advocating the non-existence of freewill were more likely than controls to take advantage of an opportunity to cheat in a subsequent test. Other studies by Baumeister et al showed that participants encouraged not to believe in freewill were more aggressive and less helpful towards others.

References:-
1.) Gollwitzer, P.M. (1999) - Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans - American Psychologist, 54, pp. 493-503
2.) Gailliot et al (2007) - Self control relies on glucose as a limited energy source - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, pp.325-336
3.) Vohs, K. & Schooler, J. (2008) - The value of believing in freewill - Psychology Science, 19, pp. 49-54