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Other Quantum 2


Other Quantum: 2

Further papers and articles relative to other theories of quantum consciousness

1.) Quantum consciousness - Piero Scaruffi

2.) Consciousness & non-hierarchical physics - Chris Clarke

3.) Quantum mechanics, consciousness & the self - Chris Clarke

4.) Mind, Brain & the Quantum - Michael Lockwood: Main theme is the relationship between relativity, time and consciousness.





Quantum consciousness

Piero Scaruffi

http://thymos.com

Piero Scaruffi takes the view that the more we come to know about the brain, the less easy it becomes to explain consciousness in terms of classical physics. This is the direct opposite of the mainstream view according to which greater knowledge of the brain will inevitably reveal an explanation that can be described in terms of classical physics.

Neurobiology is by implication criticised for being so dependent on Newtonian physics, despite this being known to be limited in its correctness. Neurobiologists have remained attached to classical physics, despite the fact that the objects and processes they are studying have become smaller, and therefore closer to needing a quantum interpretation. A further problem is that consciousness was from the beginning excluded from Newtonian theory.

The early part of Scaruffi’s paper provides an outline of the main theories of quantum consciousness. Quantum models of consciousness date back to the 1920’s and the birth of quantum theory itself. However, the earliest detailed model appears to have been produced by Evan Walker in 1970. This proposed that electrons could quantum tunnel between adjacent neurons to produce a virtual nervous system that direct the synapse-based system. The idea finds echoes in the later Penrose/Hameroff model, where Hameroff suggests that quantum states can extend across macroscopic areas of the brain, as a result of quantum tunnelling at gap junctions linking the dendrites of different neurons.

The physicist, Herbert Fröhlich, suggested that a quantum phenomenon called Bose-Einstein condensation could arise in biological matter. Living matter comprises mainly water and biomolecules, both of which are electrical dipoles. It is suggested that when such oscillators are maintained at a constant temperature, as they are in the thermal non-equilibrium of biological tissue, condensates can arise. These may also encode information and transmit signals. At a later date, the Penrose/Hameroff model also used condensates, which in conjunction with quantum tunnelling at gap junctions allowed quantum states to extend over macroscopic areas of the brain. In 1989, Ian Marshall also suggested that consciousness could arise from the excitation of condensates in the brain.

The philosopher, Michael Lockwood, approached quantum consciousness from a different angle. He argued that special relativity meant that mental states must be physical states. Mental states existed in time, and because space and time were part of the same thing, mental states must also exist in space. He viewed consciousness as having the role that the observer has in the orthodox Bohr view of quantum mechanics, but also because of his argument from special relativity argument, they have to be part of the physical state of the brain. Consciousness is put in the position of scanning the brain looking for sensations.

The physicist, Henry Stapp, produced a quantum theory of consciousness based on Heisenberg’s and von Neumann’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is close to Bohr’s. Stapp’s interpretation of this was that all that exists is subjective knowledge (i.e. the knowledge of an observer of a Bohr type quantum experiment). What is referred to as the ‘Heisenberg choice’ is the choice of what question will be asked of nature, and this choice is seen as altering the way in which the universe actually develops. The ‘Dirac process’ is the answer to the question provided by nature, which like all quantum answers is seen to be random. Scaruffi relates these views to the psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwarz, who is opposed to the mechanistic approach to psychiatry, and argues for the ability of consciousness to control brain processes.

The paper also discusses the position of Karl Pribram, who considers that brain processes have many of the properties of holograms. Sensory perception is seen as electromagnetic activation propagating through the brain. These sensory waves can interfere with memory also propagating as a wave to produce a holographic structure. Perceptions can be analysed into component frequencies, and therefore dealt with by Fourier analyse. Dirac’s least action principle constrains the trajectories of these waves.

The physicist, Kunio Yasue built on the earlier ideas of another physicist Hiroomo Umezawa to develop a set of ideas known as quantum brain dynamics. Yasue emphasises the role of the water molecules that make up much of the brain. He proposes that these can form an extensive quantum system that interacts with neuronal networks. He supports Fröhlich’s idea of condensates in the neuronal membrane providing macroscopic coherence. He thinks the microtubules inside neurons could also support coherence, and that they could be involved in cognition and memory. Consciousness is suggested to arise from the interaction between the electromagnetic field and the fields created by water and protein in the brain.

The Penrose/Hameroff model is also discussed. Penrose proposed that in addition to the normal random quantum wave reduction, there could be an additional objective reduction affecting waves that do not interact with the environment. Each superposition of the quantum wave is proposed to have its own spacetime geometry, and when the separation of these spacetimes reaches a critical level, the superpositions collapse to a single state. This latter reduction process is suggested to be non-computable. Non-computable processes are suggested to be encoded into networks that make up the fundamental geometry of spacetime. The brain is suggested to access this level via the wave function collapse of macroscopic quantum states existing in microtubules within the brain’s neurons. At a later point in Scaruffi’s paper, he states that Penrose is wrong in making consciousness appear by magic out of unconscious matter. However, this does not appear to be a correct interpretation of Penrose, even relative to Scaruffi’s own description. In the Penrose theory, consciousness arises from spacetime as a fundamental property of the universe.

The ideas of the philosopher, David Chalmer’s are discussed. Chalmers is critical of mainstream consciousness thinking, but does not see the solution in quantum theories of consciousness. Chalmers makes a distinction between the phenomenal concept of mind (the way it feels) and the psychological concept (what the mind does). Every mental property is considered to be either phenomenal or psychological or some combination of the two. Pain, often viewed as an example of the qualia, is experienced subjectively, but can also be analysed functionally. Chalmer’s proposed solution to the problem of consciousness is based on the concept of information. Information is seen as the link between the physical and the conscious. Information is pattern seen from the inside, and consciousness is seen as information about the pattern of the self.

A Darwinist theory of consciousness
The last part of Scaruffi’s paper seeks to develop his own view on the subject of consciousness. He rejects the notion that sensations or subjective experience can be reduced to particles. He suggests that we should analyse why consciousness is limited to the brain, or in another words, what is special about the brain that can’t be found elsewhere. The brain is described as being made by common and well-known constituents of matter, with no explanation as to why they produce consciousness, when configured as a brain, but not when configured as a foot. He does not think that any account of the brain, however detailed it may become, will ever be able to explain how the material components of the brain turn into consciousness.

Instead, consciousness itself must be a physical property, rather than something that is created by other physical components. He compares those neuroscientists who do not accept this, to a scientist that did not accept that electrical charge is a fundamental property, but tried to explain it in terms of some other property such as gravity. He takes the view that any paradigm that tries to manufacture consciousness out of something else is doomed to failure. In such a paradigm, consciousness will seem to appear by magic by putting neurons or similar components which have no sign of consciousness in their make up together. He says that his theory is neither dualist nor reductionist. Consciousness is seen as separate from physical science as described, but still a physical property.





Consciousness & non-hierarchical physics

Chris Clarke

Faculty of Mathematical Studies, University of Southampton

Chis Clarke’s paper discusses qualia and free will. Clarke defines the irreducible aspect of qualia and also free will as the essence of human consciousness. He thinks that qualia arise from an ‘entanglement’ between a person and the perceived object. Free will is suggested to arise from the use of self-reflection to change the reference frame within which decisions are taken. This change in the reference frame is likened to the change between quantum wave and particle. Clarke does not think that these characteristics can be derived by just summing up the microscopic events found in quantum theory.

In discussing qualia, Clarke remarks that consciousness is a unity and some aspects of this are qualia such as colour. However, the totality of consciousness is more than just the total of various qualia. Clarke takes the view that in looking at, for instance a tree, we perceive a variety of qualia, but that there is no tree quale. Clarke also distinguishes between internal experience, such as anger etc, and the perception of external objects. Clarke argues, in line with Heidegger, that the primal qualia is the internal experience, with infants gradually learning to split off the perceived external world from their internal experience. The last has been confirmed by studies of child development.

The present scientific orthodoxy is seen as going only half way to describe qualia. The perceptual world and its qualia are seen as only a model of external reality. There are one-to-one correspondences between external things and perceptions, but they are not at all the same thing. Thus a particular frequency of oscillation of photons corresponds to the quale of the colour red, but in contrast to the external behaviour of the photon, the physical nature of the redness quale is completely unknown, and it is not apparent how it would be discovered by a conventional scientific approach.

Clarke, in line with Max Velmans, wants to stand the traditional scientific view on its head. Instead of our perceptions being a model of external reality, external reality is modelled by our perceptions, with the qualia being out there in the external world, and apparently being the product of entanglement between the two systems.

In discussing free will, Clarke looks at our process of decision taking where we envisage the possible outcome of actions and evaluate our emotional response to these. This approach is often effective in reaching a decision, but on some occasions we are still left without a decision. Clarke suggests that free will or something like it cuts in at this point, and changes the frame of reference so that we might suddenly bring in the thought, what would X have done or thought in this situation, thus moving the decision making process into a new frame of reference.





Quantum mechanics, consciousness & the self

Chris  Clarke

Chris Clarke claims that the stories that society tells itself about the physical nature of the world really matter because this affects the values of the society, and reinforces or undermines its power structures. The current mainstream paradigm derives from Newton, with subsequent additions from 19th century physics and 20th century molecular biology, and is now entrenched in the modern educational and medical systems. In earlier centuries, western thinking was dualistic. Clarke traces this back to ancient Greek philosophy, with humans comprised of two distinct substances, body and spirit. This idea was inherited by Christianity, and then given a more definite form by Descartes in the 17th century.

In the subsequent centuries, there was a gradual squeezing out of the spirit from this initially dualist view. This resulted from the ability of science to give a physical explanation to more and more things that had previously seemed to be the role of the spirit. The invention of computers, as a form of mechanical brain, seemed to round off this world view. The world is viewed as a system of isolated atoms and ideas such as meaning and purpose are deemed to be an illusion. At the same time, physics seems to leave out consciousness and the possibly related concepts of meaning and creativity. Further, the mainstream idea of phenomena, referring to mental experience appears  to presuppose the idea of perceptions being mere mental appearances produced by an external reality.

Clarke is particularly critical of the current mainstream approach to consciousness. He criticises writers who replace the basic experience of the subjective with something at once more restricted and more complicated, such as self-consciousness, reasoning or problem solving. These writers appear not to notice the basic substratum of the subjective, thus rendering most of their discussion irrelevant.

Dennett, who is pre-eminent amongst mainstream thinkers on consciousness and taken as sole guide by some popular writers, is particularly criticised for looking at the problem from only a third person point of view, when the very concept of the third person assumes the existence of the first person.

Newtonian physics had in principle the ability to specify the position and velocity of every particle in the universe, and all properties of the universe could be specified in these terms. However, this approach is undermined by quantum mechanics. With respect to quantum mechanics, Clarke stresses two concepts, complementarity and non-locality.

Complimentarity does not allow us to specify all the properties of a physical system. Observation by an observer on the macroscopic world can determine which properties of a quantum system can be given values such as position or momentum. Clarke interprets this to mean that reality does not run from the quantum to the macroscopic, but constitutes an interplay between the two. This is related to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, where two values such as position and momentum cannot be specified at the same time, but only two approximations, with the product of these uncertainties being equal to or greater than Planck’s constant. Clarke also argues that the majority of physicists who ignore quantum effects at the macroscopic or classical level are wrong, because with something like a living organism that has intermeshed interactions at many different scales, quantum unpredictability could manifest at the macroscopic level.

Clarke further discusses the problem of non-locality. A field, such as the electromagnetic field is regarded as local. At each point in spacetime the field takes a particular value. The field changes in time as a result of the value of the field at neighbouring points and never as a function of the values of distant points.

However, quantum states can be non-local. The Alain Aspect experiment showed that there could be a correlation between distant quantum particles that could not be a function of any of the particles that were local to the particles concerned. This suggests to Clarke that the particles are integrated into a larger system by underlying non-local connections. There is no possibility of communication between these particles, and this hard to explain characteristic leads Clarke to claim that existing physics, including quantum mechanics, is incomplete.

Clarke puts interpretations of quantum mechanics into two groups. Firstly, there are those that envisage the collapse of the wave function as a real physical event, while in the other camp views such as the Copenhagen interpretation regard the quantum states as mere abstractions necessary to predict and understand the outcome of experiments.

Clarke builds on the latter approach at the same time as saying that physics needs to be extended in order to provide a complete theory. First, he proposes a version known as histories of interpretation of quantum theory. Here the basic fact about a quantum state is the history that created the particular state, and a calculation of a probability of any particular history. An admitted problem here is the vast number of possible histories that could account for a state. There has to be a way of paring these down, and consciousness is suggested as the way of doing this.

Clarke describes the conscious ‘I’ as on the one hand linked with the various subsystems of the body but on the other hand, through quantum locality, including within it aspects of the people and things that it perceives. This represents a distinct view of quantum consciousness based mainly on non-locality.

It is disappointing that Clarke does not at least speculate on the practicalities of his proposal. For instance, non-locality does not allow the transmission of matter or energy, or of normal information, which is instantiated in matter or energy, but only of quantum properties, such as the spin of a particle. This obviously creates a problem for the efficacy of quantum entanglement in producing perception or subjective experience, which it would be interesting to have discussed. Similarly, the proposal seems to assume some presently unknown structure in the brain, presumably involving quantum coherence. This lays the idea open to sort of attacks that have assailed the Penrose/Hameroff model, and therefore require some explanation of how coherence would be sustained in the conditions of the brain.

This leads on to Clarke’s take with respect to free will, where his stance is somewhat confusing. In the first place, he suggests that decisions are based on a mixture of deterministic problem solving and randomness, the latter presumably quantum related. However, the mind is allowed to move into new frameworks of meaning, when consciousness changes the way in which it selects from different quantum histories. This could do with a lot more discussion. It is not really clear what triggers these changes of framework or how important they are in the overall workings of the mind, nor why it is the selection of histories rather than futures that is important.

Altogether, Clarke puts forward an interesting concept, but one that needs much more development.





Mind, Brain & the Quantum

Michael Lockwood

ISBN 0-631-18031-1

Lockwood claims that there is nothing in physics or chemistry as currently understood to account for the inner or subjective life that we experience. Considerable progress has been made in understanding how the brain processes information, but this has thrown little light on why these processes are associated with subjective experience. Moreover, Lockwood feels that simply accumulating more knowledge of the type that neuroscience produces is unlikely to solve the problem.

Relativity & Frames of Reference
The recurring theme of this book is the apparent conflict between special relativity and our subjective experience of time as something that flows from the past into the future. The concept of relativity began with Galileo. He used the thought experiment of a ship moving at a constant pace on a calm sea. Water dripping from a bottle falls vertically downwards onto the floor of the ship’s cabin, it does not fall towards the stern of the ship, which it would if it were to fall vertically towards the spot on the planet that the water was directly above when it started to fall. In modern conditions it is easy for anyone to witness this experiment. If someone drops something in a plane or a train, it falls directly to the floor, and does not hurtle towards the back of the means of transport. This was an extremely important insight. It demonstrated that there was no absolute spatial frame of reference in the universe, and that each observer or indeed object had an individual frame of spatial reference.

One of Einstein’s insights in special relativity was to extend the concept of individual frames of reference to include time, as well as the three spatial dimensions, and thus to create the new concept of spacetime. Time was conceived of as being like space in that it was just there extending in all directions. This led, however, to a conceptual problem. Space had never been conceived of as flowing, but time was subjectively perceived to flow from the past and into the future. But this became an unscientific view once time was perceived as extending everywhere, and being the same sort of thing as space.

Light Cones & the Absolute Elsewhere
Further to this, the concept of the light cone is crucial to special relativity. Those things which effect an observer lie within the observer’s past light cone, that is the rays of light reaching the observer from the past. Events for which there has not been enough time for rays of light to reach A lie outside the past light cone, and therefore can have no physical influence on A. Similarly events which can be influenced by A lie within its future light cone, being those parts of the universe, which there has been sufficient time for light from A to reach. Other areas lie outside the future light cone, and cannot have yet been effected by anything which has happened at A. Areas which lie outside both the past and future light cones can neither effect A, nor have yet been effected by A. These areas are referred to as the ‘absolute elsewhere’ and for all practical purposes can be viewed as being outside A’s universe.

Lockwood discusses the situation in special relativity where an event can be in the future of observer A but in the past of observer B, despite the fact that observer B is actually situated in the past of observer A. He explains with the help of a diagram how this is possible. In a two dimensional diagram, i.e on the page of a popular science book, A which is a stationary observer has a horizontal line or simultaniety plane passing through it, indicating the present or ‘now’ for its frame of reference. Anything lower down the page is in the past, and anything higher up the page is in the future. If we take a point C, which might be an event in another galaxy, that is further up the page than the simultaneity plane of A, it is deemed to lie in the future of A.

However, the observer B, that lies in the past of A is moving and because of this its simultaneity plane is not horizontal, but runs at an upward angle across the page, such that it eventually crosses that of A, and comes so far up the page that it is higher up than the point C. Therefore C is deemed to lie in the past of B, but the future of A, despite the fact that A is in the future of B.

This paradoxical situation is often taken to verify an entirely deterministic view of the universe, which in particular excludes any possibility of human free will. It seems that the fact that C lies in the past of B but the future of A means that the future of C is predestined. However, it is questionable whether the relationship of the two observers with the event C has any meaning within physics. The paradox described here can only arise when C lies outside the light cones of A and B in the absolute elsewhere, that is when it is impossible for C to influence A or B or visa versa. It is arguable to what extent the point C means anything for A and B.

David Bohm in his book on special relativity uses the example of a star visible from Earth. Because the star is many light years away, and is visible to the observer, it lies in the past light cone of the observer. With some knowledge of astronomy it might be possible to infer the position of the star on the simultaniety plane or the ‘now’ of the observer, but that is only an inference, and the star might have gone into super nova since its light set out towards the observer on Earth. The ‘now’ of the star is in the ‘absolute elsewhere’ a region with no possible contact with the observer. In effect, past and future events and their ordering in the absolute elsewhere are no more than a speculation. In the future of A, C may in fact come to lie in its past light cone, but then there will be no disagreement as to the ordering of events within the then existing past light cone. Within the past or future light cone, events will always happen in the same order, and there will be no violation of causality.

However, even if we accept this view, it does not rule out the plausibility of a deterministic universe. Events in the future light cone of A will evolve according to the laws of physics, and since Newton there has been a strong bias in favour of the deterministic. In Newtonian physics algorithms determine the interaction of particles, and in principle if one knew the position and momentum of all the particles in the universe one could calculate with absolute certainty all future events. This could work just as well within special relativity.

General Relativity & Closed Timelike Curves
However, problems for this view start to arise when we look at general relativity and still more in the difficult relationship with quantum theory. In general relativity space is curved by massive objects and future light cones are tilted in line with the curvature of space. This evolution of gravity/curvature of space becomes one of the deterministic influences in this picture. However, with a sufficiently strong gravitational field, such as within a black hole, the tilt of the light cone could continue right round the massive object until it came back to where it started. This development is described as a ‘closed timelike curve’. As some time would have elapsed, it is coming back into its own past light cone, as one of the influences which should deterministically influence its own future.

Quantum Problems
This might be dismissed as speculative, and in any case unlikely to impact on the cause and effect of human lives which do not take place in black holes. More direct problems can be seen in integrating quantum theory into this picture. Quantum particles are conceived as evolving as waves representing a superposition of the possible position and other properties of particles. When a choice of position is made for an individual particle the outcome is random. Einstein himself was hostile to the way in which randomness became a factor in quantum theory, as he always favoured a deterministic view of the universe.

It seems that it used to be thought that averaging out over countless numbers of such quantum choices would mean that this randomness would have no significant effect on the large scale world. However, the emergence of chaos theory over recent decades has given this a new slant. Chaos theory is deterministic, but it shows that tiny changes in the initial conditions could result in dramatic differences subsequent conditions, and random choices by a quantum particle might constitute part of the initial conditions.

An unhappy story illustrates this possibility. This concerns a nuclear scientist whose boy friend wearied of her not being able to turn up for dates because of working late. He issues an ultimatum that if it occurs on his birthday, he will dump her. That night she is held up by an experiment involving the random decay of a nuclear particle, which takes an unusually long time to happen. He dumps her, and the two former lovers subsequently marry other people, by whom they each have one child. These children grow up to be the dictators of rival nuclear powers.

Entropy & the arrow of time
Surprisingly, Lockwood fails to discuss the problems of increasing entropy and the non-reversibility of time in relation to relativity. Space and time are viewed as the same thing in relativity, but in both classical physics and everyday life there is one important difference. If we travel for an hour we move spatially. That journey is in principle reversible, allowing us to return to our starting point in space, but we cannot go back through the hour that we traversed on the outward journey, and return to our starting point in time. Time has a scientifically undeniable arrow which is not present in space.

Time’s arrow is most often related to increasing entropy. In a closed system, and the universe is viewed as a closed system, entropy either stays the same or increases, but never decreases. The increase in entropy is loosely defined as the increase in disorder. More accurately, one state has higher entropy than another, if more possible configurations of atoms could represent that state. The high entropy state is thus more likely to arise by chance. An analogy is the throw of two dice. There is three times the chance of getting a score of 7, than a score of 2, and the score of 7 therefore is analogous to higher entropy. Entropy is known to have been very low in the early universe, is higher now, and is predicted to be higher in the future, and this is most often seen as creating the arrow of time.

Lockwood appears slightly glib in passing over all of these problems, and seemingly accepting the deterministic or ‘block universe’ view of relativity. However, his line of argument lies elsewhere. He wonders why, despite the view of past and future, and the ordering of events being a factor of one’s current state of motion, we do in fact have the subjective experience of the flow of time. The throw away view of much of mainstream theory is that the flow of time is an illusion. As so often in consciousness studies, something that does not fit the paradigm is conveniently classed as an illusion. One example used as an analogy to illustrate the possibility of illusion is the sensation of dizziness, which creates the illusion that the environment is spinning round the subject. Lockwood, at any rate is not content to let this pass. He argues that if the flow of time is an illusion, it is not an illusion about the external environment, but instead relates to our stream of consciousness.

Lockwood goes on to discuss mainstream theories of consciousness, such as functionalism and identity theory. In particular, he takes issue with the view put forward by both Wittgenstein and A.J. Ayer that it was impossible to assign a spatial location to a mental event. Lockwood argues that mental events are located in time, and that in relativity space and time are the same thing, and anything that is located in time is also located in space.

Lockwood looks at the instance of a physical event A, which causes a mental event B, which in turn causes another physical event C. Event B will be spatially located within the intersection of the future light cone of A and the past light cone of C, and he considers it would in principle be possible to progressively narrow this down to a tighter and tighter specification of the spatial location.

Functionalism
Lockwood goes on to examine some mainstream consciousness theories. He rejects functionalism, which suggests that any system that can perform the functions of the brain will of its nature produce consciousness. In arguing against this, he points to the phenomenon of blindsight. This is a condition where the patients lacks sight in a part of their visual field. However, when they are asked to guess what is present in the blind area, they have a success rate of much above chance, indicating that the brain is still in fact receiving and processing signals from that part of the field. The most likely explanation appears to be that there is an additional pathway in the brain to the one that has ceased to function, but that the functioning of this additional pathway does not enter consciousness. This suggests that two things can perform the same brain function, but with one being conscious and the other not, which directly contradicts the main idea of functionalism.

Lockwood & Quantum Consciousness
It is only towards the end of his book that Lockwood begins to focus on quantum theories of consciousness. He discusses the possibility that quantum computing could operate in the brain. David Deutsch, one of the originators of the idea of quantum computing, took the view that given the nature of biological tissue, rapid decoherence would prevent brain from supporting any quantum computing. However, Lockwood is less sceptical. He mentions the work of the physicist, Fröhlich, who suggested the pumping of biochemical energy could sustain quantum states of many particles oscillating in phase, known as Bose-condensates, at relatively high temperatures. Such systems could in principle form the basis of quantum computing in the brain. Ian Marshall is attributed with being the first person to suggest that such systems could be the basis of mental states. In particular, Marshall suggested that the holistic state of the Bose condensates might be the basis of the unity of consciousness. Marshall proposed that the amplitudes and phase relations of dipole oscillators could code for phenomenal experience. Anaesthetics, which suspend consciousness, act by binding to specific proteins in cell membranes and possibly elsewhere in the cell. Marshall suggested that this process works by preventing protein molecules from participating in molecular dipole oscillations.

Lockwood repeatedly comes back to the connection between time, consciousness and relativity. In relativistic terms, Lockwood envisages the conscious part of the brain as a spatio-temporal world tube, occupying a certain space in the brain and moving through time. He envisages a phenomenal frame, the contents of which depend on where the frame is positioned. The frame is defined by a preferred set of observables in the brain.

Lockwood goes further in suggesting that time itself is a quantum mechanical observable, with a spectrum of eigenvalues corresponding to a range of possible times, each one capable of manifesting as ‘the time’ or ‘now’, while memory gives access to ‘nows’ that are set in the past. Lockwood does not make much attempt to describe any mechanism by which this would happen in the brain, although his references to Fröhlich and Ian Marshall suggests that he would favour the involvement of Bose-condensates.

Lockwood & the Philosophers
Lockwood is critical of his fellow philosophers in their approach to the stand point that matter is a given and mind is problematic, and for assuming a Newtonian concept of matter that is incorrect. He says that they need to move on from the reassuringly solid matter of Newtonian physics and engage with the more problematic matter of quantum theory. In general, he regrets their failure to tackle the ‘big problems’ such as the mind-body problem. He notes that Wittgenstein regarded mind-body as a pseudo-problem that would be resolved by correct use of language, but points out that philosophy as influenced by Wittgenstein made little progress in resolving this problem.

It is hard not to sympathise with Lockwood’s frustration with modern philosophy. In looking at consciousness, philosophers do not seem to have wished to interpret scientific findings, but rather to back up the interpretations already made by scientists, which are themselves rooted in 19th century physics. There is a sense that philosophy has lost the self confidence to make its own interpretations, and merely sees itself as having a duty to sell the ready-packaged ideas it has received from the scientists. This attitude could be thought to have done much to bring about the current stagnation of consciousness studies, with the mainstream deeply entrenched but if anything further than they were 20 years ago from producing an explanation of consciousness.

References:-

Lockwood, Michael  -  Mind, Brain & the Quantum  -  Blackwell (1989), ISBN 0-631-18031-1 (pbk)

Bohm, D.  -  The Special Theory of Relativity  -  Routledge (1965), ISBN 0-415-14809-X (pbk)

Penrose, R.  -  The Emperor’s New Mind  -  Oxford University Press (1989) ISBN 0-19-286198-0

Penrose, R.  -  The Road to Reality  -  Jonathan Cape (2004) ISBN 0-224-04447-8
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