Quantum Cosmology and the Hard Problem of the Conscious Brain

Abstract

Abstract:The conscious brain poses the most serious unsolved problem for science at the beginning of the third millennium. Not only is the whole basis of subjective conscious experience lacking adequate physical explanation, but the relationship between causality and intentionally willed action remains equally obscure. We explore a model resolving major features of the so-called 'hard problem in consciousness research' through cosmic subject-object complementarity. The model combines transactional quantum theory, with chaotic and fractal dynamics as a basis for a direct relationship between phase coherence in global brain states and anticipatory boundary conditions in quantum systems, complementing these with key features of conscious perception, and intentional will. The aim is to discover unusual physical properties of excitable cells which may form a basis for the evolutionary selection of subjective consciousness, because the physics involved in its emergence permits anticipatory choices which strongly favour survival. 1: Subject-Object Complementarity and the Hard ProblemIn "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience" David Chalmers (1995) summarizes some of the main points of his deÞnition of the now renowned 'hard problem in consciousness research'. He contrasts with the hard problem what he calls the 'easy' problems such as: 'How can a human subject discriminate sensory stimuli and react to them appropriately?' 'How does the brain integrate information from many different sources and use this information to control behaviour?' 'How is it that subjects can verbalize their internal states?' Each of these deal broadly with problems of consciousness, but in ways which could in principle be resolved by straightforward functional explanations.The 'hard problem', by contrast, is the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience. This puzzle involves the inner aspects of thought and perception and the way things feel for the subject -all of them subjective experiences known only to the participant. This is much harder to resolve because trying to compare brain states, which are in principle objective and replicable, with subjective experiences, which, however rich for the experiencer, are unavailable to an external observer, pose a severe problem of qualitative difference, which seems almost unbridgeable.Chalmers rejects any simple resort to neuroscience explanations about brain states in solving the hard problem. He notes for example that the 40 Hz oscillations made famous by Crick and Koch (1992) and others, which might provide an explanation for the coherent binding together of different brain regions, for example visual and auditory into one attended perception, may explain how the brain integrates different processing tasks (an easy problem) but don't explain how any of these modes evoke the subjective conscious experiences of vision and sound. Likewise he rejects philosophical explanations such as Daniel Dennett's (1991) 'multiple drafts' theory of consciousness as an explanati...

Sensory Transduction and Subjective Experience: Expression of Eight Genes in Three Senses Suggests a Radical Model of Consciousness

“…Physically transduced quantum excitations phase correlated with the electrodynamics underlying the electroencephalogram could provide a realizable means for the brain to generate quantum entangled states, permitting forms of quantum computing using our massively parallel, phase coupled brain dynamics. Some models ( (King, 1997(King, , 2006) also suggest such processes could also have an anticipatory function which might help explain free-will.…”

“…It has also been proposed that conscious anticipation might be made possible through quantum excitations both emitted and absorbed by the CNS (King, 1997(King, , 2006. Although subjective consciousness has many attributes, from the sense of self-awareness (self-consciousness) through semantic and rational processes (rational mind) and working memory, some of which involve subliminal processing on the fringes of consciousness or unconsciously, there is a major central arena of conscious experience, sometimes referred to as the Cartesian theatre (Baars, 1997;Dennet, 1991), which gives the subjective expression of an envelope of sensory experience, whether it involves experiences of the external world or purely internal states such as dreaming.…”

“…Sensory transduction is also capable of working at the quantum limit. Frog rod cells are capable of responding to single photons 26, pheromones likewise can elicit a response from a single molecule (especially in insects) and the limits of audition involve movements of the cochlear membrane of the order of a hydrogen atom radius (Rudgley, 1993;King, 2006).…”

“…By contrast with all other areas of scientific discovery, from the human genome to cosmological grand unification, the nature and basis of conscious experience remains the principal scientific area in the third millennium for which there is yet no realizable candidate theory, nor even a qualitative understanding in principle, of how our 'internal model of reality' is generated. While consciousness research has come in from the cold as an accepted scientific research area (King, 2006) there are still major stumbling blocks to a realizable theory of consciousness, including the 'hard problem' (Chalmers, 1995) -whether subjective consciousness is in any way qualitatively identifiable with an objective description of reality, to the 'binding problem' -how multifarious processes come together to convey the impression of a 'Cartesian theatre' of the mind (Baars, 1997;Dennet, 1991). Research into the biophysical basis of consciousness remains obscure, invoking a variety of speculative theories, few of which have convincing experimental support at the cellular level.…”

Sensory Transduction and Subjective Experience: Expression of eight genes in three senses suggests a radical model of consciousness

“…A variety of functional proteins in the CNS are under investigation to test for their possible role in the biophysical underpinning of subjective consciousness. It has also been proposed that conscious anticipation might be made possible through quantum excitations both emitted and absorbed by the CNS 27,28 .…”