Require a Quantum Physicist to work on a collaborative paper on Cognitive Neuroscience which includes deep implications of the space-time. Any researcher from the field of Quantum Physics who's seriously interested can send me a message.
The paper will shed light on some of the bizarre cognitive processes of the human brain that are only plausible if we take some of the Quantum Mechanical processes of the environment into account.
In principle, this might be a good idea. But it all depends on what exactly you hope to accomplish. Good and bad ideas are very close in this area.
In principle, this might be a good idea. But it all depends on what exactly you hope to accomplish. Good and bad ideas are very close in this area.
I agree with you Frohlich. But again, any scientific revolution begins with one idea. Just like E=MC2 started a revolution along with Schrodinger's Wave Equation. In this paper I'm officially incorporating the world of Quantum Physics into brain science and consciousness studies. Roger Penrose has contributed a great deal relevant to this matter working on microtubules of consciousness. But this paper deals with the human consciousness and space-time.
I spent many years devoted to this, as it was my intention to lay to rest the idea that quantum theories of consciousness were untenable. Alas, I started early in my graduate career and was overly optimistic. I practically relearned linear algebra until Dirac notation was 2nd nature (despite it's inferior notational schema), I devoted years to using quantum technologies for physics experiments, research in theoretical physics, and so forth (all on top of neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, etc.). And now I'm either going to go into physics or find a new graduate program, because this question involves combining a scientific approach to something that can't be formally defined with a formal system that we are, even in theory, incapable of relating to any physical reality.
I can certainly recommend probably every QM approach the brain (including QM-like approaches) if you wish to find collaborators, but I don't recommend this path.
Also, FYI, Schrödinger's wave equation wasn't anything remotely like a "revolution". Although the widely held belief that Heisenberg's matrix mechanics is equivalent is likely wrong, they are far more equivalent than the earliest developments in field theory (namely quantum electrodynamics, mostly developed by Dirac).
Quite simply, as Penrose & Hameroff's ORCH-OR model clearly demonstrates, insofar as we can find quantum processes in the brain that are non-trivial, we can't even begin to come close to relating them to basic cognitive functions. In fact, neuronal network models remain overly simplistic and we are incapable of connecting computational neuroscience to cognitive neuroscience such that the reason in either is explained by or explains the other.
The only good idea is to wait until we are able to actually even approach this question.
Sounds like quackery. Much worse than being a crackpot. You've got one quantum device already, so you must be a specialist.
As do most other RG blogs, this one has taken a hopeless turn - not least, because the question that has triggered it is not sufficiently precise. -- Given that the world is falling apart, I would think there are more urgent concerns than all these meaningless discussions on RG. Wake up!!
Dear esteemed colleagues,
I understand all your concerns. But first, let me clear a few things. The work I'm talking about here is not at all about a Quantum mechanical approach to explain consciousness. Here I'm talking about a few apparently bizarre cognitive processes of the human brain which can only be explained if we incorporate a few elementary processes of the Quantum Physics which take place in the environment. I'm no physicist, I'm a neuroscientist dealing with the cognitive structures of the human brain and neurophysiology. And as far as I'm concerned, even Richard Feynman said that if you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, you don't understand Quantum Mechanics. So in the interest of science a physicist is required to work on this paper along with me.
my best wishes to all the scientists out there who are making a little difference
Dear colleague: Please, make it clear what it is that you want to study and understand and what kind of help you expect to receive from physicists! I can say one thing: The quantum-mechanical theory of retrieval of information about a physical system is presumably of interest to people studying cognitive science and, in particular, the question of how we retrieve information about our environment (external stimuli). But it is not that brain functions must be treated quantum-mechanically; rather the quantum theory of information retrieval and the theory of information retrieval by the brain of an intelligent animal might be expected to be analogous. (This is an expectation I'd be willing to defend.) Now, let me warn you: I am a physicist, but do not know anything substantial about the cognitive sciences and about neurology. So, I don't really know what I am talking about. I tend to think that quantum mechanics is easy as compared to the science of how brains of intelligent animals function.
Where did the Penrose-Hammeroff model go?? It's been long dead, no?? If it was any good we'd know about it already, don't you think? Especially given how hot the quantum biology field has gotten lately...
No, the Orch-OR remains alive, found in various papers, volumes, monographs, etc. And we have several journals and monograph series which concern quantum theories of consciousness. As for Penrose-Hameroff's theory specifically, the last I read (if memory serves) was
Hameroff, S., & Penrose, R. (2014). Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’theory. Physics of life reviews, 11(1), 39-78.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188)
The emphasis on quantum processes in cognition is increasing, unfortunately. I say unfortunately not because I find this notion somehow distasteful (or desirable), but because we have no way of testing such theories but a slew of possible hypothesis with which we can run wild speculating without being able to confirm.
I would be very interested in following the ideas of Jurg, the analogy seems very interesting to me but the more I think about it the more I am puzzled. When you say quantum information retrivial, what do you have in mind? Are you thinking about having a state and performing tomography on it, or measuring expectation values of some resticted class of observables?
Typically in this last context, if I am not wrong, we then get a family of states (say a Gibbs state if we have measured the energy) by maximizing the entropy so to get a family of states compatible with our measurements.
If our brain performed something similar, I would expect that we would completely rule out all the "intuitive behaviors", that I would define (maybe in a naive form) as those behaviors that are triggered by some incomplete information + some vision, that is adding extra information to the one gathered.
Maybe I am mixing potatoes with pearls, if so forgive me, I am just very courious on how you can make such a parallelism.
No theory of consciousness is testable. The fact that QM theories seem attractive to some because they combine the measurement problem/interpretation problem of QM with the hard problem of consciousness to allow for speculation as if this were no different from any other scientific approach is counterbalanced by the fact that there is no testable theory of consciousness because there is no scientific definition sufficiently rigorously formulated to even begin to formulate a hypothetical test. This is why I despise QM theories of consciousness so much: they are the "god in the gaps" version of THE question of the cognitive sciences.
oh happy days ...
we'll should get started right now!
for such a project decent funding in inherent. we/I mail beautyful letters to rich public and/or economic/political organizations, they will understand not a word of that what they read, but it sounds just great!! I'm looking foreward hearing from you soon!
Dr. Schober
Dear colleagues,
I'm very much delighted to see such various scientific perspectives on this matter. I even saw, that the hard problem of consciousness has also been incorporated into this discussion. It is absolutely true that we cannot yet have a simple Quantum Mechanical approach to all brain functions. It is way too early to confirm any hypothetical approach to consciousness as the absolute truth. And again there is no ultimate theory in any field of science. We keep evolving. Also, since the topic of Orch-OR came to light in this discussion, as a neuroscientist I assure you that it is not at all absurd any more. There have been significant studies in the recent times that clearly make the hypothesis strong enough. But even Einstein's general relativity was just a scientific hypothesis once. Likewise the field of neuroscience is advancing as well with various studies and hypotheses. Coming back to the matter of discussion, consciousness is a vast universe just like our physical universe. And when we study every single element of this inner universe we cannot simply jump to any conclusion, and start talking about the hard problem of consciousness.
The project which I talked about in this discussion is merely an important step towards that hard problem. It'll explain a few bizarre cognitive structures of the retrieval of information by the human brain from the four-dimensional space-time. And to make it a little more clear, the Quantum Mechanical processes i mentioned earlier, do not take place within the brain after all. Rather they occur in our surrounding environment that significantly influence various cognitive functions of the brain.
Therefore to get Quantum Physics right for this paper, I welcome my dear colleagues from the field of Physics to collaborate with me.
My best wishes to all of you
"And to make it a little more clear, the Quantum Mechanical processes i mentioned earlier, do not take place within the brain after all. Rather they occur in our surrounding environment (that) and tend to significantly influence various cognitive functions of the brain": This sounds reasonable!
What if one starts with a sea of neurons interacting via a suitable binary potential? Then one could apply a quantum-mechanical many-body theoriy to derive the 'scattering' and thermophysical properties of the sea. True, in this case, one might have nothing useful to say about 'consciousness' ; but it would be a step forward. What would be a reasonable binary neuron-neuron potential (if at all)?
I am really inerested but from many aspects quantum effect in human brain is unacceptable.My thesis was about mind-brain problem with quantum approach solution, and I am still interested to know how we can relate mind intentions and brain function. I think quantum mechanics may be a proper condidate for it.
All the best.
" consciousness" is only the "surface" of SUBCONCIOUSNESS. This "inner universe" was firstly described by S. Freud in scientific terms. Physicists know generally nothing about this object. There exists order (es/ich/überich) and a kind of energy balance (libido-theory). Most interesting, there is no past and no spatial ordering. So a Galilean 3,1 space-time does not exist there. On the other hand, there is a broad variety of "geometries", some are locally Euclidean. It seems to me, a projective space-time - locally Euclldean and compact - should be an interesting first choice. Till today there is no acceptable QM over projective space time (string is T8xR). Note, in a model of compact time (T1, circle), time ordering is impossible (no past, no future). The fundamental invariant is the crossratio of four (different) points. The compact three space consists of two tori, where the inner surface of the one torus is identified with the outer surface of the other (topologically trivial). This space may be described by real homogeneous nonzero six-tuples and the motion by (a suitable subset of) real regular 6x6 matrices, mostly simple linear algebra.
have fun.
There exist two large monographs solving these problems, unfortunately up to now only in German:
Thomas Görnitz, Brigitte Görnitz:
Der kreative Kosmos / Geist und Materie aus Quanteninformation
Heidelberg, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag
1. Auflage 2002, 407 Seiten, 978-3-827-41368-0
Taschenbuchauflage 2006, , 374 Seiten, ISBN 978-3827417688
2. Taschenbuchauflage 2013, ISBN 978-3642417504
Thomas Görnitz, Brigitte Görnitz:
Die Evolution des Geistigen / Quantenphysik - Bewusstsein - Religion
Göttingen, Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 1. Auflage 2008, 2. Aufl. 2009
372 Seiten mit 45 Abb., gebunden, ISBN 978-3-525-56717-3
An overview in English can be found at:
http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-quantum-theory/quantum-theory-as-universal-theory-of-structures-essential-from-cosmos-to-consciousness
Sir iam an engineering graduate but my expertise and intrest narrowed to Metaphsics,psychology,philosophy can thus I am eligible to colobrate in this project
Since as a philosophical expert I can easily give you falsification statements
Respected abjith Naskar
Being a neuroscientist can you say that neuro science is ultimate comparing to other deciplene
I know your repley "every other subject has its unique purpose"
Why you need to compare such thing but it is not a comparison an exploration of ultimate
Sir my brain is scattering it has travelled a long journey of theories and various subject also I have experienced several mental illness but my only destination is to reach the ultimate
I am a quantum gravity researcher from Sydney, Australia. I work at the Centre fo Quantum Dynamics at Griffith Univesity on the holographic principle and gauge-gravity duality. I also have a Masters in Cognitive Sciences (Philosophy) and a BA in Philosophy. I am interested to collaborate. Please contact me via email at [email protected]. Cheers. Eric
Sir I have read your article Mission of a scientist and also I have send you a message my qurie is that" if I ask why anyone can answer" either Scientist or huminist scientist both can answer what is mission? But any one can answer why we need mission
The so-called “hard problem” is solved. A short overview is:
Thomas Görnitz: Quantum Theory and the Nature of Consciousness,
The final version can be found at Foundations of Science, DOI : 10.1007/s10699-017-9536-9, published online 22 June 2017
And there is also a new and large German monography:
Thomas Görnitz, Brigitte Görnitz, Von der Quantenphysik zum Bewusstsein/Kosmos, Geist und Materie; Springer 2016
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