Unfortunately there seems to be quackish claims on both sides of the debate - by those who say that the human mind is all there is, but also by those who claim to debunk all by saying, for instance, that there are no quantum effects in the brain (such as Victor Stenger who writes that the distances in the brain are far too long for quantum effects to play a role - he obviously never heard of Bell's inequality nor of Alain Aspect's experiments, nor of the rapidly developing field of quantum biology.)

If you take quantum physics to its logical conclusion, the primary role of wave functions and of Schrödinger's equation is all that remains, and the observer effect is just a coherence effect brought about my measurement - whether that measurement is carried out by a human mind, an electron microscope, or any other measuring device being immaterial. The experimental proof of this would be the quantum Zeno effect, which has been triggered by all kinds of measuring devices, human as well as non-human.

A modern experiment in particle physics requests the completely automatic acquisition, filtering and elaboration of literally millions of events.

The experimenter usually looks at final results and only in special cases at single events. Therefore the experimenter consciousness has not the possibility

to actualize each event. Should the Wigner-von Neumann interpretation be taken seriously, the final report of the experiment should correspond to the description of a

not yet actualized reality!

Even more, the experimenter can make the choice to visualize a registered event in a 3d-reconstructor many years after it is happened. According to that interpretation,

the event will becomes real just then. Therefore, a rather magic retroaction should be involved.

A different affair is the hypothesis of a cosmic consciousness enabled to a direct connection with micro-events. But then the following question arises: is the operation of this consciousness described by invariances which can be translated in natural laws?

If the answer is affirmative, these laws form an autonomous set of natural laws for micro-events, and their foundation in a cosmic consciousness becomes a mere matter of debate. If the answer is instead negative, no natural science is possible

but this possibility is excluded by the success of natural science.

In my opinion this is, for example, the principal weak point in Goswami argument.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Christianto, 

I'd say the article you link to gets this question about right, and the criticism of "quantum mysticism" in particular. The role of the observer has been over-emphasized in some tradition interpretations of QM.

This is part of the reason for the contemporary emphasis on "decoherence," in contrast with aspects of the "Copenhagen interpretation."  Observation, as a physical interaction, may be responsible for collapse of the wave function, but the same can happen, in other physical interactions, without need of an observer. 

H.G. Callaway

@H. Chris Ransford, Leonardo, and H.G. Callaway: thank you for your insightful answers. Btw, i just found an interesting article from Nature 2006, discussing quantum mechanics of the brain. Does it have any relation with mind over matter belief? Thanks

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/news/koch-hepp-06.pdf

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Christianto, 

The Nature piece which you linked to strikes me as interesting and much to the point. Its well worth reading through and reflecting on a bit. I especially liked the authors' emphasis on decoherence, and they seem to bring it in quite usefully both regarding the over emphasis on "observation" in the traditional Copenhagen interpretation and regarding proposals relating quantum phenomena and consciousness.

Whether they will bring everyone along on their arguments is another question, of course. But they show a particularly firm grasp of some difficult questions.  Thanks for the reference. 

H.G. Callaway

Dear Dr. H.G. Callaway: you are welcome, yes personally i do not take seriously mind over matter belief. Nonetheless, i wish that someday experiment will resolve whether mind over matter is just an illusion, or it is a working paradigm just like observation of single photon jump by Dr. Serge Haroche et al. Best wishes

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Christianto, 

The first important point made in the Nature piece is that when one regards observation as collapsing the wave function, the "observer" is treated as a macro-system and this, prima facie, has little do do with quantum mechanics of living tissue. If some measuring device was employed to the same effect, this could happen whether or not anyone records the measurement. That is reason to think that "decoherence" is more general and central, in comparison to observation; and that observation is only accidentally involved in decoherence, as a result of some physical interaction involved in observation. Generally, any number of accidental or unplanned physical interactions could bring about the "collapse of the wave-function" without observation.

Brains, no doubt, have quantum mechanical properties, just like anything else in the physical world. But "mind" (as contrasted with "measurement," perhaps) seems not to be a physical concept at all.  It is not something we find discussed or described in physics books, for instance. However, there seems to be a substantial functional element in the concept of mind that is analogous to the ways in which a small "governing" device, involving slight expenditures of free energy, can control or direct a larger connected system involving larger-scale flows of free energy. The point seems to be connected with the common-sense belief in the efficacy of mind. The phrase, "mind over matter" suggests, in contrast, the notion that believing makes it so--without need of any means to the end. Rejecting that notion, we still generally hold that having and developing the mind is effective in our making our way in the world. If mind could have no effect, then it would not be useful to have or develop the mind. (These are my own points here, and not anything drawing on the Nature piece.) 

The chief argument of the piece, however, involves the concept of consciousness, and proposes an experiment involving the "suppression" of consciousness. Perhaps we should think of this proposal as itself a kind of thought experiment, but in any case, it is an interesting idea. The notion is that we could experiment on the hypothesis that consciousness is necessary to the reduction of the wave-function. The authors seem to think this is relevant to Roger Penrose's proposals regarding the role of QM in the mind/brain. (This is not something I have studied in any detail.) 

Do you see this proposed experiment as viable? Do you think it tells us anything about the relationship between consciousness and QM? 

H.G. Callaway

@H.G. Callaway: thank you, yes i agree that it will be helpful to discern among brain, mind, consciousness. However, i tend to say that those belong to neuroscience or other branch of biophysics, rather than QM. So far i do not know any experiment which proves that consciousness can collapse wave function. What do you think?

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Christianto, 

I would tend to think of consciousness as a macro-level psychological phenomenon, though I might be open to some particular empirically anchored argument or analysis involving QM. The differentiation of conscious states seems its most prominent feature. From the perspective of mind as a "governing" device or structure, consciousness seems to be an aspect of functional psychological differentiation. One expects some significant relationship between function and structure. A purely epiphenomenal notion of consciousness seems unappealing. 

More generally, one wants to know about the efficacy of consciousness. Consider the following analogous question: What role does the differentiation and interpretation of vocabulary play in the efficacy of thought or the development of prediction/explanation in theory? The idea of observation as "theory-laden" is of interest here. 

All of this may depart excessively from your initial question, though. 

H.G. Callaway

The paper points at a theoretical position which is fashion enough today. Many research workers would like a QM base for biology, probably to export towards that field already mature tools which are available in QM.

Now the question is: what the expression “quantum effects in biology” actually means? I think that many colleagues intend effects based on superposition of macroscopically distinguishable states. If so, the possible role of these “effects” is, in my opinion, very limited if they exist at all. As a matter of fact, no macroscopic quantum coherence effect has been produced in laboratory to date, in conditions well favored respect to them of a biological tissue. We can assume as granted that living systems are described by mixtures of states, rather than pure quantum states, thus no quantum computing mechanism can be relevant in living matter.  Obviously, quantum effects at microscopic level are not forbidden and are surely important (e.g. the recently discovered inibition of gene expression by “quantum Zeno”-like effects).

Two different and scarcely explored connections between quantum world and the so called “mind-body problem” (yet I prefer the more extended expression “psycho-somatic connection problem”) could be the following:

1) the “quantum mind” (instead of “quantum brain”!). Briefly, the idea lies upon the chain semiotics in natural systems --->  Clifford algebras --->  quantum-like laws of evolution which are generalizations of QM formalism. These generalizations could be applicable to mind as well as physical processes. (Aerts, Sassoli de Bianchi, Kac, Conte and others). The pioneer in this field was the mathematician Grassman.

2) the QM non locality exhibited by entangled states could be a particular case of a wider non local connection between quantum collapses, beyond the ordinary role played by wavefunctions. This rather speculative possibility has been considered by Pauli, Koestler, Disertori and others.

Summarizing, “quantum” is not the same of “quantum coherence” and discussions about quantum, mind and biology should be take this fact in account.

@Leonardo: thank you for your answer. Yes i found quantum mechanics and mind matter problem are not solved yet. If you know any good experimental paper, please kindly let me know. So far i only know a recent paper discussing Stapp's proposal.  

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.0714v2.pdf

Leonardo, you got me totally confused here. You say in the same text 'quantum biological effects are very limited if they exist at all' and then you go on to say 'quantum effects at microscopic levels are surely important'. What gives ? You can't have your cake and eat it, unless your brain, like Schrödinger's cat, is in 2 states at once.

This being said, beyond the QZE, there are the works of Luca Turin establishing specific quantum biological effects, plus the proven role of QM in photosynthesis (Alexandra Olaya-Castro) , etc.

Those, like Victor Stenger, who have heaped scorn on the possibility of quantum effects in biology owing to, Quote, 'far too long distance scales in biology as compared to the range of quantum effects', have obviously never heard of John Bell, Alain Aspect, Nicolas Gisin, et al., and of non local effects at galactic scales, and so on. They have not heard of Schrödinger's equation either, which does not feature distance between its variables. It does not look not overly serious, or am I missing something?.

Dear Chris

I apologize for your state of confusion. What I intend is that no macroscopic quantum coherence (MQC) effect has been detected to date, neither in living or not living matter. In other words dissipative processes destroy a superposition of macroscopically distinguishable states in an interval of 10^-6 seconds or so, even in artificial and accurately prepared test objects in laboratory. For "macroscopically distinguishable" I intend, to be clear, the analogous of a situation where a macroscopic current flows in a superconductive ring in a CW and simultaneously a CCW sense.  This is, inter alia, the fundamental difficulty along the path to the realization of a quantum computer.

This has nothing to do with quantum effects at microscopic level, whose existence and evidence are absolutely without doubt, in living as well as not living systems. The true "quantum biology" (other than whishful thinking of Penrose, Hameroff and other people) regards, as you correctly note, electron transfer in photosynthesis, gene expression, Davydov waves in molecular biology and so on. But these processes are all at molecular level, where an involvement of QM is rather obvious.

In other words, it is apparent that in living matter there are not long range coherent states associated with wavefunctions or, if you prefer, living systems are not quantum machines. Quantization, if any, plays a role only at the level of fundamental components of these systems.

The absence of long range coherence implies the impossibility to have, in living systems, the non locality which is instead manifested in totally decoupled systems as those investigated by Aspect, Gisin and so on (for example, pairs of entangled particles).