Pensamiento Revista de investigación e información filosófica
Geometría, Biofísica y Neurociencia. Sobre la naturaleza cuántica de la vida y la conciencia en la confluencia del pensamiento de Erwin Schrödinger y Hermann Weyl
The new theoretical and experimental developments in neurosciences project an idea of consciouness deeply bound to the physical nature. Nevertheless, consciousness does enigmatically keep without scientific explanation. The phenomenum per se is commonly known, but its definition and position in the modern scientific frames are not well determined. Consequently, there are plenty different interpretations full of speculation and imagination. On the opposite side, the scientific consciousness research is not frequent and it is exclusively done by a reduced group of researchers that works on the psycho-physical connection between physical matter and its psychical emergent activity from the neuroscientific experimental data. In this paper we widely explain a fundamental contextualized synthesis of two scientific geniuses in the mind-matter relationship problem. Although they belong to a near past, Erwin Schrodinger and Hermann Weyl are both paradigmatic personalities because of their methodical rigor and widespread investigations, which characterize the strong scientific spirit. Their styles are stout, their works inspire future researches and their conclusions connect well with the last frontiers results in neurosciences and quantum physics.
The new theoretical and experimental developments in neurosciences project an idea of consciouness deeply bound to the physical nature. Nevertheless, consciousness does enigmatically keep without scientific explanation. The phenomenum per se is commonly known, but its definition and position in the modern scientific frames are not well determined. Consequently, there are plenty different interpretations full of speculation and imagination. On the opposite side, the scientific consciousness research is not frequent and it is exclusively done by a reduced group of researchers that works on the psycho-physical connection between physical matter and its psychical emergent activity from the neuroscientific experimental data. In this paper we widely explain a fundamental contextualized synthesis of two scientific geniuses in the mind-matter relationship problem. Although they belong to a near past, Erwin Schrodinger and Hermann Weyl are both paradigmatic personalities because of their methodical rigor and widespread investigations, which characterize the strong scientific spirit. Their styles are stout, their works inspire future researches and their conclusions connect well with the last frontiers results in neurosciences and quantum physics.
The new theoretical and experimental developments in neurosciences project an idea of consciouness deeply bound to the physical nature. Nevertheless, consciousness does enigmatically keep without scientific explanation. The phenomenum per se is commonly known, but its definition and position in the modern scientific frames are not well determined. Consequently, there are plenty different interpretations full of speculation and imagination. On the opposite side, the scientific consciousness research is not frequent and it is exclusively done by a reduced group of researchers that works on the psycho-physical connection between physical matter and its psychical emergent activity from the neuroscientific experimental data. In this paper we widely explain a fundamental contextualized synthesis of two scientific geniuses in the mind-matter relationship problem. Although they belong to a near past, Erwin Schrödinger and Hermann Weyl are both paradigmatic personalities because of their methodical rigor and widespread investigations, which characterize the strong scientific spirit. Their styles are stout, their works inspire future researches and their conclusions connect well with the last frontiers results in neurosciences and quantum physics.
Introduction We saw in Part I that in addition to explaining consciousness there is another hard problem for the modern scientific worldview – understanding what quantum physics is telling us about reality. And if anything this one is harder. In philosophy of mind there is at least consensus enough for an orthodox position to exist (materialism), and a widespread expectation that it will be vindicated by future neuroscience. By contrast, in philosophy of physics all sides understand that quantum theory is compatible with a variety of metaphysical interpretations, and have little hope that new empirical discoveries will settle the matter. But both problems are “hard” in the sense that, despite tremendous intellectual effort over many decades, no clear progress has been made toward solving them. The basic idea of quantum consciousness theory is that bringing the two problems into contact may be the key to solving both (though I will be addressing only the mind–body problem in what follows). That this could be a novel idea attests to the fact that their philosophical discussions have evolved quite separately. While philosophers of physics have long been interested in the role of consciousness in the measurement process, they have engaged little with the mind–body problem per se; and philosophers of mind have been almost unanimous in dismissing the suggestion that consciousness has anything interesting to do with quantum physics. Social scientists might echo such skepticism, wondering how adding the problem of interpreting quantum theory to the problem of consciousness will help them . Besides piling up jargon and arcane debates, in moving to the sub-atomic level we are now even farther removed from the human world, and seemingly poised to engage in the most vulgar reductionism. Yet, naïvely one might expect the two problems to be related, for two reasons. The first is the intriguing analogies mentioned in Chapter 1 between the mental and quantum domains.
The cognitive frame in which most neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behavior is conducted contains the assumption that brain mechanisms per se fully suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms must therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. One consequence of this stance is that psychological terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content (terms such as "feeling," "knowing," and "effort") have not been included as primary causal factors in neuropsychological research: insofar as properties are not described in material terms they are deemed irrelevant to the causal mechanisms underlying brain function. However, the origin of this demand that experiential realities be excluded from the causal base is a theory of nature that has been known for more that three quarters of a century to be fundamentally incorrect. It is explained here why it is consequently scientifically unwarranted to assume that material factors alone can in principle explain all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience. More importantly, it is explained how a key quantum effect can be introduced into brain dynamics in a simple and practical way that provides a rationally coherent, causally formulated, physics-based way of understanding and using the psychological and physical data derived from the growing set of studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental effort to systematically alter brain function.
Este trabajo intenta, someramente, hacer un racconto de las principales teorias de la fisica cuantica que intentaron vincularse con el estudio de la consciencia. Para luego intentar vincularlas con los hallazgos sobre el estudio de las bases neurales de la consciencia y aspectos filosoficos del vinculo mente-cerebro.
Palabras clave
Fisica Cuantica Consciencia Cerebro
ABSTRACT
CONTRIBUTIONS OF QUANTUM PHYSICS TO STUDY THE MIND-BRAIN PROBLEM This paper try to make a brief review of quantum physic theories that attempt to link their theories with the study of consciousness. After that I try to link them with findings on the study of the neural basis of consciousness and philosophical aspects of mind-brain connection.
Key words
Physics Quantum Consciousness Brain
This text exposes, from a general historical perspective, the emergence and recent development, within the western scientific community, of the so-called “Quantum Theories of Consciousness” (QTC). A brief explanation is carried out attending, in chronological order of first publication, to the main QTC proposals that address the so- called “hard problem of consciousness”, starting from postulates of philosophy and quantum physics, theoretical springs that maintain an open and transversal dialogue with other disciplines such as neuroscience, chemistry, biology, psychology or cognitive sciences. Keywords: Mind-matter, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, chemistry, biology, psychology, cognitive sciences, quantum physics, consciousness, neuroquantum analogy.
In recent decades, progress in the field of neurosciences has triggered an interest in understanding mind-brain relationships. Quantum Mechanics (QM) has been present in the debate from its beginnings through the well-known measurement paradox. The standard interpretation of QM considers two basic, fundamentally irreducible, processes: the deterministic evolution of the wave-function according to the Schrodinger equation, once the initial conditions have been settled; and the indeterministic wave-function collapse into one of the possible outcomes, after performing a specific measurement. So, QM would point to the limits of a purely deterministic view of nature and, in particular, of brains. Nevertheless, QM’s relevance for the brain’s physics is still to be proven. Detractors of the QM influence are confident of the role of decoherent processes at different physical scales in order to ensure a classical deterministic behavior of the brain. However, little attention is paid to the epistemic implications of invoking decoherence for the mind-brain problem. In this paper, (i) we present lasting QM models stating a specific view of human consciousness and make explicit their position regarding the relationship between the physical activity of neurons and/or networks of neurons and the phenomenal conscious experience; (ii) we review the main criticisms of the relevance of QM in the brain and, most importantly, we bring out the philosophical implications behind the usual recourse to decoherence in the transition from the quantum to the classical world, explaining why the mind-brain problem and the measurement paradox should not be disentangled.