A number of researchers today make an appeal to quantum physics when trying to develop a satisfactory account of the mind, an appeal still felt to be controversial by many. Often these "quantum approaches" try to explain some well-known features of conscious experience (or mental processes more generally), thus using quantum physics to enrich the explanatory framework or explanans used in consciousness studies and cognitive science. This paper considers the less studied question of whether quantum physical intuitions could help us to draw attention to new or neglected aspects of the mind in introspection, and in this way change our view about what needs explanation in the first place. Although prima facie implausible, it is suggested that this could happen, for example, if there were analogies between quantum processes and mental processes (e.g., the process of thinking). The naive idea is that such analogies would help us to see mental processes and conscious experience in a new way. It has indeed been proposed long ago that such analogies exist, and this paper first focuses at some length on David Bohm's formulation of them from 1951. It then briefly considers these analogies in relation to Smolensky's more recent analogies between cognitive science and physics, and Pylkk ö's aconceptual view of the mind. Finally, Bohm's early analogies will be briefly considered in relation to the analogies between quantum processes and the mind he proposed in his later work.
A number of researchers today make an appeal to quantum physics when trying to develop a satisfactory account of the mind, an appeal still felt to be controversial by many. Often these "quantum approaches" try to explain some well-known features of conscious experience (or mental processes more generally), thus using quantum physics to enrich the explanatory framework or explanans used in consciousness studies and cognitive science. This paper considers the less studied question of whether quantum physical intuitions could help us to draw attention to new or neglected aspects of the mind in introspection, and in this way change our view about what needs explanation in the first place. Although prima facie implausible, it is suggested that this could happen, for example, if there were analogies between quantum processes and mental processes (e.g., the process of thinking). The naive idea is that such analogies would help us to see mental processes and conscious experience in a new way. It has indeed been proposed long ago that such analogies exist, and this paper first focuses at some length on David Bohm's formulation of them from 1951. It then briefly considers these analogies in relation to Smolensky's more recent analogies between cognitive science and physics, and Pylkk ö's aconceptual view of the mind. Finally, Bohm's early analogies will be briefly considered in relation to the analogies between quantum processes and the mind he proposed in his later work.
This paper explores the theme “quantum approaches to consciousness” by considering the work of one of the pioneers in the field. The physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) not only made important contributions to quantum physics, but also had a long-term interest in interpreting the results of quantum physics and relativity in order to develop a general world view. His idea was further that living and mental processes could be understood in a new, scientifically and philosophically more coherent way in the context of such a new world view. This paper gives a brief overview of different – and sometimes contradictory - aspects of Bohm’s research programme, and evaluates how they can be used to give an account of topics of interest in contemporary consciousness studies, such as analogies between thought and quantum processes, the problem of mental causation, the mind-body problem and the problem of time consciousness.
A number of modern scientists adheres to the point of view that, despite the fact that quantum mechanics does not allow to explain the existence of mental phenomena in the physical world, with the help of its inherent ontological principles and mathematical formalism, it is possible to understand the functioning of consciousness and the unconscious. Based on the analogy between quantum and mental processes, the unconscious can be represented as a superposition of mental states, and consciousness — in the form of decoherence of unconscious experiences. From an evolutionary point of view, consciousness can be considered as a consequence of the accumulation of a sufficient amount of information during the interaction of the organism with the surrounding environment, when the transition from the quantum state of the unconscious to the classical state of consciousness is carried out at the psychic level of being, by analogy with the accumulation of a sufficient amount of information by a quantum system during interaction with the environment, when at the physical level of being the collapse of the wave function. In psychotherapy and psychodiagnostics, one can see an analogy with the measurement process in quantum mechanics and a quantum leap from one mental state to another. However, the analysis of this point of view carried out in the article shows that the parallels between quantum mechanics and psychology today look insufficiently substantiated, since the mathematical model of the psyche, which allows describing human behavior on the basis of the laws of quantum mechanics, has not yet been built, which is why, firstly, the use of quantum-physical terminology in the understanding of mental experience does not rise to the level of scientific theory, remaining a metaphor, and, secondly, quantum psychology has a predictive potential, in contrast to the psychology of the classical type.
Two principle concerns prompt some theorists to link quantum mechanics and theories of mind or theories of consciousness. On the one hand, it is commonly thought that conscious minds play some important role in processes of quantum measurement and that any good theory of mind ought to explain how a mind can play such a role. On the other hand, a few people think that the framework of classical physics is not, by itself, sufficiently powerful to explain the myriad remarkable properties of minds and that a good explanation must rely on some special features of quantum mechanics. Usually, these features include either state vector reduction-the collapse of the wave function-or special capabilities, often computational or super-computational ones, allegedly displayed by physical substrates while existing in hypothesised coherent states of linear superposition. Two questions summarise the author's misgivings about both the above motivations for linking quantum mechanics and theories of mind. First, does the process of quantum measurement really require a conscious observer? Second, does quantum mechanics underwrite any special effects in, say, intraneuronal protein lattices, which could play a role in instantiating consciousness in biological systems? It turns out that the particular character of the negative answer suggested for the first question also prompts a negative answer for the second. He summarises these negative answers after describing briefly some popular attempts to forge quantum theories of mind.
It is widely accepted that consciousness at the start of the 20th century was considered mainly in the context of neurology and the mind-body problem belonged to the domain of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, later broadened by behavioural science and cognitive science. However, these disciplines cannot completely explain the correlation between mental activity and matter. \nChapter one starts by defining the difficulty of determining consciousness. A discussion of how philosophers (such as Descartes, Locke, Dennett and Nagel) attempted to describe this phenomenon leads to the conclusion that firstly, consciousness is indefinable and secondly, it continues to be a challenge for both – philosophy and science – to explain how subjective consciousness fits into the objective world. The following two parts of the chapter focus on the major philosophical theories of the mind-body problem. \nIn chapter two there is a focus on the mutual relation between philosophy and science, physics in particular. However, this project deals more with the implications of science for the philosophy of mind and mind-body problem than the science itself. The second enquiry of this chapter is to point out the difference in philosophical and scientific understanding of the word ‘substance’ (crucial to the mind-body problem). \nChapter three considers quantum theory, since the relation between mind and body started to be tackled from the completely new point of view, after the philosophers began to assimilate the implications of quantum physics. Firstly, there is a short introduction to quantum theory and the most significant points for philosophy and quantum mechanics issues are provided (such as quantum superposition, the measurement problem or the backward causation). Analysis of three prevailing theories is provided. \nThis project addresses the contribution of quantum mechanics to the studies of consciousness and matter and examines whether it helps in solving the mind-body problem.
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.
Is mind quantum-like? Is consciousness quantum physical? Does consciousness have a role to play in the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum universe? Or is this dichotomy between classical and quantum an illusion? How can world philosophies enrich our views on these matters and interact with the best scientific theories? These are some questions that motivated us to conceive the current book. We also felt an urgent need to discuss the central philosophical questions haunting the emerging frameworks of quantum cognition and quantum-like framework (QLF). We have observed that there are very good technical or mathematical works being done in the emerging fields of quantum cognition and QLF, but there is still a great need for exploring the underlying and open philosophical questions they demand. Quantum cognition developed as a frontier research programme in understanding various cognitive phenomena that are hard or impossible to describe based on classical cognitive science paradigm. Classical cognitive science draws philosophically and mathematically from classical physics and classical probability theory. For example, cognitive realism thinking is deeply motivated by the scientific realism of classical physics. However, as we explore, there are numerous empirical findings which demonstrate clearly that human mind and cognitive processes exhibit features that are more quantum-like. Central to these features are indeterminacy, context dependence, and complementarity of cognitive phenomena, for example, perception, information retrieval, and even qualia. Many good works in the previous decade have demonstrated the efficacy of quantum-like mathematical modelling in such cases. However, given that efficacy, we cannot simply conclude that mind is quantum. Rather there are features that go beyond what is allowed in standard quantum formalism.