The Proof that a Quantum Model of the Brain is Required that is Non-Classical

[Reiku]

(Only a physicist studying this field, would understand the need to know whether the brain requires a model of non-classical means or not)

space-matter-time-energy-mind

It is said in relativity, that spacetime is in fact one thing with energy as space-matter-time-energy. Now with the new physics, no longer are they four, but mind is added to the one force:

space-matter-time-energy-mind

Actually, I am not the first to posit this. Dr. Wolf also makes the relation in his book, ‘’Mind into Matter.’’

The reality we see, smell and touch are built up on senses. Thus, the optical bubble of perception isn't the real physical outside world. The world we see is actually a mental projection > one that is created through a series of complicated processes. Somehow, the eye captures a two-dimensional image and casts it into the three-dimensional phenomenon of perception, and how it does this, is still a mystery to neuroscientists.

More physical processes are involved, at the microscopic level. When a photon (a particle of light) hits off the retina, changes occur inside of the cells. A molecule called the Cis-Retinal changes into a Trans-Retinal; it isn't a chemical change, but rather a change in the spatial structure of the molecule. This changes a protein that is already present in the cells of the retina, and this protein attaches itself to another protein, because of a chemical change in the original protein. More happens.

Molecules are cut in half, which in turn causes electrical channels to become closed off; and this series of events causes an electrical imbalance, which is then transported through electrolyte and nerve activity to the brain. This is all quite amazing. To think a picture from the outside world has to go through so many changes to reach the brain. Something which is even more amazing is that the process needs to be reversed! The reason for this is because if it didn't, a cell in the retina could only ever be used once. This regeneration allows our eyes to use a cell over and over again. Some of these cells will be used for color perception. Other's black and white. But how the brain processes this mixed information is still one of the biggest mysteries concerning this area of science.

What is even more interesting is the ''binding problem'' of quantum physics. How does the mind not only make sense of this information, but bind it together into a smooth continuous perception, rather than discontinuous flashes of awareness? The brain really is quite complex when one considers these things.

Nevertheless, one cannot escape the beauty of consciousness' ability to 'recreate' space and time in its own projection of the external world. In fact, more and more physicists are attempting to treat the mind with its own spacetime continuum. However, there are not many models or mathematical basis for consciousness around. It is still an on-going, difficult problem. One just doesn't know how to; and for those who do, tread this yellow brick road with careful coordinated steps to the wizard of quantum.

And I hope, from my following conclusions of whether the mind requires a non-classical model, that the academia will consider its implications seriously:

‘’It is absolutely, and ridiculously useless to consider a non-classical frame for the mind, when in the end, the ultimatum is that non-classical actions determine any result of consciousness, in the state of that single photon, a two dimensional object of information transverses into the three dimensional phenom of the neural networks. So in any model of consciousness, it needs to take into account of these quantum actions, upon arrival at the retina, and therefore leaves the conclusion of a classical model of the brain retarded.’’

How can this be disputable?

 

[Tnerb]

Relentless!

 

[Oli]

And barely readable.

 

[Reiku]

And barely readable.

Since we have a professional like yourself, please do better.

 

[Billy T]

... So in any model of consciousness, it needs to take into account of these quantum actions, upon arrival at the retina, and therefore leaves the conclusion of a classical model of the brain retarded.’’

How can this be disputable?

I do not think there are any even half-way adequate models of consciousness, but if one were created I doubt that quantum mechanics would be required. I.e. I think QM has nothing to do with how the brain makes a mind or gives you your perceptual experiences of life in a 3D external world. The accepted POV by the experts of cognitive science is that after many stages of neural transformations of sensory input information that transfomed information "emerges" to become our experienced perception. That is not only just "hand waving" but wrong in my opinion. Mankind does know a good deal about the early stages of neural transformations, especially of the visual information present in the 2D image on the retina. It is dissected into what are called "features" such as color (processed in cortex region called V5) and orientations of contrast edges of objects (found in V1 and processed further in V2)

The great mystery of perception is not the neuro-chemical- electrical processes occurring in the retina's rods and cones (that is rather well understood) nor even the dissection and segregation to different regions of the brain all the various "characteristics" of objects in the visual field. How the continuous 2D retinal pattern is "parsed" into separated objects is also reasonably well understood - at least I have described it AT THE NEUROLOGICAL LEVEL (not some verbal description, but in term of known interactions of nerves) 20 years ago in Johns Hopkins Un. published article.

The fundamental mystery of vision is how and where do these separately processed "characteristics” ever "rejoin" to become our unified perception. For example if a yellow pencil is sticking out of a red apple and color is separately processed in V5 (it is) from shape, then why do I not sometimes experience a red pencil sticking out of a yellow apple. This is what cognitive scientists refer to as "the binding problem." - Not what you called "binding” at all.

I have published a solution to all these problems, at the neurological level and was surprised that another even older problem's solution also "fell out" from my solution. Namely if every action and every thought is just the cumulative result of neural discharges in our nervous system and 100% of those discharges are just ions flowing under the laws of chemistry and physics, how is any "Genuine Free Will, GFW, possible? I.e. our every thought and action is a direct, unavoidable consequence of the current state of the neural system being ruled by chemistry and physics to produce or evolve the state of our neural system a moment later, etc. moment-by-moment as time passes.

Three solutions to this GFW problem have long been offered:
(1) GFW is an illusion - does not exist. Chemistry, physics and prior history do control how we react and evolve/think about/ the currently present external stimuli and internal mental processes (our thoughts etc.)
(2) We are not only material items, but a co-joined "soul" / "sprit" which not being material is not controlled by these physical laws. {I reject this POV as I have seen no evidence to support it.}
(3) We are controlled by these physical laws but because of quantum mechanics, the future is not determined by them. Chance decisions do occur and that is what we want to do, so in some sense we chose to do what we do think or do and thus we do have free will "to do as we chose." {I reject this also as it implies I could not chose otherwise. I.e. I did not really choose anything. I just did the inevitable and thought of it as my choice. I admit this can be called and does feel like "free will, but it is not what I refer to as GFW.} Some supporter of this POV have suggested the QM chance actions take place in the micro tubular "hairs" that do exist on surface of neural cells. they are so small that QM could play a role and exactly what they do is not well known; however, creatures very low on the evolutionary scale have them also.

I have a fourth solution. See it at:

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1294496&postcount=52

It requires the acceptance of a new concept of yourself. I.e. you are not your physics body and not some immaterial "soul," but part of a Real Time Simulation, RTS, which the brain creates in parietal tissue when you are awake and when not in deep sleep. At other times, when the RTS is not running, you do not exist. You do exist when in dream sleep, but then the RTS is not making a nearly perfect (illusion do exist) simulation of the sensed external world as it does when you are awake and alert.

Only if you are immaterial is the conflict between GFW and physical laws avoidable without the "soul postulate." My solution to this old problem does NOT show that GFW does exist - only that it is not necessarily inconsistent with the physics laws. I.e. solution (1) above may well be the correct solution but there is much more physical evidence supporting the RTS than I give in the above link which is focused on GFW. That essay is condensed from only a tiny part of the original JHU paper on how visual processing achieves the perceived 3D world we all experience. That paper is Ref. 1 at the end of the text at the end of the above link. Be warned: the text at the link is not short, but if interested in these question you should read it to learn a self consistent POV, rather than the internally conflicting POV most scientists hold. – Most people (100%?) who both think they have GFW and yet also believe that the world is controlled by physical laws, rather than some “higher spirit,” are not logical.

 

[Reiku]

''physics body and not some immaterial "soul," but part of a Real Time Simulation, RTS, which the brain creates in parietal tissue ''

This is spooky. I was devising possible idea's about half an hour ago using real time and imaginary constructs, that relate to specific points in absolute spacetime.

As for the rest, can i return tomorrow? I am tired, and i need sleep.

 

[Billy T]

'...As for the rest, can i return tomorrow? I am tired, and i need sleep.

Sure. Please do. I hope you will read my essay, despite it being about 8 pages long with a clear head. Few here read it -that is their loss, IMHO. It is a unique idea, self consistent and explanatory of many different mysteries (From why our weaker, smaller-brained, ancestors killed of the Neanderthals to phantom limbs, hallucinations, optic illusion, etc. - dozen of mysteries "fall out" easily and naturally from my "crackpot" POV about how perception functions, even as mentioned here, how Genuine Free Will can be consistent with physics.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Only a physicist studying this field, would understand the need to know whether the brain requires a model of non-classical means or not

Only a biologist/neurobiologist and who actually studies the brain and nervous systems would understand whether your rambling nonsense is total load of bull cookies or not.

I am, I do, it is.

 

[Billy T]

Hi Hercules:

...Only a biologist/neurobiologist and who actually studies the brain and nervous systems would understand .... I am, I do, ...

If you have time, please look at my essay at link below and tell me your opinion of it. I am not a neurobiologist,* but I have studied the visual system both from the POV of performance tests related to perception (lots of finding the X in a field of Os etc. – that sort of computer display stuff, once just brief colored light flashes for an old lady suffering from unilateral neglect due to a parietal stroke.) and the physiological layout and connections of everything behind the central sulcus related to vision.

For example, my theory of how perception works, predicts that the EEG signal known as P300 (or the "startle spike”) will be strongest over the parietal cortex (and it is) it also explains (almost requires) the otherwise totally strange retrograde neural connections coming back to visual cortex from the parietal region (they are slightly more numerous than the input of the eyes coming via the LGN) and several other neurological facts are also mentioned in my essay at:

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1294496&postcount=52

You are one of the few active here with the ability and knowledge to point out errors I may have made or hopefully supply more modern related references. I had no professional interest in my theory/ POV. I have not even followed the literature for 20 years, but once I did.** After I became convinced that my "crackpot" POV did answer many questions and explain many mysteries that the more conventional theory of perception fails at, I ceased to be active in the area. I would really appreciate your comments.
-------

*I have held a human brain in my hands and assisted at quite a few operations on Rhesus brains – once had to finish one implant of stimulation electrodes (on the superior cerebellar surface) myself as the JHU neurosurgeon who ran this primate lab was called back to the hospital on a head injury case.

**In my one published paper in this field***, I may have been the first to describe AT THE NEROLOGICAL LEVEL, how objects are parsed from the continuous 2D retinal image, how the Gestalt law of “good continuation” is achieved by neural interactions, etc.

***Actually I am named as a co-author on a few papers I have never even read - that neurosurgen appreciated my free labor and help, so listed me on his papers related to that work.

 

[Reiku]

Problem with nueroscientists, is that they think far too material. A quantum physicist would shoot you down, friend. Of course, there must be some reasoning behind this bullshit conclusion, so please tell. Don't leave the idiots like me wondering what the fuck you are on about.

 

[Reiku]

I liked it Billy. Let me mull over it now.

 

[Prince_James]

Hercules Rockefeller:

Can you give us your academic affliation and other pertinent info? I'm interested.

 

[Billy T]

Hercules Rockefeller:
Can you give us your academic affliation and other pertinent info? I'm interested.

And I in yours, if you know much about neurology and / or perception and will read and comment on my essay.

You may know mine but it seems only fair to tell, If I am asking. I have no formal training in neurophysics, nor cognitive sciences except for the year on scholarship I won, sort of a sebatical leave (with full pay), which I chose to spend in the Johns Hopkins cognative science department long afer getting my Ph.D in physics. I had grown tired of physics, in part becuase I was not doing any, but working on US Navy ship defeneses - I.e. how to best use their selfdefense weapons in computer simulations of battles, and occasionally asked to look into some of the weapon's control logic. (I did find an error in how the HARM missile responds to the defense of two radars alternating on and off trying to make the HARM hit neither. TI, who made the HARM, sent me a letter of thanks and fixed that error.)

I did spend most Saturadays for almost three years working for free in a large primated lab, called FRIENDS.
(originally I think the full names was Friends of psychiatric research) it was created separately during the MaCathry era as JHU did not want any more problems so it was set up entirely separately and always finacially struggling. They were glad to have me - initially I mainly feed monkeys, fixed an old EEG machine JHU had discarded, and supplied some electronic. We did not have money to buy some platium foil for electrodes we wanted to implant. So I proposed a project to the Navy program managers at APLJHU about measurement of the variation of electrical conductivity in the sea with depth. (Selling point was that a soviet sub that had passed even hours early might have left a wake disturbance in the conductivity and thus have its trail picked up. That was all done to get an excuse to buy platimum foil, most of which was made into electodes that ended up on the cerebellar surfaces of Rhesus monkeys! However, if any Navy auditors are reading, it did get deployed, at least experimentally, and was a good idea for the Navy to look into.

 

[Prince_James]

Billy T:

And I in yours, if you know much about neurology and / or perception and will read and comment on my essay.

I am not a scientist. I am a philosopher. As such, I can comment from the perspective of the philosophy of mind, but I cannot give you much in the way of cutting edge neuroscientific findings. I'd be glad to give the PoM answer, though, as I see fit to give it.

I am studying to get my Ph.D. None yet. So my list of credentials isn't nearly as intriguing as yours, you platinum foil rhesus monkey boy!

 

[Gustav]

It requires the acceptance of a new concept of yourself. I.e. you are not your physics body and not some immaterial "soul," but part of a Real Time Simulation, RTS, which the brain creates in parietal tissue when you are awake and when not in deep sleep. At other times, when the RTS is not running, you do not exist. You do exist when in dream sleep, but then the RTS is not making a nearly perfect (illusion do exist) simulation of the sensed external world as it does when you are awake and alert.

i do not understand. give some analogies to this rts. perhaps some precedents to this line of thought. a virtual os running on vmware? what?

as far as i am concerned, it appears as if you have merely introduced a new label and stuck it on us. you shifted the hard problem to another layer. you appear to have explained nothing. furthermore by postulating this rts is created by the brain, that places you firmly in the materialist camp.

why would the brain do this? is it advantageous to mull rather than call it as it is?

 

[Prince_James]

Billy T:

I am 99 percent sure I all ready gave feed back on that essay a year ago. I remember. I brought up baseball and ping-pong and how they refute projecting ahead with compensation as such would be impossible.

 

[Reiku]

Billy

After some time, i wanted to ask you:

The Real Time Simulations, are they tied to actual observations made in the real world?

If it does, again, its strange, because i was modelling some idea's that are consistant with the idea that it is irrelevant to even consider any notions where there is no reference between us, and what we measure...

 

[Reiku]

Gustav

Yes, it may place some of his notions into a materialistic camp... ... ... but there is actually a growing idea in the mainstream right now, that thoughts and emotions may not be entirely ''stuck'' to the material brain, and somehow the vacuum also plays an intrical part. But it would be interesting to hear what Billy's notions are in his idea in the long run, considering the materialistic and non.

 

[Reiku]

From Dr Wolfs Award Winning Book:

''It may seem impossible that your experience of reading these words at the moment might not arise from the framework of spacetime, but its true nonetheless...

..We have come to believe that all human experience is rooted from the physical world... you may be amazed when i tell you, there is no real proof to back up this conclusion, inspite of the onslaught of evidence of muscle activity in the brain...

... I am pointing to the one experience about which you are most certain... your awareness of being in a body at the moment.''

And he is right you know. The ''me'' is not a physical phenom, even if the ''me'' seeps out of the fabric of spacetime itself, from its distortions and creases...

I thought this quite adiquate right now, after what Gus raised.

 

[Reiku]

I believe, that matter is required for consciousness to become independant in thought and experience. Independant of the one mind in creation... Wolf calls this the Mind of God. A subspacetime realm, where probability curves become possibilities. Its well accepted by the mainstream.

Matter and energy may just be there (among other reasons, but we are talking about mind and consciousness), to give a foundation of linear thought and linear experiences.

As we know, in physics, there is no such thing as a linear time existence, but somehow, the mind creates this illusion.

When mind entered matter and energy, mind began to function in a direct path, in a direct vector, in a distinct framework of a psychological arrow.

When this matter dies, the biological functions of the brain cease to operate, does the mind rally out of existence? The experience of consciousness may defy quantum rules, but the essence of consciousness cannot, and since we have a place in time and space, we must ask if our information, the network information of what we come to experience, really does dissappear, because we are insideously told by physics, that information is impervious, and cannot simply be destroyed.

But as wolf has informed us, there is no definate proof of a physical consciousness, nor is there any proof of it relying on space and time... that is... the latter has an acception i wish to share. And i will share it soon, along with some mathematical consclusions, i hope you will enjoy.