Quantum Brain

Reply to John Chalmers,

>Marion: To answer your question, Vic Stenger, a physicist at
>the U of Hawaii, has just written a book on the subject.
>(The title is something like the Quantum Mind or Quantum Brain).

Great! Good title.

>Stenger does not think QM is necessary to explain consciousness
>or other mental activities. .... For quantum effects to
>be important, the product mvd should be of the same order as
>PC.

It's certainly an open question, and that is a good argument, but
is it compelling? If, after only a hundred years or so of the
study of electricity, we can amplify a tiny, tiny radio signal to
produce a tv picture, or detonate a nuke, could not millions of
years of evolution have generated the ability to amplify quantum
effects up to the level of ions.

>... why not also in the Liver and other organs where
they are also prominent?

Why not? Human waste disposal technicians have brains, it's not
only white collar workers who are gifted with the ability to
think. Information processing capacity of some kind would
certainly seem to lend a survival advantage to single celled
organisms.

>The other point raised in your post is speed. The brain
>is a massively parallel computer, so while the speed of each
>element is low, the ensemble can carry out an enormous number of
>operations per unit time.

Perhaps a more compelling argument for the quantum theory is the
ant brain. They hardly have two neurons to rub together, but I
think we have yet to produce aggregates of silicon that can match
their computational capacities.

I am intrigued by the quantum theory, but I am not convinced. I
am also not convinced that it is wrong.

Note that the question of how much information is transferred
when an ion is exchanged between two cells can be important even
if we assume quantum effects are not important in thought. If
the position in the cell membrane at which an ion is emitted
encodes information, then the information transfer between cells
could be vastly more subtle that simple on/off pulses caused by
large numbers of ions being exchanged.

Thanks for your post.

Marion

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