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"Funda-Mentality": is the conscious mind subtly linked to a basic level of the universe?

Hameroff, Stuart R. (1998) "Funda-Mentality": is the conscious mind subtly linked to a basic level of the universe? [Journal (Paginated)]

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Abstract

Age-old battle lines over the puzzling nature of mental experience are shaping a modern resurgence in the study of consciousness. On one side are the long-dominant "physicalists" who view consciousness as an emergent property of the brain's neural networks. On the alternative, rebellious side are those who see a necessary added ingredient: proto-conscious experience intrinsic to reality, perhaps understandable through modern physics (panpsychists, pan-experientialists, "funda-mentalists"). It is argued here that the physicalist premise alone is unable to solve completely the difficult issues of consciousness and that to do so will require supplemental panpsychist/pan-experiential philosophy expressed in modern physics. In one scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity. The proposed process is Roger Penrose's "objective reduction" (OR), a self-organizing "collapse" of the quantum wave function related to instability at the most basic level of space-time geometry. In the Penrose- Hameroff model of "orchestrated objective reduction" (Orch OR), OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brain's neurons. The basic thesis is that consciousness involves brain activities coupled to a self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality.

Item Type:Journal (Paginated)
Keywords:consciousness, quantum computation, microtubules, Penrose-Hameroff theory, Orch OR, pan-experientialism, qubit, cytoskeleton, spacetime geometry, panpsychism, volition, face recognition, tubulin, gap junctions, quantumstates, quantum collapse, pre-conscious processing, quantumsuperposition, objective reduction, orchestrated objectivereduction, non-computability, general relativity, neurophysiology, proteins, protein conformational dynamics, synaptic function, London forces, van der Waals forces, pan-protopsychism, metaphysics, Whitehead, actin, sol-gel transitions, isolation, environmental decoherence, quantum coherence, entanglement, quantum computing, freewill, cognition, modern physics
Subjects:Biology > Theoretical Biology
Philosophy > Philosophy of Mind
ID Code:369
Deposited By: Hameroff, Stuart
Deposited On:28 Nov 1998
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:53

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