CAN CONSCIOUSNESS BE APPROACHED SCIENTIFICALLY? |
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IN THIS SECTION(click on heading to bookmarked paragraphs) 1. MIND MATTER INTERFACE 2. THERE ARE MANY BIG QUESTIONS 3. WELL-KNOWN NAMES 4. A FUNDAMENTAL BOUNDARY TO SCIENCE? 5. ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS 6. ON THE FRINGES OF SCIENCE? 7. OUR PILOT PRACTICAL EXPLORATIONS 8. PRACTICAL STUDIES BY OTHERS 9. REMOTE VIEWING
1. MIND MATTER INTERFACE Will we ever be able to make sense of mind/matter interfaces? A good source of general information is the University of Arizona, which recently received support of over a million dollars for its Centre for Consciousness Studies. To keep in touch with cutting edge developments by different schools of thought looking into the possible links between quantum mechanics and the mind, I recommend their Quantum Mind listserver. Information on joining can be found on the 'LISTSERV reference card', which can be retrieved by sending the message "INFO REFCARD" to the automated service The contributions are archived and valuable free search facilities are provided:- 2. THERE ARE MANY BIG QUESTIONS Consciousness is as generic a term as palaeontology so we are talking about numerous things. Thus an understanding of consciousness has many features, for example:- a) Neural Correlates All forms of consciousness appear to have neural correlates. What gives rise to the neural activity when we think and imagine? b) Qualitative nature Consciousness has a dualist property, in that experience is totally distinguishable from matter. Yet mind and matter interact, so they must unify at some level. The question is at what level? If at a deeper level of reality, beyond our direct awareness and current understanding, then the physical activity of the brain merely correlates with activity at some deeper level. Even so each qualitative property has a quantitative aspect in that intensity of feeling depends upon the strength of the stimulus. c) Two-way causal relationship with matter. We can raise our arms at will, and if someone else raises our arms we are aware of the fact. How so? d) Unity Why does the mind have a temporal unity whilst an overall conscious experience may possess many spatial and experiential building blocks? e) Multimodality How can we can assemble many qualitatively different things into a unified experience? f) Delay Why does conscious awareness lag behind physical events by about 500 ms and behind the initial brain activity? g) Subjectivity Human beings can immediately distinguish between objective things, like the size of a book, and subjective effects like thinking that classical music is better than pop music. How? h) Intentionality, and freedom of choice We can switch the focus of attention at will, for example we can listen to different instruments playing in an orchestra. How do we achieve this? i) Irreducibility Is consciousness a primary property or is it an illusion like a rainbow? j) Causation Is the physical world causally closed, or are reports of psychokinesis etc. factual? k) Attention span Like athletes, trained meditators can focus their minds over long time intervals. The average person has a short attention span. l) Recall We remember things and can usually recall them at will. How do we construct maps of our physical environment? What is the difference between episodic memory (remembering events) and knowledge in its various forms? m) Different states Anaesthetics make us unconscious. (this does not invalidate a dualist concept for the brain may be like a TV set or transmitter) In sleep we dream. Mystics and others report heightened experiences.What causes these differences in state? What is dreaming? n) locality Why is consciousness not localised in the brain? o) Optical illusions Why can we interpret one image in different ways? p) Threshold What brings something to our attention like a tap on the shoulder whilst we remain unconscious of the feelings of the soles of our feet? q) Dendrite structure modifications Modification of dendrite structures seems to be associated with conscious experience, but not directly so for the time scales don’t appear to match. What happens? r) Logical thought and creative thought What is the difference between solving a mathematical equation and crating an abstract picture in the mind’s eye? s) Telepathy, Remote Viewing These phenomena seem normally to be at a low or degraded level of consciousness, yet evidence of their reality mounts. Subjective aptitude appears to be important. Accepting the phenomena as fact, how could spatially separated things interact with consciousness other than via our senses? (top) 3. WELL-KNOWN NAMES David Chalmers is well known and respected for his philosophical approach to consciousness. He is reputed to have coined the phrase 'the hard problem' (How appropriate!) relating to consciousness. He has produced a very extensive list of key papers:- Alwyn Scott views mind as an emergent phenomenon of biological molecules which possess non-linear properties (see his book Stairway to the Mind, Copernicus, 1995). He is not impressed by theories based on quantum theory. Physics of Consciousness, by Stapp leads to the first part of a seven-part paper which is a valuable personal review of the topic. Sarfatti is a heavyweight in the quantum consciousness arena:- and so is Hameroff Pitkanen proposes a relationship between quantum theory and consciousness via a model of reality which he has been developing for many years..
I gave a few thought of my own, which, relative to the above, are very elementary but perhaps they form a starting point for discussions which can lead to the sort of profound questions which are being addressed by these experts:- 4. A FUNDAMENTAL BOUNDARY TO SCIENCE?A fascinating subject for me, which seems to be unusual among physical scientists, is the nature of subjective experience. It is such an essential component of life. Science is objective. Art is subjective.Why does subjective experience so stubbornly remain completely outside the domain of science? After all we can experience only one reality, can't we? Matter and subjective experience are both present in man so what is that is preventing science from reaching consciousness? This nagging question is one which prompts my interest in the boundary between science and metaphysics, but what a hazy scene it leads to! I can't blame those who are faced with earning a living and providing for their families if they avoid it! For a broader look at metaphysics click on "Reality and the Mind". There is currently a huge resurgence of interest in the nature of consciousness, and the subject is attracting some of the big names in science. But the question remains, what can science possibly tell us about consciousness? I’m not sure, but clearly some cutting edge scientists are eager to find out. It is the sort of quest where large cross-disciplinary teams are more likely to make progress than the individual genius as it calls for expert knowledge in so many fields in physical and medical sciences as well as other disciplines more commonly associated with the study of consciousness. 5. ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS For some, interest in consciousness extends to the exploration of altered states. (See the home page by Tart, an internationally acknowledged expert in this area). Everyday consciousness might be considered to be enough of challenge to be going on with, but it seems not so! A problem with discussing altered states of consciousness is that those who have experienced them (e.g.near death experiences) seem to find difficulty in finding words to describe them. They can be life-changing events, but even so people have difficulty conveying to others what they have experienced to others. Perhaps the creation of a new vocabulary supported by good range of metaphors would help them to get their experiences across to the average person with an objective interest in the topic. LaBerge's is an investigator of lucid dreaming and he also has a Web site. 6. ON THE FRINGES OF SCIENCE?Are such things as dowsing and telepathy accessible to scientific study? Non-local connections were predicted by quantum mechanics, long before their existence was confirmed by practical observation, ( Aspect, A., Grainger, P., and Roger, G. (1982) Experimental Realisation of Einstein -Podolski -Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: a new violation of Bell’s inequalities. Phys. Rev. Lett., 48, 91 104.) Explaining nonlocality poses quite a challenge for science. If non-local physical effects have been observed and cannot be explained, why should there not exist nonlocal links between minds? Discussions of the possibility of quantum coherence and nonlocality in biological environments are included by Mae-Wan Ho in her book:- The Rainbow and the Worm, 1993, ISBN 981-02-1487-1, and by Danah Zohar in her book The Quantum Self, Bloomsbury, London, 1991. For expert comment on these books see "Reality Through The Looking Glass", ISBN 0-86315-216-3. It is a readable book by Prof. C. J. S. Clarke, an active quantum cosmologist. 7. OUR PILOT PRACTICAL EXPLORATIONSFor a time, I joined a group of people, with sufficiently curiosity and determination to find whether (nonlocal?) connections between minds could be demonstrated practically, and to conducted pilot investigations. They were modest being without financial support. (As an industrial physicist looking back on this I'm finding it difficult to remember how I got to that point!). In our investigations, EEG signals from two subjects were recorded simultaneously whilst they endeavoured to make mental contact. (There are suggestions that couples who are in love or twins make the best subjects but we worked with 'healers'). The records were stored on disc using fast digital sampling techniques. Off-line, correlations were sought between the two sets of records using powerful mathematical techniques, familiar to industrial control engineers, but possibly novel to neuroscientists. The techniques yielded the "impulse responses" between the two minds under The merit of the technique is that it can detect small signals in very noisy backgrounds. Exercises of this type have been much simplified which has recently been much simplified with the advent of powerful PC's and modern spreadsheets. We found signs of weak correlations at around 38Hz, in the pilot study. Although we felt that the practical feasibility of conducting such investigations had been demonstrated, the study was terminated prematurely when the team member who owned the EEG monitoring equipment emigrated from the UK to America. Such is life! However I believe researchers with superior equipment in other parts of the world are also picking up the trail started by Grinberg-Zilberbaum (top) 8. PRACTICAL STUDIES BY OTHERSOur pilot study was stimulated by the investigations reported by Dr. Jocobo Grinberg-Zilberbaum in Mexico. In his investigations, subjects were isolated in Faraday cages and progressed beyond the pilot stage (Subtle Energies, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp 25 - 43), although they ended before completion as Dr. Grinberg-Zilberbaum left the laboratory and it was subsequently closed. Positive results were reported suggesting that the studies should be worth repeating. Investigations aimed at confirming these positive results require a team with an appropriate mix of aptitudes and training, but these days I guess that there is not an abundance of qualified people who are enthusiastic about conducting research projects without financial backing. Come back Michael Faraday! Professionals have however picked up Zilberbaum's baton. A more recent paper citing similar projects has been written by Laszlo:- see also his book The Whispering Pond, ISBN 1-853230-899-0 which considers among other things the possible role that the quantum vacuum has to play in these matters.
An investigation in Japan which combined a range of monitoring techniques, including EEG, was reported by Sugano, Uchida and Kuramoto. "A new Approach to Subtle Energies", Subtle Energies, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp 143-166, 1994. Changes were observed in signals from healers and healees but no attempt to use auto and cross correlations of the signals to obtain impulse response as we did. 9. REMOTE VIEWINGRemote viewing is another subject that raises the question of whether there is such a thing as nonlocal communication. A vast amount of work has been done in the USA on remote viewing, which in terms of science is another inexplicable phenomenon. Some participant in the government scheme have become tutors in remote viewing and attempt to make information commercially confidential However, two places to start exploring this topic are the excellent home pages of Lyn Buchanan and Palyne Gaenir:- |
