From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
quantum mind or
quantum consciousness[1] group of hypotheses propose that
classical mechanics cannot explain
consciousness. It posits that
quantum mechanical phenomena, such as
quantum entanglement and
superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function and could form the basis of an explanation of consciousness.
Hypotheses have been proposed about ways for quantum effects to be
involved in the process of consciousness, but even those who advocate
them admit that the hypotheses remain unproven, and possibly unprovable.
Some of the proponents propose experiments that could demonstrate
quantum consciousness, but the experiments have not yet been possible to
perform.
Terms used in the theory of quantum mechanics can be misinterpreted
by laymen in ways that are not valid but that sound mystical or
religious, and therefore may seem to be related to consciousness. These
misinterpretations of the terms are not justified in the theory of
quantum mechanics. According to Sean Carroll, "No theory in the history
of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans—and
misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult
ideas—than quantum mechanics."
[2] Lawrence Krauss says, "No area of physics stimulates more nonsense in the public arena than quantum mechanics."
[3]
Some proponents of pseudoscience use quantum mechanical terms in an
effort to justify their statements, but this effort is misleading, and
it is a false interpretation of the physical theory. Quantum mind
theories of consciousness that are based on this kind of
misinterpretations of terms are not valid by scientific methods or from
empirical experiments.
History
Eugene Wigner developed the idea that quantum mechanics has something to do with the workings of the mind. He proposed that the
wave function collapses due to its interaction with consciousness.
Freeman Dyson argued that "mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron."
[4]
Other contemporary physicists and philosophers considered these arguments to be unconvincing.
[5] Victor Stenger
characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having "no scientific
basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and
dragons."
[6]
David Chalmers argued against quantum consciousness. He instead discussed how
quantum mechanics may relate to dualistic consciousness.
[7] Chalmers is skeptical of the ability of any new physics to resolve the
hard problem of consciousness.
[8][9]
Quantum mind approaches
Bohm
David Bohm viewed
quantum theory and
relativity as contradictory, which implied a more fundamental level in the universe.
[10]
He claimed both quantum theory and relativity pointed towards this
deeper theory, which he formulated as a quantum field theory. This more
fundamental level was proposed to represent an undivided wholeness and
an
implicate order, from which arises the
explicate order of the universe as we experience it.
Bohm's proposed implicate order applies both to matter and
consciousness. He suggested that it could explain the relationship
between them. He saw mind and matter as projections into our explicate
order from the underlying implicate order. Bohm claimed that when we
look at matter, we see nothing that helps us to understand
consciousness.
Bohm discussed the experience of listening to music. He believed the
feeling of movement and change that make up our experience of music
derive from holding the immediate past and the present in the brain
together. The musical notes from the past are transformations rather
than memories. The notes that were implicate in the immediate past
become explicate in the present. Bohm viewed this as consciousness
emerging from the implicate order.
Bohm saw the movement, change or flow, and the coherence of
experiences, such as listening to music, as a manifestation of the
implicate order. He claimed to derive evidence for this from
Jean Piaget's[11]
work on infants. He held these studies to show that young children
learn about time and space because they have a "hard-wired"
understanding of movement as part of the implicate order. He compared
this "hard-wiring" to
Chomsky's theory that grammar is "hard-wired" into human brains.
Bohm never proposed a specific means by which his proposal could be
falsified, nor a neural mechanism through which his "implicate order"
could emerge in a way relevant to consciousness.
[10] Bohm later collaborated on
Karl Pribram's
holonomic brain theory as a model of quantum consciousness.
[12]
According to philosopher
Paavo Pylkkänen, Bohm's suggestion "leads naturally to the assumption that the physical correlate of the
logical thinking
process is at the classically describable level of the brain, while the
basic thinking process is at the quantum-theoretically describable
level."
[13]
Penrose and Hameroff
Theoretical physicist
Roger Penrose and
anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff collaborated to produce the theory known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (
Orch-OR).
Penrose and Hameroff initially developed their ideas separately and
later collaborated to produce Orch-OR in the early 1990s. The theory was
reviewed and updated by the authors in late 2013.
[14][15]
Penrose's argument stemmed from
Gödel's incompleteness theorems. In Penrose's first book on consciousness,
The Emperor's New Mind (1989),
[16]
he argued that while a formal system cannot prove its own consistency,
Gödel’s unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians.
[17]
He took this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not formal
proof systems and are not running a computable algorithm. According to
Bringsjorg and Xiao, this line of reasoning is based on fallacious
equivocation on the meaning of computation.
[18]
In the same book, Penrose wrote, "One might speculate, however, that
somewhere deep in the brain, cells are to be found of single quantum
sensitivity. If this proves to be the case, then quantum mechanics will
be significantly involved in brain activity."
[16]:p.400
Penrose determined
wave function collapse
was the only possible physical basis for a non-computable process.
Dissatisfied with its randomness, Penrose proposed a new form of wave
function collapse that occurred in isolation and called it
objective reduction.
He suggested each quantum superposition has its own piece of spacetime
curvature and that when these become separated by more than one
Planck length they become unstable and collapse.
[19] Penrose suggested that
objective reduction represented neither randomness nor algorithmic processing but instead a non-computable influence in
spacetime geometry from which mathematical understanding and, by later extension, consciousness derived.
[19]
Hameroff provided a hypothesis that
microtubules would be suitable hosts for quantum behavior.
[20] Microtubules are composed of
tubulin protein dimer subunits. The dimers each have
hydrophobic pockets that are 8 nm apart and that may contain delocalized
pi electrons.
Tubulins have other smaller non-polar regions that contain pi
electron-rich indole rings separated by only about 2 nm. Hameroff
proposed that these electrons are close enough to become entangled.
[21] Hameroff originally suggested the tubulin-subunit electrons would form a
Bose–Einstein condensate, but this was discredited.
[22]
He then proposed a Frohlich condensate, a hypothetical coherent
oscillation of dipolar molecules. However, this too was experimentally
discredited.
[23]
However, Orch-OR made numerous false biological predictions, and is not an accepted model of brain physiology.
[24] In other words, there is a missing link between physics and neuroscience,
[25]
for instance, the proposed predominance of 'A' lattice microtubules,
more suitable for information processing, was falsified by Kikkawa
et al.,
[26][27] who showed all in vivo microtubules have a 'B' lattice and a seam. The proposed existence of gap junctions between neurons and
glial cells was also falsified.
[28] Orch-OR predicted that microtubule coherence reaches the synapses via dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs), however De Zeeuw
et al. proved this impossible,
[29] by showing that DLBs are located micrometers away from gap junctions.
[30]
In January 2014, Hameroff and Penrose claimed that the discovery of
quantum vibrations in microtubules by Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the
National Institute for Materials Science in Japan in March 2013
[31] corroborates the Orch-OR theory.
[15][32]
Although these theories are stated in a scientific framework, it is
difficult to separate them from the personal opinions of the scientist.
The opinions are often based on intuition or subjective ideas about the
nature of consciousness. For example, Penrose wrote,
my own point of view asserts that you can't even simulate conscious
activity. What's going on in conscious thinking is something you
couldn't properly imitate at all by computer.... If something behaves as
though it's conscious, do you say it is conscious? People argue
endlessly about that. Some people would say, 'Well, you've got to take
the operational viewpoint; we don't know what consciousness is. How do
you judge whether a person is conscious or not? Only by the way they
act. You apply the same criterion to a computer or a computer-controlled
robot.' Other people would say, 'No, you can't say it feels something
merely because it behaves as though it feels something.' My view is
different from both those views. The robot wouldn't even behave
convincingly as though it was conscious unless it really was — which I
say it couldn't be, if it's entirely computationally controlled.[33]
Penrose continues,
A lot of what the brain does you could do on a computer. I'm not
saying that all the brain's action is completely different from what you
do on a computer. I am claiming that the actions of consciousness are
something different. I'm not saying that consciousness is beyond
physics, either — although I'm saying that it's beyond the physics we
know now.... My claim is that there has to be something in physics that
we don't yet understand, which is very important, and which is of a
noncomputational character. It's not specific to our brains; it's out
there, in the physical world. But it usually plays a totally
insignificant role. It would have to be in the bridge between quantum
and classical levels of behavior — that is, where quantum measurement
comes in.[34]
In response,
W. Daniel Hillis
replied, "Penrose has committed the classical mistake of putting humans
at the center of the universe. His argument is essentially that he
can't imagine how the mind could be as complicated as it is without
having some magic elixir brought in from some new principle of physics,
so therefore it must involve that. It's a failure of Penrose's
imagination.... It's true that there are unexplainable, uncomputable
things, but there's no reason whatsoever to believe that the complex
behavior we see in humans is in any way related to uncomputable,
unexplainable things."
[34]
Lawrence Krauss is also blunt in criticizing Penrose's ideas. He
said, "Well, Roger Penrose has given lots of new-age crackpots
ammunition by suggesting that at some fundamental scale, quantum
mechanics might be relevant for consciousness. When you hear the term
'quantum consciousness,' you should be suspicious.... Many people are
dubious that Penrose's suggestions are reasonable, because the brain is
not an isolated quantum-mechanical system."
[3]
Umezawa, Vitiello, Freeman
Hiroomi Umezawa and collaborators proposed a quantum field theory of memory storage.
[35][36] Giuseppe Vitiello and
Walter Freeman proposed a dialog model of the mind. This dialog takes place between the classical and the quantum parts of the brain.
[37][38][39] Their quantum field theory models of brain dynamics are fundamentally different from the Penrose-Hameroff theory.
Pribram, Bohm, Kak
Karl Pribram's
holonomic brain theory (quantum holography) invoked quantum mechanics to explain higher order processing by the mind.
[40][41] He argued that his holonomic model solved the
binding problem.
[42]
Pribram collaborated with Bohm in his work on the quantum approaches to
mind and he provided evidence on how much of the processing in the
brain was done in wholes.
[43] He proposed that ordered water at
dendritic membrane surfaces might operate by structuring Bose-Einstein condensation supporting quantum dynamics.
[44]
Although
Subhash Kak's
work is not directly related to that of Pribram, he likewise proposed
that the physical substrate to neural networks has a quantum basis,
[45][46] but asserted that the quantum mind has machine-like limitations.
[47]
He points to a role for quantum theory in the distinction between
machine intelligence and biological intelligence, but that in itself
cannot explain all aspects of consciousness.
[48][49] He has proposed that the mind remains oblivious of its quantum nature due to the principle of
veiled nonlocality.
[50][51]
Stapp
Henry Stapp
proposed that quantum waves are reduced only when they interact with
consciousness. He argues from the Orthodox Quantum Mechanics of
John von Neumann
that the quantum state collapses when the observer selects one among
the alternative quantum possibilities as a basis for future action. The
collapse, therefore, takes place in the expectation that the observer
associated with the state. Stapp's work drew criticism from scientists
such as David Bourget and Danko Georgiev.
[52] Georgiev
[53][54][55] criticized Stapp's model in two respects:
- Stapp's mind does not have its own wavefunction or density matrix, but nevertheless can act upon the brain using projection operators.
Such usage is not compatible with standard quantum mechanics because
one can attach any number of ghostly minds to any point in space that
act upon physical quantum systems with any projection operators.
Therefore, Stapp's model negates "the prevailing principles of physics".[53]
- Stapp's claim that quantum Zeno effect is robust against environmental decoherence directly contradicts a basic theorem in quantum information theory that acting with projection operators upon the density matrix of a quantum system can only increase the system's Von Neumann entropy.[53][54]
Stapp has responded to both of Georgiev's objections.
[56][57]
David Pearce
British philosopher
David Pearce
defends what he calls physicalistic idealism (""Physicalistic idealism"
is the non-materialist physicalist claim that reality is fundamentally
experiential and that the natural world is exhaustively described by the
equations of physics and their solutions [...]," and has conjectured
that unitary conscious minds are physical states of
quantum coherence (neuronal superpositions).
[58][59][60][61]
This conjecture is, according to Pearce, amenable to falsification
unlike most theories of consciousness, and Pearce has outlined an
experimental protocol describing how the hypothesis could be tested
using
matter-wave interferometry to detect
nonclassical interference patterns of
neuronal superpositions at the onset of
thermal decoherence.
[62] Pearce admits that his ideas are "highly speculative," "counterintuitive," and "incredible."
[60]
Criticism
These
hypotheses of the quantum mind remain hypothetical speculation, as
Penrose and Pearce admitted in their discussion. Until they make a
prediction that is tested by experiment, the hypotheses aren't based in
empirical evidence. According to Lawrence Krauss, "It is true that
quantum mechanics is extremely strange, and on extremely small scales
for short times, all sorts of weird things happen. And in fact we can
make weird quantum phenomena happen. But what quantum mechanics doesn't
change about the universe is, if you want to change things, you still
have to do something. You can't change the world by thinking about it."
[3]
The process of testing the hypotheses with experiments is fraught
with problems, including conceptual/theoretical, practical, and ethical
issues.
Conceptual problems
The
idea that a quantum effect is necessary for consciousness to function
is still in the realm of philosophy. Penrose proposes that it is
necessary. But other theories of consciousness do not indicate that it
is needed. For example,
Daniel Dennett proposed a theory called
multiple drafts model that doesn't indicate that quantum effects are needed. The theory is described in Dennett's book,
Consciousness Explained, published in 1991.
[63]
A philosophical argument on either side isn't scientific proof,
although the philosophical analysis can indicate key differences in the
types of models, and they can show what type of experimental differences
might be observed. But since there isn't a clear consensus among
philosophers, it isn't conceptual support that a quantum mind theory is
needed.
There are computers that are specifically designed to compute using quantum mechanical effects.
Quantum computing is
computing using
quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as
superposition and
entanglement.
[64] They are different from
binary digital electronic computers based on
transistors. Whereas common digital computing requires that the data be encoded into binary digits (
bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1), quantum computation uses
quantum bits, which can be in
superpositions of states. One of the greatest challenges is controlling or removing
quantum decoherence.
This usually means isolating the system from its environment as
interactions with the external world cause the system to decohere.
Currently, some quantum computers require their qubits to be cooled to
20 millikelvins in order to prevent significant decoherence.
[65]
As a result, time consuming tasks may render some quantum algorithms
inoperable, as maintaining the state of qubits for a long enough
duration will eventually corrupt the superpositions.
[66]
There aren't any obvious analogies between the functioning of quantum
computers and the human brain. Some of the hypothetical models of
quantum mind have proposed mechanisms for maintaining quantum coherence
in the brain, but they have not been shown to operate.
Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon often invoked for quantum mind models. This effect occurs when pairs or groups of
particles interact so that the
quantum state
of each particle cannot be described independently of the other(s),
even when the particles are separated by a large distance. Instead, a
quantum state has to be described for the whole system.
Measurements of physical properties such as
position,
momentum,
spin, and
polarization, performed on entangled particles are found to be
correlated.
If one of the particles is measured, the same property of the other
particle immediately adjusts to maintain the conservation of the
physical phenomenon. According to the formalism of quantum theory, the
effect of measurement happens instantly, no matter how far apart the
particles are.
[67][68] It is not possible to use this effect to transmit classical information at faster-than-light speeds
[69] (see
Faster-than-light § Quantum mechanics). Entanglement is broken when the entangled particles
decohere through interaction with the environment; for example, when a measurement is made
[70]
or the particles undergo random collisions or interactions. According
to David Pearce, "In neuronal networks, ion-ion scattering, ion-water
collisions, and long-range Coulomb interactions from nearby ions all
contribute to rapid decoherence times; but thermally-induced decoherence
is even harder experimentally to control than collisional decoherence."
He anticipated that quantum effects would have to be measured in
femtoseconds, a trillion times faster than the rate at which neurons
function (milliseconds).
[62]
Another possible conceptual approach is to use quantum mechanics as
an analogy to understand a different field of study like consciousness,
without expecting that the laws of quantum physics will apply. An
example of this approach is the idea of
Schrödinger's cat.
Erwin Schrödinger
described how one could, in principle, create entanglement of a
large-scale system by making it dependent on an elementary particle in a
superposition. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a locked steel
chamber, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a
radioactive
atom, whether it had decayed and emitted radiation or not. According to
Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that
the cat remains both alive and dead
until the state has been observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote
the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; on the
contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the
existing view of quantum mechanics.
[71] However, since Schrödinger's time, other
interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real.
[72][73] Schrödinger's famous
thought experiment poses the question, "
when
does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and
become one or the other?" In the same way, it is possible to ask whether
the brain's act of making a decision is analogous to having a
superposition of states of two decision outcomes, so that making a
decision means "opening the box" to reduce the brain from a combination
of states to one state. But even Schrödinger didn't think this really
happened to the cat; he didn't think the cat was literally alive and
dead at the same time. This analogy about making a decision uses a
formalism that is derived from quantum mechanics, but it doesn't
indicate the actual mechanism by which the decision is made. In this
way, the idea is similar to
quantum cognition.
This field clearly distinguishes itself from the quantum mind as it is
not reliant on the hypothesis that there is something micro-physical
quantum mechanical about the brain. Quantum cognition is based on the
quantum-like paradigm,
[74][75] generalized quantum paradigm,
[76] or quantum structure paradigm
[77]
that information processing by complex systems such as the brain can be
mathematically described in the framework of quantum information and
quantum probability theory. This model uses quantum mechanics only as an
analogy, but doesn't propose that quantum mechanics is the physical
mechanism by which it operates. For example, quantum cognition proposes
that some decisions can be analyzed as if there are interference between
two alternatives, but it is not a physical quantum interference effect.
Practical problems
The
demonstration of a quantum mind effect by experiment is necessary. Is
there a way to show that consciousness is impossible without a quantum
effect? Can a sufficiently complex digital, non-quantum computer be
shown to be incapable of consciousness? Perhaps a quantum computer will
show that quantum effects are needed. In any case, complex computers
that are either digital or quantum computers may be built. These could
demonstrate which type of computer is capable of conscious, intentional
thought. But they don't exist yet, and no experimental test has been
demonstrated.
Quantum mechanics is a mathematical model that can provide some extremely accurate numerical predictions.
Richard Feynman called quantum electrodynamics, based on the quantum mechanics formalism, "the jewel of physics" for its
extremely accurate predictions of quantities like the
anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the
Lamb shift of the
energy levels of
hydrogen.
[78]:Ch1
So it is not impossible that the model could provide an accurate
prediction about consciousness that would confirm that a quantum effect
is involved. If the mind depends on quantum mechanical effects, the true
proof is to find an experiment that provides a calculation that can be
compared to an experimental measurement. It has to show a measurable
difference between a classical computation result in a brain and one
that involves quantum effects.
The main theoretical argument against the quantum mind hypothesis is
the assertion that quantum states in the brain would lose coherency
before they reached a scale where they could be useful for neural
processing. This supposition was elaborated by
Tegmark. His calculations indicate that quantum systems in the brain decohere at sub-picosecond timescales.
[79][80]
No response by a brain has shows computation results or reactions on
this fast of a timescale. Typical reactions are on the order of
milliseconds, trillions of times longer than sub-picosecond time scales.
[81]
Daniel Dennett uses an experimental result in support of his Multiple
Drafts Model of an optical illusion that happens on a time scale of
less than a second or so. In this experiment, two different colored
lights, with an angular separation of a few degrees at the eye, are
flashed in succession. If the interval between the flashes is less than a
second or so, the first light that is flashed appears to move across to
the position of the second light. Furthermore, the light seems to
change color as it moves across the visual field. A green light will
appear to turn red as it seems to move across to the position of a red
light. Dennett asks how we could see the light change color before the
second light is observed.
[63] Velmans argues that the
cutaneous rabbit illusion,
another illusion that happens in about a second, demonstrates that
there is a delay while modelling occurs in the brain and that this delay
was discovered by Libet.
[82]
These slow illusions that happen at times of less than a second don't
support a proposal that the brain functions on the picosecond time
scale.
According to David Pearce, a demonstration of picosecond effects is
"the fiendishly hard part – feasible in principle, but an experimental
challenge still beyond the reach of contemporary molecular matter-wave
interferometry. ...The conjecture predicts that we'll discover the
interference signature of sub-femtosecond macro-superpositions."
[62]
Penrose says,
The problem with trying to use quantum mechanics in the action of the
brain is that if it were a matter of quantum nerve signals, these nerve
signals would disturb the rest of the material in the brain, to the
extent that the quantum coherence would get lost very quickly. You
couldn't even attempt to build a quantum computer out of ordinary nerve
signals, because they're just too big and in an environment that's too
disorganized. Ordinary nerve signals have to be treated classically. But
if you go down to the level of the microtubules, then there's an
extremely good chance that you can get quantum-level activity inside
them.
For my picture, I need this quantum-level activity in the
microtubules; the activity has to be a large scale thing that goes not
just from one microtubule to the next but from one nerve cell to the
next, across large areas of the brain. We need some kind of coherent
activity of a quantum nature which is weakly coupled to the
computational activity that Hameroff argues is taking place along the
microtubules.
There are various avenues of attack. One is directly on the physics, on
quantum theory, and there are certain experiments that people are
beginning to perform, and various schemes for a modification of quantum
mechanics. I don't think the experiments are sensitive enough yet to
test many of these specific ideas. One could imagine experiments that
might test these things, but they'd be very hard to perform.[34]
A demonstration of a quantum effect in the brain has to explain this
problem or explain why it is not relevant, or that the brain somehow
circumvents the problem of the loss of quantum coherency at body
temperature. As Penrose proposes, it may require a new type of physical
theory.
Ethical problems
Can
self-awareness, or understanding of a self in the surrounding
environment, be done by a classical parallel processor, or are quantum
effects needed to have a sense of "oneness"? According to Lawrence
Krauss, "You should be wary whenever you hear something like, 'Quantum
mechanics connects you with the universe' ... or 'quantum mechanics
unifies you with everything else.' You can begin to be skeptical that
the speaker is somehow trying to use quantum mechanics to argue
fundamentally that you can change the world by thinking about it."
[3]
A subjective feeling is not sufficient to make this determination.
Humans don't have a reliable subjective feeling for how we do a lot of
functions. According to Daniel Dennett, "On this topic,
Everybody's an expert...
but they think that they have a particular personal authority about the
nature of their own conscious experiences that can trump any hypothesis
they find unacceptable."
[83]
Since humans are the only animals known to be conscious, then
performing experiments to demonstrate quantum effects in consciousness
requires experimentation on a living human brain. This is not
automatically excluded or impossible, but it seriously limits the kinds
of experiments that can be done. Studies of the ethics of brain studies
are being actively solicited
[84] by the
BRAIN Initiative, a U.S. Federal Government funded effort to document the connections of neurons in the brain.
An ethically objectionable practice by proponents of quantum mind
theories involves the practice of using quantum mechanical terms in an
effort to make the argument sound more impressive, even when they know
that those terms are irrelevant. Dale DeBakcsy notes that "trendy
parapsychologists, academic relativists, and even the
Dalai Lama
have all taken their turn at robbing modern physics of a few
well-sounding phrases and stretching them far beyond their original
scope in order to add scientific weight to various pet theories."
[85]
At the very least, these proponents must make a clear statement about
whether quantum formalism is being used as an analogy or as an actual
physical mechanism, and what evidence they are using for support. An
ethical statement by a researcher should specify what kind of
relationship their hypothesis has to the physical laws.
Misleading statements of this type have been given by, for example,
Deepak Chopra. Chopra has commonly referred to topics such as
quantum healing
or quantum effects of consciousness. Seeing the human body as being
undergirded by a "quantum mechanical body" composed not of matter but of
energy and information, he believes that "human aging is fluid and
changeable; it can speed up, slow down, stop for a time, and even
reverse itself," as determined by one's state of mind.
[86] Robert Carroll states Chopra attempts to integrate
Ayurveda with quantum mechanics to justify his teachings.
[87]
Chopra argues that what he calls "quantum healing" cures any manner of
ailments, including cancer, through effects that he claims are literally
based on the same principles as quantum mechanics.
[88] This has led physicists to object to his use of the term
quantum in reference to medical conditions and the human body.
[88]
Chopra said, "I think quantum theory has a lot of things to say about
the observer effect, about non-locality, about correlations. So I think
there’s a school of physicists who believe that consciousness has to be
equated, or at least brought into the equation, in understanding quantum
mechanics."
[89]
On the other hand, he also claims "[Quantum effects are] just a
metaphor. Just like an electron or a photon is an indivisible unit of
information and energy, a thought is an indivisible unit of
consciousness."
[89] In his book
Quantum Healing, Chopra stated the conclusion that
quantum entanglement links everything in the Universe, and therefore it must create consciousness.
[90]
In either case, the references to the word "quantum" don't mean what a
physicist would claim, and arguments that use the word "quantum"
shouldn't be taken as scientifically proven.
Chris Carter includes statements in his book,
Science and Psychic Phenomena,[91]
of quotes from quantum physicists in support of psychic phenomena. In a
review of the book, Benjamin Radford wrote that Carter used such
references to "quantum physics, which he knows nothing about and which
he (and people like Deepak Chopra) love to cite and reference because it
sounds mysterious and paranormal.... Real, actual physicists I've
spoken to break out laughing at this crap.... If Carter wishes to posit
that quantum physics provides a plausible mechanism for psi, then it is
his responsibility to show that, and he clearly fails to do so."
[92]
Sharon Hill has studied amateur paranormal research groups, and these
groups like to use "vague and confusing language: ghosts 'use energy,'
are made up of 'magnetic fields', or are associated with a 'quantum
state.'"
[93][94]
Statements like these about quantum mechanics indicate a temptation
to misinterpret technical, mathematical terms like entanglement in terms
of mystical feelings. This approach can be interpreted as a kind of
Scientism, using the language and authority of science when the scientific concepts don't apply.
A larger problem in the popular press with the quantum mind
hypotheses is that they are extracted without scientific support or
justification and used to support areas of pseudoscience. In brief, for
example, the property of quantum entanglement refers to the connection
between two particles that share a property such as angular momentum. If
the particles collide, then they are no longer entangled. Extrapolating
this property from the entanglement of two elementary particles to the
functioning of neurons in the brain to be used in a computation is not
simple. It is a long chain to prove a connection between entangled
elementary particles and a macroscopic effect that affects human
consciousness. It is also necessary to show how sensory inputs affect
the coupled particles and then computation is accomplished.
Perhaps the final question is, what difference does it make if
quantum effects are involved in computations in the brain? It is already
known that quantum mechanics plays a role in the brain, since quantum
mechanics determines the shapes and properties of molecules like
neurotransmitters and
proteins, and these molecules affect how the brain works. This is the reason that drugs such as
morphine
affect consciousness. As Daniel Dennett said, "quantum effects are
there in your car, your watch, and your computer. But most things — most
macroscopic objects — are, as it were, oblivious to quantum effects.
They don't amplify them; they don't hinge on them."
[34]
Lawrence Krauss said, "We're also connected to the universe by gravity,
and we're connected to the planets by gravity. But that doesn't mean
that astrology is true.... Often, people who are trying to sell whatever
it is they're trying to sell try to justify it on the basis of science.
Everyone knows quantum mechanics is weird, so why not use that to
justify it? ... I don't know how many times I've heard people say, 'Oh, I
love quantum mechanics because I'm really into meditation, or I love
the spiritual benefits that it brings me.' But quantum mechanics, for
better or worse, doesn't bring any more spiritual benefits than gravity
does."
[3]
But it appears that these molecular quantum effects are not what the
proponents of the quantum mind are interested in. Proponents seem to
want to use the nonlocal, nonclassical aspects of quantum mechanics to
connect the human consciousness to a kind of universal consciousness or
to long-range supernatural abilities. Although it isn't impossible that
these effects may be observed, they have not been found at present, and
the burden of proof is on those who claim that these effects exist. The
ability of humans to transfer information at a distance without a known
classical physical mechanism has not been shown.
