Being & Field Theory
Being & Field Theory
Being & Field Theory
This article arises from the remarkably multi-faceted book Brain and Being
edited by Gordon Globus and others, hereafter referred to as B&B.1 It raises
questions (though not unusually, few answers) about several related areas: the
way in which quantum theory might endow the physical matter of the brain with
surprising, though still essentially classical, properties; the possibility that quantum field theory might shed a wholly new light on aspects of consciousness, in
both the subjective and neurological approaches; and, at the most speculative,
the suggestion that the nature of being, as disclosed subjectively, can be understood in the light of one or other of the interpretations of quantum theory. I will
consider these in turn.
1. The Emergence of Novel Behaviours for Matter
Many (for instance, Walker, Marshall, Penrose and Hameroff) have raised the
possibility that the behaviour of matter in the brain is quantum mechanical; but
the critical question must be asked, in what sense is quantum mechanical
meant? Trivially, quantum mechanics lies at the root of the behaviour of all matter; but beyond this two further claims can be made, of increasing strength. The
more modest claim is that, when matter is organised on a hierarchy of length
scales extending down to the molecular, then quantum effects induce long range
correlations of molecular states, which in turn produce behaviour that is classically inexplicable and plays an important role in brain functioning. An interesting (though very idealised) example of how this might come about is discussed
in this book by Jibu and Yasue (B&B pp. 267 ff), in which modifications of the
ground states of long-range collective oscillations of molecules can form the
basis for a system of distributed memory in the brain.
Correspondence: [email protected]
[1] Gordon G. Globus, Karl H. Pribram and Giuseppe Vitiello (ed.) Brain and Being: At the Bound-
ary Between Science, Philosophy, Language and Arts, Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing Co.,
2004, xii + 350 pp., 115.00, $138.00, ISBN 90 272 5194 0.
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C. CLARKE
The stronger claim, however, is that macroscopic correlated systems might literally be quantum objects in the sense of exhibiting quantum logic, so that the
brain could in effect function as a quantum computer (Pribram, quoting Stapp,
B&B p. 224). Both these claims require that a distinctive property called the
quantum phase should be correlated from one point to another, in the presence of
influences from the environment that tend to make it uncorrelated (a well investigated phenomenon called decoherence). But whereas the first claim involves
only the modest requirement of the coherence of quantum phase locally but continuously throughout the whole of a connected system, the second claim raises
much higher demands on the performance of quantum theory, by requiring the
coherence of phase globally across the system. Hameroff and Penrose make a
well defended, though still controversial, claim that this latter effect can occur at
the level, intermediate between micro and macro, of the microtubules (with a less
detailed claim that this behaviour can be orchestrated globally); but most calculations would suggest that if quantum behaviour in this strong sense is to hold
across physiologically defined regions of the brain, then some sort of addition is
required to the conventional quantum formalism (as indeed is postulated by
Penrose). These questions have stayed unresolved for many years: it appears that
there are too many imponderables to decide them purely theoretically, and so it is
gratifying to see in this volume a report of research by Fleischman (B&B pp. 241
ff) on artificial membranes, showing that coherence effects, possibly including
the quantum phase, do hold between molecules of water at short length scales.
This could start to bridge the gap between idealised theory and the real behaviour
of cellular structures in the brain. We need much more of this.
2. The Role of Quantum Field Theory
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This has added a further layer of confusion to that which already surrounds
quantum field theory. The idea of the double was publicised by Vitiello (2001),
who here (B&B p. 319) reasonably explains that [t]he doubled degrees of freedom are meant to represent the environment to which the brain is coupled.
His co-editor Globus (B&B p. 88) describes, however, the double as an alter universe that serves as a heat bath for our universe in which resides the elusive
subjectivity of consciousness studies. We see now why we can never capture
subjectivity, not because it is a different substance or a parallel process but
because unreachable subjectivity is of an alter universe that defaults our own (p.
93) a suggestion that is firmly rejected by Vitiello (B&B p. 326).
3. Being and Subjectivity
Where, then, does all this leave the vexed problem of subjectivity, for which QT
is so often appealed to for the solution? Other discussions of subjective awareness occupy a significant part of the book, but because of the above they sometimes rests on an unsure footing. There is nonetheless an important strand based
on the idea that consciousness has primarily to do with the presence of phenomena, including of itself as a phenomenon (the phenomenon of self-consciousness), and far less to do with thinking (Plotnitsky, B&B p. 35). Presence is
an issue in quantum theory, as opposed to classical theory in which the universe
just baldly is. Franck (B&B p. 54), for example, argues that quantum theory
implies a gradation from potentiality (in the sense of mere possibility), to the
real-but-not-actual status of the quantum state, to the actuality that must take
place when a memory state is selected for making appearance in mental presence. He helpfully links this with Heideggers account of presence in Being and
Time. The association of consciousness with (some forms of) memory-recording
is an established part of many schools of cognitive science (e.g. Barnard, 2004),
and the discussions here suggest that at least the language of QT can play a role
in clarifying confusions that seem built into the language of the everyday. In
these considerations it is not merely that, as in the well known caricature, subjectivity is mysterious, quantum theory is mysterious, so they must be connected. It
is that, if further research shows that both mysteries do converge in the biological
phenomenon of consciousness, then this gives an indication that they are in fact
the same mystery, on which a two-fronted attack may then be possible.
The volume is also valuable for its inclusion of an approach to subjectivity, at
first sight quite different, via the concepts of information and meaning. One formulation of the problem of consciousness is the need to explicate intentionality,
the way in which a neural state comes to mean an external object. Both Hiley
(B&B p.209) and Pribram (p. 235), develop this from Bohms (1985) ideas of a
duality between soma (literally, body), the manifest aspect of a process, and
significance, the subtle aspect woven beneath the surface. The novelty of
Bohms insight was that this did not reflect a fundamental duality in nature
between fixed realms of mind and matter (a concept that hovers around
Umezawas double), but rather the different views of a single process from two
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