TRANSCENDING T H E MIND/BRAIN PROBLEM

by Karl H . Pribram

Ever since Rent! Descartes enunciated his dictum, Cogito ergo sum,
philosophers have debated the relationship of mental phenomena to
the material universe. Those of us in the laboratory trying to under-
stand the relationship of brain anatomy and physiology to behavior
and to subjective experience continually come up against this issue.
T h e very words we use to describe our work-brain and experience-
embody the problem. I believe the time has come to look at this
problem once more but with the wisdom that ought to come
from recent discoveries in the physical, biological, and behavioral sci-
ences. The time does seem ripe. There has been a surge of publica-
tions on the topic.' However, there appears to be little in the way of
wisdom or often even acquaintance with those scientific discoveries
that bear directly on the issue.
ONTOLOGY
AND SCIENTIFIC
DISCOVERY
A major deterrent to wisdom has been the pronouncement by certain
philosophers that scientific discoveries can have no bearing on the
question.2 T h e issue, we are told, is a philosophical one that must be
resolved through reasoning and not by experiment. It is claimed to be
ontological, not scientific, in nature.
My theme throughout this paper will be that there is some merit to
most of the philosophical arguments but that in essence they can be
transcended. And so I agree that ontology is at the root of the
mind/brain issue. However, it is incorrect to argue that therefore
scientific research has no relevance. My claim here is that the very
assumptions that have given rise to the problem have been shaken by
the results of research.
THEDEMATERIALIZATION
OF MATTER

T h e fundamental assumption that has given rise to the mind/brain

problem is that mental phenomena and the material universe are in
Karl H. Pribram is professor of neuroscience in the departments of psychology and
of psychiatry and behavioral science, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
0 1979 by Karl H . Pribram.

[Zygm, vol. 14, no. 2 (June 1979).]

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 ZYGON

some essential fashion different from each other. In the ordinary

domain of appearances, at the Euclidean, Newtonian level of analysis,
this assumption is certainly tenable. A phenomenal-material dualism
describes the situation clearly and will be discussed fully below. What
remains to be discovered in this domain is the relationship between
mental and material, and, as we shall see, the answer to this question
lies in an abandonment of the mental-material dichotomy.
Modern physics has concentrated on levels of analysis-of the
macro- and microphysical universes-where the simple dualism be-
tween mental and material does not hold. Niels Bohr’s and Werner
Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty emphasize the importance of
the observer in any understanding of what presumably is ~ b s e r v e d . ~
Eugene P. Wigner states the issue succinctly: Modern microphysics
and macrophysics no longer deal with “relations among observables
but only with relationships among observation^."^
An objection can be entered that such difficulties of distinguishing
observables from observations encountered by physicists today are
temporary, superficial, and of no concern to philosophers interested
in the eternal verities. But that is not the message these thoughtful
Nobel laureates in physics are attempting to convey. They have been
exploring universes where the everyday distinction between material
and mental becomes disturbingly untenable at a very fundamental
level. As we proceed I shall tender some explanations that may help
account for their views.
T h e dematerialization of matter can be traced in some sense to
earlier formulations. For instance, physics was conceptually under-
standable in James Clerk Maxwell’s day when light waves were propa-
gated in the “ether.” But then physicists did away with the “ether.”
Still they did not rid themselves of Maxwell’s wave equations or the
more recent ones of Erwin Schroedinger or Louis Victor prince de
B r ~ g l i eOne
. ~ readily can conceptualize waves traveling in a medium,
such as when sound waves travel in air, but what can be the meaning
of light waves or electromagnetic waves “traveling” in a vacuum? Cur-
rently physicists are beginning to fill that vacuum with dense concen-
trations of energy, potential for doing work when interfaced with
matter.

Is INFORMATION MATERIALOR MENTAL?

Further, when forces are postulated to exist between material bodies
the forces still can be conceptualized as “material” even though they
themselves are not constituted of matter. When matter and energy
are related by the equation E = mc2,energy is shown to be “material”

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 Karl H . Pribram

(and neural excitation, the brain’s “energy,” falls readily under this
rubric). But energy is measured by the amount of work that can be
accomplished by using it and the efficiency of its use depends on its
organization as measured by its entropy. The invention of the vacuum
tube and subsequent devices has shown that minute amounts of
energy can control large expenditures and that these minute organi-
zations provide “information,” that is, they inform and organize
energy. Measures of information and entropy thus were seen as re-
lated.6 Computers were constructed to process information, and pro-
grams were written to organize the operations of computers. Is the
information contained in a program “material” or “mental”? If it is
either, what then of the information in a book? Or the entropy that
describes the behavior of a heat engine or of a warm-blooded mam-
mal? Clearly we have come to the limit of usefulness of a distinction
between the material and the mental.
Research on “mind” using behavioral techniques also blurs a dis-
tinction which seems so clear when only the ordinary Euclidean, New-
tonian domain of appearances is considered. As noted above, the
organization of the behavior of organisms can be comprehended best
by recourse to concepts such as “information” and “programs” or
“plans” which serve equally well in understanding the operations of
machine^.^ Once again the question arises: Is information processing
to be conceived as mental or material?
Philosophers and psychologists of a nonbehaviorist persuasion im-
mediately will counter that behavior is not mind and therefore any
argument about mental phenomena derived from behavior is spuri-
ous. They would rather begin with “the phenomenon itself existen-
tially experienced.” But there is little that can be done with such
experiences except to attempt to describe them (behaviorally) and to
organize the descriptions (structurally). Thus Maurice Merleau-
Ponty, an existentialist philosopher, has authored a book entitled The
Structure of Behavior (1963), which in both spirit and content shows
remarkable resemblances to our own Plans and the Structure of Behavior
(1960), which tackles the issues from a behavioral and information-
processing vantage.8 I do not mean to convey here that there is no
distinction between a behavioristic and an existential-phenomenalistic
approach to mind. Elsewhere I detail this distinction in terms of a
search for causes by behaviorists and a search for informational struc-
ture reasonably (meaningfully) composed by phenomenol~gists.~
What I do want to emphasize here is that both approaches lead to
conceptualizations that cannot be classified readily as either mental or
material. Behaviorists in their search for causes rely on drives, incen-

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tives, reinforcers, and other “force”-like concepts that deliberately

have a Newtonian ring. Existentialists in their quest for understand-
ing “mind” come up with structure much as anthropologists and lin-
guists when tackling other complex organizations. And structural
concepts are akin to those of modern physics where particles arise from
the interactions and relationships among processes. In neither case
can this resultant of inquiry be characterized as mental or material
unless one wishes simply to state a bias in favor of one or the other as
being more meaningful to oneself.
I have belabored these findings of scientific research to indicate
that perhaps they do have relevance to ontology. If the mind/brain
problem arises from a distinction between the mental and the material
and we find that at a certain level of analysis we no longer can make
such a separation clearly, then the very assumptions upon which the
issue is joined may be found wanting.
With these considerations in mind let us now look at some specific
proposals that have been forwarded recently and place them within a
perspective which states that the material-mental dichotomy holds
only for the ordinary Euclidean-Newtonian world of appearances.

DO EXPERIENCES
MATTEROR DOESMATTER BECOMEEXPERIENCED?
In this world of appearances there is no question but that human
mental experience can be distinguished sharply from that which is
experienced. The issue has been labelled “intentionality” (or inten-
tional inexistence) by Franz Clemens Brentano and has given rise to
inferences about the nature of reality.1° The question is often
phrased: Are my perceptions (my phenomenal experiences) the really
“real,” or does the content of those perceptions make up the “real”
world? My phenomenal experiences are mental; the world as it ap-
pears to me is material. I can give primacy to my experience and
become a phenomenologist, or I can give primacy to the contents of
the experience and become a materialist. But I can also give primacy
to neither and attest to the dual nature of reality.
Materialism and phenomenology run into difficulty only when each
attempts to deny the other. As long as only primacy is at stake, either
view can be made consistent. After all, our experiences are primary,
and empiricism is not inimical to a real material world. And we do
appear to be experiencing something(s), so our experiences may well
become organized by those real somethings.
However, by accepting such a moderate position with regard to
mind and matter we immediately come up against a set of dualistic
problems. Are the contents of perception “really” organized by the

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experience of the perceiver? Is that experience in turn organized by

brain function, sensory input, and the energies impinging on the
senses? Would a complete description of brain function of an or-
ganism also be a description of the experience of that organism? If so,
are not the material descriptions of brain, senses, and energies suffi-
cient? O r at least do the descriptions of experience add anything to
the material descriptions? Cannot the inverse be equally true-what
do the descriptions of brain, senses, and energies materially add to
what we so richly experience?

TRANSCENDING
DUALISMS THEM
WITHOUT DENYING

I believe that today there are answers to these questions where only a
few years ago there were none. These answers come from “unpack-
ing” conceptual confusions and demonstrating where each concep-
tualization captures a part of a truthful whole.
A semantic analysis shows that descriptors of brain, senses, and
energy sources are derived from an analysis of experience into com-
ponents. T h e components are organismic and environmental (biolog-
ical and physical or social), and each component can be subdivided
further into subcomponents until the quantum and nuclear levels of
analysis are reached. This procedure of analysis downward in a
hierarchy of systems is the ordinary way of descriptive science. Within
systems, causes and effects are traced. When discrepancies are found
statistical principles are adduced and probabilities invoked. Scientists
have become adept and comfortable with such procedures.
Mental language stems from different considerations. As in the case
of descriptive science, mental terms take their origin in experience.
Now, however, experience is validated consensually. Experience in
one sensory mode is compared with that obtained in another. Then
validation proceeds by comparison of one’s experience with that of
another. A little girl points to a horse. Up to now mother has allowed
her to say “cow” whenever any animal is pointed to. But the time has
come to be more precise, and the experience of horse becomes validly
different from that of cow. Mental language is derived from such
upward validations in a hierarchy of systems.
Elsewhere I detail the differences in scientific approach which this
upward-or outward-look entails.” It is certainly not limited to
psychology. When Albert Einstein enunciated his special and general
theories of relativity he was looking upward in the set of hierarchically
arranged physical systems. T h e resultant relativistic views are as
applicable to mental conceptualizations as they are to physical. It is
these relativisms which existentialists and phenomenologists con-

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stantly struggle to formulate into some coherent principles. My own

belief is that they will be successful only to the extent that they develop
the techniques of structural analysis. But structural analyses often
depend on enactment to clarify the complexities involved. Abhorrent
as the computer a n d other engineering devices may be to
philosophers and psychologists of the existential-phenomenal persua-
sion, these tools may turn out to be of great service to their mode of
inquiry.
If the above analysis is correct, then a dualism of sorts can be enter-
tained as valid. First a caution, however. This form of dualism is
concerned with the everyday domain of appearances-of ordinary
experiences. Commencing with such ordinary experiences two modes
of conceptualization have developed. One mode operates downward
in a hierarchy of systems, analyzing experience into components and
establishing hierarchical and cause-effect relationships between these
components. The other operates upward toward other organisms to
attain consensual validation of experiences by comparing and sharing
them.
Thus two mirror images-two optical isomers, as it were-are con-
structed from experience. One we call material and the other mental.
Just as optical isomers in chemistry have differing biological proper-
ties though they have identical components and arrangements, so the
mental and material conceptualizations have different properties
even though they initially arise from the self-same experiences.
I suggest that this is the origin of dualism and accounts for it. T h e
duality expressed is of conceptual procedures, not of any basic duality
in nature. As we shall see below, there are other dualities that are
more basic, but these are not the ones that have become the staple of
those arguing for dualism.

CONSTRUCTIONAL REALISM: A PLURALISTIC MONISM

Before I proceed with a critique of current dualisms, it may be helpful
to describe alternative views. Most of these fall under the rubric of
“monism,” which states simply that the truly basic components of the
universe are neither material nor mental but neutral. T h e de-
materialization of matter at the level of analysis that concerns modern
physics-reviewed above-supports such a “neutral monism.”12Criti-
cal philosophers ( e.g., Herbert Feigl) steeped in linguistic analysis
developed this monistic view by suggesting that the “mental” and
“material” are simply different ways of talking about the same proces-
ses. Thus “mind” and “brain” come to stand for separate linguistic
systems, covering different aspects of a basic commonality. The prob-

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lem has been to find a neutral language to describe the commonality

without being either mental or material in its connotations.
I take this “dual aspects” view a step further by proposing that each
aspect not only is characterized linguistically but in fact is a separate
“realization” or “emb~diment.”’~ Further, I have proposed that what
becomes embodied is informational “structure.” Thus in essence I
have stood the critical philosopher’s approach on its head: T h e endur-
ing “neutral” component of the universe is characterized as linguis-
t i c - o r mathematical, musical, cultural, etc.-and is essentially struc-
tural. T h e dual aspects are dual realizations-which in fact may be
multiple-of the fundamental informational structure. Thus a sym-
phony can be realized in the playing at a concert, in the musical score,
on a record or on a tape, and thence through a high-fidelity audio
system at home.
“Mind” and “brain” stand for two such classes of realization, each
achieved, as described above, by proceeding in a different direction in
the hierarchy of conceptual and realized systems. Both mental
phenomena and material objects are realizations and therefore
realities. Both classes of reality are constructions from underlying
“structures,” which it is the task of science to specify in as neutral a
language as possible (neutral, i.e., with respect to connotations that
would suggest that the “structures” belong in one or the other class). I
note elsewhere the relationship of such a constructional realism to
critical realism, pragmatism, and neo-Kantian rationali~m.’~

MINDAS EMERGENT
AND AS ACTOR

The views expressed thus far have provided a coherent theory which
accounts for dualistic views but transcends them by showing them to
arise from procedural differences which separately realize a common
structure. That structure is neutrally described in mathematical and
information-processing (or similar) terms-terms which cannot read-
ily be characterized as either material or mental.
This theory is considerably different from more classical dualistic
views which hold to a fundamental separation between mental and
material. I believe that there is considerable merit to these views in
that they pose questions which are not addressed by the construc-
tional realism proposed above. I do not agree with the dualistic solu-
tion (or rather nonsolutions) given by unreconstructed dualists, how-
ever, and will detail an alternative in the last section of this paper. But
let us examine one recent document which states the case for one
form of classical dualism in comprehensive fashion: The Self and Its
Brain by Karl R. Popper and John C . Eccle~.’~

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The Selfand Its Bruin embodies in its format the views of its authors.
T h e book is divided into two major portions: Popper deals with the
philosophy of mind; Eccles describes the neurophysiology of brain. In
keeping with the interactionist tone of the volume there is a third
section made up of discourse between Popper and Eccles-a sort of
question and answer period. The interaction is somewhat stilted and
one sided; the discourse deals much more often with mind than with
brain. But even this defect is, 1 feel, in keeping with the authors’
philosophy. In their system, mind gently-“with a cognitive caress,” as
Eccles once put it to me-influences and biases brain function. Pop-
per is not quite so gentle as Eccles, however, and I tend to agree with
him. After all, “the pen is mightier than the sword”; there is nothing
gentle about the way I am moved by music, a spouse’s anger, etc.
Perhaps this basic disagreement between Eccles and Popper and their
attempt to deal with it “gently” has led to the somewhat artificial tone
of the interchange. I am sorry about this because I feel that the format
of two views and an interchange between them is potentially power-
ful. (1 suggested it once to Arthur Koestler, but he chose to go it alone
and produced The Ghost in the Machine.)
What does bring power to the format of The Self and Its Bruin is the
book itself. Popper’s interactionism depends on the products of mind,
its contents, becoming manifest in the physical world. T h e physical
world in turn influences the brain through the senses. Books are
prime examples, and The Self and Its Bruin is a prime example of a
book (a medium) being in format what its contents are meant to
convey.
But here we experience in reality the dissonance expressed in the
dialogue between Popper and Eccles. Popper’s books and other con-
tents of mind constitute his World 3. World 3 interacts with the brain
(which is part of the physical world-World 1) through the senses.16
The interaction is clear-cut. By contrast, Eccles has mind selecting
from the sensory input, organizing the functions of the association
cortex especially that of the dominant, speech-producing hemi-
sphere: “In these further stages the different sensory modalities pro-
ject to common areas in the polymodal areas. In these areas. . . wide-
ranging information is processed. How is it selected.. . and put to-
gether?. . . It is proposed that the self-conscious mind plays through
the whole (polymodal) liaison brain in a selective and unifying man-
n e r . . . somewhat like a searchlight. O r better, a multiple scanning
and probing device that reads out from the selects.. . .”I7
Thus mind operates on brain directly for Eccles and indirectly
through World 3 for Popper. For Popper mind is an emergent, and

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 Karl H . Pribram

the problem is how emergents can interact with their substrate.I8 He

worries about “downward causation of the higher level acting on the
lower level” and comes to the conclusion that “the emergence of
hierarchical levels or layers, and of an interaction between them, de-
pends upon a fundamental indeterminism of the physical universe.
Each level is open to causal influences coming from lower and higher
l e ~ e l s . ” ’For
~ Eccles mind is a given entity that organizes brain func-
tion and is organized in turn by World 3 acting through the senses;
mind pre- and postdates brain but needs cortex of a special sort in
order to make a liaison.
T o me Popper’s position is the easier starting point. As we shall see,
however, there is some merit to Eccles’s view as well. What Popper has
done is split what ordinarily is called “mental” into two worlds-
World 2 and World 3. World 2 is the mental state; World 3 is com-
posed of the contents of that state. Both World 2 and World 3 are
emergents of complex brain organization. World 3 is a product of
World 2. World 2 is completely mental, but World 3 can be, in the
part at least, material (e.g.,the book).
I believe this division and the resultant attempts at interactionism to
be unnecessarily awkward. I prefer to begin with the idea that mental
states are the result of an interaction between an organism and its
environment, in particular between an organism’s brain and its social
environment. This position is derived from behaviorism but goes
beyond it in that it admits the ghosts in the machine, admits them to
be as real as the machine itself.20 Images, experiences, intentions,
plans, expectations, joys, and sorrows are not excised from the “real”
world but are prime manifestations of that world.21 They are not
necessarily the primary or only manifestations, however, as the
phenomenologists or even the empiricists would have them. Eccles
and Popper, as dualists, rightly decry such overemphases on the pri-
macy of the subjective but often come up with confusing statements
regarding causation from the interactionist stance. Thus Popper talks
of illusions which have a mental origin as in wish fulfillment.22How-
ever, Sigmund Freud, in the “Project” (1895), suggests that wish ful-
fillment and its illusions come about by very specific brain processes,
more in keeping with Popper’s overall, emergent property position.=
T h e proofs of the existence of a reality beyond our senses are
reviewed clearly by Popper, and I hold with him and with
psychologists such as James Jerome Gibson that there are invariants in
the relationship between organism and environment that provide
strong proofs of stable organizations in that e n v i r ~ n r n e n tNote
. ~ ~ that
the interaction I espouse is between organism and its environment.

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Note also that such interaction does not deny the emergence of men-
tal properties. However, the emergence can stem either from biologi-
cal evolution which has produced novel brain organizations that result
in linguistic capacities or from cultural evolution which can produce
new linguistic modes such as writing and printing.25
Popper by contrast addresses the interaction between mental and
material. And although he reviews the problems faced by materialism
because of the insights obtained from the new physics, he fails to see
that these insights apply as well to a dualism which still holds dear the
separation of mind and matter. I repeat: Are forces “material”? Are
light “waves” waving in vacuo “material”? Are quarks with their
charm and flavors “material”? As noted, Wigner states that modern
physics is based on “relationships between observations not relation-
ships between observables.”26But is not this the self-same definition
which characterizes modern scientific psychology?
I do not of course deny the distinction between observation and
observable-the problem of intentionality (see, e.g., John R. Searle).
What I d o claim is that the distinction no longer distinguishes what we
call the physical from what we call the psychological sciences. I d o not
deny reality to an appearance of the material world as in Newtonian
mechanics o r in Gibsonian perceptual psychology. Nor do I deny that
one can distinguish between these appearances and other realities or
between physical reality and psychological reality. But for me realities
are constructed, often painfully and painstakingly. Appearances are
one such reality, the perceptual reality, beyond which lie others.
I am sitting quietly writing this commentary. I am moving in a
complex trajectory around the earth’s axis, the sun, and within our
galaxy. Both statements reflect a reality-the one my perceptual real-
ity, the reality of appearance; the other, my physical reality based on
the observations and calculations of innumerable scientists. Which
reality is “objective” and which “subjective”? Which is based solely on
the interaction of material observables, and which is based on mental
operations such as calculation and observation?
Popper’s invention of World 3 attempts to cope with these ques-
tions, but I believe the invention does not go far enough. The issue is
not material versus mental but how we construct a material reality and
how we construct one that is apparently mental.
Elsewhere I argue that the way Popper-and Eccles-describe the
interaction of mind and brain is akin to a colloquial use of the concept
We say that gravity pulls us to the earth. However, the
concept “gravity” was derived from studying the interactions of mas-
ses in motion. Gravity is by definition an interaction term; gravity
 Karl H . Pribram

would not “exist” were there no “us” to be attracted to the earth. We

then reify gravity and have it pull us; and appearances certainly con-
firm this way of conceiving forces-that they are being “produced” by
one body and operating on another. Popper develops his thesis of
World 3 being “produced” by World 2 in this spirit.
What I see as helpful in the World 2-World 3 division is the at-
tempt to portray the same issue that I have in mind when I discuss
structure and its realization. In a sense what I call “structure” is what
Popper and Eccles call “mind.” The difficulty is, however, that my
“structures,” like all other concepts, are derived from the interaction
of organism and environment. “Structure” therefore can be inherent
in environment and in material, physical environments (such as the
structure of a symphony being embodied in a printed score or a
magnetic tape). This would make my formulation akin to Alfred
North Whitehead’s and Wigner’s-a form of panpsychism. But in
agreement with Eccles I am not wholly willing to go that far at the
moment. Rather I prefer to hold the line by stating that structures
transcend both the physical and mental realities in which they become
realized.
There is thus an important difference between a constructional
realism such as I propose and the dualist (triadic) interactionism es-
poused by Eccles and Popper. In a constructional scheme the precise
place of brain mechanisms can be specified. The sensory and brain
perceptual mechanisms that are used to construct the Newtonian real-
ity of appearances; the cognitive, “intrinsic” (my term for Eccles’s
“liaison”) brain mechanisms that are necessary to the formulation of
quantum and nuclear physics; the connative, motor brain
mechanisms that organize intention and plan; the emergence of feel-
ings from the neurochemical organizations of the brain-all can be
fitted into their precise and proper place in the scheme.28There is no
global “mind” that has to make mysterious contact with global “brain.”
Many mysteries are still there-to name only one, for example, how
emergents do come about and how they are so utterly different from
their substrate. But issues become scientific and manageable within
the broader context of philosophic inquiry.

THEBRAINAS A WAVE-FORM
ANALYZER
One example is in the order of such manageability and the precision
with which the problems can be stated. I take this example from my
own work because Eccles reviews it and criticizes it in his part of the
book. The problem relates to both perception and memory. T h e issue

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is how sensory input becomes encoded in the brain cortex. Eccles puts
the problem in the following way:
What neural events are in liaison with the self-conscious mind both for
giving and receiving.. . . We reject the hypothesis that the agent is the field
potential generated by the neural events. The original postulate of the gestalt
school was based on finding that a massive visual input such as a large illumi-
nated circle resulted in some topologically equivalent potential field in the
visual cortex, even a closed loop! This crude hypothesis need not be further
considered. However a more refined version has recently been proposed by
Pribram (1971) in his postulate of micro-potential fields. It is assumed that
these fields provide a more subtle cortical response than the impulse genera-
tion by neurones. However, this field potential theory involves a tremendous
loss of information because hundreds of thousands of neurones would be
contributing to a micro-potential field across a small zone of the cerebral
cortex. All the finer grain of neuronal activity would be lost in this most
inefficient task of generating a minute electrical potential by current flow in
the ohmic resistance provided by the extracellular medium. In addition we
have the further problem that there would have to be some homunculus to
read out the potentials in all their patterned array! The assumed feedback
from micro-potential fields onto the firing frequencies of neurones would be
of negligible influence because the currents would be extremely small.
We must,believe that there is an essential functional meaning in all the
discrete neuronal interactions in spatiotemporal patterns, otherwise there
would be a great loss of information. In this context, we must consider the
organization of the cortical neurones in the anatomical and physiological
entity that is called a module.. . . In the first place it is inconceivable that the
self-conscious mind is in liaison with single nerve cells or single nerve fibers.
These neuronal units as individuals are far too unreliable and ineffective. In
our present understanding of the mode of operation of neural machinery we
emphasize ensembles of neurones (many hundreds) acting in some collusive
patterned array. Only in such assemblages can there be reliability and effec-
tiveness.. . . the modules of the cerebral cortex.. . are such ensembles of
neurones. The module has to some degree a collective life of its own with as
many as 10,000 neurones of diverse types and with a functional arrangement
of feed-forward and feedback excitation and inhibition. As yet we have little
knowledge of the inner dynamic life of a module, but we may conjecture that,
with its complexly organized and intensely active properties, it could be a
component of the physical world (World 1) that is open to the self-conscious
mind (World 2) both for receiving from and for giving to. We can further
propose that not all modules in the cerebral cortex have this transcendent
property of being “open” to World 2, and thus being the World 1 compo-
nents of the interface. By definition there would be restriction to the modules
of the liaison brain, and only then when they are in the correct level of
activity. Each module may be likened to a radio transmitter-receiver unit.. . .
the module may be thought of as an integrated microcircuit of electronics,
only vastly more c o m p l i ~ a t e d . ~ ~
Although Eccles quotes my Languages of the Brain, he ignores in
the above account whole sections (e.g., pp. 126-31 and pp. 324-27)
devoted to what I label there as “logic modules.”30The structure of

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such modules is presented in much greater detail than Eccles has

done in The Self and Its Brain or anywhere else. Furthermore, the
precise operation of the modules has been simulated by computer on
several occasions in my l a b ~ r a t o r y . ~ ~
But there is more. Eccles criticizes me in the first paragraph quoted
above: “The assumed feedback from micro-potential fields onto the
firing frequencies of neurones would be of negligible influence be-
cause the currents would be extremely small.” In the second para-
graph he uses these same currents (which, as dearly defined in Lan-
guages of the Brain, are the depolarizations and especially the hyper-
polarizations that occur at synapses and within dendritic fields) to
“emphasize ensembles of neurones (many hundreds) acting in some
collusive patterned array.. . with as many as 10,000 neurones of di-
verse types and with a functional arrangement of feed-forward and
feedback excitation and inhibition.” Excitation and inhibition for the
most part are carried out in axonless (Golgi type 2) “local circuit”
neurons which depend on the very micropotentials that Eccles
criticized in the first paragraph.32 It is becoming clearer that process-
ing in the brain-processing within local neuronal circuits-is pro-
ceeding by way of local electrotonic and chemical communications
that characterize dendrodendritic interactions rather than via the ac-
tion potential mode so characteristic of long sensory and motor path-
way~.~~
G. M. Shepherd and W. Rall have presented voluminous neuro-
physiological evidence on the functional organization of these local
microcircuits-evidence on which I based my proposal of micro-
s t r u c t u r e ~ .What
~ ~ then is the actual difference between Eccles’s
microcircuits and my microstructures except that I clearly specify the
graded response characteristics of the patterning of electrical poten-
tials that produces the functional arrangements within microstruc-
tures (or microcircuits) while Eccles fails to do so and take umbrage in
“the self and its mind” operating a “radio transmitter or receiver” (the
brain modules).
So much for the neurophysiology. T h e question is of course: What
does this neurophysiology gain us with respect to the mind-body
problem? I have suggested that the neuronal microstructure, the
microcircuitry, is encoding periodic activity, that sensory transduction
of environmental energy results in patterns of neural activation in the
wave-form domain. Eccles is not averse to this when he suggests that
microcircuits act much as radio transmitters-receivers. Radios operate
on periodic information; they are tuned to transmit and receive wave
forms.

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The initial evidence for neural encoding in the wave-form domain

was presented in Languages of the Brain.35Since its publication, evi-
dence continues to pour in. G. S. Ohm and Hermann von Helmholtz
originally suggested that the auditory system operates as a wave-form
analyzer.36 Georg von Bekesy showed that the skin and the somato-
sensory mechanism behave in a similar fashion.37But the most drama-
tic evidence concerns the visual system. More and more evidence is
accumulating to show that visual spatial processing is accomplished in
the wave-form domain-the eye analyzes the periodic fluctuations of
the intensity of light over space.38
In the engineering sciences such processing in the wave-form do-
main is called optical information processing (if done with lens sys-
tems) or image processing (if performed with computers) or holo-
graphy (if storage on photographic film is employed). It is holography
that first called my attention to the attributes of the wave-form domain
and their relevance for understanding the mind/brain.39 In a holo-
gram (the photographic film that stores the microstructure of
periodic changes of light and dark over space) the information about
forms in space becomes distributed. This sheds light on one of the
most difficult problems of neuroscience, namely, how to explain the
fact that local lesions in the brain do not selectively impair one or
another memory trace. In a hologram restricted damage does not
disrupt the stored information because it has become distributed.
In essence the information becomes blurred over the entire extent
of the holographic film but in such a precise fashion that it can be
deblurred by performing the inverse procedure. Thus image recon-
struction (or construction) from the stored wave-form domain is sim-
ple; applying the same transform that produced the store will also
decode it into an image. In short, contrary to what Eccles states to be a
problem with my theory, the evidence that the brain encodes informa-
tion in the wave-form domain indicates that no “homunculus” is
needed to read out the memory trace. Either an input from the senses
or from some central source (such as Popper’s suggestion that the
pain-pleasure expectation and attention mechanisms might be re-
sponsible) will activate the wave-form encoded memory trace to pro-
duce an image.40No “self-conscious mind” is sitting there, biasing the
functions of the association cortex, as Eccles suggests. Rather, as Pop-
per claims, self-conscious mind is conceived best as an emergent
property of a specifiable brain organization.
For the mind/brain problem this mechanism has direct relevance.
Note that storage takes place in the wave-form domain. Images as such
are not stored, nor are they “localized” in the brain. Rather by virtue

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of the operation of the local brain circuitry, usually with the aid of
sensory input from the environment, images and mental events
emerge and are constructed. The images are the ghosts resulting
from the operations of the machine (brain).
A similar mechanism involving the motor mechanisms of the brain
can account for intentional, planned behavior. T h e evidence that such
a mechanism exists is presented in Languages of the Bruin and
elsewhere.41 Much of my laboratory research has been involved de-
monstrating that brain function is active, not passive, in its interac-
tions with environment and elucidating the processes operative in this
active aspect of mind. This research has shown that the intrinsic cortex
and limbic formations of the forebrain actively organize sensory input,
etc.
Suffice it here to say that I believe the discovery that certain opera-
tions of the brain can be understood best in terms of processing in the
wave-form domain is as important to the mind/brain problem as the
discovery in quantum and nuclear physics that ultimately the appear-
ances of matter may be immaterial.

A NEW DUALITY:THEWORLD OF APPEARANCES

VERSUS T H E
WAVE-FORMDOMAIN
The point was made earlier in this paper that the dualism of mental
versus material holds only for the ordinary world of appearances-
the world described by Euclidean geometry and Newtonian me-
chanics. An explanation of dualism was given in terms of proce-
dural differences in approaching the hierarchy of systems that can
be discerned in this world of appearances. This explanation was de-
veloped into a theory, a constructional realism. But it was also stated
that certain questions raised by a more classical dualistic position were
left unanswered by the explanations given in terms of a constructional
realism.
What are these questions? Recall that Popper and Eccles propose
entirely different-and, in a fundamental sense, opposite-views of
how mind and brain interact. Popper has mind an emergent from
brain functioning; Eccles has mind operating on the intrinsic “liaison”
formations of brain cortex. Still these authors managed to publish a
book together. Each must have felt some affinity for the other’s views.
What is it that they may have sensed to be in common, what deep
feeling did they fail to articulate adequately in their book?
I believe that the analysis provided earlier in this paper may help
“unpack” this issue. Note that, when one looks downward in the
hierarchy of systems that compose the ordinary world of appearances,

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essentially reductive analyses are engaged. T o take account of new

properties that arise when components become organized into
higher-order, more complex structures, “emergence” is proposed;
the proposal is essentially descriptive of what is observed. T h e upward
look in the hierarchy, as in the phenomenal and existential ap-
proaches, simply takes these “emergents” as the fundamental
achievements of observations. Constructional realism is compatible
with such views of emergence, and, as noted above, I believe Popper is
attempting to achieve a similar end by his construction of a World 3.
Eccles by contrast is holding out for a very different sort of formu-
lation. He insists that mind transcends brain function in that mind
operates upon brain, not because mind emerges from the functioning
of the brain. As noted above, articulated in this fashion, Eccles’s for-
mulation makes no scientific sense.
But consider now the brain as a wave-form analyzer and the general
characteristics of the wave-form domain. These characteristics have
been appreciated fully only recently. The recording of patterns of
wave fronts by holography has provided a visible artifact whose prop-
erties can be readily conceptualized.
Essentially space and time become enfolded in the holographic do-
main. This accounts for translational invariance, the fact that trans-
formation into the ordinary domain can be accomplished from any
part of the encoded record. In the holographic record information
becomes distributed, spread over the entire surface of a photographic
film or brain module much as the waves produced by throwing a
pebble into a pond spread to its edges. Several such waves initiated by
several pebbles will interact or “interfere,” and the record of these
interference patterns constitutes the hologram. If a moving picture
were made of the origin and development of the interference pat-
terns, the movie could be reversed and the image of the pebbles
striking the pond could be recovered. Image reconstruction by holo-
graphy accomplishes much the same effect by an operation that per-
forms an inverse transform on the record. Thus image (and object)
and holographic record are transforms of each other, and the trans-
formations involved are readily reversible.
Consider further the fact that in the holographic domain space and
time are enfolded. Only the density of occurrences is manifest. These
densities can be recorded as wave number or in scattering matrices
representing n-dimensional (Hilberth) domains such as have been
used in quantum physics. Holography has become a window through
which we are able to conceptualize a universe totally different from
that which characterizes the world of appearances. David Bohm

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points out that most of our conceptions of the physical world depend
on what we can observe through lenses.42Lenses focus, objectify, and
draw boundaries between parts. Lenses particularize. Holograms by
contrast are distributive, boundaryless, and holistic. Bohm refers to
our lens-given ordinary perceptions and conceptions as explicate and
those that are holographiclike as implicate. Thus there are at least two
discernible orders in the universe-an explicate and an implicate. The
explicate order gives an account in terms of particles, objects, and
images. T h e implicate order, still poorly cognized, begins with den-
sities of the fluctuating properties of wave forms.
Bohm and other physicists have become excited by the similarity of
conceptualizations of the implicate order and those described by mys-
tics who have experienced a variety of religions and other “para-
normal” phenomena.43T h e lack of spatial and temporal boundaries,
the holographic characteristic that the whole is represented in every
part, and the transformational character of shifting from explicate to
implicate order are all beyond ordinary human experiencing which
apparently is limited to the everyday, explicate, Euclidean, Newtonian
universe to which we have become accustomed.
It is probably not an accident that holograms were a mathematical
invention (by Dennis Gabor, who received the Nobel Prize for the
discovery) which used a form of mathematics-the integral
calculus-invented by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who also came to a
vision of the implicate order. Leibniz’s monadology is holographic; his
monads are distributed, windowless forms each of which is representa-
tive of the whole. Substitute the term lensless for windowless, and
the description of a monad and a hologram is identical.
T o summarize this section, I propose that Eccles’s suggestion of a
distributed “mind” operating in some “as yet mysterious” way on
brain can be supported by a highly rigorous, mathematical formula-
tion. The fact that the brain is, among other things, a wave-form
analyzer, that it encodes information in a distributed fashion akin to
that which characterizes a hologram also means that the structural
boundaries that characterize the ordinary limits of “brain” and “body”
are transcended. Take as an example our current-day world in a large
city. T h e space surrounding us is filled with wave forms generated by
radio and television stations. We are insensitive to these wave forms
unless we obtain the use of a receiver tunable to one o r another of the
wave forms. Only then do we “explicate” into the everyday domain
the wave forms enfolded in the space about us. The “mystery” is
resolved not by holding to the stance that Eccles has taken which is
appropriate to Popper’s formulation but by recognizing the trans-
formational nature of the implicate domain.
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 ZYGON

In concluding I will attempt to summarize my position as developed

in this paper. I began by accepting a dualistic view of everyday experi-
ence: We humans can distinguish clearly between the process of ex-
periencing and the contents of that experience. This led in the cen-
turies since Descartes to the view that the process of experiencing is
mental while the contents of the experience, if not themselves mate-
rial, are at least indicators of a material, physical world. I then went on
to show that modern physicists working both at the microphysical
quantum and nuclear level and at the macrophysical “universe” level
have called into question the material basis of matter. Matter is consti-
tuted of energy which in several forms interacts to produce that which
we normally experience in ordinary perception. Normal experience is
characterized by Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics.
Thus the material nature of matter is limited to the ordinary world of
experience unless one wants to adopt the bias that energy is material
since it can be converted to matter as indicated by Einstein’s equation
E = mc2. But then why would we have to call such a transformation a
conversion? Does not such a materialist bias cloud rather than clarify
the fact that we as yet d o not know how to characterize properly such
energy forms? And by this question I do not wish to suggest that they
be characterized as mental.
Beginning from the other end of the mental/material dichotomy we
run into a similar limitation on its usefulness. Information and infor-
mation processing, as when a computer is programmed or a brain is
informed by sensory signals, are shown to involve minute amounts of
energy that can organize or reorganize large-scale systems. The con-
figurations which energy systems display rather than their raw
amount are shown to be critical. Are such figural changes to be con-
ceived as mental or material when they involve languages, cultures,
etc.? Once again a limit is reached where the mental/material distinc-
tion becomes useless
Next I analyzed the issue of dualism on its own ground, that is,
within the purview of ordinary experience. Here dualism is found to
be based on mirror-image views constituted by different analytic pro-
cedures. The reductive “materialistic” view held by most scientists is
found by looking downward from one’s experience into the hierarchy
of components that constitute that experience. This reductive view is
balanced ordinarily by the recognition that novel properties “emerge”
when specific configurations of components are formed. Later I
showed this view to be shared by Popper in The Self and Its Brain.
Looking upward from one’s experiences involves validating the ex-
perience with that of others. Experienced “phenomena” are described

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and compared. Emphasis is on the existence of the experience per se,

its existential nature, and when precision is attempted the emphasis is
on the structural relationships among phenomena. Consensual vali-
dation, enactment, and structural analysis of relationships constitute
the tool of inquiry, not separation into parts causally related to one
another as in the reductive sciences. Thus the language of
phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism is “mental” since it
is experience per se that constitutes the focus of interest.
Recognition of the procedural difference that is responsible for
dualism in the ordinary world of experience allows one to transcend
this dualism without denying its usefulness to deal with the problems
of that ordinary world. I propose that dualism can be transcended by
carefully combining the techniques and results of both the reductive
and the phenomenal approaches to inquiry. Structure having been
made the central, enduring, single quality of a pluralistic monism,
both reductive entities and phenomena are seen as realizations of
identical structures derived from a more basic existential given.
Once this constructional realism is formulated it has to face another
issue, however. True, dualism is not denied; it simply is shown to
operate in a limited sphere. But transcending dualism with a struc-
tural monism violates the very spirit of what dualists believe in and are
trying to articulate. As shown, Eccles attempts such articulation by
suggesting what seems to be a rather naive interactionism: mind
operating on the association areas of the brain, its intrinsic, “liaison”
cortex. A constructional realism does not deal with the issue that is
being posed by Eccles’s formulation: a “mental” universe “indepen-
dent” of, though “interacting in some mysterious way” with, the mate-
rial.
My final proposal meets the requirement of this aspect of dualism.
Brain physiologists have shown the nervous system to be, among
other things, a wave-form analyzer. Further, input apparently be-
comes distributed and stored in the wave-form domain in the manner
of a holographic record. And physicists have suggested that a
holographiclike order may well characterize the microstructure of the
physical world. In the wave-form domain, space and time become
enfolded; only density of occurrences is represented.
Descriptions of this domain and other similar orders that account
for the observations of modern physics seem to be remarkably similar
to mystics’ descriptions of paranormal and religious experience. I
propose therefore that the duality between the normal, everyday do-
main of appearances and the wave-transform domain captures
the spirit of dualism and accounts in a scientific and precise

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mathematical fashion for what hitherto has been incomprehensible.

Structural realism thus deals with a number of dualities of which
two are especially significant for unpacking the issues involved in a
mindJbrain dualism: (1) a procedural duality that faces upward and
downward in the hierarchy of systems discerned in the ordinary
world of appearances and (2) a transformational duality that apposes
the ordinary world of appearances to that viewed through the window
of the wave-transform domain characterized by descriptions
akin to those of the experiences of mystics which provide the basis for
some important insights in various religious traditions.
Other dualities may well be discovered to underlie as yet unarticu-
lated premises of dualism. What appears clear at the moment is that a
dualism based on the distinction between mental and material is too
limited to deal with the very issues that it poses. Other dualities can
articulate answers to the problems raised by these issues and deal not
only with their substance but also with their spirit. Further, these
dualities can be specified by scientifically sound procedures and
mathematically precise formulations. Finally recognition of these
dualities stems directly from discoveries in the physical, information,
and behavioral sciences. Thus the often-made argument that the re-
sults of scientific research have no bearing on philosophically framed
issues has been shown to be wrong. In fact what has been shown is that
only through the results of scientific research can philosophical issues,
even at the ontological level, be refreshed.

NOTES
1. See, e.g., R. W. Sperry, “Neurology and the Mind-Brain Problem,” American
Scientist 40 (1952): 291-312; Gordon G . Globus, “Mind, Structure and Contradiction,”
in Casciuusness and the Brain: A Scientific and Philosophical Inquily, ed. Gordon G. Globus,
Grover Maxwell, and Irwin Savodnik (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), pp. 273-92;
Karl R. Popper and John C . Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (New York: Springer-Verlag,
1977).
2. See, e.g., J. W. N. Watkins, “A Basic Difficulty in the Mind-Brain Identity-
Hypothesis,” in The Searchfor Absolute Values in a Changing World, 2 vols. (San Francisco:
International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, 1978).
3.. Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York: Vintage Press,
1966); Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959).
4. Eugene P. Wigner, “Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics: Its Appraisals and
Demands,” in The Anatomy of Knowledge, ed. Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1969).
5. Erwin Schroedinger, “Quantization as a Problem of Proper Values,” in Collected
Papers a Wave Mechanics, trans. J. F. Shearer and W. M. Deans (London: Blackie &
Son, Ltd., 1928); Louis Victor prince de Broglie, The Current Intwpretatia of Wave
Mechanism: A Critical Study, trans. Express Translation Service (Amsterdam: Elsevier,
1964).
6. E.g., L. Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, 2d ed. (New York: Academic
Press, 1962); E. von Weizsacker, Offene Spteme I (Stuttgart: Verlag, 1974).

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7. See, e.g., G. A. Miller, E. H. Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram, Plans and the
Structure of Behavior (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1960).
8. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavr’or, trans. Alden L. Fisher (Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 1963); Miller, Galanter, and Pribram.
9. Karl H. Pribram, “Behaviorism, Phenomenology and Holism in Psychology: A
Scientific Analysis” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psycholog-
ical Association, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, August 28-September 1 , 1978).
10. Franz Clemens Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,, trans. Antos
C. Rancmello, D. B. Terrell and Linda L. McAlister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1973); R. M. Chisholm, Realism and the Background of Phenomenology (New York: Free
Press, 1960).
11. Karl H. Pribram, “Proposal for a Structural Pragmatism: Some Neuro-
psychological Considerations of Problems in Philosophy,” in Scientqic Psychology: Princi-
ples and Approaches, ed. B. Wolman and E. Nagle (New York: Basic Books, 1965), pp.
426-59.
12. See, e.g., William James, A Pluralistic Universe (London: Longman’s, Green &
Co., 1909); Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1948).
13. Karl H. Pribram, ”The Realization of Mind,” Synthese 22 (1971): 313-22.
14. Pribram, “Proposal for a Structural Pragmatism” and “Realization of Mind’’;
idem, Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology, 2d
ed. (Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1977).
15. Popper and Eccles (n. 1 above).
16. E.g., ibid., p. 449. [For a discussion of Popper’s three worlds see John C. Eccles,
“Cultural Evolution versus Biological Evolution,” Zygon 8 (September-December 1973):
282-93.-ED.]
17. Popper and Eccles, p. 163.
18. E.g., ibid., p. 127.
19. Ibid., p. 35.
20. See Popper’s discussion of Gilbert Ryle, ibid., pp. 104-7.
21. See the “subjective behaviorism” of Miller, Galanter, and Pribram (n. 7 above).
22. Popper and Eccles, p. 514.
23. Sigmund Freud, “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895), in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychologzcal Works of Sigmund Fveud, trans. James Strachey et al.
(London: Hogarth Press, 1950), 1:281-397; Karl H. Pribram and M. M. Gill, Freud’s
“Project” Reassessed (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
24. Popper and Eccles, pp. 104-8;James Jei-ome Gibson, The Perception of the Visual
World (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1950).
25. Karl H. Pribram, “Language in a Sociobiological Frame,” Annals ofthe New York
Academy of Sciences 280 (1976): 798-809.
26. Wigner (n. 4 above).
27. Karl H. Pribram, “Problems Concerning the Structure of Consciousness,” in
Globus, Maxwell, and Savodnik (n. 1 above).
28. See, e.g., my “Realization of Mind” (n. 13 above).
29. Popper and Eccles, pp. 365-66.
30. Pribram, Languages of the Brain (n. 14 above).
31. D. N. Spinelli, “Visual Receptive Fields in the Gat’s Retina: Complications,”
Science 152 (1966): 1768-69; R. W. Phelps, “Effects of Interactions of Two Moving
Lines on Single Unit Responses in the Cat’s Visual Cortex,” Vision Research 14 (1974):
1371-75; B. Bridgeman, “Metacontrast and Lateral Inhibition,” Psychological Review 78
(1971): 528-39; Karl H. Pribram, M. Nuwer, and R. Baron, “The Holographic
Hypothesis of Memory Structure in Brain Function and Perception,” in Contemporary
Developments in Mathematical Psychology, ed. R. C. Atkinson et al. (San Francisco: W. H.
Freeman & Co., 1974), pp. 416-67.
32. Pasko Rakic, Local Circuit Neurons (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1976).

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33. See, e.g., Francis 0. Schmitt, Parvati Dev, and Barry H. Smith, “Electrotonic
Processing of lnformation by Brain Cells,’’ Science 193 (1976): 114-20.
34. G. M. Shepherd, The Synaptic Organization .f the Brain: An Introduction (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1974); W. Rall, “Dendritic Neuron Theory and
Dendrodentritic Synapses in a Simple Cortical System,”in The Neurosciences: SecondStudy
Program, ed. Francis 0. Schmitt (New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1970), pp.
552-65.
35. Pribram, Languages of the Brain, chap. 8.
36. G. S. Ohm, “Uber die Definition des Tones, nebst daran geknupfter Theorie
der Sirene und ahnlicher tonbildener Vorrichtungen,” Annalen der Physikalischen Chemie
59 (1843): 513-65; Hermann von Helmholtz, Lehre uon den Tonempfindungen
(Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1863).
37. George von Bekesy, “Neural Volleys and the Similarity between Some Sensa-
tions Produced by Tones and by Skin Vibrations,” Journal qf the Accoustical Society of
America 29 (1957): 1059-69.
38. F. W. Campbell and J. G. Robson, “Application of Fourier Analysis to the Visibil-
ity of Gratings,” Journal of Physiology 197 (1968): 551-66; J. A. Movshon, I. D.
Thompson, and D. J. Tolhurst, “Receptive Field Organization of Complex Cells in the
Cat’s Striate Cortex,” Journal of Physiology (in press); idem, “Spatial Summation in the
Receptive Field of Simple Cells in the Cat’s Striate Cortex,” ibid. (in press); idem,
“Spatial and Temporal Contrast Sensitivity of Cells in the Cat’s Areas 17 and 18,”ibid.
(in press); R. L. De Valois, D. G. Albrecht, and L. G. Thorell, “Spatial Tuning of LGN
and Cortical Cells in Monkey Visual System,” in Spatial Contrast, ed. H. Spekreijse
(Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, in press); idem, “Cortical Cells:
Line and Edge Detectors, or Spatial Frequency Filters?” in Frontiers of Visual Science, ed.
S . Cool (New York: Springer-Verlag, in press); Karl H. Pribram, M. C. Lassonde, and
M. Ptito, “Intracerebral Influences on the Microstructure of Visual Cortex: Classifica-
tion of’ Receptive Field Properties (I)” (manuscript).
39. Karl H. Pribram, “Some Dimensions of Remembering: Steps toward a Neuro-
psychological Model of Memory,” in Macromolecules and Behavior, ed. J. Gaito (New
York: Academic Press, 1966), pp. 165-87.
40. For evidence see Karl H. Pribram and D. McGuinness, “Arousal, Activation and
Effort in the Control of Attention,” Psychologzcal Review 82 (1975): 116-49.
41. Pribram, Languages .f the Brain (n. 14 above) and “Problems Concerning the
Structure of Consciousness” (n. 27 above); Pribram, Lassonde, and Ptito (n. 38 above).
42. David Bohm, “Quantum Theory as an Indication of a New Order in Physics:
The Development of New Orders as Shown through the History of Physics (Part A),”
Foundations Of‘Physics 1 (1971): 359-81; idem, “Quantum Theory as an Indication of a
New Order in Physics: Implicate and Explicate Order in Physical Law (Part B),” ibid. 3
(1973): 139-68.
43. David Bohm, Fragmentation and Wholeness (Jerusalem: V a n h e r Jerusalem
Foundation, 1976); Fritjof Capra, The Tao ofPhysics (Berkeley, Calif.: Shambhala Publi-
cations, 1975).

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