Please Help Me Understand Consciousness
March 6, 2014 at 5:44 am
(This post was last modified: March 6, 2014 at 5:58 am by Mudhammam.)
I'm currently reading a book titled "The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and The Meaning of Life." I have a number of qualms with the book so far, most of which are largely summarized by the following excerpt:
"...whatever we do, we must be sure that the mechanism we postulate preserves the electron tunneling going on at individual synaptic clefts; otherwise, the mechanism will no longer involve data-processing events at synapses. At least we are not searching for a phenomenon that may or may not exist. We already know that quantum tunneling is there. We already know its features and much of its mechanism. All we need to discover is a way that electrons at synapses can make the long jumps from one synapse to the next."
Much of the book is spent arguing that scientific analysis leads to the conclusion that quantum mechanics is directly tied to individual synapses of neuron cells. I can appreciate an unconventional hypothesis but here "the quantum mind" is presented as THE scientific theory that best explains the data. I get the sense that I'm being oversold mystical woo-woo by a physicist with alterior motives. If so, can someone direct me to scientific literature that demonstrates why appealing to quantum physics or "Universal Consciousness" (that's the direction this book is heading) is not the correct approach? I'm not at all studied in theories of consciousness and I feel like this may not have been the best book to start with.
"...whatever we do, we must be sure that the mechanism we postulate preserves the electron tunneling going on at individual synaptic clefts; otherwise, the mechanism will no longer involve data-processing events at synapses. At least we are not searching for a phenomenon that may or may not exist. We already know that quantum tunneling is there. We already know its features and much of its mechanism. All we need to discover is a way that electrons at synapses can make the long jumps from one synapse to the next."
Much of the book is spent arguing that scientific analysis leads to the conclusion that quantum mechanics is directly tied to individual synapses of neuron cells. I can appreciate an unconventional hypothesis but here "the quantum mind" is presented as THE scientific theory that best explains the data. I get the sense that I'm being oversold mystical woo-woo by a physicist with alterior motives. If so, can someone direct me to scientific literature that demonstrates why appealing to quantum physics or "Universal Consciousness" (that's the direction this book is heading) is not the correct approach? I'm not at all studied in theories of consciousness and I feel like this may not have been the best book to start with.
