This may take a while. Stick with it, take tea, coffee or stretching breaks if you need to. There’s a prize at the end, honest.
Invoking an ancient, foreboding archetype, a goddess, of duality, death-dealing, life-giving, of the lands we inhabit, as I did in ‘Decolonising a Scots Mind pt.2’ – a companion series to this – seems particularly apropos, as I finally get around to typing up the last of my current scribblings on minds, brains, colonised, divergent, neurodivergent and why it's all because of quantum.
Maybe it’s because it could seem like the nuclear option, moving past the summer of ‘Barbenheimer’, to echo, hold up a mirror to Vishnu, who had become death, the destroyer of worlds, long before J.Robert reflected on it and hogged all the credit. And to see in it, the Cailleach. The Bodach too.
Maybe they are culture, place, specific, invocations of Jungian archetypes, channeled through Emily Lyle’s god-pack. Then again, maybe I’m talking through a hole in my proverbial. It’s likely I’ll keep doing it, at least until I’m done.
Despite every sentient being, ever, experiencing it, as well as, at least since the Enlightenment, science taxonomically explaining, or at least attempting to, every physical aspect (often alongside every non-physical phenomenon it observes or experiences by utilising itself), there remains no unifying theory of consciousness. To a large extent this is explained by what David Chalmers described as the ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ problems of it.
‘Easy’ problems of consciousness are only so when compared to the ‘hard’ ones. The hard problem is concerned with how and why humans (and some other organisms) have subjective experiences, qualia and phenomenal consciousness. It differs categorically from the easy problem because no mechanistic or behavioural explanations can define the character of experience, not even in principle.
In a 1994 presentation to the ‘Science of Consciousness’ conference, followed the next year by a paper entitled ‘Facing up to the problem of consciousness’, and, in the next year again, expanded upon in the book ‘The Conscious Mind’, Chalmers drew upon Nagel’s definition of consciousness. Nagel ( 1974) posited that scientific reasoning produced falsely objectified theories of mind based in a conception of itself as the only paradigm of objectivity.
Nagel argued that the kind of understanding scientific objectivity represents cannot be applied to everything in order to promote genuine understanding. Accordingly, Nagel advocated for the idea that consciousness and subjective experience cannot, at least with contemporary understanding of physicalism, be satisfactorily explained by concepts of physics. Nagel’s work reached some way across the explanatory gaps and ambiguities of consciousness.
Chalmers draws upon Nagel’s definition of consciousness as synonymous with experience. Consciousness is ‘the feeling of what it is like to be something’. In ‘Facing up to the problems of consciousness’, Chalmers, defining the two fundamental problems of consciousness, wrote:
‘…even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioural function in the vicinity of experience – perceptual discrimination, categorisation, internal access, verbal report – there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?’
For Chalmers, the ‘easy’ problem of consciousness is amenable to reductive enquiry. It can be rendered as a logical consequence of ‘lower level facts’, about the world. In this sense they concern mechanistic analysis of neural processes accompanying behaviour. They can be analysed or understood through determining structures and functions.
The ‘hard’ problem of consciousness is why and how these processes are accompanied by experience. In particular, further queried by why they are accompanied by ‘this’ or ‘that’, rather than any other, experience. The ‘hard’ problem is fundamentally irreducible to the ‘easy’ problem.
Facts about neural mechanisms do not lead to facts about conscious experience. They are ‘further’ facts, not derivable from physical facts about the brain, at least not in any sense then available to Chalmers.
In this irreducibility, the hard problem is associated with two explanatory targets. Physical processing gives rise to experiences with a phenomenal character. The phenomenal qualities are ‘thus-and-so’. The first concerns the relationship between the physical and phenomenal, the second concerns the essential nature of the phenomenal.
The subjective nature of experience has never been and may never be sufficiently accounted for by the objective (and even our ‘experience’ of the ‘objective’ ultimately takes place in the human brain, is an aspect of mind, of consciousness) methods of reductionist science, or physicalism. Any physical theory of mind, or of consciousness, can only be sought beyond the general problem of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’.
It is, of course, as Joseph Levine (1983) posited, as an aspect of this, where properties of mind, of consciousness, of mental properties irreducible to physical properties, that this remains an epistemological problem. The explanatory gap, in understanding, in this sense:
‘…doesn’t demonstrate a gap in nature, but a gap in our understanding of nature,…(a)…plausible explanation for there being a gap in our understanding is that there is a gap in nature. But so long as we have countervailing reasons for doubting the latter, we have to look elsewhere for an explanation of the former.’
The fundamental nature of seeking to bridge this explanatory gap, given that all human understanding, not only of our selves but also of the world in which we perceive them to exist, remains not only epistemological but also existential.
Into that explanatory gap, just as others do and have, steps quantum. In many ways it also attempts to bridge the gap between philosophy of mind, whether physicalist or not, and physicalist science.
It should be noted, before proceeding, that Chalmers, as a philosopher of mind, has argued previously against quantum consciousness and has been sceptical that any new physics can solve the hard problem of consciousness. He has posited that just as there is no particular reason why particular macroscopic features in the brain should give rise to consciousness, there is no reason why a particular quantum feature should either.
There seems to be an implicit irony, in having established the epistemological, explanatory gap, between the easy and hard problems of consciousness, as being derived from the irreducible nature of the phenomenal, Chalmers appears to also find attempts to bridge it with ‘new physics’ irreducible too. Being mainly concerned in the academic field of neuroanthropology, as this writer and blog are, it is difficult not to surmise, whilst Chalmers has cultivated a ‘rock star philosopher’ like presence, in the age of social media, that remaining recalcitrant on the subject for which you are most known is a marketing technique which keeps the clicks coming, tickets for presentations in demand and books selling.
Whilst theories of quantum consciousness, derived from the fast-evolving physics of quantum brain, attempt to bridge the explanatory gap between the hard and easy problems of consciousness, between ‘easy’ physicality and ‘hard’ phenomena, they also attempt to bridge the gap between the fields of neuroscience and wider physics. Unsurprisingly, while experiments are conducted in physical environments and theories are derived from them in conscious minds, presented in the language of scientific research papers and frameworks, it can often be difficult to separate what appear to be reductive scientific conclusions from personal opinions.
They often appear as, even refer directly to them as, intuitive physics or physics intuitions. So, subjective ideation about the nature of consciousness and not objective, reductive reasoning. It doesn’t mean this isn’t physics, but its not as you might think you know it, Jim; you can change the laws of physics, captain!
David Pearce, philosophically defending this position, regarding quantum bridges crossing the gap between physics and philosophy of mind, which he calls physicalist idealism, conjectures that unitary conscious minds are physical states of quantum coherence or neuronal superpositions. This is amenable to falsification, unlike most theories of quantum consciousness.(2018)
Pearce has posited it could be tested using matter wave interferometry to detect non-classical interference patterns of neuronal superpositions at the onset of thermal decoherence. Before looking at the growing field this type of physicalist idealism sits within, as part of attempts to resolve the hard problem of consciousness, it is surely worth a look at where the (less idealistic?) physics of resolving the easy problem currently sit. Just how easy has it become and how do the two relate to each other currently?
Just how far have we come along the journey of understanding, of the mechanistic analysis of neural processes, of determining the structures and functions of neurology which, in turn, determine, accompany and are also, to some extent, determined by behaviours, events and environments?
In a 2015 paper, based on data derived from and studies of human neuroimaging, Petersen and Sporns acknowledged that most previous accounts of human cognitive architecture had focused on interpreting computational accounts of cognition. These made little contact with the study of anatomical structures and physiological processes.
Their study formed part of a renewed convergence between neurobiology and cognition, a resurgence of study addressing that deficit. In line with the approach adopted by growing numbers of its cohorts, it explored the overlap between adopted systems of cognitive neuroscience and the discipline of network science.
The diversifying fields of neuroscience have increasingly adopted and applied network tools and concepts to describe the operation of collections of brain regions. They have offered a theoretical framework for approaching brain structure and function as a multi-scale system, comprised of networks of neurons, circuits, nuclei, cortical areas and systems of areas. Overlaying these, attempting to apply the theory, to previously established physics of neurology, has appeared and claimed to illuminate, expand upon and in many ways disprove or supersede previous understandings of the biological basis for cognitive architectures.
Cognitive architecture, as a term, until relatively recently, used to refer almost exclusively to concepts in the domains of cognitive and computer scientists, which also made little or no reference to the underlying biology of the human brain. But times they are, ahem, a-changing, and quick smart too.
Since the early 2000s, a new, developing picture has emerged. Cognitive architectures have come to be thought of, generally described as, ‘sets’ of brain regions, contributing to the performance of ‘sets’ of related tasks or functions, often explicitly referred to as networks.
How the term network is used, applied or interpreted varies, has varied, significantly.
The human brain is characterised by heterogeneous patterns of structural connections, which give rise to, support, facilitate, equally varied and heterogeneous, wide-ranging cognitive functions and behaviours derived from them. It may make it easier to understand the complexity of codependence this creates between them, as well as in the interaction with the environments where they take place, to represent them as systems, networks and often then pathologised orders and disorders of function. Or to use these as means to mirror understanding of recognisable behavioural patterns in those interactions.
Maintaining awareness of heterogeneity, diversity, becomes difficult when using reductive reasoning beginning from a base of theoretical frameworks, then using defining terms which arise from it as attempts to promote understanding of it. It becomes self-referential.
Taxonomical representation becomes delimiting. It is subjective, despite technological advancement or progress in apparent understanding claimed as developed by it.
It, they, occur, inevitably, as an aspect of the patterns and processes they attempt to understand. Any such effort would do well to first acknowledge the semiotics of representational understanding and expression.
Before continuing, it is worth further acknowledging. Where terminology is used herein, it is with reference to its use ‘in the field’ or fields. And it is done with innate understanding or acknowledgement that the sign is not the signifier, is not the signified. It should always bear repeating; this is definitively not a pipe.
So, where were we…?
…ah, pause was given to acknowledge implicit gaps in language, used apparently due to the zeal of technological advancement. This was/is taken to its nth degree by pioneers of the very systems and networks used as theoretical frameworks, applied to deepening understanding of brain biology and function.
The echoed, disruptive calls, among brain network theorists, to move fast whilst breaking things, bear, even in apparently considered and evidenced forms, disarming, concerning and ultimately counterproductive, while presenting ‘discovery’ to a wider world, resemblance to self reinforcing creationism. It is a world in the cognitive throes of all-encroaching systems and networks, which have in many ways broken it and taken our brains along for the smash and grab ride. Arguments for them would, in any other debate, once have been called out as a ‘Gish gallop’.
Lines of understanding, credulity and charlatanism are easily blurred. Galloping along, without challenge, eyes can glaze over, the alleged audience becomes averse to listening. Sometimes that’s the intent.
Far from promoting actual understanding, it can make resistance to it more likely. It can lead to a general dismissiveness, disengagement or a wilful failure to genuinely understand.
It is there, palpably present, in a widespread tendency, when considering how our brains actually work, or mind and consciousness, our subjective, phenomenal experience of them as emergent properties of it, from inside it, to resort to easy, magical, mystical thinking. Even when, sometimes in response to, being presented with ‘the physics’ or self-declared ‘facts’, or evidence of them.
It’s as worth remembering in developing understanding of the ‘networked brain’ and any properties which could be considered as emergent from it, as it is to them as potentially quantum properties. Cautionary tales abound where semiotics lend themselves, open the door to, pseudo-science and mysticism. As a Scottish proponent, resisting delimitation by either, might say, ‘Aye, but, the brains a funny hing!’.
Caution, ca’ing canny, should not least be considered when addressing the fundamental challenge of understanding how the brain’s structural ‘wiring’ supports cognitive processes, which facilitate behavioural responses, while using new and innovative techniques, among them non-invasive brain imaging, to enable ‘comprehensive’ mapping of their patterns. This is particularly true of where they claim to have ‘major implications’ for ‘personalised mental health treatments’ ( Lynn & Bassett, 2019).
There may be much to celebrate among their advances. We should perhaps, though, wait for the morning after the party’s inevitable hangover to dissipate before unleashing excitable and shaking hands, wielding literal and metaphorical scalpels, upon unwitting brains and minds. Still, some have already been unleashed, champing at the bit, ready to break things, with ‘the science’ as their backup.
Few subjects, clients, of ‘neurofeedback’ practitioners, submitting to the flourishes of their dark arts, will realise the difference between them and those of developing neuroscience. For the sake of clarity, they may utilise similar technology and equipment but training in how to interpret the results derived from its data is the difference between a 4–6-week course in neurofeedback and at least seven years of study, prior to additional years of practical training, application and experience it takes to become a neurophysiologist.
Just because you don’t understand how the inner workings of your brain drive your mind and behaviours, doesn’t mean you should let the equivalent of someone whose watched an online ‘how-to’ video start tinkering around under its bonnet!
OK, disclaimers made, lines drawn, lets continue reviewing recent efforts to understand the ‘engine’, the brain’s structural ‘wiring’, as a networked system, systems, to meet its challenges, drawing on physics ‘intuitions’, models and theories, spanning the domains of statistical mechanics, system theory, information theory, as well as how they apply to dynamical systems and their control.
Substantive volumes of research and reviews of it, in these areas, exist. To revisit them all, in their proliferation alongside the advent of new technologies would require substantive and largely redundant rendering, in terms of blog space, to replicate them here. Whilst attempting to avoid the forewarned of perils and pitfalls, previously referred to, lets borrow some useful summaries from Lynn & Bassett’s 2019 review of then recent research into ‘The physics of brain network, structure and control’:
- the interaction of physics and neuroscience has persisted since at least 1849, when Helmholtz conducted the first measurement of a nerve impulse – it is not new.
- current network neuroscience, studying the brain as a complex web of interacting components draws upon almost every field of physics.
- current studies of the ‘networked brain’, modelling the architecture of structural connections between neurons and regions, show it to be constrained by requirements of energy minimisation and efficient information transfer.
- understanding of the physics, or materialisation, of long-range correlations and synchronisation from collective firing of individual neurons draws upon statistical mechanics theories to develop further theories of emergence and criticality.
- these theories of brain network structure, function and control are being applied to guiding treatments for cognitive and mental health ‘disorders’.
- More than ever, utilising theoretical neurophysics as brain network analysis, posited by experimental and pioneering physicists, is being drawn upon as ‘hard’, proven, objective science, as acknowledged ‘understanding’ of the complexities of mind and consciousness.
Despite these being the work in progress, the almost universally a priori case, driving forward how we ‘look’ at mind, consciousness and behaviour emergent from them, a more recent review, of June this year (Wang et al, 2023), which drew upon cumulative research and developments in brain network theory, computational neuroscience, or ‘neurodynamics’ and ‘neuroinformatics’, as ‘experimental neuroscience’, to posit a ‘neural energy model’, or comprehensive ‘Neural Energy Theory’, did so with and in response to significant caveats.
Explaining their perceived need for a universal theory or model, the study acknowledged that despite ‘hundreds of years of history’, neurophysics has not had, does not have ‘a systematic and complete theoretical system’ and is still an ‘immature discipline’, which still does ‘not know how the nervous system, at different levels, is interacting and coupling with itself and each other’.
Their study also acknowledges, despite their attempts to posit an integrative theory of neural, brain and nervous system, networks, ‘there still seems to be an invisible and unbridgeable chasm between the…(disparate)…achievements of neuroscience at all levels’. It also notes, this is especially so where experimental neuroscience has conducted, is conducting, research into ‘consciousness, thinking, creativity generation mechanisms, memory storage and recall, global brain function and many other aspects’.
What both reviews make clear is that, despite the claims of neurophysicists to be moving fast, forging ahead, hoping, maybe, not to break things, using computational neurodynamics and experimental physics of brain network structure, function and control, as applied means of addressing cognitive and mental health conditions of functionality, we may have come some way toward ‘solving’ easy problems of consciousness but we most definitely have not solved the easy problem.
In many ways, in the same way as experimental neurophysics has been used to ‘solve’ easy problems, experimental quantum physics has been used to address hard problems of consciousness, and may be closer to solving the hard problem.
Interviewed about a research article, published in October 2022 (Kerskens & Pérez, 2022), lead physicist at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Dr Christian Kerskens explained how their study had adapted an idea developed to prove the existence of quantum gravity, whereby taking known quantum systems which interact with unknown systems and establishing if they entangle, it also establishes if the unknown system is quantum in nature too.
Their experiment used proton spins of ‘brain water’, which builds up naturally as fluid in our brains, which can be measured using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). By using a specific MRI design to seek and measure entangled spins, the research found signals resembling heartbeat evoked potentials, a form of EEG signal.
EEG signals are not usually detectable or measurable with MRI. The research concluded, based on their evidence, that this was only possible because the nuclear proton spins in the brain were subject to quantum entanglement.
Kerskens noted that, if as the evidence indicated, ‘entanglement is the only possible explanation here then that would mean that brain processes must have interacted with the nuclear spins mediating the entanglement…As a result we can deduce that those brain functions must be quantum. Because those…functions were also correlated to short term memory and conscious awareness…those quantum processes are an important part of our cognitive and conscious brain functions’.
Kerskens also linked these processes to why our brains still ‘outperform supercomputers’, particularly when it comes to unforeseen circumstances, decision making or learning something new. The research, conducted just some fifty metres away from the lecture theatre where Schrödinger first presented his most widely influential theories, has begun to provide as much, more, physical evidence evidence on the biology of consciousness as quantum in nature, as a solution to the hard problem, as brain network theory has for the easy problem.
This is not isolated research either. Khajetoorians et al (2018, 2021) have explored ‘self-adapting atoms’, their neuron firing and spins, to the extent of being able to build a working model of a quantum brain. Adams & Petruccione (2021) and Wang et al (2016) have conducted significant research on how biophotons act, on a quantum mechanical level, as excitatory neurotransmitters, signalling processes in the central nervous system and its emergent property, consciousness.
Previous objections, largely from more fundamentally grounded or limited quantum physicists, to Penrose and Hameroff’s first detailed theories of quantum consciousness, positing generally that quantum effects at the cellular level, via microtubules, involved in the firing of neurons and, by extension, consciousness, have now been largely mitigated by more recent research in the wider field of quantum biology. Significant research in directional orientation, olfaction, enzymes and even DNA provide a growing evidence base for quantum effects being foundational and active elements not only in neural processes but, largely because these act at a nerve cell level, via neurotransmitters and chemoreceptors, they are implicated far more generally, than could previously be established, in the functioning neurology and behaviours of all biological organisms.
Whilst all biology, in a general sense, is quantum mechanical, just as all matter is, being composed of atoms and thus subject to the physical effects of atomic structure, the focus of more recent quantum biology has been on key, long established quantum effects. They are quantum phenomena which defy classical scientific imagination. Like superpositions, quantum coherence, tunnelling and entanglement.
They explain and have the potential to continue explaining both the what and the where of quantum effects on neurology, in the brain. And, by extension, on their emergent properties of mind and of consciousness.
Given that there is no unifying architecture or working model for quantum networks generally (Van Meter et al, 2021), despite advancements in disparate areas of the field, so thus none to model quantum brain function on, it may be safe to say quantum biologists have the edge on solving the hard problem of consciousness over brain network theory in solving the easy one. It is all because of quantum after all. Somebody should give them a prize.
You’ve made it to the end, you won consciousness, well done you. Use the contact page to claim your wee chocolate banana.