ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Brain/Mind/Computer 33
2 Brain/Mind/Computer
2.1 Metaphors of Consciousness
Systems for information processing are evolving within both biological life
forms and computer technologies. The most highly evolved information
processing system currently appears to be human consciousness which resides in
the human brain. The scientific relationships between consciousness and
structural brain activities remain obscure and are often referred to as the
brain/mind “duality.” To explain this duality, humans have historically perceived
their minds in the context of predominant cultural themes, particularly
information technologies. Author Julian Jaynes (1976) has chronicled how the
metaphors of the mind are the world it perceives. The trail of brain/mind
metaphors perhaps began during the Greeks’ Golden Age. According to Plato,
Socrates said:
Imagine ... that our minds contain a block of wax ... and say that
whenever we wish to remember something we hear or conceive in
our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions or ideas and
imprint them on it as we might stamp the impression of a seal ring.
The Greeks traveled about in freedom (while their slaves did the work) and
consciousness was perceived by free men as a free entity. Heraclitus described
consciousness as an “enormous space whose boundaries could never be found
out.” Later, Augustine of Carthage described “the mountains and hills of my high
imagination,” “the plains and caves and caverns of my memory” with “spacious
chambers wonderfully furnished with innumerable stores.”
The geological discoveries in the 19th century revealed a record of the past
written in layers of the earth’s crust. Consciousness became viewed as layers
recording an individual’s past in deeper and deeper layers until the original record
could no longer be read. This emphasis on the unconscious mind grew until the
late 19th century when most psychologists thought that’ consciousness was but a
small part of the mind. As chemistry superceded geology in scientific esteem,
consciousness became viewed as a compound structure that could be analyzed in
a laboratory into precise elements of sensations and feelings. When steam engines
became commonplace, the subconscious was perceived as a boiler of straining
energy demanding release, and when repressed, pushing up and out into neurotic
behavior. In the early part of the 20th century, mind metaphors continued to
encompass technologies for information processing such as telephone switching
circuits, tape recorders, clocks, holograms, and computers.
The computer is the most recent brain/mind metaphor and has evolved
qualitatively beyond its predecessors (as has human consciousness). Computer
technology has approached, and in some cases surpassed, some aspects of human
brain function such as “brute force” calculations. Computers may also be used to
simulate dynamical systems (including the brain), thus providing a metaphorical
medium. In efforts to construct computing machines capable of independent logic
and decision making, artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have examined what
is known about the workings of the brain and mind. Accordingly, they have been
led away from classical “serial” computers towards massively parallel systems
with high degrees of lateral interconnection. Because the brain at first glance is a
parallel aggregation of billions of neurons with tens of thousands of connections
per neuron, AI researchers of the connectionist school have viewed and modeled
the brain as “neural networks” which may be simulated on conventional