ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Brain/Mind/Computer 35
and organization. Thus, the basic irreducible substrate of information should
reside within biological cells, and the brain may then be viewed as an organized
assembly of billions of computers in which collective emergent properties may be
specifically related to consciousness. The hierarchy of brain organization may
thus have a secret basement-a new “dimension.” Advances in intracellular
imaging and molecular biology have illustrated the complex dynamic
organization of intracellular cytoplasm. Specifically a dense, parallel, highly
interconnected solid state network of dynamic protein polymers, the
“cytoskeleton,” is a medium which appears to be ideally suited for information
processing, and which is actively involved in virtually all cell functions.
Appreciation of this “cytoskeletal dimension” may be the key to the
brain/mind/computer triangle (Figure 2.1).
2.2 Historical Perspectives—Consciousness as ...
Many disciplines have concerned themselves with attempts to understand
consciousness. Like the proverbial group of blind men trying to describe an
elephant, each discipline’s perception is highly dependent on its orientation and
particular elephant part it happens to contact. The blind men succeed, largely
because they have the elephant surrounded.
Some feel the mind is too complicated to be described by the human brain.
Perhaps the mystery of the mind is a necessary barrier to man’s “roboticization”
As philosopher Richard Rorty has said: “the ineffability of the mental serves the
same cultural function as the ineffability of the divine-it vaguely suggests that
science does not have the last word” (Jaynes, 1976). Despite these worries, a
progression of theories and metaphors of the mind have evolved and are reviewed
historically in Julian Jaynes’ book, The Origin of Consciousness and the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Jaynes describes eight solutions to the
brain/mind problem developed through the 20th century. They describe
consciousness as a property of matter, of protoplasm, of learning, as a
metaphysical imposition, a helpless spectator, an emergent property of evolution,
behavior, and as activity within the brain’s reticular activating system. These are
reviewed with modifications and additions relevant to computer technology and
the cytoskeletal dimension.
2.2.1 Consciousness as Particle/Wave Physics
Great discoveries in 19th century particle physics dissolved the solidity of
matter into mere mathematical relationships in space. Thoughts, feelings,
introspection, and mind-environment interactions were related to the brain as
waves to electrons. In the 20th century, Nobel biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
(1960) wrote Introduction to a Submolecular Biology in which he perceived the
essence of life and consciousness to exist in coordinated electron movement
within semiconductive proteins. Others, including Russian physicists Pullman and
Pullman (1963) compared life and consciousness with the mobility of electrons
within resonant bond orbitals. Scottish biologist A. G. Cairns-Smith (1985) has
theorized that life developed from crystals of clay. The molecular lattice structure
in clay allows for shifting neighbor relationships and processing of information
which Cairns-Smith has likened to genetic development. These views equate
life’s basic processes with those of atoms and sub-atomic particles. Information is
represented as dynamic electron patterns within computers, and life and
consciousness are certain to be related to fundamental particle activities. The
questions are how, where and at what level of organization