source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 21:58:12 -0700 Subject: Re: Quantum Brain From: MMCK@delphi.com Reply to John Chalmers, >Marion: To answer your question, Vic Stenger, a physicist at >the U of Hawaii, has just written a book on the subject. >(The title is something like the Quantum Mind or Quantum Brain). Great! Good title. >Stenger does not think QM is necessary to explain consciousness >or other mental activities. .... For quantum effects to >be important, the product mvd should be of the same order as >PC. It's certainly an open question, and that is a good argument, but is it compelling? If, after only a hundred years or so of the study of electricity, we can amplify a tiny, tiny radio signal to produce a tv picture, or detonate a nuke, could not millions of years of evolution have generated the ability to amplify quantum effects up to the level of ions. >... why not also in the Liver and other organs where they are also prominent? Why not? Human waste disposal technicians have brains, it's not only white collar workers who are gifted with the ability to think. Information processing capacity of some kind would certainly seem to lend a survival advantage to single celled organisms. >The other point raised in your post is speed. The brain >is a massively parallel computer, so while the speed of each >element is low, the ensemble can carry out an enormous number of >operations per unit time. Perhaps a more compelling argument for the quantum theory is the ant brain. They hardly have two neurons to rub together, but I think we have yet to produce aggregates of silicon that can match their computational capacities. I am intrigued by the quantum theory, but I am not convinced. I am also not convinced that it is wrong. Note that the question of how much information is transferred when an ion is exchanged between two cells can be important even if we assume quantum effects are not important in thought. If the position in the cell membrane at which an ion is emitted encodes information, then the information transfer between cells could be vastly more subtle that simple on/off pulses caused by large numbers of ions being exchanged. Thanks for your post. Marion Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 2 Oct 1995 14:26 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id FAA07033; Mon, 2 Oct 1995 05:25:58 -0700 Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 05:25:58 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu