Walkers consciousness theory.
In his book, The Physics of Consciousness, Walker quoted Einstein as follows: Warning: In Quantum Mechanics, the results of any action are determined by the observer rather than any Newtonian law of physics and, if this phenomenon is true in three dimensions, it must also be true in the fourth! how we would know if someone ever actually changed history retroactively as that new history would be all we remember. He said there would be some subtle indicator or something that looked like a coincidence.
He originated the ‘Quantum Observer Theory’ relating to state vector collapse that is of significance to parapsychology. Both of these theories have been supported by extensive and predicted experimental results. He has also contributed to the fields of neurophysiology, specifically to the mechanism of synaptic functioning, and in psychology to understanding optical illusion phenomena.
What is consciousness and psi phenomena?
“Who are we; what are we; why are we here?” When we ask, “What is the nature of consciousness"; can neither science nor religion explain who am I? In Walker’s opinion, his answer to this question incidentally also answers the question: what are psi phenomena; what are their cause? Psi phenomena have been incorporated into a theory known as the Quantum Observer Theory of Psi Phenomena.
Walker insist on the importance of looking beyond materialism. Through the development of physics, from Newton's laws to Bell's inequalities and EPR paradox he argues for the importance of consciousness for the understanding of quantum theory, and especially for the measurement problem. New solutions to problems within physics might help resolve philosophical problems with materialism; perhaps, for example, by radically altering the physical terms, and especially the time concept is a reason to stagging developement. The many-worlds idea needs also attention. He underline the primacy of the subjective over the objective, a new, radical idea. This has relevance for the time concept, as well as for the consciousness and self. Ego and matter are important as entangling tools?
There is nothing new in the suggestion that there are difficulties with quantum mechanics and that those difficulties may have something to do with the idea of an "observer". But there we stagger, it is not so easy to go further. We have to look at things with new eyes. Let's give it a try.
"Only in the most exceptional circumstances do we ever find quantum mechanical effects entering the macroscopic world", is his statement, and in fact, if the fundamental laws of physics are quantum mechanical, then every physical effect is quantum mechanical to some degree. Quantum mechanics infects every physical structure at every level.
Walker attempts to tie together quantum theory and neuroscience by arguing that quantum tunnelling has a vital role in synaptic transmission. The synaptic vesicle release is an ordinary biochemical process triggered by an electrochemically-driven influx of calcium into the pre-synaptic neuron , calciumwaves (Suedhof & Scheller, 2001), and its effectivity is bound to magnetic fields through the cyclotrone frequencies (Liboff). In photosynthesis we have also seen that quantum tunnelling is at work. In ATPase there are proton transfer, and the chirality is one regulator (electrostasis). Enzymes are particularly important for this regulation, often coupled to vitamins and coenzymes.
The unpredictability comes from the entire history of uncertain scatterings and interactions at the molecular level and below. In conventional quantum-mechanical terms, if it never "collapsed" at any other moment, the quantum state of the brain would have to "collapse" at a great number of synaptic firings (synchronously?) in order to make each of those firings definitely happen at moments definite in biological terms. In this task is the inhibition very important, creating some kind of resistance in the tissues. Non-linear, non-dissipative states arise; the hallmark of life?
He wanted to "integrate synaptic firings into a single quantum mechanical conscious existence". To do this, he built on the idea of quantum tunnelling at synapses. "This requires the electrons which are involved in synaptic tunnelling, going on to jump from synapse to synapse using soluble RNA molecules as stepping stones". The classical picture of an electron as a hopping object and a quantum picture of its wavefunction are both invoked in the picture. The electron wavefunction in the brain is an irreducibly many-body object that reduce the degrees of freedom very strongly. Neural electrons are indistinguishable not just in the sense that they are all identical, but also in the sense that, on biological timescales, they are inseparably entangled. Walker refers to "interlaced collections of quantum potentialities weaving together the possibilities". He has also a non-linear modification to the Schroedinger equation. The cat cannot be both dead and alive in biology.
The theory of consciousness proposed by Eccles (1986) also suggests an influence of mind on quantum uncertainties at synapses.
Free will.
Walker claims that quantum possibilities allow us a non-illusory free will, stating that "for will to have any meaning, it must be possible for the mind to affect events - for the mind to control the body".
Mind decides among the elements of a quantum superposition, say in a receptor. Where do the mind keeps the computational power required for this decision making? If in the brain, the brain should be capable of detecting and analysing the structure of an uncollapsed superposition so as to match the willed choice to the collapsed outcome. Maybe that is the readiness potential? The choice seems to be made before that interaction comes into play. If the decision making is extra-bodily, then we have a new homunculus problem? We have transported the observer outside our body? If it is "observers" who bring about "collapses", then our conventional picture of the universe may be radically incorrect.
Evolutionary forces wrong too?
The universe could have continued as a vastly complicated superposition (implicit order by Bohm) until such time as entirely physical processes allowed observers to evolve within some part of that superposition. Not until that time would it seem to be necessary for any "collapse" to occur (explicit order). The materialization and evolution can go very fast then. Evolution jumps. What drives the jumps? When we look at that question we see that the physics need to be renewed too. It is the Physics in the boundary of life that is so otherwise, the physics at low temp., near 0 Hz magnetic frequencies, the Planck constant and cosmological constant problem etc. A new world will rise from the ruins of our old reductionistic science. A quantum world?
There is a hierachical order of terms which may describe the organization of living systems. On the base, is matter itself, then energy, then the distribution of energy over the matter (entropy). This induces and describes what we call "potential" information, after which we arrive at its highest organizational form, what we call "consciousness" Popp, F.A. Memory and morphogenic fields are somewhere in between.
A central task of an interpretation of quantum mechanics is to explain how and at what level quantum unpredictability is resolved. Here TGD has done a great job.
Macroscopic systems, and microscopic.
When we look at macroscopic systems we use a measure apparatus, also macroscopic, that only sample in quite big bits, and we have no tool to look at those measurement results further. We only have to accept them. The wavefunction is not usually seen. Only in certain conditions we can see it, as in low temp. physics. Supratransition also happen at higher temp. Von Neumann has talked about this problem. EPR paradox and Bells inequalities are also effects of this kind. In nature we usually see a Gaussian distribution that reflects the quantum basic physic? A big part of the problem is our measurement technique, and its low resolution properties. It has no transparency. It is not necessarily the nature that don't respond, it is we that don't percieve it.
Quantum consciousness in metaphysics and altered state consciousness.
In metaphysics are the chakras as instance. They are not material, and they can be experienced. Different chakras has a different frequency, and that would mean a different 'memory' or 'message', also experienced as emotion. Emotions are cognitions. I have experienced those chakras, and when I come to number 6 and 7 (especially) I clearly can feel how my face fleet in waves. It is a very sweet feeling. Some day ago I realised that Shivas dance was just this experience of a fleeting, wavelike existence. Let a magnetic wave go through your body (transverse) and you can imagine the effects.
Also out of body experience is about this. The peculiar thing is that you can actually see. Without brain? You can see yourself sitting there on the chair and the one sitting there know of nothing. While you are up there levitating, and know everything, and it is too a floating existence I have experienced myself.
When something bad happens you can feel this too. Suddenly your feet doesn't obey you. You simply sack and fall. You don't swim, don't get an epileptic attack, but something like that.
Time is also like this. It comes and goes. In trauma situations a second is so long, or the opposite. Flow is when time feels as nothing at all. Your inner, personal, subjective clock doesn't always follow the official, objective time. Time may also go in 'slow motion'. Yet we can have a very fast transmission of cognitions in these moments. Subjective time may also go to 'the dark quantum side'? Time is a trickster. Everyone has experienced this. Or take an animal that with an accuracy of minutes can know when it is time for dinner, or when you come home. How is that done?
What part has the consciousness in this? Is it quantum mechanical and non-local entanglement? Correlations are results of that kind of entangled systems, as Walker said. The correlations can be spatial or temporal. Or non-tidal, eternal. This is very much like the psi phenomenon. In fact psi would be predicted by quantum mechanics,if we would not have knownof them before. Psi phenomen is obligatory, in fact.
Michael Persinger, Todd Murphy, etc. has done research on this.
We experience consciousness and self diffusely, and empathy and compassion often goes outside our bodies, when we feel how it would be to be 'in their shoes' (mirrorneurons). In out of body experiences we levitate up in space, and the picture of God is often as Gods eye above us. God can be thought of as looking into the world from all angles around the room, and be different from the system within which we are acting.
The use of vision as a metaphor (I like that particularly well) for knowing and consciousness creates a distance or split between what is called the subjective I (a disembodied consciousness) and one or more selves. We can also locate self-consciousness in a place one imaginatively steps back to, or up to. The feelings and emotions going on in one's bodily self can be displyed or hided, taken a distance to (disentangle from), or it can extend compassion to parts of the self. As instance in an accident sometimes happen that people gets incredible strength,or pain can be left in emergency situations, giving mor energy for other things. Compassion can be given to the abused child that I was once. Forgiveness can be given to already dead parents etc.
In this disentangled state (from our subselves) we can 'look around' and notice other systems, imagine other ways of doing things and ask, "What if...?" This wider consciousness opens up the possibility of making other choices or actings according to different principles, that is, the possibility of having free will.
Chaos can also achieve a disentanglement through forceful fields that break the entanglements. This is done through strong emotions, pain, psychoses etc. The emotions widen the behavioral field (inhibition loss), often with bad consequences. In the oppurtinities to make different choices Walker saw the brain as a chaos-operator. Some few random-processes in the braincircuits can give a cascade of different new effects and in that way amplify and give forceful effects on the consciousness. In states of strong entanglement no such effects are seen, but brain inhibits changes and acts as a stabilizer. Personality and ego is also stabilizing.
In schizophrenia is seen that a weak ego sometimes is strongly correlated to psychoses. The ego is the degree of entanglement between the subselves. In cases of a bipersonal disorder there has chrystalized two different persons, often radially different, as in 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'.
The analogy to 'the third eye' is very close. It is a diffuse eye; ordinary eye is a very strict sense. Also chakras are outside the body, where a wider consciousness is described.
40 Hz consciousness depends on inhibition, but if that is disturbed then we experience altered consciousness? Also the other way, we don't use brain much at all. So brain consciousness is experienced as awareness in a window 7 - 40 Hz, outside that is altered state consciousness. What about the hippocampal 600 Hz pulse then? Has it something to do with the structure of hippocampus? And the function? Hippocampus make superpositions. It is a formidabel black hole machine. The weaver?
Is that to experience the dimensions?
References.
Matthew J. Donald, 2001: A Review of The Physics of Consciousness by Evan Harris Walker. PSYCHE, 7(15), October 2001. http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2493.pdf
Eccles, J.C. 1986: Do mental events cause neural events analogously to the probability fields of quantum mechanics? Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 227, 411-428.
O.I. Fisun , a & A.V. Savina, 1992: Homochirality and long-range transfer in biological systems. Biosystems Volume 27, Issue 3, 1992, Pages 129-135 doi:10.1016/0303-2647(92)90068-A
F. A. Popp, 2001: Biophysical Aspects of the Psychic Situation, http://www.lifescientists.de/ib0203e_1.htm (this site is out of function.)
Suedhof, T.C. & Scheller, R.H. 2001: Mechanism and regulation of neurotransmitter release. Chapter 4 of Cowan, Suedhof, and Stevens (2001).
Evan Harris Walker 2000: The Physics of Consciousness. The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.
http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/QMA.doc
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