Quantic aspect of the mind

Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 00:33:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eric Wallich <wallich@easynet.fr>
To: quantum-d@teleport.com
Subject: Quantic aspect of the mind

Being a newcomer on quantum-d, I wish in a few lines to make explicit
my scientific or epistemological position on the matter of the mind,
which is my basic concern.

I have proposed in 1991 an original theory on Higher Cerebral
Functions i.e: the mind. It runs briefly as follows:

a) basic minimal mental units should be found, in the brain, at the
   atomic level of the neural cell. I have called such a unit the
   Nano-Mental Element of Representation (NMER); it is very close to
   the electron-level. One can calculate the approximate number of
   electrons present in the brain to the figure of 10 to the power of
   24. The same number thus applies to NMER.
b) the phenomena linked to NMER are of an ultrafast nature. They
   should have characteristic times in the picosecond range.
c) last and the most important: these astronomically highly numerous
   and ultrafast NMER should behave as wave-functions in quantum
   mechanics. For our purpose they appear therefore to be non-local
   entities with no direct material basis. They must fit very closely to
   a unique probability structure, which should account for the extreme
   plasticity exhibited by the mind in the brain.

Those three sets of hypothesis might turn out to be false. They should,
however, enable researchers to follow a promising new precise quantic
path, towards a better explanation and understanding of the mind and its
emergent phenomenon known as consciousness.

Recent reprints are available on the subject for any member of the
quantum-d group interested to read more details about this - probably
new - nanobiological quantic aspect of the mind

Rhett asked:

> I wonder if you could expand somewhat on your third point? Also, have
> you any comment on how these "very close to the electron-level" NMER are
> related to the 'tubulin', subcomponents of the infamous microtubules?

  ...You must realize that I have been working both theoretically and
experimentally for the last five years on this particular subject. Some
material is unpublished to this day. And on top of all I'm presently in
the course of writing a book, directly in English, on the microphysics
behind consciousness. In any case my whole work is linked together, and
it is difficult to hand it out in spare parts. Anyway, here goes:

For us, the brain has three parts, from bottom-up the nonconscious,
the unconscious and the conscious. The nonconscious (in John Searle's
sense) is not connected with language as the other two are. It is made
up of the NMER. And most likely as these should be precise wave-
functions, they are nothing other than a huge, ultrafast, probabilistic
universe arranged in different codings. We have the example of the
binary coding in computer science; but, this particular coding has
nothing to do with the various codings likely to be present in the
nonconscious brain. These could probably be of a mathematical,
logical, emotional or even affective type and possibly many others.
Nothing material is to be found in the nonconscious brain. On account
of the wave-function nature of NMER, this whole part is basically
non-local; although its microphysical existence depends on the
presence of electrons, even this wave-particle duality as Louis de
Broglie had imagined it in 1924, might be nothing more than a very
necessary and obvious probability link between the wave and the
particle, but nothing less than the exact wave-function that Schrodinger
took great care to explicit later.

In other words mind at this quantic level could be some sort of
gigantic sorting out and extracting of non-linguistic meaning out of
probabilistic ultrafast NMER, with the result that it would simplify
the unconscious workings of the mind - thought, memory and learning
operate in a highly interconnected manner, linked with language, which
would in turn express their own result in a conscious way through speech
or inner speech.

These three parts of the brain are part of a space-time continuum,
extending from bottom microphysics, through biology up to cognition;
and a lot more should be said about all of this!

As for tubulin, hereby hangs a huge other story that I am working
out presently in my book...