**The Quest for Consciousness: A Quantum Neurobiological Approach.**

*Henry P. Stapp*

*Theoretical Physics Group*

*Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory*

*University of California*

*Berkeley, California 94720*

**[Introduction]{.underline}**

Christof Koch has recently written an extremely accessible book, *The
Quest for Consciousness: a Neurobiological Approach*. It summarizes in a
clear way the main known biological facts that seem particularly
pertinent to the mind-brain problem, along with an attempt to understand
these facts within the framework that he has been developing in
collaboration with Francis Crick. This theoretical framework, although
only one of many being pursued at present, is probably as close to
main-line neurobiology as any. This article contrasts Koch's way of
accounting for certain time-related psycho-neurobiological data with a
contemporary-physics-based understanding of these data.

By a contempory-physics-based understanding I mean an understanding
based on the fundamental principles of physics, as they are understood
today by physicists. This understanding differs profoundly from the one
that prevailed at the end of the nineteenth century. During the first
part of the twentieth century it became clear that the earlier approach
was conceptually unable to account for the results of the observations
that we make upon systems whose behaviors depend sensitively on the
motions of their atomic constituents. Physicists, lead by Niels Bohr,
Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli, erected the new and empirically
successful physical theory based not on the idea of evolving material
substances, but rather upon the idea of a sequence of abrupt events.
Each of these events is *psychophysical* in the sense that it has, on
the one hand, certain aspects that are described in the ordinary
language that, in Bohr's words, we use to communicate to others "what we
have done and what we have learned", and, on the other hand, other
aspects that are described in the mathematical language of contemporary
physics. These psychophysical events link certain physically described
aspects of the systems we observe to events in our minds. These
mind-matter connections were subsequently converted by John von Neumann
to connections between the minds and the brains of human
observer-participants. This introduction, at the level of the basic
physics, of events that relate physical descriptions of our brains to
events in our streams of consciousness has led many physics who are
interested basic ontological issues to the conclusion that twentieth
century physics may provide the a more adequate foundation for
understanding the connection between our brains and our minds than its
nineteenth century predecessor, which treated our minds\-\--our
conscious thoughts\-\--as passive, causally inert witnesses of certain
aspects of the physically described world; as witnesses having no
conceptual or causal place in the causally closed physically described
world. The older theory is an approximation to the contemporary theory,
and this approximation systematically leaves out certain physical
effects of our conscious choices that, according to twentieth-century
physics, are a *sine qua non* component of the dynamics.

This possibility that the inclusion of the mind-brain connection
enforced by the basic principles of physics might offer a more
rationally coherent and useful conception of the connection between our
conscious thoughts and their neural correlates than the
classical-physics-based ideas currently in vogue in neuroscience has
recently been explored in some detail. (Schwartz, Stapp, and Beauregard
2005, Stapp 2004, 2005, 2007). The encouraging findings will not be
reviewed here. However, readers of this article do need some general
understanding of what is meant here by "orthodox contemporary quantum
theory of the mind-brain connection". Hence, before describing the
contrasts between Koch's explanations of the psychobiological data, and
the contemporary-physics-based account, a brief description needs to be
given of the significant contrasts between these two alternative
theoretical frameworks.

**[Contemporary-physics-based approach to the connection between mind
and brain.]{.underline}**

It is by now widely appreciated that the materialist-deterministic
conception of nature that prevailed during the eighteenth and nineteen
centuries fails to account for the macroscopic properties of systems
whose behaviors depend sensitively on the behaviors of their
atomic-sized constituents. That earlier theory was replaced during the
first half of the twentieth century by quantum theory. The basic
mathematical change was to replace the *numbers* of the older theory by
*operators.* The effect of this replacement is to change the theory from
one putatively about intrinsic observer-independent properties of
physical systems to one explicitly about the observed feedbacks from
actions performed upon observed systems by observing systems. Observing
systems that stand somewhat apart from observed physical systems, but
that act upon them in chosen ways*,* and then receive feedbacks from
them, are thus brought into the dynamics of the full combined system.

The older theory, classical mechanics, has *one* single dynamical
process, the continuous evolution of the physical universe in accordance
with Newton's laws, or perhaps some classical-type generalization of
them. In contrast, the new theory, quantum theory, is built around a
sequence of discrete events that is governed by four processes. Each
such event is, from an ontological perspective, simultaneously: (1), an
*actualization* of certain mathematically characterized potentialities
created by prior events; (2) a *creation* of potentialities for future
events; and (3), an experiential event that constitutes *an increment in
knowledge.*

One of the four processes governing the flow of these events is called
by von Neumann Process 1. It is *a mathematically characterized abrupt
action of an observing system upon an observed system*. This action has
the effect of *posing a particular question* about the observed system.
A second process, called Process 2 by von Neumann, is a continuous
deterministic process. It is the quantum analog of the single
deterministic process of classical physics, but it acts only during the
intervals *between* successive abrupt events. The third process is the
abrupt event of *answering* the question posed by Process 1. It is
called by Dirac a "choice of the part of nature". It is *random*: it
conforms to specified statistical conditions. This "Process 3" is where
the famous "random element" enters into quantum mechanics. The fourth
process is called Process Zero, because it comes before Process 1 This
action is what Niels Bohr calls a "free choice on the part of the
experimenter." This choice specifies which particular probing
action\-\--taken from among a host of allowed possibilities\-\--will be
instigated by the experimenter: it specifies which question will be
posed, and when that question will be posed. This Process Zero choice is
not constrained or limited by any currently known law, statistical or
otherwise, and is treated, in actual scientific practice, as the
conscious choice of a human agent. Because this choice is not fixed by
any *known* laws it is, *in* *this very specific sense*, a "free
choice".

Quantum mechanics is, in this way, explicitly about selected
observations and their observed outcomes. Each such action is
represented by abrupt event that suddenly change the physically
described properties of the observed system in a way concordant with the
associated increment of knowledge of the observer. In the von Neumann
formulation the directly observed system becomes the brain of the
observer, and the mind-matter connections of the original "Copenhagen"
formulation are converted to mind-brain connections. This quantum
understanding of nature is radically different from the earlier
classical conceptualization, which has no conceptual or causal place for
experiential realities. The quantum framework is more *complete* than
the earlier classical framework, because it incorporates descriptions of
both our physically described brains and the experiential realities that
are causally connected to them, and it specifies the putative form of a
dynamical connection between them. Both of these aspects of our
understanding of nature are essential components of science, and quantum
theory is expressly designed to bring usefully into science the fact
that "in the great drama of existence we ourselves are both actors and
spectators." (Bohr, 1963, p. 15: 1958, p. 81)

An important characteristic of this quantum conceptualization is that
the substantive-matter-like aspects, have dropped out. The theory is
about: (1) abrupt *events*, each of which is tied to an experiential
increment in knowledge; and (2) *potentialities* for such events to
occur. Events are not substances, which, by definition, endure. And the
potentialities have an "idea-like" character because they are like an
"imagined" idea of what the future events *might* be; and they change
abruptly when a new event occurs. Thus neither the events nor the
potentialities have the ontological character the substantive matter of
classical physics. Yet the predictions of quantum mechanics encompass
all of the known successes of classical mechanics.

A second important feature of this quantum ontology is that the
conscious "free choices" of which question will be posed next, and when
it will be posed\-\--neither of which is determined by any known
law\-\--can influence the course of the psychophysical events. The
principle of the "causal closure of the physical" is therefore not
enforced in orthodox quantum theory, not only because of the entry, via
Process 3, of random elements, but also, and more importantly in the
present context, because of the entry of physically effective Process
Zero conscious free choices. These latter choices can influence the
*objective potentialities* for future actual events, and thereby affect
also the course of actual events..

A third important point is this. By virtue of the quantum rules
themselves, a *conscious intent* to perform either a physical action or
a mental action (say to recall something or to focus one's attention on
something) *can have*, by virtue of a well known quantum effect\-\--the
quantum Zeno effect\-\--the physical effect of holding in place a
pattern of neurobiological activity that tends to cause this imagined,
or expected, or intended experience actually to occur. Such a pattern of
brain activity\-\--namely one such that *its* *persisting existence*
*for a sufficiently long time* tends to cause the (experience of the)
contemplated action to occur\-\--is called a *template for action.* How
it comes about that conscious free choices can, by virtue of the quantum
psychophysical laws, cause a physically described *template for action*
to be held in place for an extended period has been described elsewhere
(in most detail in Stapp 2004), and will not be reviewed here.

The earlier articles, cited above, described many applications of
twentieth-century physics to the data amassed in scientific studies
pertaining to volition. The present article is an application to some
data described in Koch's book.

**[Koch's Quest for Consciousness and the NCC's]{.underline}**

Kock's title advertises his book as *The* *Quest for* *Consciousness*,
and he speaks briefly, at the beginning (and also in several other
places) about the mystery of consciousness\-\--about the puzzle of *why
certain activities in our brains are accompanied by conscious
experiences.* But he says (p.xv) that "I argue for a research program
whose supreme aim is to discover the neural correlates of consciousness,
the NCC. These NCC's are defined (p.xv: p. 341) as:

*"The minimal set of neuronal mechanisms or events jointly sufficient
for a specific conscious precept or experience."*

He immediately adds: "*This is what this book is about."*

Notice that he does not say "necessary and sufficient". This means that
he is not suggesting an *equivalenc*e between a conscious experience and
its neural correlate. Indeed, he says explicitly (p. 19) "The characters
of brain states and of phenomenal states appear too different to be
completely reducible to each other." Thus he distinguishes brain
activities from streams of consciousness, and his definition allows a
conscious experience to occur without the associated NCC occurring. He
emphasizes, right from the start, that his book is about the NCC's, not
about consciousness per se, and he acknowledges that it does not address
the big mystery of consciousness: *why does it exist at all*. In fact,
he notes (p.334) that his project of identifying the NCC's is what David
Chalmers calls "The Easy Problem". Chalmers argues that solving this
East Problem leaves unresolved The Hard Problem of consciousness: "why
does it exist at all"; the mystery of why "the causation of behavior
should be accompanied by subjective inner life."

Francis Crick, in his Foreward to Koch's book, says simply that "our
strategy has been to try *firs*t to find the neural correlates of
consciousness." \[My emphasis.\] But Koch says that "Characterizing the
NCC is one of the ultimate scientific challenges of our times." This
apparent elevation by Koch of the *first* part of the attack on the
problem of consciousness, namely the "Easy" NCC part, from *preliminary*
to *ultimate* status is probably connected to his assertion that: "I
suspect that the Hard Problem ...will disappear once one has solved the
Easy Problem." (p. 334).

Can we identify the root of this major difference between Chalmers'
position and Koch's? I think so! Chalmers, in his characterization of
his position says. "I have not disputed that the physical world is
causally closed or that behavior can be explained in physical terms."
(Chalmers 1996, p. xiii). But this puts him essentially in the arena of
classical physics, where consciousness is epiphenomenal: where conscious
can do nothing in the physical world not done by the physical aspects
alone. Given Chalmers's underlying acquiescence to epiphenomenalism, it
is no wonder he encounters a hard problem.

Koch seemingly adopts a far more reasonable position! He apparently
believes that consciousness can have real effects in the physical world.
"I argue that consciousness gives access to ... planning...Without
consciousness you would be worse off." (p. 4) He asks " Why then, from
the point of view of evolution, does consciousness exist? What survival
value is attached to consciousness?" (p. 2) "In a fiercely competitive
world consciousness must give the organism an edge over non-conscious
zombies" (p. 231) "Operationally consciousness is needed for nonroutine
tasks...(p. 12)." "The belief that phenomenal consciousness is real but
impotent to influence events in the physical world continues to be
remarkably widespread among modern philosophers. While this idea cannot,
at this point, be proved false, it can be undermined... (p. 238).

Thus Koch appears to be saying, in many places, that, according to his
thinking, consciousness has real physical effects. Presumably, his
position is that consciousness *itself* is doing these things. No one
doubts that neural activities, or brain activities, can have physical
effects: the issue is only whether consciousness *itself, which he
recognizes as being inequivalent to brain state,* can have such effects.
If the NCC's, and the entailed brain states, by themselves, were able to
do whole job, then there would be no justifiable reason to say that
(inequivalent) *consciousness* has important effects, particularly in
this context where the connection between consciousness and brain states
is a key issue.

If Koch indeed believes that consciousness is *not*
epiphenomenal\-\--that it does things *not* done by the NCC's and the
physically entailed brain states alone, and hence can have an
evolutionary reason to exist\-\--then he is going outside classical
physics, which, because it enforces the principle of the causal closure
of the physical, cannot allow anything not *equivalent* to some
physically describable property to have physical consequences. Thus when
Koch claims (p. 11) that his non-epiphenomenal "conscious is fully
compatible with the laws of physics" he cannot be referring to the laws
of classical physics, because classical physics makes consciousness,
insofar as it is not equivalent to a physical property, epiphenomenal.
Since he cannot, rationally, be referring to the laws of deterministic
classical physics, he must be referring to the laws of quantum physics,
which do allow our conscious choices to influence brain activity,
without being equivalent to any physically describable brain activity!

Koch's explanations of the psycho-neurobiological data are in terms of
the essentially classical idea of "victories of coalitions". Thus his
model does not appear to bring in the quantum effects that can actually
allow consciousness to possess the non-epiphenomenal status that he
ascribes to it.

It must be noted, however, that Koch does not always maintain a sharp
distinction between the effects of consciousness and the effects of its
NCC's. For example, on page 18 he begins, promisingly, with the clean
assertion "As I shall argue in Chapter 14, it is quite unlikely that
consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon. Rather consciousness enhances the
survival of its carrier." But he then immediately goes on to say "This
means that the NCC activity must affect other neurons in some manner."
But this is a non sequitur if, as his definition allows, the conscious
event is not equivalent to its NCC, and can occur without it.

This basic conceptual problem (namely the epiphenomenal character of
consciousness within classical physics) points to the logical need, if
consciousness is to have survival value, and one respects the laws of
physics, to bring into the model the quantum effects that allow
consciousness to be non-epiphenomenal. The interesting question, then,
is whether this shift, demanded by rationality, has benefits beyond its
mere rationality.

**[Differences between Koch's explanation of some neurobiological data
and the physics-based explanation]{.underline}**

Koch's [figure 15.1B]{.smallcaps} pertains to an experiment in which a
subject observers a light source that is abruptly turned on, then
maintained at a steady intensity for a certain interval, and then
abruptly turned off. The figure shows a variable that Koch identifies as
a "the 'critical' activity at the essential node for brightness". This
variable rises with time until, at time T~ON,~ it reaches a conjectured
threshold, Threshold~on~. This variable then becomes an NCC, and it
remains so until, at time T~OFF,~ it drops below an [off]{.smallcaps}
threshold, Threshold~off~. During the interval between T~ON~ and T~OFF~
this critical amplitude, labeled NCC, varies greatly, but the brightness
of the light is experienced as *constant*. But why is the experienced
brightness zero before T~ON,~ then *constant* over the period between
T~ON~ and T~OFF,~ while the strength of the driving amplitude is greatly
varying, and then abruptly zero again? One might expect, a priori, from
classical physics, that if the *presence* of the experience depends on
the strength of an amplitude then the *quality* of the experience should
also depend upon the strength of that amplitude, and should therefore
vary over a period during which the strength of driving amplitude is
varying greatly. Why is this not the case?

Koch's explanation of the empirical constancy is this. Coalitions of
neurons, firing in coordinated ways, battle for supremacy. When some
coalition reaches "some sort of threshold" (p. 253) it brings about
coordinated firings in many parts of the brain "until a stable
equilibrium is reached." At this point an experience occurs. After a
while, neural fatigue, and perhaps other factors, causes this state of
stable equilibrium to break down, and the constant experience\-\--say of
brightness\-\-- which has endured unchanging during the period of stable
equilibrium, will abruptly cease to exist.

This process, as conceived of from a classical point of view, is purely
mechanical (i.e., neuro-physiological) with consciousness merely a
*consequence* of the mechanically maintained state of stable
equilibrium, not a causal *contributor* to the endurance of that state..

Once the macroscopic state of stable equilibrium that correlates with
the experience comes mechanically into being it can become a controlling
feature that can mechanically influence a lot of other brain activities,
and one can say that the NCC exercises a sort of top-down control, which
is correlated with the experience that this NCC is the correlate *of*.
There could then be an "illusion" that the conscious experience *itself*
is "causing" the activities that are actually being caused, purely
mechanically, by the stable brain activity that is entailed by the
varying NCC's.

If Koch adheres consistently to this position that all conscious
experiences are *consequences* of physically describable activities, and
that our intuition that our conscious events can influence physically
describable activities is an illusion\-\--that is, if he accepts that
conscious experiences themselves have no effect on physically described
activities\-\--then he will be unable to rationally support his claim
that consciousness aids survival: consciousness cannot aid survival if
it can have no effect on physically describable activities. If,
therefore, he accepts that conscious experiences can influence
physically describable activities, yet are, as he admits, not the same
thing as physically describable activities, he must, perforce, jettison
the constraints imposed by the classical physical principles. Bohr
(1962, p. 60), referring to discrete-event aspect of quantum theory,
emphasizes: "The element of wholeness characterized by the quantum of
action and completely foreign to classical physical principles."

**[Buds of Perception and the Wagon Wheel Illusion]{.underline}**

One of the chief features of (conscious) perception is its discrete "all
or nothing at all" character. William James \[1911\] said of percepts
that:

> a discrete composition is what actually obtains in our perceptual
> experience. We either perceive nothing, or something already there in
> a sensible amount. This fact is what is known in psychology as the
> laws of the 'threshold.' Either your experience is of no content, of
> no change, or it is of a perceptible amount of content or change. Your
> acquaintance with reality grows literally by buds or drops of
> perception. Intellectually and on reflection you can divide these into
> components, but as immediately given they come totally or not at all.

A closely connected phenomenon was discussed by Koch in the same Chapter
15. It is the "wagon wheel illusion". Every cowboy-movie goer is
familiar with the fact that the wheels of a moving wagon sometimes seem
to be turning backward. The explanation is simple: the flickering
sequence of frames catches the wheels at times such that a later spoke
has almost reached the position that an earlier spoke was at in the
previous frame.

But there is a related empirical fact the needs explaining: The same
illusion occurs in broad daylight!

At this point (p.264) Koch says "The implicit assumption up to this
point has been that you and I experience the world in a continuous
fashion: that the seamless nature of perceptual experience is reflected
in the smooth waxing and waning of the NCC".

He goes on to say: "This is not the only possibility. Perception might
well take place in discrete processing epochs, *perceptual moments,
frames, or snapshots."...* "Within one such moment the perception of
brightness, color, depth, and motion would be constant."

Koch goes on to say "Plenty of psychological data favors discrete
perception, with the duration of each snapshot being quite variable,
lasting anywhere between 20 and 200 msec." He cites an extreme example
that was experienced by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. During a visual
migraine Sacks did not see "movements as continuous but rather as a
succession of "stills," a succession of different configurations and
positions, but without any movement in-between, like the flickering of a
film ... run too slow."

Koch's explanation of the evidence in favor of discrete perception, in
terms of what is going on in the continuously changing brain, harks back
to his explanation of the constancy of the perception of the steady
light. He says (p. 264): "Activity at the essential mode for some
attribute would build up until a dominant coalition established itself
and the NCC came into being. If the subject continued to attend to the
stimulus, the dynamics of the system would have to be such that with
some degree of regularity the NCC turn off and on again, constant within
one perceptual moment but changing from one to the next before reaching
a new quasi steady-state."

Koch's explanation of this fundamentally bud-like character of
perception depends upon some putative properties of the mind-brain,
conceived of in classical mechanistic materialist terms that are known
to be fundamentally false. On the other hand, the explanation of this
discreteness within the framework of the principles of quantum physics
stems not from conjectured special properties of the classical
approximation, which eliminates all the physical effects of our
thoughts, but rather from mathematical demands arising from the need to
incorporate rationally into our understanding of all natural phenomena
the profound effects of the quantum of action discovered at the end of
the nineteenth century by Max Planck.

Accepting contemporary physics has the advantage of bringing not only
perception itself, but also the bud-like character of perception into
the theory at the fundamental level, and of also explaining, directly in
terms of the basic known dynamical laws of physics, how consciousness
can causally effect our physical actions, and thereby allow it to aid
survival, as Koch grants that it does

**\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_**

**This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of
High Energy and Nuclear Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under
contract DE-AC02-05CH11231**

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