Neuroleadership Summit\-\--Opening Talk

(Informing executives about the use of recent findings in neuroscience
in the organization and management of businesses.)

Hudson Theater

145 W. 44^th^ NYC

Tuesday, October 28, 2008. \[Revised December 17, 2008\]

1.  During the next few days you will hear about recent neuroscience
    experiments.

2.  These experiments are focused on a specific question: How are your
    conscious thoughts related to physical events in your brain?

3.  But how is this knowledge about the mind-brain connection useful

> in management.

4.  Historically, during the industrial revolution many businesses were
    concerned with the development and use of machinery. Not
    coincidentally the basic science of that era was classical
    mechanics, which is basically a theory of machines.

5.  Today, many businesses are concerned with the development and use of
    knowledge. Not coincidentally the basic science of today is quantum
    theory, which is basically a theory of knowledge.

6.  The transition from classical mechanics to quantum theory occurred
    during the first half of the twentieth century, when experiments
    revealed that the basic principles of classical mechanics failed to
    describe the behavior of mindless atoms, and consequently, failed to
    describe the behavior of systems built solely out of such atoms and
    their associated physical fields

7.  To recover rational order a new perspective on science was adopted.
    Basic physics was converted from a description of mindless machines
    to a theory of how we can put the knowledge we glean from our
    earlier experiences to use in predicting the likelihoods of the
    possible outcomes of the various possible actions between which we
    seem to be able freely to choose.

8.  Basic physics became converted, in this way, from a theory of the
    actions of machines to a theory of the creation and use of
    knowledge.

> 9\. This detailed science-based conception of human beings as creators
> and users of
>
> knowledge is the basis for a science-based theory of the organization
> of businesses in today's knowledge-based economy. Instead of following
> industrial
>
> age models of top-down control of employees, treated as pieces of
> machinery, the

new model accesses the intellectual capacities of workers as
scientifically

> described human agents engaged in the creation and productive use of
> knowledge.

DETAILS

10. The brain is a large lump of matter. The scientific theory of large
    material objects began with the work of Galileo and Newton in the
    seventeenth century. This theory comprehended the motions of large
    visible objects including planets, cannon balls, and falling apples.

11. Newton imagined these large visible objects to be composed of tiny
    hard billiard-ball-like atomic particles that moved about under the
    influence of physical forces generated by other particles, in
    accordance with certain immutable mathematical laws that were
    essentially similar to the forces acting on the planets.

12. The motions of the large visible objects were explainable in terms
    of the forces acting on the invisible atomic particles.

13. Thus physics set forth a single uniform theoretical scheme that
    extended from the smallest to the largest objects in the solar
    system.

14. Newton's theory was deterministic: The motion of every particle and
    every physical object was mathematically determined by the prior
    motions of these physical entities, *without any influence or effect
    coming from the idea-like aspects of reality.*

15. This Newton-type science is called "classical physics". It is purely
    mechanistic, in the sense that *mental/experiential* realities enter
    only as passive witnesses to the causally complete physically
    describable aspects.

16. Because the theory extends from the smallest to the largest objects
    in the solar system, it seemed to scientists unreasonable to exclude
    human beings. Thus human beings were viewed as physical machines
    imbedded in an imbedding machine-like universe.

17. A first philosophical objection to this mechanistic view of the
    universe is that it flagrantly violates of our everyday experience.
    Our conscious efforts SEEM to influence our physical actions. But
    mainline philosophers who accepted this classical-physics-based
    conception of reality countered this objection with the claim that
    what "seems to be" could be\-\--and in this case actually is\-\--an
    "illusion".

18. That conclusion would mean that our basic understanding of our
    connection to the world\-\--the understanding upon which we base our
    entire lives, namely *the idea that we can, by our conscious
    efforts, influence how we act*\-\--is an illusion.

19. A second objection is that a principal purpose of science was
    (according to Sir Francis Bacon) that a scientific understanding of
    nature would allow us to put nature to work improving our lives. But
    our conscious thoughts cannot improve our lives if everything is
    pre-determined by physical properties alone. One cannot act
    rationally while truly believing the claim of classical mechanics
    that conscious thoughts and intentions can have no physical effects!
    Acting on the basis of an unquestioned firm belief in classical
    mechanics is irrational!

20. A third objection pertains to evolution. If our minds have no
    physical effects, then they cannot evolve in accordance with the
    evolutionary law of survival of the fittest: a causally inert
    consciousness cannot affect physical survival.

21. Yet philosophical arguments cannot dislodge a scientific theory that
    works well in actual practice. Classical physics worked well in the
    eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so many philosophers accepted
    it as the final word.

22. But early in the twentieth century physicists began to do
    experiments whose *empirical outcomes could not be reconciled with
    the precepts of classical physics*.

23. A new and empirically adequate physics, called quantum mechanics,
    was created/invented/devised by Heisenberg, Pauli, Bohr, and their
    colleagues.

24. Quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, is not purely
    mechanistic: it brings our conscious intentions explicitly into the
    physical dynamics in a causally effective way.

25. The logical opening for such causal effects stems from a fundamental
    precept of quantum mechanics: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle!

26. This principle converts the precisely determined trajectories of the
    particles of classical mechanics into *smeared out collections of
    "possible" trajectories*.

27. If the quantum mechanical counterpart of the deterministic process
    of classical mechanics, namely the Schroedinger equation, were the
    only process occurring in nature, then the universe would rapidly
    evolve into a continuous smear of possibilities\-\--into a
    continuous smear of possibilities of the kind that we actually
    experience.

28. To bring the theoretical description into accord with our actual
    experience, quantum mechanics introduces a second process. It
    consists of a sequence of events called "collapses of the wave
    function".

29. The utility and validity of the theory rest squarely upon certain
    special presumptions about how these collapses are brought about.

30. According to quantum theory, these collapses are initiated by
    probing actions on the part of observer/agents. Prior to each
    knowledge-increasing experience, a specific Yes/No type question is
    required to be posed by an observer/agent.

31. This question specifies a well defined, *possible experiential
    consequence*. Once the specific question is posed by the
    observer/agent, nature responds either Yes or No, with the relative
    probabilities specified by the quantum mathematics.

32. If the answer is Yes, then all future experiences of all observers
    will conform to the information specified by the specific possible
    experiential consequence.

33. The question posed, and the time at which it is posed, is not
    specified by any known law of physics. This omission produces a
    *causal gap* that breaks the hold of physical determinism, and opens
    the door to a very circumscribed kind of mental causation.

34. Quantum theory allows, and indeed strongly indicates, that the
    content of the question, and the time at which it is posed, can be
    influenced by the agent's mental state. This connection to
    consciousness provides a rationally coherent, mathematically
    specified way for conscious intent to influence brain activity,
    completely within the mathematical framework of contemporary
    physics, and also close in accord with the way in which the theory
    is used in practice.

35. Two key ideas are needed to make this process work. They are
    "template for action" and the "quantum Zeno effect".

36. A "Template for Action" is a pattern of neurological (or brain)
    activity that (1), functions as an executive process that controls
    some other course of brain activity, and that (2), is such that the
    other specified activity will normally occur if the executive
    pattern continues to exist, unabated, for a sufficiently long period
    of time.

37. The "quantum Zeno effect" is a specifically quantum effect that
    tends *to holds in place* a pattern of physical activity if
    recurring probing actions pertaining to its existence, or
    nonexistence, are occurring sufficiently rapidly.

38. It is assumed that *intention density*\-\--the rapidity of probing
    actions\-\--can be increased by conscious effort.

39. This combination of features leads to a quantum description of how
    conscious intent influences brain activity.

40. This quantum description exists *now*, today, whereas the
    alternative classical understanding yields what Sir Karl Popper
    calls "promissory materialism": it exist only as a *promise* that
    anunderstanding will eventually come about, sometime in the future.
    Such a theory is not immediately useful. Moreover, the likelihood
    that this promise will ever be fulfilled is rendered remote by the
    fact that classical mechanics, by its basic structure, completely
    leaves out all mental aspects of nature. Why should a
    known-to-be-false conception of nature be able to account for
    features that it specifically ignores?

41. The quantum account of the mental effects *acts strictly within the
    latitude opened up by the uncertainty principle*, and this latitude
    shrinks to zero in the classical approximation. This makes the
    failure of classical physics to account for the effects of
    consciousness completely understandable.

42. This quantum understanding in terms of templates for action held in
    place by an intention-activated quantum Zeno effect provides a way
    of understanding, dynamically, the neuroscience data that you will
    be hearing about.