QUANTUM Physics in Neuroscience AND PSYCHOLOGY: A NEW MODEL WITH RESPECT
TO MIND/BRAIN INTERACTION

Jeffrey M. Schwartz ^1^

Henry P. Stapp ^2^

Mario Beauregard ^3,\ 4,\ 5,\ 6\*^

1 UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, 760 Westwood Plaza, C8-619 NPI Los
Angeles, California 90024-1759, USA. E-mail: <jmschwar@ucla.edu>

2 Theoretical Physics Mailstop 5104/50A Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-8162,
USA. Email: hpstapp@lbl.gov

3 Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128,
succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3J7.

4 Département de radiologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128,
succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3J7.

5 Centre de recherche en sciences neurologiques (CRSN), Université de
Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada,
H3C 3J7.

6 Groupe de Recherche en Neuropsychologie Expérimentale et Cognition
(GRENEC), Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-Ville,
Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3J7.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

> \*Correspondence should be addressed to: Mario Beauregard, Département
> de psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale
> Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3J7. Tel (514) 340‑3540
> #4129; Fax: (514) 340‑3548; E-mail: <mario.beauregard@umontreal.ca>

Short abstract

Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behavior generally
posits that brain mechanisms fully suffice to explain all
psychologically described phenomena. Terms having intrinsic experiential
content (e.g., \"feeling,\" \"knowing\" and \"effort\") are not included
as causal factors because they are deemed irrelevant to the causal
mechanisms of brain function. However, principles of quantum physics
causally relate mental and physical properties. Use of this causal
connection allows neuroscientists and psychologists to more adequately
and effectively investigate the neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the
growing number of studies of the capacity of directed attention and
mental effort to systematically alter brain function.

Long abstract

The cognitive frame in which most neuropsychological research on the
neural basis of behavior is conducted contains the assumption that brain
mechanisms *per se* fully suffice to explain all psychologically
described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain
is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all
causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience must therefore be formulated
solely in terms of properties of these elements. One consequence of this
stance is that psychological terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or
experiential content (terms such as \"feeling,\" \"knowing\" and
\"effort) have not been included as primary causal factors in
neuropsychological research: insofar as properties are not described in
material terms they are deemed irrelevant to the causal mechanisms
underlying brain function. However, the origin of this demand that
experiential realities be excluded from the causal base is a theory of
nature that has been known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than
three quarters of a century. It is explained here why it is consequently
scientifically unwarranted to assume that material factors alone can in
principle explain all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience. More
importantly, it is explained how a key quantum effect can be introduced
into brain dynamics in a simple and practical way that provides a
rationally coherent, causally formulated, physics-based way of
understanding and using the psychological and physical data derived from
the growing set of studies of the capacity of directed attention and
mental effort to systematically alter brain function.

Key words: attention, brain, consciousness, mental effort, mind,
neuropsychology, neuroscience, quantum physics, self-directed
neuroplasticity.

1\. Introduction

The introduction into neuroscience and neuropsychology of the extensive
use of functional brain imaging technology has led to a major conceptual
advance pertaining to the role of directed attention in cerebral
functioning. On the empirical side the identification of brain areas
involved in a wide variety of information processing functions
concerning learning, memory and various kinds of symbol manipulation has
been the object of a large amount of intensive investigation (See Toga &
Mazziotta 2000). As a result neuroscientists now have a reasonably good
working knowledge of the role of a variety of brain areas in the
processing of complex information. But, valuable as these empirical
studies are, they provide only the data for, not the answer to, the
critical question of the causal relationship between the psychologically
described information and the central nervous system (CNS) mechanisms
that process this information. In the vast majority of cases
investigators simply assume that measurable properties of the brain are
the only factors needed to explain, at least in principle, all of the
types of information processing that are experimentally observed. This
privileging of physically describable brain mechanisms as the core, and
indeed final, explanatory vehicle for the processing of every kind of
psychologically formulated data is, in fact, the foundational assumption
of almost all contemporary biologically based cognitive neuroscience.

It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that there is at least one
type of information processing and manipulation that does not readily
lend itself to explanations that assume that all final causes are
subsumed within brain, or more generally, CNS mechanisms. The cases in
question are those in which the conscious act of willfully altering the
mode by which experiential information is processed itself changes, in
systematic ways, the cerebral mechanisms utilized. There is a growing
recognition of the theoretical importance of applying experimental
paradigms that employ directed mental effort in order to produce
systematic and predictable changes in brain function (e.g., Beauregard
et al. 2001; Ochsner et al. 2002). These wilfully induced brain changes
are generally accomplished through training in the cognitive
reattribution and attentional recontextualization of conscious
experience. Further, an accelerating number of studies in the
neuroimaging literature significantly support the thesis that, again,
with appropriate training and effort, people can systematically alter
neural circuitry associated with a variety of mental and physical states
that are frankly pathological (Schwartz et al. 1996; Schwartz 1998;
Musso et al. 1999; Paquette et al. 2003). A recent review of this and
the related neurological literature has coined the term "self-directed
neuroplasticity" to serve as a general description of the principle that
focused training and effort can systematically alter cerebral function
in a predictable and potentially therapeutic manner (Schwartz & Begley
2002).

From a theoretical perspective perhaps the most important aspect of this
line of empirical research is the direct relevance it has to new
developments in our understanding of the physics of the interface
between mind/consciousness and brain. Until recently virtually all
attempts to understand the functional activity of the brain have been
based ultimately on principles of classical physics that have been known
to be fundamentally false for three quarters of a century. A basic
feature of that classical conception of the world is that all causal
connections are carried by, and are completely explainable in terms of,
direct interactions between material realities. This truncated view of
causation is not entailed by the current principles of physics, which
provide a far more adequate and useful foundation for the description
and understanding the causal structure of self-directed neuroplasticity.
The superiority of contemporary physics in this context stems from two
basic facts. First, terms such as "feeling," "knowing" and "effort,"
because they are intrinsically mentalistic and experiential, cannot be
described exclusively in terms of material structure. And second,
mentalistic terminology of precisely this kind is critically necessary
for the design and execution of the experiments in which the data
demonstrating the core phenomena of self-directed neuroplasticity are
acquired and described. Thus the strictly materialistic principles of
causation to which one is restricted by the form of classical physics
enforce a causal and semantic gap between the neurological and
psychological parts of the data of self-directed neuroplastic phenomena.
On the other hand, physics, as it is currently practiced, utilizes
quantum principles that, as we shall explain in detail, fully allow for
the scientific integration of mentalistic and neurophysiological
terminology. These principles provide for logically coherent rational
explanations that are entirely capable of accounting for the causal
mechanisms necessary to understand the rapidly emerging field of
self-directed neuroplasticity.

In order to explicate the physics of the interface between
mind/consciousness and brain, we shall in this article describe in
detail just how the quantum mechanically based causal mechanisms work,
and show why it is necessary in principle to advance to the quantum
level to achieve an adequate understanding of neurophysiology during
volitionally directed activity. The reason, basically, is that classical
physics is an approximation to the more accurate quantum theory, and
this approximation eliminates the causal efficacy of our conscious
efforts that is manifested in these experiments.

The theoretically important point is that classical physics, and the
associated doctrine of materialism, fail to coherently explain
self-directed neuroplastic phenomena, while the quantum mechanical
principles that causally integrate mentalistic and physicalistic data
clearly and explicitly do. Because experientially based language is not
logically reducible to classical materialist terminology, yet such
mentalistic language is a logical pre-requisite for the design,
execution, and description of volitionally directed neuroplastic
phenomena, the attempt to explain such phenomena in solely materialist
terms must be abandoned as a matter of principle: the logical structure
of materialism is inadequate in these cases. In the light of the causal
structure of quantum physics, as described in some detail in later
sections of this article, the case for giving brain mechanisms a
privileged position as the sole cause of our conscious efforts, and of
their consequences, has become radically atheoretical and ungrounded in
reason.

Let us be entirely clear about the sort of neuroscientific reasoning
that remains coherent, given the structure of modern physics, and,
contrastingly, the types of assertions that should now be viewed as
merely the residue and cultural baggage of a materialistic bias stemming
from superceded physical concepts. Entirely acceptable are
**correlational analyses** concerning the relationship between
mentalistic data and neurophysiological mechanisms. Examining the
qualitative and quantitative aspects of brain function, and doing
detailed analyses of how they relate to the data of experience, obtained
through increasingly sophisticated means of psychological investigation
and subject self-report analysis (e.g., the entire Sep/Oct 2003 issue of
Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 10, Number 9-10, is dedicated
to these issues), can now be seen as being both completely in line with
fundamental physics, and also the core structure of neuropsychological
science. To a significant degree this is already the case. However, what
is not justified is the assumption that *all* aspects of experience
examined and reported are necessarily causal consequences solely of
brain mechanisms that are in principle observable. The structure of
modern physics entails no such conclusion. This is particularly relevant
to data from first person reports concerning active willfully directed
attentional focus, and especially to data regarding which aspects of the
stream of conscious awareness a subject chooses to focus on when making
self-directed efforts to modify and/or modulate the quality and beam of
attention. In such cases the structure of orthodox quantum physics
implies that the investigator is not justified in assuming that the
focus of attention is determined wholly by brain mechanisms that are in
principle completely well defined and mechanically determined. Conscious
effort itself can justifiably be taken to be a primary variable whose
complete causal origins may be untraceable in principle, but whose
causal efficacy in the physical world is real.

The quantum mechanical principles that causally integrate mental and
physical phenomena, which are separately taken to be to be both
indispensable and irreducible, provide a rationally coherent foundation
for modern neuroscience and neuropsychology.

# 2. Practical and theoretical aspects of self-directed neuroplasticity

The cognitive frame in which neuroscience research, including research
on cerebral aspects of behavior, is generally conducted contains within
it the assumption that brain mechanisms *per se*, once discovered, are
fully sufficient to explain whatever phenomenon is being investigated.
In the fields of neuroimaging this has led to experimental paradigms
that primarily focus on changes in brain tissue activation as primary
dependent variables used to explain whatever behavioral changes are
observed \-\-- including ones understood as involving essentially
cognitive and emotional responses. As long as one is investigating
phenomena that are mostly passive in nature this may well be fully
justified. A person is shown a picture depicting an emotionally or
perhaps a sexually arousing scene. The relevant limbic and/or
diencephalic structures are activated. The investigator generally
concludes that the observed brain activation has some intrinsic causal
role in the emotional changes reported (or perhaps, the hormonal
correlates of those changes). All is well and good, as far as it goes.
And all quite passive from the experimental subject's perspective \-\--
all that's really required on his or her part is to remain reasonably
awake and alert, or, more precisely, at least somewhat responsive to
sensory inputs. But when, as happens in a growing number of studies, the
subject makes an active response aimed at systematically *altering* the
nature of the emotional reaction \-\-- for example by actively
performing a cognitive reattribution \-\-- understanding the data solely
from the perspective of brain-based causal mechanism can be severely
limiting and counterproductive. This is especially so when one is
investigating how to develop improved methods for altering the emotional
and cerebral responses to significantly stressful external or internally
generated stimuli.

Simply stated, the prevailing prejudices, unsupported by contemporary
physics, about the respective causal roles of neurophysiologically and
mentalistically described variables seriously limits the scope and
utility of the present matter-based theory of conscious-brain activity.
While one may immediately grant that that these two types of variables
are quite intimately related, and that complete clarity concerning their
respective role in any given human action can be difficult (and
sometimes even impossible), the fact remains that the serious
investigator of human neuropsychology must make a concerted effort to
sort out the differences. This is especially so when the phenomena under
investigation are value-laden, i.e., involve the possibility of making
choices and decisions about how to respond to sensory phenomena.

In the case of studying clinical phenomena such as psychological
treatments and their biological effects the distinction between mind and
brain (or, if one prefers, mentalistic and neurophysiological variables)
becomes absolutely critical. That's because if one simply assumes the
most common generic belief of our era of neuroscience research, namely
that all aspects of emotional response are passively determined by
neurobiological mechanisms, then the possibility of developing genuinely
effective self-directed psychological strategies that cause real
neurobiological changes becomes, in principle, impossible. The clinician
thus becomes locked, as it were, into at least the implicit view that
the psychological treatment of ailments caused by neurobiological
impairments is not a realistic goal.

There is already a wealth of data arguing against this view. For
instance, work in the 1990's on patients with obsessive compulsive
disorder demonstrated significant changes in caudate nucleus metabolism
and the functional relationships of the orbitofrontal
cortex-striatum-thalamus circuitry in patients who responded to a
psychological treatment utilizing cognitive reframing and attentional
refocusing as key aspects of the therapeutic intervention (for review
see Schwartz & Begley 2002). More recently work by Beauregard and
colleagues (Paquette et al. 2003) have demonstrated systematic changes
in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and parahippocampal gyrus after
cognitive-behavioral therapy for spider phobia, with brain changes
significantly related to both objective measurements and subjective
reports of fear and aversion. There are now numerous reports on the
effects of self-directed regulation of emotional response, via cognitive
reframing and attentional recontextualization mechanisms, on cerebral
function (e.g., Beauregard et al. 2001; Lévesque et al. 2003; Ochsner et
al. 2002 ; Paquette et al. 2003 ; Schwartz et al. 1996).

The brain area generally activated in all the studies done so far on the
self-directed regulation of emotional response is the prefrontal cortex,
an area of the brain also activated in studies of cerebral correlates of
willful mental activity, particularly those investigating self-initiated
action and the act of attending to one's own actions (Spence & Frith
1999; Schwartz & Begley 2002). There is however one aspect of willful
mental activity that seems particularly critical to emotional
self-regulation and seems to be the critical factor in it's effective
application \-\-- the factor of focused dispassionate self-observation
that, in a rapidly growing number of clinical psychology studies, has
come to be called mindfulness or mindful awareness (Segal et al. 2002)

The mental act of clear-minded introspection and observation, variously
known as mindfulness, mindful awareness, bare attention, the impartial
spectator, etc. is a well-described psychological phenomenon with a long
and distinguished history in the description of human mental states
(Nyanaponika 2000). The most systematic and extensive exposition is in
the canonical texts of classical Buddhism preserved in the Pali
language, a dialect of Sanskrit. Because of the critical importance of
this type of close attentiveness in the practice of Buddhist meditation
some of it's most refined descriptions in English are in texts concerned
with meditative practice (although it is of critical importance to
realize that the mindful mental state does not require any specific
meditative practice to acquire, and is *certainly not* in any sense a
"trance-like" state). One particularly well-established description,
using the name bare attention, is as follows:

> "Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what
> actually happens *to* us and *in* us at the successive moments of
> perception. It is called \'Bare\' because it attends just to the bare
> facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical
> senses or through the mind . . . without reacting to them."
> (Nyanaponika 1973, p.30)

Perhaps the essential characteristic of mindful observation is that you
are just watching, observing all facts, both inner and outer, very
calmly, clearly, and closely.

A working hypothesis for ongoing investigation in human neurophysiology,
based on a significant body of preliminary data, is that the mental
action of mindful awareness specifically modulates the activity of the
prefrontal cortex. Because of the well established role of this cortical
area in the planning and willful selection of self-initiated responses
(Spence & Frith 1999; Schwartz & Begley 2002) the capacity of mindful
awareness, and by implication all emotional self-regulating strategies,
to specifically modulate activity in this critical brain region has
tremendous implications for the fields of mental health and related
areas.

The major theoretical issue we are attempting to address in this article
is the failure of classical models of neurobiological action to provide
a scientifically adequate account for all of the mechanisms that are
operating when human beings utilize self-directed strategies for the
purpose of modulating emotional responses and their cerebral correlates.
Specifically, the assumption that all aspects of mental activity and
emotional life are ultimately explicable solely in terms of micro-local
deterministic brain activity, with no superposed effects of mental
effort, produces a theoretical structure that both fails to meet
practical scientific needs, and also fails to accommodate the causal
structure of modern physics. The simple classical model must in
principle be replaced by the physically more accurate and functionally
more useful concept in which the role played by the mind when observing
and modulating one's own emotional states is an intrinsically active and
physically efficacious process in which mental action is *affecting*
brain activity and not merely being affected by it. One key reason for
the necessity of this change in perspective is the fact that recognition
of the active character of the mind in emotional self-regulation is
needed both to subjectively access the phenomena, and to objectively
describe what is subjectively happening when a person directs his or her
inner resources to the challenging task of modifying emotional
responses. It takes *effort* for people to do this. That is because it
requires a redirection of the brain's resources away from lower level
limbic responses and toward higher level prefrontal functions \-\-- and
this does not happen passively. Rather, it requires willful training and
directed effort. It is semantically inconsistent, clinically counter
productive, and to insist that these kinds of brain changes be viewed as
being solely an intra-cerebral "the physical brain changing itself" type
of action. That is because features of the activity essential to its
identification, activation, and use are not describable solely in terms
of material brain mechanisms.

Furthermore, as we will see in detail in the following sections of this
article, orthodox concepts of contemporary physics are ideally suited to
a rational and practical understanding of the action of mindful
self-observation on brain function. Classical models of physics, which
view all action in the physical world as being ultimately the result of
the movements of material particles, are now seriously out of date, and
no longer should be seen as providing the only, or the best, paradigm
for investigating the interface between mind/consciousness and brain.

Does it make scientific good sense to try to understand the process of
self-directed neuroplasticity solely in terms of brain mechanisms?

For at least one quite straightforward reason it seems clear that it
does not. That reason is that it is intrinsically impossible to explain
and describe to real people the techniques they must learn to perform
and strategies required to initiate and sustain self-directed
neuroplastic changes without using language that contains instructions
about what to do with your mind, i.e., without using terms referring to
mental experience, words like: feeling, effort, observation, awareness,
mindfulness and so forth. When people practice self-directed activities
for the purpose of systematically altering patterns of cerebral
activation they are attending to their mental and emotional
*experiences*, not merely their limbic or hypothalamic brain mechanisms.
And while no scientifically oriented person denies that those brain
mechanisms play a critical role in generating those experiences,
precisely what the person is training himself to do is to willfully
*change* how those brain mechanisms operate \-\-- and to do that
absolutely requires attending to mental experience *per se*. It is in
fact the basic thesis of self-directed neuroplasticity research that the
*way* in which a person directs his attention, e.g., mindfully or
unmindfully, will affect both the experiential state of the person and
the state of their brain.

The very acquisition of the skills required in order to change the
brain, especially in the attempt to alleviate stressful and/or
patholological conditions, requires understanding what it means to
observe mindfully etc., and learning those skills cannot be accomplished
via the sole use of neurobiological terminology \-\-- the language of
mental experience must of necessity be utilized. A growing body of
research informs us that when people learn to systematically alter their
emotional and/or behavioral responses to stressful stimuli it modulates
the activity of the prefrontal cortex, among other areas. But to merely
say to someone "Now modulate your prefrontal cortex," just like that, is
not, in and of itself, a meaningful use of language. This is so because
in the absence of some kind of learning and/or training process that in
principle *must* make use of the language of personal experience, it is
intrinsically impossible for any real living person to know *how to*
modulate their prefrontal cortex. For experimental subjects to actually
learn and operationalize the skills and techniques necessary for the
collection of the data that demonstrate the phenomena of self-directed
neuroplasticity *requires* the use of mind-based experiential language.
The assertion that a science of self-directed action could possibly be
elaborated within a purely materialist framework is neither semantically
coherent nor entailed by the principles of modern physics.

People can certainly learn how to be mindful, and when they do it
changes brain function in very beneficial ways. But to effect and
accomplish those brain changes requires the language of mental
experience and activity in basic and irreducible ways \-\-- it can never
be accomplished solely by the use of brain-based language. This
straightforward fact tells us that the language of neurobiology will
never be sufficient for the effective self-regulation of brain activity.
The language of the active mind is an absolute logical requirement. As
we will now see, contemporary physical theory contains a prepared place
for the needed causal intervention in brain activity of conscious
volition.

3\. Classical physics

Classical physics is a theory of nature that originated with the work of
Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century and was advanced by the
contributions of James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. Newton based
his theory on the work of Johannes Kepler, who found that the planets
appeared to move in accordance with a simple mathematical law, and in
ways wholly determined by their spatial relationships to other objects.
Those motions were apparently *independent of our human observations of
them*.

Newton assumed that all physical objects were made of tiny miniaturized
versions of the planets, which, like the planets, moved in accordance
with simple mathematical laws, independently of whether we observed them
of not. He found that he could explain the motions of the planets, and
also the motions of large terrestrial objects and systems, such as
cannon balls, falling apples, and the tides, by assuming that every tiny
planet-like particle in the solar system attracted every other one with
a force inversely proportional the square of the distance between them.

This force was an *instantaneous action at a distance*: it acted
instantaneously, no matter how far the particles were apart. This
feature troubled Newton. He wrote to a friend "That one body should act
upon another through the vacuum, without the mediation of anything else,
by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to
another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has
in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall
into it." (Newton 1687: 634) Although Newton's philosophical persuasion
on this point is clear, he nevertheless formulated his universal law of
gravity without specifying how it was mediated.

Albert Einstein, building on the ideas of Maxwell, discovered a suitable
mediating agent: a distortion of the structure of space-time itself.
Einstein's contributions made classical physics into what is called a
*local theory*: there is no action at a distance. All influences are
transmitted essentially by contact interactions between tiny neighboring
mathematically described "entities," and no influence propagates faster
than the speed of light.

Classical physics is, moreover, *deterministic*: the interactions are
such that the state of the physical world at any time is completely
determined by the state at any earlier time. Consequently, according to
classical theory, the complete history of the physical world *for all
time* is mechanically fixed by contact interactions between tiny
component parts, together with the initial condition of the primordial
universe.

This result means that, according to classical physics, *you are a
mechanical automaton*: your every physical action was pre-determined
before you were born solely by mechanical interactions between tiny
mindless entities. Your mental aspects are *causally redundant*:
everything you do is completely determined by mechanical conditions
alone, without reference to your thoughts, ideas, feelings, or
intentions. Your intuitive feeling that your mental intentions make a
difference in what you do is, according to the principles of classical
physics, a false and misleading illusion.

There are two possible ways within classical physics to understand this
total incapacity of your mental side (i.e., mental processes and
consciousness) to make any difference in what you do. The first way is
to consider your thoughts ideas, and feelings to be epiphenomenal
by-products of the activity of your brain. Your mental side is then a
causally impotent sideshow that *is* *produced*, or *caused*, by your
brain, but that *produces* no reciprocal action back upon your brain.
The second way is to contend that each or your conscious experiences
\-\-- each of your thoughts, ideas, or feelings \-\-- is the *very same
thing* as some pattern of motion of various tiny parts of your brain.

4\. Problems with classical physics

William James (1890: 138) argued against the first possibility,
epiphenomenal consciousness, by arguing that "*The particulars of the
distribution of consciousness*, so far as we know them, *points to its
being efficacious.*" He noted that consciousness seems to be "an organ,
superadded to the other organs which maintain the animal in its struggle
for existence; and the presumption of course is that it helps him in
some way in this struggle, just as they do. But it cannot help him
without being in some way efficacious and influencing the course of his
bodily history." James said that the study described in his book "will
show us that consciousness is at all times primarily a *selecting
agency*." It is present when choices must be made between different
possible courses of action. He further mentioned that "It is to my mind
quite inconceivable that consciousness should have *nothing to do* with
a business to which it so faithfully attends."(1890: 136)

If mental processes and consciousness have no effect upon the physical
world, then what keeps a person's mental world aligned with his physical
situation? What keeps his pleasures in general alignment with actions
that benefit him, and pains in general correspondence with things that
damage him, if pleasure and pain have no effect at all upon his actions?

These liabilities of the notion of epiphenomenal mind and consciousness
lead most thinkers to turn to the alternative possibility that a
person's mind and stream of consciousness are *the very same thing* as
some activity in his brain: mind and consciousness are "emergent
properties" of brains.

A huge philosophical literature has developed arguing for and against
this idea. The primary argument against this "emergent-identity theory"
position, *within a classical physics framework*, is that within
classical physics the full description of nature is in terms of numbers
assigned to tiny space-time regions, and there appears to be no way to
understand or explain how to get from such a restricted conceptual
structure, which involves such a small part of the world of experience,
to the whole. How and why should that extremely limited conceptual
structure, which arose basically from idealizing, by miniaturization,
certain features of observed planetary motions, suffice to explain the
totality of experience, with its pains, sorrows, hopes, colors, smells,
and moral judgments? Why, *given the known failure of classical physics
at the fundamental level*, should that richly endowed whole be
explainable in terms of such a narrowly restricted part?

The core ideas of the arguments in favor of an identity-emergent theory
of mind and consciousness are illustrated by Roger Sperry's example of a
"wheel." (Sperry 1992) A wheel obviously does something: it is causally
efficacious; it carries the cart. It is also an *emergent property*:
there is no mention of "wheelness" in the formulation of the laws of
physics, and "wheelness" did not exist in the early universe;
"wheelness" *emerges* only under certain special conditions. And the
macroscopic wheel exercises "top-down" control of its tiny parts. All
these properties are perfectly in line with classical physics, and with
the idea that "a wheel is, precisely, a structure constructed out of its
tiny atomic parts." So why not suppose mind and consciousness to be,
like "wheelness", emergent properties of their classically conceived
tiny physical parts?

The reason that mind and consciousness are not analogous to wheelness,
within the context of classical physics, is that the properties that
characterize wheelness are properties that are *entailed,* within the
conceptual framework of classical physics, by properties specified in
classical physics, whereas the properties that characterize conscious
mental processes, namely the way it feels, are not *entailed,* within
the conceptual structure provided by classical physics, by the
properties specified by classical physics.

This is the huge difference-in-principle that distinguishes mind and
consciousness from things that, according to classical physics, are
constructible out of the particles that are postulated to exist by
classical physics.

Given the state of motion of each of the tiny physical parts of a wheel,
as it is conceived of in classical physics, the properties that
characterize the wheel - e.g., its roundness, radius, center point, rate
of rotation, etc., - are specified within the conceptual framework
provided by the principles of classical physics, which specify only
geometric-type properties such as changing locations and shapes of
conglomerations of particles, and numbers assigned to points in space.
But given the state of motion of each tiny part of the brain, as it is
conceived of in classical physics, the properties that characterize the
stream of consciousness - the painfulness of the pain, the feeling of
the anguish, or of the sorrow, or of the joy - are not specified, within
the conceptual framework provided by the principles of classical
physics. Thus it is possible, within that classical physics framework,
to strip away those feelings without disturbing the physical
descriptions of the motions of the tiny parts. One can, within the
conceptual framework of classical physics, take away the consciousness
while leaving intact the properties that enter into that theoretical
construct, namely the locations and motions of the tiny physical parts
of the brain and its physical environment. But one cannot, within the
conceptual framework provided by classical physics, take away the
wheelness of the wheel without affecting the locations and motions of
the tiny physical parts of a wheel.

Because one can, within the conceptual framework provided by classical
physics, strip away mind and consciousness without affecting the
physical behavior, one cannot rationally claim, within that framework,
that mind and consciousness are the *causes* of the physical behavior,
or are *causally efficacious* in the physical world. Thus the "identity
theory" or "emergent property" strategy fails in its attempt to make
mind and consciousness efficacious, within the conceptual framework
provided by classical physics. Moreover, the whole endeavor to base
brain theory on classical physics is undermined by the fact that the
classical theory fails to work for phenomena that depend critically upon
the properties of the atomic constituents of the behaving system, and
brains are such systems: brain processes depend critically upon synaptic
processes, which depend critically upon ionic processes that are highly
dependent upon their quantum nature. This essential involvement of
quantum effects will be discussed in detail in a later section.

5\. The Quantum approach

Classical physics is *an approximation* to a more accurate theory -
called quantum mechanics - and quantum mechanics makes mind and
consciousness efficacious. Quantum mechanics *explains* the causal
effects of mental intentions upon physical systems: it explains how your
mental effort can influence the brain events that cause your body to
move. Thus quantum theory converts science's picture of you from that of
a mechanical automaton to that of a mindful human person. Quantum theory
also shows, explicitly, how the approximation that reduces quantum
theory to classical physics completely eliminates all effects of your
conscious thoughts upon your brain and body. Hence, from a physics point
of view, trying to understand the connection between mind/consciousness
and brain by going to the classical approximation is absurd: it amounts
to trying to understand something in an approximation that eliminates
the effect you are trying to study.

Quantum mechanics arose during the twentieth century. Scientists
discovered, empirically, that the principles of classical physics were
not correct. Moreover, they were wrong in ways that no minor tinkering
could ever fix. The *basic principles* of classical physics were thus
replaced by *new basic principles* that account uniformly both for all
the successes of the older classical theory and also for all the newer
data that is incompatible with the classical principles.

The most profound alteration of the fundamental principles was to bring
the mind and consciousness of human beings into the basic structure of
the physical theory. In fact, the whole *conception of what science is*
was turned inside out. The core idea of classical physics was to
describe the "world out there," with no reference to "our thoughts in
here." But the core idea of quantum mechanics is to describe *our
activities as knowledge-seeking human agents*, and *the knowledge that
we thereby acquire*. Thus quantum theory involves, basically, what is
"in here," not just what is "out there."

The basic philosophical shift in quantum theory is the *explicit*
recognition that science is about *what we can know*. It is fine to have
a beautiful and elegant mathematical theory about a *really* *existing
physical world out there* that meets a lot of intellectually satisfying
criteria. But the essential demand of science is that the theoretical
constructs be tied to the experiences of the human scientists who devise
ways of testing the theory, and of the human engineers and technicians
who both participate in these test, and eventually put the theory to
work. So the structure of a proper physical theory must involve not only
the part describing the behavior of the not-directly-experienced
theoretically postulated entities, expressed in some appropriate
symbolic language, but also a part describing the human experiences that
are pertinent to these tests and applications, expressed in the language
that we actually use to describe such experiences to ourselves and each
other. Finally we need some "bridge laws" that specify the connection
between the concepts described in these two different languages.

Classical physics met these requirements in a rather trivial kind of
way, with the relevant experiences of the human participants being taken
to be direct apprehensions of gross behaviors of large-scale properties
of big objects composed of huge numbers of the tiny atomic-scale parts.
These apprehensions \-\-- of, for example, the perceived location and
motion of a falling apple, or the position of a pointer on a measuring
device \-\-- were taken to be *passive*: they had no effect on the
behaviors of the systems being studied. But the physicists who were
examining the behaviors of systems that depend sensitively upon the
behaviors of their tiny atomic-scale components found themselves forced
to go to a less trivial theoretical arrangement, in which the human
agents were no longer passive observers, but were *active participants*
in ways that contradicted, and were impossible to comprehend within, the
general framework of classical physics, *even when the only features of
the physically described world that the human beings observed were
large-scale properties of measuring devices.* The sensitivity of the
behavior of the devices to the behavior of some tiny atomic-scale
particles propagates in such a way that the acts of observation by the
human observers of *large scale properties of the devices* could no
longer be regarded as passive. Thus the core structure of the basic
general physical theory became transformed in a profound way: the
connection between physical behavior and human knowledge was changed
from a one-way bridge to a mathematically specified two-way bridge. This
revision must be expected to have important ramifications in
neuroscience, because the issue of the connection between
mind/consciousness (the psychologically described aspects of a human
being) and brain/body (the physically described aspects of that person)
has recently become a matter of central concern in neuroscience.

This original formulation of quantum theory was created mainly at an
Institute in Copenhagen directed by Niels Bohr, and is called "The
Copenhagen Interpretation." Due to the profound strangeness of the
conception of nature entailed by the new mathematics, the Copenhagen
strategy was to refrain from making any ontological claims, but to take,
instead, an essentially pragmatic stance. Thus the theory was formulated
*basically* as a set of practical rules for how scientists should go
about their tasks of acquiring knowledge, and then using this knowledge
in practical ways. Speculations about "what the world out there is
really like" were discouraged.

The most profound change in the principles is encapsulated in Niels Bohr
dictum that " in the great drama of existence we ourselves are both
actors and spectators." (Bohr 1963: 15 and 1958: 81) The emphasis here
is on "actors": in classical physics we were mere spectators.

Copenhagen quantum theory is about the relationships between human
agents (called *participants* by John Wheeler) and the systems that they
act upon. In order to achieve this conceptualization the Copenhagen
formulation separates the physical universe into two parts, which are
described in two different languages. One part is the observing human
agent and his measuring devices. This extended "agent," which includes
the devices, is described in mental terms - in terms of our instructions
to colleagues about how to set up the devices, and our reports of what
we then "see," or otherwise consciously experience. The other part of
nature is *the* *system that the "agent" is acting upon*. That part is
described in physical terms - in terms of mathematical properties
assigned to tiny space-time regions. Thus Copenhagen quantum theory
brings "doing science" into science. In particular, it brings a crucial
part of doing science, namely our *choices* about how to probe physical
systems, directly into the causal structure. And it describes the
non-trivial effects of these choices upon the systems being probed.

This approach works very well in practice. However, it seems apparent
that the body and brain of the human agent, and his devices, are parts
of the physical universe, and hence that a complete theory ought to be
able to describe also our bodies and brains in physical terms. On the
other hand, the structure of the theory depends critically also upon
aspects of reality described in mentalistic language as our intentional
probing actions and the resulting experiential feedbacks.

The great mathematician and logician John Von Neumann reformulated the
theory in a rigorous way that allows the bodies and brains of the
agents, along with their measuring devices, to be placed in the
physically described world, *while retaining those mentalistically
described properties of the agents that are essential to the causal
structure of the theory.* It is this von Neumann formulation that
provides a natural science-based account of how your mental intentions
influence the activities of your brain and body.

Von Neumann identifies two very different processes that enter into the
quantum theoretical description of the evolution of a physical system.
He calls them Process 1 and Process 2 (Von Neumann 1955: 418). Process 2
is the analog in quantum theory of the process in classical physics that
takes the state of a system at one time to its state at a later time.
This Process 2, like its classical analog, is *local* and
*deterministic*. However, Process 2 by itself is not the whole story: it
generates "physical worlds" that do not agree with human experiences.
For example, if Process 2 were, from the time of the Big Bang, the
*only* process in nature, then the quantum state of the moon would
represent a structure smeared out over large part of the sky, and each
human body-brain would likewise be represented by a structure smeared
out continuously over a huge region.

To tie the quantum mathematics to human experience in a rationally
coherent and mathematically specified way quantum theory invokes
*another process*, which Von Neumann calls Process 1.

Any physical theory must, in order to be complete, specify how the
elements of the theory are connected to human experience. In classical
physics this connection is part of a *metaphysical* superstructure: it
is not part of the core dynamical description. But in quantum theory
this connection of the mathematically described physical state to human
experiences is placed *within the causal structure.* And this connecting
process is not passive: it does not represent a mere *witnessing* of a
physical feature of nature by a passive mind. Rather, the process is
active: it projects into the physical state of the system being acted
upon properties that depend upon the choices made by the agent.

Quantum theory is built upon the practical concept of intentional
actions by agents. Each such action is expected or intended to produce
an experiential response or feedback. For example, a scientist might act
to place a Geiger counter near a radioactive source, and expect to see
the counter either "fire" during a certain time interval or not "fire"
during that interval. The experienced response, "Yes" or "No", to the
question "Does the counter fire during the specified interval?"
specifies one bit of information. Quantum theory is thus an
information-based theory built upon the knowledge-acquiring actions of
agents, and the knowledge that these agents thereby acquire.

Probing actions of this kind are performed not only by scientists. Every
healthy and alert infant is engaged in making willful efforts that
produce experiential feedbacks, and he/she soon begins to form
expectations about what sorts of feedbacks are likely to follow from
some particular kind of effort. Thus both empirical science and normal
human life are based on paired realities of this action-response kind,
and our physical and psychological theories are both basically
attempting to understand these linked realities within a rational
conceptual framework.

The basic building blocks of quantum theory are, then, a set of
intentional actions by agents, and for each such action an associated
collection of possible "Yes" feedbacks, which are the possible responses
that the agent can judge to be in conformity to the criteria associated
with that intentional act. For example, the agent is assumed to be able
to make the judgment "Yes" the Geiger counter clicked or "No" the Geiger
counter did not click. Science would be difficult to pursue if
scientists could make no such judgments about what they were
experiencing.

All known physical theories involve idealizations of one kind or
another. In quantum theory the main idealization is not that every
object is made up of miniature planet-like objects. It is rather that
there are agents that perform intentional acts each of which can result
in a feedback that may or may not conform to a certain criterion
associated with that act. One bit of information is introduced into the
world in which that agent lives, according to whether the feedback
conforms or does not conform to that criterion. Thus knowing whether the
counter clicked or not places the agent on one or the other of two
alternative possible separate branches of the course of world history.

These remarks reveal the enormous difference between classical physics
and quantum physics. In classical physics the elemental ingredients are
tiny invisible bits of matter that are idealized miniaturized versions
of the planets that we see in the heavens, and that move in ways
unaffected by our scrutiny, whereas in quantum physics the elemental
ingredients are intentional actions by agents, the feedbacks arising
from these actions, and the effects of these actions upon the physically
described states of the probed systems.

Consideration of the character of these differences makes it plausible
that quantum theory may be able to provide the foundation of a
scientific theory of the mind-brain interaction that is better able than
classical physics to integrate the physical and psychological aspects of
human nature. For quantum theory injects the choices made by human
beings into basic causal structure, in order to fill a logical need, and
it specifies the effects of these choices upon the physically described
systems being probed. Classical physics systematically eliminates these
physical effects of our conscious actions, hence seems ill-suited to be
the foundation of a rational understanding of the connection between the
psychologically and physically described aspects of nature.

An intentional action by a human agent is partly an intention, described
in psychological terms, and partly a physical action, described in
physical terms. The feedback also is partly psychological and partly
physical. In quantum theory these diverse aspects are all represented by
logically connected elements in the mathematical structure that emerged
from the seminal discovery of Heisenberg. That discovery was that in
order to get a satisfactory quantum generalization of a classical theory
one must replace various numbers in the classical theory by *actions*
(operators). A key difference between numbers and actions is that if A
and B are two actions then AB represents the action obtained by
performing the action A upon the action B. If A and B are two different
actions then generally AB is different from BA: the order in which
actions are performed matters. But for numbers the order does not
matter: AB=BA.

The difference between quantum physics and its classical approximation
resides in the fact that in the quantum case certain differences AB-BA
are proportional to a number measured by Max Planck in 1900, and called
Planck's constant. Setting those differences to zero gives the classical
approximation. Thus quantum theory is closely connected to classical
physics, but is incompatible with it: certain nonzero quantities must be
replaced by zero to obtain the classical approximation.

The intentional actions of agents are represented mathematically in
Heisenberg's space of actions. Here is how it works.

Each intentional action depends, of course, on the *intention of the
agent*, and upon the *state of the system* upon which this action acts.
Each of these *two aspects of nature* is represented within Heisenberg's
space of actions by an *action*. The idea that a "state" should be
represented by an "action" may sound odd, but Heisenberg's key idea was
to replace what classical physics took to be a "being" by a "doing." I
shall denote the action that represents the state being acted upon by
the symbol S.

An intentional act is an action that is intended to produce a feedback
of a certain conceived or imagined kind. Of course, no intentional act
is sure-fire: one's intentions may not be fulfilled. Hence the
intentional action puts in play a process that will lead either to a
confirmatory feedback "Yes," the intention is realized, or to the result
"No", the "Yes" response did not occur.

The effect of this intentional mental act is represented mathematically
by an equation that is one of the key components of quantum theory. This
equation represents, within the quantum mathematics, the effect of the
Process 1 action upon the quantum state S of the system being probed.
The equation is:

SàS' = PSP + (I-P)S(I-P).

This formula exhibits the important fact that this Process I action
changes the state S of the system being acted upon into a new state S',
which is a *sum* of two parts.

The first part, PSP, represents the possibility in which the
experiential feedback called "Yes" appears, and the second part,
(I-P)S(I-P), represents the alternative possibility "No", this feedback
does not appear. Thus an effect of the probing action is injected into
the mathematical description of the physical system being acted upon.

The operator P is important. The action represented by P, acting both on
the right and on the left of S, is the action of eliminating from the
state S all parts of S except the "Yes" part. That particular retained
part is determined by the choice made by the agent. The symbol I is the
unit operator, which is essentially multiplication by the number 1, and
the action of (I-P), acting both on the right and on the left of S, is,
analogously, to eliminate from S all parts of S except the "No" parts.

Notice that Process 1 produces the *sum* of the two alternative possible
feedbacks, not just one or the other. Since the feedback must either be
"Yes" or "No = Not-Yes," one might think that Process 1, which *keeps*
both the "Yes" and the "No" parts, would do nothing. But that is not
correct! This is a key point. It can be made quite clear by noticing
that S can be written as a sum of four parts, only two of which survive
the Process 1 action:

S = PSP + (I-P)S(I-P) + PS(I-P) + (I-P)SP.

This formula is a strict identity. The dedicated reader can quickly
verify it by collecting the contributions of the four occurring terms
PSP, PS, SP, and S, and verifying that all terms but S cancel out. This
identity shows that the state S is a sum of four parts, *two of which
are eliminated by Process 1.*

But this means that Process 1 has a *nontrivial effect* upon the state
being acted upon: it eliminates the two terms that correspond neither to
the appearance of a "Yes" feedback nor to the failure of the "Yes"
feedback to appear.

That is the *first key point*: quantum theory has a specific causal
process, Process 1, which produces a nontrivial effect of an agent's
action upon the physical description of the system being examined.

5.1. Free choices

The second key point is this: the agent's choices are "free choices,"
*in the specific sense specified below.*

Orthodox quantum theory is formulated in a realistic and practical way.
It is structured around the activities of human agents, who are
considered able to freely elect to probe nature in any one of many
possible ways. Bohr emphasized the freedom of the experimenters in
passages such as:

> \"The freedom of experimentation, presupposed in classical physics, is
> of course retained and corresponds to the free choice of experimental
> arrangement for which the mathematical structure of the quantum
> mechanical formalism offers the appropriate latitude.\" (Bohr 1958:
> 73}

This freedom of action stems from the fact that in the original
Copenhagen formulation of quantum theory the human experimenter is
considered to stand outside the system to which the quantum laws are
applied. Those quantum laws are the only precise laws of nature
recognized by that theory. Thus, according to the Copenhagen philosophy,
*there are no presently known laws that govern the choices* made by the
agent/experimenter/observer about how the observed system is to be
probed. This choice is*, in this very specific sense*, a "free choice."

5.2. Probabilities

The predictions of quantum theory are generally statistical: they
specify, for each of the alternative possible feedbacks, only the
*probability* that the agent will experience that feedback. Which of
these alternative possible feedbacks will actually occur in response to
the Process 1 probing action is not determined by quantum theory.

The formula for the probability that the agent will experience the
feedback 'Yes' is Tr PSP/Tr S, where the symbol Tr represents the trace
operation. This trace operation means that the actions act in a cyclic
fashion, so that the rightmost action acts back around upon the leftmost
action. Thus, for example, Tr ABC=Tr CAB =Tr BCA. The product ABC
represents the result of letting A act upon B, and then letting that
product AB act upon C. But what does C act upon? Taking the trace of ABC
means specifying that C acts back around on A.

An important property of a trace is that the trace of any of the
sequences of actions that we consider must always give a positive number
or zero. This trace operation is what ties the actions, as represented
in the mathematics, to measurable numbers.

Von Neumann generates his form of quantum theory by recognizing that
Process 1 describes an influence of a mentalistically described aspect
of reality upon a physically described aspect, and by expanding the
physically described part to include the brain that is connected to the
mentalistically described stream of consciousness. Thus Process 1
represents, in the end, a dynamical influence of the mind of an agent
upon his own brain

But if the agent is *free* to choose which action to take, and if the
*intention* of that action, represented by P, affects the state being
acted upon, then the agent's free mental choice of intention influences
the state S being acted upon, which in Von Neumann quantum theory is his
or her brain.

This is the important conclusion: Orthodox (Von Neumann) quantum theory
has a Process 1 action that: (1) is needed to tie the theory to human
experience, (2) is not determined by the known laws, and (3) produces a
specified effect on the state of the brain of the agent.

It is worthwhile to reflect for a moment on the ontological aspects of
Von Neumann quantum theory. Von Neumann himself, being a clear thinking
mathematician, said very little about ontology. But he called the
mentalistically described aspect of the agent "his abstract 'ego' (Von
Neumann 1955: 421). This phrasing tends to conjure up the idea of a
disembodied entity, standing somehow apart from the body/brain. But
another possibility is that consciousness is an *emergent property* of
the body-brain. Notice that some of the problems that occur in trying to
defend this idea of emergence within the framework of classical physical
theory disappear if one uses quantum theory. For one thing, there is no
longer a need to defend against the charge that the emergent properties,
mind and consciousness, have no "genuine" causal efficacy because
anything it does is done already by the physically described process,
independently of whether the psychologically described aspect emerges of
not. In quantum theory the causal efficacy of our thoughts is no
illusion: it's the real thing! A conscious choice has physically
described effects that are not determined by the local deterministic
Process 2 that is the generalization of the laws of classical physics.

Another difficulty with "emergence" in a classical physics context is to
understand how the motion of a set of miniature planet-like objects,
careening through space, can *be* *a painful experience*. Classical
physics is *a postulated conceptual structure* into which is placed only
mindless bits of mathematically characterized structure. From this
restricted conceptual base there is no natural way to go beyond it to
the world of conscious experiences. But quantum theory, although it has
a mathematical analog of the physical world of classical physics, has a
basically different ontological structure. This analog of the physical
description of classical physics is tied to experiential realities in a
way that has caused physicists to call it a representation, not of
material substance, but rather of "our knowledge," or of "information,"
or of "potentialities for events to occur." For example, Heisenberg
said:

"The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles has
thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept,
but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no
longer the behavior of the particle but rather our knowledge of this
behavior." (Heisenberg 1958)

The essential point, here, is that gulf between mind and matter that
characterizes classical physics is bridged by quantum theory: the
psychologically and physically described aspects of nature become
understood as *two interacting parts of a* *nonmaterial causally
connected whole.*

This reconciliation of the physically and psychologically described
aspects of nature that was needed in atomic physics should be important
also in neuroscience and neuropsychology. That is because the basic
problem in neuroscience and neuropsychology is essentially the same as
the basic problem in atomic physics. It is the problem of linking, in a
practically useful and testable way, the space-time-based mathematical
description of a physical system to the psychologically described
aspects of a probing and observing agent. The problem in both cases, and
in science in general, is to link, in practically useful ways, the
psychological language that we use to communicate the content of our
experiences to others, and to ourselves, to the mathematical language of
physics and physiology. Matter-based classical physics provides no
scientifically adequate conceptual linkage between these two languages,
but agent-based quantum physics does.

The quantum state of a human brain is a very complex thing. But its main
features can be understood by considering first a classical conception
of the brain, and then incorporating some key features that arise
already in the case of the quantum state associated with single degree
of freedom, which could be the quantum analog of the center point of
some large or small object.

5.3. States of a simple harmonic oscillator

One of the most important examples of a quantum state is that of a
pendulum, or more precisely, what is called a "simple harmonic
oscillator." Such a system is one in which there is a restoring force
that tends to push the center of the object to a single "base point" of
lowest energy, and in which the strength of this restoring force is
directly proportional to the distance of the center point of the object
from this base point.

According to classical physics any such system has a state of lowest
energy. In this state the center point of the object lies motionless at
the base point. In quantum theory this system again has a state of
lowest energy, but the center point is not localized at the base point:
the location of the center point is represented by a *cloudlike* spatial
structure that is spread out over a region that extends to infinity.
However, the amplitude of this cloudlike form has the shape of a bell:
it is largest at the base point, and falls off in a prescribed manner as
the distance the center point from the base point increases.

If one were to squeeze this state of lowest energy into a more narrow
space, and then let it loose, the cloudlike form would first explode
outward, but then settle into an oscillating motion. Thus the cloudlike
spatial structure behaves rather like a swarm of bees, such that the
more they are squeezed in space the faster they move, and the faster the
squeezed cloud will explode outward when the squeezing constraint is
released. These visualizable properties extend in a natural way to
many-particle cases. However, it should be emphasized that the "swarm of
bees" analogy cannot be pushed too far, because the cloud like structure
refers, in the simple one-particle case, to *one single particle*
\-\--e.g., to one calcium ion \-\-- isolated from all others. The
different parts of the cloud that represents this *one single calcium
ion* , seem to be repelling each other, in the case of the squeezed
state.

5.4. The double-slit experiment

An important difference between the behavior of the quantum cloudlike
form and the somewhat analogous *classical probability distribution* is
exhibited by the famous *double-slit experiment*. If one shoots an
electron, an ion, or any other quantum counterpart of a tiny classical
object, at a narrow slit then if the object passes through the slit the
associated cloudlike form will fan out over a wide angle. This is
analogous to the initial explosion of the tightly confined swarm of
bees. But if one opens two closely neighboring narrow slits, then what
passes through the slits is described by a probability distribution that
is not just the sum of the two separate fanlike structures that would be
present if each slit were opened separately. Instead, at some points the
probability value will be almost *twice the sum* of the values
associated with the two individual slits, and in other places the
probability value drops nearly to zero, even though both individual
fanlike structures give a large probability value at that place. These
*interference* features of the quantum cloudlike structure make that
structure logically different from a classical-physics probability
distribution\-\--for a single particle \-\-- because in the classical
case the probabilities arising from the two slits would simply add, due
to the facts that, according to classical principles, the particle must
pass through one slit or the other, and that the presence of the other
opening should not matter much.

Quantum theory deals consistently with this interference effect, and all
the other non-classical properties of these cloudlike structures.

5.5. Nerve terminals, ion channels, and the need to use Quantum Theory

Some neuroscientists who study the relationship of mind and
consciousness to brain process believe that classical physics will be
adequate for that task. That belief would have been reasonable during
the nineteenth century, but now, in the twenty-first, it is rationally
untenable: quantum theory must in principle be used because the behavior
of the brain depends sensitively upon ionic and atomic processes, and
these processes involve large quantum effects.

To study quantum effects in brains within an orthodox (i.e., Copenhagen
or Von Neumann) quantum theory one must use the Von Neumann formulation.
The reason is that *Copenhagen* quantum theory is formulated in a way
that leaves out the quantum dynamics of the human observer's body and
brain. But Von Neumann quantum theory takes the physical system S upon
which the crucial Process 1 acts to be the brain of the agent. Thus
Process 1 describes an interaction between a person's stream of
consciousness, described in mentalistic terms, and the activity in his
brain, described in physical terms. That interaction drops completely
out when one passes to the classical approximation. Hence ignoring
quantum effects in the study of the connection between
mind/consciousness and brain means, according to the basic principles of
physics, ignoring the dynamical connection one is trying to study. One
must *in principle* use quantum theory. But there is then the
quantitative issue of how important the quantum effects are.

To explore that question we consider the quantum dynamics of nerve
terminals.

Nerve terminal are essential connecting links between nerve cells. The
way they work is well understood. When an action potential traveling
along a nerve fiber reaches a nerve terminal, a host of ion channels
open. Calcium ions enter through these channels into the interior of the
terminal. These ions migrate from the channel exits to release sites on
vesicles containing neurotransmitter molecules. A triggering effect of
the calcium ions causes these contents to be dumped into the synaptic
cleft that separates this terminal from a neighboring neuron, and these
neurotransmitter molecules influence the tendencies of that neighboring
neuron to "fire."

The channels through which the calcium ions enter the nerve terminal are
called "ion channels." At their narrowest points they are less than a
nanometer in diameter (Cataldi et al. 2002). This extreme smallness of
the opening in the ion channels has profound quantum mechanical
implications. The consequence is essentially the same as the consequence
of the squeezing of the state of the simple harmonic operator, or of the
narrowness of the slits in the double-slit experiments. The narrowness
of the channel restricts the lateral *spatial* dimension.. Consequently,
the lateral *velocity* is forced by the *quantum uncertainty principle*
to become large. This causes the cloud associated with the calcium ion
to *fan out* over an increasing area as it moves away from the tiny
channel to the target region where the ion will be absorbed as a whole,
or not absorbed, on some small triggering site.

This spreading of the ion wave packet means that the ion may or may not
be absorbed on the small triggering site. Accordingly, the vesicle may
or may not release its contents. Consequently, the quantum state of the
vesicle has a part in which the neurotransmitter is released and a part
in which the neurotransmitter is not released. This quantum splitting
occurs at every one of the trillions of nerve terminals.

What is the effect of this *necessary* incursion of the cloud-like
quantum character of the ions into the evolving state of the brain?

A principal function of the brain is to receive clues from the
environment, to form an appropriate plan of action, and to direct and
monitor the activities of the brain and body specified by the selected
plan of action. The exact details of the plan will, for a classical
model, obviously depend upon the exact values of many noisy and
uncontrolled variables. In cases close to a bifurcation point the
dynamical effects of noise might even tip the balance between two very
different responses to the given clues, e.g., tip the balance between
the 'fight' or 'flight' response to some shadowy form.

The effect of the independent "release" or "don't release" options at
each of the trigger sites, coupled with the uncertainty in the timing of
the vesicle release at each of the trillions of nerve terminals will be
to cause the quantum mechanical state of the brain to become a smeared
out cloud of different macroscopic possibilities representing different
alternative possible plans of action. As long as the brain dynamics is
controlled wholly by Process 2 - which is the quantum generalization of
the Newtonian laws of motion of classical physics - all of the various
alternative possible plans of action will exist in parallel, with no one
plan of action singled out as the one that will actually be experienced.

Some process beyond the local deterministic Process 2 is required to
pick out one experienced course of physical events from the smeared out
mass of possibilities generated by all of the alternative possible
combinations of vesicle releases at all of the trillions of nerve
terminals. This other process is Process 1. It brings in a *choice* that
is not determined by any currently known law of nature, yet has a
definite effect upon the brain of the chooser. The choice must pick an
operator P, and also a time *t* at which P acts. The effect of this
action is to change the state *S(t)* of the brain, or of some large part
of the brain, to *PS(t)P + (I-P)S(t)(I-P).*

The action P cannot act at a *point* in the brain, because a point
action would dump a huge (in principle infinite) amount of energy into
the brain, which would then explode. The operator P must therefore act
non-locally, over a potentially large part of the brain.

To obtain a satisfactory theory the *Process 1* part of brain dynamics
must involve a completely different set of variable. The pertinent
variables are not the coordinates of the various individual calcium
ions, but rather certain *quasi-stable* *macroscopic degrees of
freedom*. The associated brain structures must enjoy the stability,
endurance, and causal connections needed to bring into being the
intended experiential feedbacks.

These structures are likely to be more like the lowest-energy state of
the simple harmonic oscillator discussed above, which is stable, or like
the states obtained from such lowest-energy states by spatial
displacements and shifts in velocity. These states tend to endure as
oscillating states, rather than immediately exploding. In other words,
in order to get the needed causal structure the projection operators P
corresponding to intentional actions ought to be constructed out of
*oscillating states of macroscopic subsystems of the brain*, rather than
out of the states of the individual particles. The states associated
with Process 1 would then be functionally important brain analogs of
collections of oscillating modes of a drumhead, in which large
assemblies of particles of the brain are moving in a coordinated way
that will lead on, via the mechanical laws, to further coordinated
activities.

The brain process that is actualized by the transition S(t)PS(t)P is
the neural correlate of the psychological intended action. It is the
brain's template for the intended action.

5.6. Choices of the Process 1 actions

It has been emphasized that the choices of which Process I actions
actually occur are "free choices," in the sense that they are not
specified by the currently known laws of physics. On the other hand, a
person's intentions surely depend upon his brain. This means that the
laws of contemporary orthodox quantum theory, although restrictive and
important, are not the whole story. There is work to be done: hypotheses
that fill in the missing details need to be formulated and tested.

It is useful to classify Process I events as either "active" or
"passive." The *passive* Process I events are considered to occur
automatically, in accordance with some brain-controlled rule, with
little or no involvement of conscious effort. The *active* Process I
events are intentional and involve effort.

Consciousness probably contributes very little to brain dynamics,
compared to the contribution of the brain itself. To minimize the input
of consciousness, and in order to achieve testability, we propose to
allow mental effort to do nothing but increase the "density of
attention", which is a measure of the *rapidity* of the sequence of
Process 1 events. This allows mental effort to have *some* influence on
brain activities that are largely controlled by the brain itself.

Given these assumptions, quantum theory *explains* how mental effort can
strongly influence the course of brain events. Within the Von Neumann
framework this potentially strong effect of mind and consciousness upon
brain is a mathematical consequence of a well-known and well studied
feature of quantum theory called The Quantum Zeno Effect.

5.7. The Quantum Zeno effect

If one considers only passive events, then it is very difficult to
identify any empirical effect of Process 1, apart from the occurrence of
awareness. In the first place, the empirical averaging over the "Yes"
and "No" possibilities tends to wash out all effects that depart from
what would arise from a classical statistical analysis that incorporates
the uncertainty principle as simply lack of knowledge. Moreover, the
passivity of the mental process means that we have no empirically
controllable variable.

But the study of effortfully controlled intentional action brings in two
empirically accessible variables, the intention and the amount of
effort. It also brings in the important physical Quantum Zeno Effect.
This effect is named for the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, and was
brought into prominence in 1977 by the physicists Sudarshan and Misra
(1977). It gives a name to the fact that repeated and closely-spaced
intentional acts can effectively hold the "Yes" feedback in place for an
extended time interval that depends upon the *rapidity at which the
Process I actions are happening*. According to our model, this rapidity
is controlled by the amount of effort being applied.

This Quantum Zeno Effect is, from a theoretical point of view, an
unambiguous mathematical consequence of the Von Neumann theory. This
effect was first identified *theoretically*, and the theoretical
predictions were later confirmed in many experimental contexts. The
first confirmations were in the realm of atomic and molecular physics.

Consider an atom that has absorbed a photon of energy. That energy has
kicked one of the atom's electrons into what's called a higher orbital,
kind of like a super-massive asteroid kicking Mercury into Venus's
orbit, and the atom is said to be "excited." But the electron wants to
go back where it came from, to its original orbital, which it can do if
the atom releases a photon. When the atom does so is one of those chance
phenomena, like when a radioactive atom will decay: the atom has some
chance of releasing a photon (and allowing the electron to return home)
within a given period of time. Physicists can measure whether the atom
is still in its initial state or not. If they carry out such
measurements repeatedly and rapidly, physicists have found, they can
keep the atom in its initial state. This is the Quantum Zeno Effect:
such a rapid series of observations locks a system into that initial
state. The more frequent the observations of a quantum system, the
greater the suppression of transitions out of the initial quantum state.
Taken to the extreme observing continuously whether an atom is in a
certain quantum state keeps it in that state forever. For this reason,
the Quantum Zeno Effect is also known as the watched pot effect ("A
watched pot never boils," according to the old adage). The act of
rapidly probing the quantum system freezes it in a particular state,
preventing it from evolving as it would if we weren\'t peeking. Actively
observing a quantum system can suppress certain of its transitions to
other states.

How does it work? Consider this experiment. An ammonia molecule consists
of a single atom of nitrogen and three atoms of hydrogen. The
arrangement of the four atoms shifts over time because all the atoms are
in motion. Let\'s say that at first the nitrogen atom sits atop the
three hydrogens, like an egg nestled on a tripod (The nitrogen atom has
only two options, to be above or below the trio. It cannot be in
between.). The wave function that describes the position of the nitrogen
is almost all concentrated in this configuration; that is, the
probability of finding the nitrogen at the apex is nearly 100 percent.
Left to its own devices, the wave function would shift as time went by,
reflecting the increasing probability that the nitrogen atom would be
found below the hydrogens. But before the wave function shifts, we make
an observation. The act of observation causes the wave function (which,
again, describes the probability of the atom being in this place or that
one) to collapse from several probabilities into a single actuality.
This is all standard quantum theory, the well-established collapse of
the wave function following an observation.

But something interesting has happened. \"The wave function has ceased
oozing toward the bottom,\" as Sudarshan and his colleague Rothman
explained (1998) \"it has been \'reset\' to the zero position. And so,
by repeated observations at short intervals, . . . one can prevent the
nitrogen atom from ever leaving the top position.\" If you rapidly and
repeatedly ask a system, *are you in this state or are you not?,* by
making observations designed to ascertain whether or not the nitrogen
atom is where it began, the system will not evolve in the normal way. It
will become, in a sense, frozen. An answer of "Yes" to the posed
question \[in this case: Is the nitrogen atom on top?\] will become
fixed and unchanging. The state will be forced to stay longer within the
realm that provides a "Yes" answer.

Quantum Zeno has been verified experimentally many times. One of the
neatest confirmations came in a 1990 study at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology. There, researchers measured the probability
that beryllium ions would decay from a high-energy to a low-energy
state. As the number of measurements per unit time increased, the
probability of that energy transition fell off; the beryllium atoms
stayed in their initial, high-energy state because scientists kept
asking them, "So, have you decayed yet?" The watched pot never boiled.
As Sudarshan and Rothman concluded, \"One really can stop an atomic
transition by repeatedly looking at it.\"

This effect is a very special case of the general fact that if a
sequence of similar Process 1 events occur rapidly \[on the time scale
of the macroscopic oscillations associated with the "Yes" state picked
out by P\] then the "Yes" outcome can be held in place in the face of
strong Process 2 mechanical forces that would tend quickly to produce
the "No" feedback. This means that agents that can influence the
rapidity of non-local Process 1 actions upon their own brains could
enjoy a survival advantage over competitors that lack this capacity, for
they could sustain beneficial brain activities longer than competitors
who do not exploit this feature of the quantum laws. This gives the
leverage needed to link quantum selection to natural selection. It would
be advantageous for species to evolve in ways that would exploit this
survival-enhancing possibility offered by the quantum laws of nature.
But is there any empirical evidence that the various species, and man in
particular, have actually evolved in a way that exploits this quantum
possibility?

6\. Support from psychology

A person's experiential life is a stream of conscious experiences. The
person's experienced *"self"* is *part* of this stream of consciousness:
it is not an extra thing that is outside or apart from the stream. In
James's words "*thought is itself the thinker*, and psychology need not
look beyond." The "self" is a slowly changing "fringe" part of the
stream of consciousness. It provides a background cause for the central
focus of attention.

The physical brain, evolving mechanically in accordance with the local
deterministic Process 2 can do most of the necessary work of the brain.
It can do the job of creating, on the basis of its interpretation of the
clues provided by the senses, a suitable response, which will be
controlled by a certain pattern of neural or brain activity that acts as
a *template for action*. But, due to its quantum nature, the brain
necessarily generates an amorphous mass of overlapping and conflicting
templates for action. Process 1 acts to extract from this jumbled mass
of possibilities some particular template for action. This is the
preferred "Yes" state PSP that specifies the form of the Process 1
event. But the quantum rules do not assert that this "Yes" part of the
prior state S *necessarily* comes into being. They assert, instead, that
if this Process 1 action is triggered\-\--say by some sort of
"consent"\-\--then this "Yes" component PSP will come into being with
probability Tr PSP/Tr S, and that the "No" state will occur if the "Yes"
state does not occur.

If the rate at which these "consents" occur is assumed to be increasable
by conscious mental effort, then the causal efficacy of "will" can be
understood. Conscious effort can, by activation of the Quantum Zeno
Effect, override strong mechanical forces arising from Process 2, and
cause the template for action to be held in place longer than it would
if the rapid sequence of Process 1 events were not occurring. This
sustained existence of the template for action can cause that action to
occur.

Does this quantum-physics-based conception of the origin of the causal
efficacy of "Will" accord with the findings of psychology?

Consider some passages from \`\`Psychology: The Briefer Course\'\',
written by William James. In the final section of the chapter on
attention James(1892: 227) writes:

> \`\`I have spoken as if our attention were wholly determined by neural
> conditions. I believe that the array of things we can attend to is so
> determined. No object can catch our attention except by the neural
> machinery. But the amount of the attention which an object receives
> after it has caught our attention is another question. It often takes
> effort to keep mind upon it. We feel that we can make more or less of
> the effort as we choose. If this feeling be not deceptive, if our
> effort be a spiritual force, and an indeterminate one, then of course
> it contributes coequally with the cerebral conditions to the result.
> Though it introduces no new idea, it will deepen and prolong the stay
> in consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade
> more quickly away."

In the chapter on will, in the section entitled \`\`Volitional effort is
effort of attention\'\' James (1892: 417) writes:

> \`\`Thus we find that we reach the heart of our inquiry into volition
> when we ask by what process is it that the thought of any given action
> comes to prevail stably in the mind.\'\'  

and later

> \`\`The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most
> \`voluntary,\' is to attend to a difficult object and hold it
> fast before the mind. \... Effort of attention is thus the essential
> phenomenon of will.\'\'

Still later, James says:

> \`\`Consent to the idea\'s undivided presence, this is effort\'s sole
> achievement.\'\'\... \`\`Everywhere, then, the function of effort is
> the same: to keep affirming and adopting the thought which, if left to
> itself, would slip away.\'\'

This description of the effect of will on the course of mental-cerebral
processes is remarkably in line with *what had been proposed
independently from purely theoretical considerations of the quantum
physics of this process*. The connections specified by James are
*explained* on the basis of the same dynamical principles that had been
introduced by physicists to explain atomic phenomena. Thus the whole
range of science, from atomic physics to mind-brain dynamics, is brought
together in a single rationally coherent theory of an evolving cosmos
that consists of a physical reality that is constituted not of matter
but of an action-based reality that determines propensities or
tendencies for Process 1 events to occur, and within which conscious
agents could naturally evolve in accordance with the principles of
natural selection.

In view of this general concordance with psychology and natural
selection the quantum approach cannot be rationally considered to be a
radical innovation. The radical approach would be to reject contemporary
physics, which seems to be able to account in a natural way for the
efficacy of our mental efforts, in favor of a known to be fundamentally
false theory whose failure to accommodate or rationally explain the
apparent causal efficacy of consciousness has been the source of
enormous philosophical difficulty and debate for more than three hundred
years.

In the quantum theory of mind/consciousness-brain being advocated here
there are two separate processes. First, there is the unconscious
mechanical brain process called Process 2. As discussed at length in the
book, *Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics* (Stapp 1993/2003: 150), this
brain processing involves dynamical units that are represented by
complex patterns of neural activity (or, more generally, of brain
activity) that are \`\`facilitated\'\' (i.e., strengthened) by use, and
are such that each unit tends to be activated as a whole by the
activation of several of its parts. The activation of various of these
complex patterns by cross referencing\-\--i.e., by activation of several
of its parts\-\--coupled to feed-back loops that strengthen or weaken
the activities of appropriate processing centers, appears to account for
the essential features of the mechanical part of the dynamics in a way
that often is not greatly different from that of a classical model,
except for the appearance of a host of parallel possibilities that
according to the classical concepts cannot exist simultaneously.

The second process, Von Neumann\'s Process 1**,** is needed in order to
select what actually happens from the continuum of alternative parallel
possibilities generated by Process 2.

Process 1, which is connected to conscious awareness and to what
actually happens, has itself two modes. The first involves mere passive
consent, and temporally isolated events; the second involves mental
effort, and a rapid sequence of Process 1 events that bring importantly
into play the Quantum Zeno Effect. The first mode involves passive
processing, and can exploit the massively parallel processing capacities
of Process 2, whereas the second mode involves an effortfully sustained
rapid linear sequence of Process 1 events.

Active Process 1 intervention has, according to the quantum model
described here, a distinctive form. It consists of a sequence of
intentional actions, the rapidity of which can be increased with effort.
Such an increase in Attention Density, defined as an increase in the
number of observations per unit time, can bring into play the Quantum
Zeno Effect, which tends to hold in place both those aspects of the
state of the brain that are fixed by the sequence of intentional
actions, and also the felt intentional focus of these actions. Attention
Density is not controlled by any physical rule of orthodox contemporary
quantum theory, but is taken both in orthodox theory and in our model to
be subject to subjective volitional control. This concordance of atomic
physics and neurodynamics is the core of our model.

6.1. Application to the psychology of attention

A huge amount of empirical work on attention has been done since the
nineteenth century writings of William James. Much of it is summarized
and analyzed in Harold Pashler's 1998 book "The Psychology of
Attention." Pashler organizes his discussion by separating perceptual
processing from post-perceptual processing. The former covers processing
that, first of all, identifies such basic physical properties of stimuli
as location, color, loudness, and pitch, and, secondly, identifies
stimuli in terms of categories of meaning. The post-perceptual process
covers the tasks of producing motor actions and cognitive action beyond
mere categorical identification. Pashler emphasizes \[p. 33\] that "the
empirical findings of attention studies argue for a distinction between
perceptual limitations and more central limitations involved in thought
and the planning of action." The existence of these two different
processes with different characteristics is a principal theme of
Pashler's book \[pp. 33, 263, 293, 317, 404\].

A striking difference that emerges from the analysis of the many
sophisticated experiments is that the perceptual processes proceed
essentially in parallel, whereas the post-perceptual processes of
planning and executing actions form a single queue. This is in line with
the distinction between "passive" and "active" processes. The former are
essentially one-shot Process 1 events, whereas the "active" processes
involve effort-induced rapid sequences of Process 1 events that can
saturate a given capacity. This idea of a limited capacity for serial
processing of effort-based inputs is the main conclusion of Pashler's
book. It is in accord with the quantum-based model, supplemented by the
condition that there is a limit to how many effortful Process 1 events
per second a person can produce.

Examination of Pashler\'s book shows that this quantum model
accommodates naturally all of the complex structural features of the
empirical data that he describes. He emphasizes \[p. 33\] a specific
finding: strong empirical evidence for what he calls a central
processing bottleneck associated with the attentive selection of a motor
action. This kind of bottleneck is what the quantum-physics-based theory
predicts: the bottleneck is precisely the single linear sequence of
mind-brain quantum events that Von Neuman quantum theory is built upon.

Pashler \[p. 279\] describes four empirical signatures for this kind of
bottleneck, and describes the experimental confirmation of each of them.
Much of part II of Pashler\'s book is a massing of evidence that
supports the existence of a central process of this general kind.

The queuing effect is illustrated in a nineteenth century result
described by Pashler: mental exertion reduces the amount of physical
force that a person can apply. He notes that \`\`This puzzling phenomena
remains unexplained.\'\' \[p. 387\]. However, it is an automatic
consequence of the physics-based theory: creating physical force by
muscle contraction requires an effort that opposes the physical
tendencies generated by the Schroedinger equation (Process 2). This
opposing tendency is produced by the quantum Zeno effect, and is roughly
proportional to the number of bits per second of central processing
capacity that is devoted to the task. So if part of this processing
capacity is directed to another task, then the applied force will
diminish.

The important point here is that there is in principle, in the quantum
model, an essential dynamical difference between the unconscious
processing carried out by the Schroedinger evolution, which generates
via a local process an expanding collection of classically conceivable
possible courses of action, and the process associated with the sequence
of conscious events that constitutes a stream of consciousness. The
former are not limited by the queuing effect, because all of the
possibilities develop in parallel, whereas the latter do form elements
of a single queue. The experiments cited by Pashler all seem to support
this clear prediction of the quantum approach.

This bottleneck is not automatic within classical physics. A classical
model could easily produce, simultaneously, two responses in different
modalities, say vocal and manual, to two different stimuli arriving via
two different modalities, say auditory and tactile: the two processes
could proceed via dynamically independent routes. Pashler \[p. 308\]
notes that the bottleneck is undiminished in split-brain patients
performing two tasks that, at the level of input and output, seem to be
confined to different hemispheres. This indicates that the non-local
operator P probably involves, in some important way, activities in the
brain stem, and hence could naturally be involved in the evolution of
the species.

An interesting experiment mentioned by Pashler involves the simultaneous
tasks of doing an IQ test and giving a foot response to a rapidly
presented sequence of tones of either 2000 or 250 Hz. The subject\'s
mental age, as measured by the IQ test, was reduced from adult to 8
years. \[p. 299\] This result supports the prediction of quantum theory
that the bottleneck pertains to both \`intelligent\' behavior, which
requires conscious processing, and selection of motor response.

Another interesting experiment showed that, when performing at maximum
speed, with fixed accuracy, subjects produced responses at the same rate
whether performing one task or two simultaneously: the limited capacity
to produce responses can be divided between two simultaneously performed
tasks. \[p. 301\]

Pashler also notes \[p. 348\] that \`\`Recent results strengthen the
case for central interference even further, concluding that memory
retrieval is subject to the same discrete processing bottleneck that
prevents simultaneous response selection in two speeded choice
tasks.\'\'

In the section on \`\`Mental Effort\'\' Pashler reports that
\`\`incentives to perform especially well lead subjects to improve both
speed and accuracy\'\', and that the motivation had \`\`greater effects
on the more cognitively complex activity\'\'. This is what would be
expected if incentives lead to effort that produces increased rapidity
of the events, each of which injects into the physical process, via
quantum selection and reduction, bits of control information that
reflect mental evaluation.

Studies of sleep-deprived subjects suggest that in these cases
\`\`effort works to counteract low arousal\'\'. If arousal is
essentially the rate of occurrence of conscious events then this result
is what the quantum model would predict.

Pashler notes that \`\`Performing two tasks at the same time, for
example, almost invariably\... produces poorer performance in a task and
increases ratings in effortfulness.\'\' And \`\`Increasing the rate at
which events occur in experimenter-paced tasks often increases effort
ratings without affecting performance\'\'. \`\`Increasing incentives
often raises workload ratings and performance at the same time.\'\' All
of these empirical connections are in line with the general principle
that effort increases the rate of conscious events, each of which inputs
a mental evaluation and a selection or focussing of a course of action,
and that this resource can be divided between tasks.

Additional supporting evidence comes from the studies of the effect of
the conscious process upon the storage of information in short-term
memory. According to the physics-based theory, the conscious process
merely actualizes a course of action, which then develops automatically,
with perhaps some occasional monitoring. Thus if one sets in place the
activity of retaining in memory a certain sequence of stimuli, then this
activity can persist undiminished while the central processor is engaged
in another task. This is what the data indicate.

Pashler remarks that \'\'These conclusions contradict the remarkably
widespread assumption that short-term memory capacity can be equated
with, or used as a measure of, central resources.\'\'\[p.341\] In the
theory outlined here short-term memory is stored in patterns of brain
activity, whereas consciousness is associated with the selection of a
sub-ensemble of quasi-classical states. This distinction seems to
account for the large amount of detailed data that bears on this
question of the connection of short-term-memory to consciousness. \[pp.
337-341\]

Deliberate storage in, or retrieval from, long-term memory requires
focused attention, and hence conscious effort. These processes should,
according to the theory, use part of the limited processing capacity,
and hence be detrimentally affected by a competing task that makes
sufficient concurrent demands on the central resources. On the other
hand, "perceptual\'" processing that involves conceptual categorization
and identification without conscious awareness should not interfer with
tasks that do consume central processing capacity. These expectations
are what the evidence appears to confirm: \`\`the entirety
of\...front-end processing are modality specific and operate independent
of the sort of single-channel central processing that limits retrieval
and the control of action. This includes not only perceptual analysis
but also storage in STM (short term memory) and whatever may feed back
to change the allocation of perceptual attention itself.\'\' \[p. 353\]

Pashler speculates on the possibility of a neurophysiological
explanation of the facts he describes, but notes that the parallel
versus serial distinction between the two mechanisms leads, in the
classical neurophysiological approach, to the questions of what makes
these two mechanisms so different, and what the connection between them
is \[p.354-6, 386-7\].

After analyzing various possible mechanisms that could cause the central
bottleneck, Pashler \[p.307-8\] says \`\`the question of why this should
be the case is quite puzzling.\'\' Thus the fact that this bottleneck
and its basic properties seems to follow automatically from the same
laws that explain the complex empirical evidence in the fields of
classical and quantum physics means that the theory has significant
explanatory power.

These features of the phenomena can perhaps be explained by some
classical-physics-based model. But the naturalness of such an
explanation is obstructed by the absence from classical physics of the
notion of conscious effort, or of the causal efficacy of conscious
thoughts, or of the change-inhibiting effect of a rapid sequence of
conscious events. These consciousness-connected features would have to
be injected into the consciousness-free causal structure of classical
theory, rather than being directly supplied \-\-- in a specific form
\-\-- by the causal structure of fundamental physical theory.

7\. Mental action in neuropsychological experiments

The quantum model is better suited to the analysis of neuropsychological
data than models based on the classical approximation. For, just as in
the treatment of atomic systems, the quantum approach brings the
*phenomenologically described data* directly into the dynamics, in place
of microscopic variables that are in principle unknowable. Quantum
theory injects directly into the causal structure the phenomenal
descriptions that we human beings use in order to communicate to our
colleague the empirical facts. It thereby specifies a useful and
testable causal structure, while evading the restrictive classical
demand that the causal process be "bottom up"\-\-- i.e., expressible in
terms of local mechanical interactions between tiny mindless entities.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle renders that ideal *unachievable in
principle*, and the banishment of that microlocal "bottom up"
determinism opens the door to the quantum alternative of injecting the
phenomenologically described realities directly into the causal
structure in the way that is both allowed by and described by
contemporary physical theory.

To illuminate this approach we consider its application to the
experiments of Ochsner et al. (2002), with particular attention to the
following four questions:

1\. How does the quantum approach work in this specific case, in
comparison to what the classical account would say?

2\. How do we account for the rapid changes occurring in large neural
circuits involving millions of neurons during conscious and voluntary
regulation of brain activity?

3\. How does consciousness "know" where and how to interact in the brain
in order to produce a specific psychological effect?

4\. Is consciousness localized, and, if so, how and in what sense? O,r
does it lie, instead, "outside of space"?

Reduced to its essence the experiment consists first of a training phase
in which the subject is taught how to distinguish, and respond
differently to, two instructions given while viewing emotionally
disturbing visual images: ATTEND (meaning passively "be aware of, but
not try to alter, any feelings elicited by") or REAPPRAISE (meaning
actively "reinterpret the content so that it no longer elicits a
negative response"). The subjects then perform these mental actions
during brain data acquisition. The visual stimuli, when passively
attended to, activate limbic brain areas and when actively reappraised
activate prefrontal cerebral regions.

From the classical materialist point of view this is essentially a
conditioning experiment, where, however, the "conditioning" is achieved
via linguistic access to cognitive faculties. But how do the cognitive
realities involving "knowing," "understanding," and "feeling" arise out
of motions of the miniature planet-like objects of classical physics,
which have no trace of any experiential quality? And how do the
vibrations in the air that carry the instructions get converted into
feelings of understanding? And how do these feelings of understanding
get converted to effortful actions, the presence or absence of which
determine whether the limbic or frontal regions of the brain will be
activated.

Within the framework of classical physics these connections between
feelings and brain activities are huge mysteries. The classical
materialist claim is that *someday* these connections will be
understood. But the question is whether these connections will ever be
understood in terms of a physical theory that is known to be false, and
that, moreover, is false in ways that, according to contemporary
physical theory, systematically exclude the causes of the correlations
between the psychological and physiological aspects of the
mind/consciousness-brain system that these neuropsychology experiments
demonstrate. Or, on the other hand, will the eventual understanding of
this linkage accord with causal linkage between mental realities and
brain activities that orthodox (Von Neumann) contemporary physical
theory entails.

There are important similarities and also important differences between
the classical and quantum explanations of the experiments of Ochsner et
al. In both approaches the particles in the brain can be conceived to be
collected into nerves and other biological structures, and into fluxes
of ions and electrons, which can all be described reasonably well in
essentially classical terms. However, in the classical approach the
dynamics must in principle be describable in terms of the local
deterministic classical laws that govern these classical quantities. The
problem of classical-physics-based neuroscience is then to reconcile the
neuropsychological data with a conception of causation that gives mind
and consciousness no explicit role.

The quantum approach is fundamentally different. In the first place the
idea that all causation is *fundamentally* *mechanical* is dropped as
being prejudicial and unsupported either by direct evidence or by
contemporary physical theory. The quantum model of the human person is
essentially dualistic, with one of the two components being described in
psychological language and the other being described in physical terms.
The empirical/phenomenal evidence coming from subjective reports is
treated as data pertaining to the psychologically described component of
the person, whereas the data from objective observations, or from
measurements made *upon that person,* are treated as conditions on the
physically described component of the person. The causal connection
between these two components is the connection specified by the quantum
laws.

The physical description will, for reasons spelled out below, be
essentially a classical description, smeared out to accommodate the
uncertainty principle. This smeared out cloud will evolve, under the
action of Process 2, essentially in accordance with the laws of
classical physics. There is no significant departure at this point from
classical physics, smeared out to accommodate the uncertainty principle.
But the fanning out of the possibilities generated by Process 2 will be
controlled by a sequence of Process 1 events. Each such event trims back
the possibilities to keep them in line with the experiences of the
person.

Many of these events will be passive, controlled largely by the dynamics
that contemporary quantum theory has not yet specified. But the
*effects* of these events are specified. When no effort is applied the
evolution of the body/brain will be roughly in accord with the
principles of classical physics. But important departures from the
classical prediction can be caused by effortful focus of attention. This
effort can cause a pattern of neural activity that is a template for
action to be held in place for an extended period. And this will tend to
cause the specified action to occur. In the Ochsner experiments the
effort of the subject to "reappraise" *causes* the "reappraise" template
to be held in place, and the holding in place of this template *causes*
the suppression of the limbic response. These causal effects are
consequences of the quantum equations of motion. Thus the "subjective"
and "objective" aspects of the data are tied together by quantum laws
that directly specify the causal effects of the choices made by the
subject, without prejudice pertaining to exactly how these choices come
about.

Quantum theory was designed to deal with the case, in which the
conscious action of an agent -- to perform some particular probing
action - enters into the dynamics in an essential way. Within the
context of the experiment by Ochsner et al., quantum theory provides,
via the Process 1 mechanism, an explicit means whereby the successful
effort to "rethink feelings" actually causes - by catching and actively
holding in place - the prefrontal activations critical to the
experimentally observed deactivation of the amygdala and orbitofrontal
cortex. The resulting *intention-induced modulation* of limbic
mechanisms that putatively generate the frightening aversive feelings
associated with passively attending to the target stimuli is the key
factor necessary for the achievement of the emotional self-regulation
seen in the active cognitive reappraisal condition. Thus, within the
quantum framework, the causal relationship between the mental work of
mindfully reappraising and the observed brain changes presumed to be
necessary for emotional self-regulation is *dynamically* accounted for.
Furthermore, and crucially, it is accounted for in ways that fully allow
for communicating to others the means utilized by living human
experimental subjects to attain the desired outcome. The classical
materialist approach to these data, as detailed earlier in this chapter,
by no means allows for such effective communication. Analogous quantum
mechanical reasoning can of course be utilized *mutatis mutandis* to
explain the data of Beauregard (2001) and related studies of
self-directed neuroplasticity (see Schwartz & Begley, 2002).

The second question is: How do we account for the rapid changes induced
by mental effort in large brain circuits?

The answer is that the non-local operator P corresponds to the action
that singles out a large quasi-stable and functionally effective
*template for action* that tends to produce the intended feedback. If
the "Yes" answer is selected by nature then a monitoring of the activity
of the brain would reveal a rapid emergence from the background "noise"
of the held-in-place template for action associated with P, followed by
the actions instigated and guided by that template.

The third question is: How do mind and consciousness "know" where and
how to interact in the brain in order to produce a specific
psychological effect?

Large intention-controlled functionally effective brain activities are
singled out and linked to mental effort through *learning*, which
depends upon the fact that mental efforts can have direct physical
consequences. A "Yes" outcome actualizes such a functional state.
Quantum theory thus provides the mathematical machinery for causally
connecting psychologically described intentions to the physically
described macroscopic states of the brain that implements them. No
comparable psycho-physical linkage is provided by classical physics.

The fourth question is: Are mind and consciousness localized, and, if
so, how and in what sense? Or, do they lie, instead, "outside of space"?

Each conscious event is associated with a Process I action that involves
an action P that is necessarily non-local. Moreover, the "Yes" part must
have the functional properties needed to set in motion the brain-body
activity that is likely to produce the intended feed-back experience.
Thus each conscious action would, in order to meet these requirements,
act over some functionally characterized extended portion of the brain.
In fact, for reasons that go well beyond the scope of this article, this
event also induces effects in faraway places: these effects are the
causes, within the Von Neumann formulation, of the long-range effects
associated with an important non-locality theorem of John Bell (1964),
and a generalization due to Stapp (2003).

Each Process 1 event changes in a specified way the state of the system
that is being acted upon, or probed. This change can affect, for
example, the energy of the observed system. If the action is a
measurement of the energy of the probed system then the "Yes" response
will single out one possible energy value, or perhaps a collection of
possible energy values. However, the statistical laws of quantum theory
ensure, in this case of a measurement of energy, that the weighted
statistical average over all possible outcomes leaves the average
unchanged and independent of exactly which possible energy values are
included in "Yes" and which are included in "No." In more general cases
this 'average energy' of the observed system can be changed by the
probing action.

If the effect of the "inquiry" is to say "Yes" to a collection of
temporarily oscillatory states of parts of the brain, as is likely to be
the case, then the effect on the average energy could be virtually
undetectable. In any case, the change is only a selection of one
possibility *for that probed system* from among a mass of allowed
possibilities. Because the energy of the full system is conserved during
the Process 2 dispersion of the cloud of possibilities there will be a
strong tendency for the selection of an energy state of the probed
subsystem of the brain to be compensated for by correlated energy
changes in other parts of the brain and its environment.

The question of whether the psychologically described properties are
inside or outside of space is a hold-over from classical Cartesian
thinking. The quantum model is dualistic in the practical sense that
there is a Process 1 "Choice" that is the direct descendant of the
pragmatic Copenhagen philosophy's conscious *choice on the part of the
observer.* However, what is instantiated in the space-time structure is
*knowledge*, not matter. Psychologically described properties are the
grist from which the mathematical structure in space is constructed. It
makes no ontological sense to separate mind from the spatial structure
that is both built out of it, and that gives it the stability and form
needed to define the changes that it effects.

8\. Answers to objections

Several objections have been raised to the idea of applying quantum
theory to a warm, wet, noisy brain that is interacting strongly with its
environment. The following seven objections are addressed in this
section:

1.  The interaction of the brain with its environment will produce
    strong "decoherence" effects that will effectively eliminate the
    quantum properties and reduce brain dynamics to classical dynamics.

2.  Quantum effects may indeed be important at the level ions, but these
    effects cannot significantly influence the functioning of the brain,
    given the temperature at which it operates.

3.  From a functional neurophysiological point of view, large neural
    circuits (not neurons or ionic channels) constitute the most
    elementary units of the brain. At this macroscopic level, classic
    physical effects apply, not quantum effects

4.  "The effort of attention is the essential phenomenon of will." But
    'will' can influence mind processes other than attention that are
    too rich and complicated to be represented by a binary (Yes or No)
    system response.

5.  "Large intention-controlled functionally effective brain activities
    are singled out and linked to mental effort through learning." But
    what about cases where a subject accomplishes the task the first
    time?

6.  How can a theory that makes conscious choices dynamically important
    deal with the universe before the existence of life, and with
    biological evolution?

7.  Quantum physicists do not agree on what is the correct
    interpretation of quantum theory. Should not the rest of us wait
    until physicists have put their own house in order, before trying to
    apply quantum theory outside atomic physics?

Understanding the answers to all of these questions depends on
understanding clearly the answer to the first.

It is known that the interaction of the brain with the environment
*enormously* curtails the interference effects that are characteristics
of quantum physics. This effect reduces the brain to a *nearly*
classically describable system. But the effect \-\-- exploited in the
quantum approach described above \-\-- of a person's conscious choices
upon the state of his physical brain is a strictly quantum effect. So
one might surmise that the strong suppression of the quantum
interference effects would strongly suppress also the effect of
conscious choices upon the state of the brain. But that conclusion does
not follow.

The reason that the conclusion does not follow is easy to see. The state
of the brain is represented by the operator S = S(t). It is often called
the density matrix, and can by pictured as a square array of numbers
\<x\|S\|x'\>, where x specifies a set of possible locations of for each
of the particles in (some part of) the brain, and x' specifies another
possible set of locations. This density matrix is obtained by
"averaging" over all the other degrees of the universe. Hence it depends
only on the two variables x and x'. According to orthodox (Von Neumann)
quantum theory this matrix of values contains all the physical
information about the brain system that can be obtained by doing
measurements or observations solely upon that brain. And it contains all
of the effects due to the interactions of that brain system with its
environment.

The effect of those interactions is to cause all of the numbers
\<x\|S\|x'\> to become very small unless x is very close to x'. This
means that all interferences effects involving contributions from two
appreciably different possible classically conceived brain states will
be severely suppressed. This means that all quantum effects like those
exploited by quantum computers can be expected to be strongly
suppressed. This fact constitutes a very powerful objection to all
attempts to apply quantum mechanics to human brains in a way that
depends on such interference effects.

The effect of the environment is also to reduce the equation of motion
for those values of \<x\|S\|x'\> where x and x' are nearly the same to
essentially the classical equation. Thus if the probability distribution
\<x\|S(t)\|x\> has a "bump" in a certain place then the motion of this
bump will very closely approximate what a classical calculation would
give. This is the basis of the claim that the effects of the interaction
with the environment will reduce brain dynamics to classical dynamics.

But those considerations are just the preliminaries to the main story.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is not undone by the interaction
with the environment. One still obtains a quantum state \<x\|S(t)\|x'\>
that satisfies the uncertainty conditions, *not some particular value of
x*, which is what classical physics would give. This distribution will
contain contributions corresponding to many different experiences 'e'.
Thus the basic interpretational problem is still unresolved: "How is
some particular experience picked out from the blur of possibilities?"
This question brings one back to the essential core of quantum theory,
which is Von Neumann's Process 1. This process picks an experience e,
and hence a projection operator P(e), which if activated rapidly brings
in the Quantum Zeno Effect. This effect *disrupts the classically
predicted changes of \<x\|S(t)\|x\>* that the decohence effects leave
untouched.

The decoherence effects leave those classical motions of the
probabilities \<x\|S(t)\|x\> essentially unaffected because these
motions are governed by the values of \<x\|S(t)\|x'\> where x and x' are
very nearly the same. This is the basis of the claim that the effect of
the interaction with the vacuum preserves the classical limit. *But the
Quantum Zeno Effect produces violations of those classical equations
that the decoherence effects leave alone,* even though the decoherence
effects do severely curtail interference effects for values of x and x'
that are appreciably different. So the bottom line is that The Quantum
Zeno Effect that follows from the application of Von Neumann's rules can
strongly effect the *nearly* classical states produced by the very
strong environmental decoherence effect! The environmental decoherence
produces nearly classical states that would evolve in the absence of
Process 1 events in close conformity to the classical laws, but whose
evolution would be strongly affected by a sufficiently rapid sequence of
Process 1 events.

The answer to objection 2, about the effects of heat, is a corollary to
the answer about the effects of the environment. The effect of heat is
an effect of the environment, and the same considerations apply.

The third objection is:

> From a functional neurophysiological point of view, large neural
> circuits (not neurons or ionic channels) constitute the most
> elementary units of the brain. At such a macroscopic level, classic
> physical effects apply, not quantum effects

The answer to objection number one was directly about large structures
in the brain. If no Process 1 event occurs then the uncertainties at the
ionic level automatically expand in the course of time to uncertainties
in the large structures. It is these *latter* uncertainties that
correspond to the uncertainties in experiences that the Process 1 event
resolves. The quantum uncertainties at the ionic level cannot be
confined to the ionic level, even in a classical statistical
description.

Objection 4 is:

> "The effort of attention is the essential phenomenon of will." But
> 'will' can influence mind processes other than attention that are too
> rich and complicated to be represented by a binary (Yes or No) system
> response.

According to the theory, each conscious experience, no matter how
complex, corresponds to the actualization of a state PS(t)P, and the
features specifically brought out by the suppression by P of the
alternatives that would conflict with the experience are the neural
correlates of the experience. Some idea of the complexity of this
correlate is gained by noticing that if some large set of oscillating
states of various weights are actualized, then a complexity comparable
to \-\-- and actually far transcending \-\-- that of the sound of a
symphony orchestra can be achieved. The discussion in Sections (6.6) and
(6.5) of Stapp (1993/2003) gives a glimpse into the sort of complexity
that is naturally encompassed by the model, both at the individual event
level, and by a sequence of such binary events. The "Yes" result
corresponds to the actualization of a normally very rich and complex
structure created as a possible response to a complex stimulus impacting
on a brain created by a long period of evolution followed perhaps by a
long lifetime of study and reflection.

Objection 5 is:

> "Large intention-controlled functionally effective brain activities
> are singled out and linked to mental effort through learning." But
> what about cases where subjects accomplish the task the first time?

A repertoire of functional actions are learned by trial-and-error
effort. These are the basic links between the psychological and physical
realms. The process of creating these links is comparable in physics to
the calibration of measuring devices. One must get started by finding
out some primary linkages between how the probing devices are
constructed and what they can tell us about and do to the world outside
us. But latter on we can achieve our ends by putting together known
elements in complex ways without needing to learn by trial and error how
the complex combination will behave.

Objection 6 is:

> How can a theory that makes conscious choices dynamically important
> deal with the universe before the existence of life, and with
> biological evolution?

Conscious choices are dynamically important in systems such as human
brains. But even in these systems there are "passive" Process 1 events
which are essentially automatic. During biological evolution the
"active" Process 1 events involving mental effort can be assumed to
become increasingly significant as brains evolve that are increasingly
able to exploit the dynamical possibilities imbedded in the structure of
the quantum laws of motion.

The present article has focused on neuropsychology and human subjects,
where the issue is the integration of the psychologically described data
with the physically described properties of the brain. We have
endeavored to provide a model that depends minimally upon the yet-to-be
discovered details of the passive process, which is empirically more
difficult to study because we lack the (at least partially) controllable
variables associated with effort and intention. However, pursuing the
general approach developed here one is led to the phenomena of plausible
reasoning. Human beings appear to be able to arrive (sometimes) at
reasonable conclusions on the basis of data that is insufficient to
determine unique definite conclusions. And they do so efficiently. This
"reasoning" process somewhat resembles conscious reasoning, so it
appears that brain process might support something that could be
considered to be a natural predecessor to conscious thought.

There is growing interest in computer science in replacing mechanistic
algorithms with software agents that interact with an environment and
are able to draw inferences and execute plans to achieve goals. The new
paradigm replaces deterministic logic with plausible reasoning based on
probability, and Bayesian inference. T. S. Lee and David Mumford (2003)
have applied these ideas successfully to the visual cortex. One of the
present authors (HPS) is working with K. Laskey to develop a quantum
version of a system that performs plausible reasoning by using Bayesian
inference and exploiting the Quantum Zeno Effect. This would appear to
be the reasonable next step in the development of the model proposed
here in the direction of pre-conscious processes.

Objection 7 is:

> Quantum physicists do not agree on what is the correct interpretation
> of quantum theory. Should not the rest of us wait until physicists
> have put their own house in order, before trying to apply their theory
> outside atomic physics?

The disagreements are at the ontological level. All physicists agree at
the pragmatic level on how to connect the mathematical formulas to the
empirical findings. The practical rules in the realm of atomic physics
are the ones formulated in the mid-1920 by Heisenberg, Pauli, Born, Bohr
and others. They are the rules of Copenhagen quantum theory. But there
are many ways of trying to devise an ontology that will lead to these
rules. The towering virtue of the Copenhagen approach is that it evades
dependence upon these speculations, and provides useful testable rules,
and even understanding, provided that understanding is about the likely
empirical feedbacks to the alternative possible ways that we might
choose to act.

This pragmatic approach was extended by Von Neumann from atomic physics
to neuroscience by shifting the boundary between 'probee' and 'prober'
from between atomic system and measuring device, which is where it was
drawn in Copenhagen quantum theory, to between the physically described
brain and empirically described choices and responses. Von Neumann
created the foundation for a *pragmatic approach* to neuroscience that
*encompasses* the pragmatic Copenhagen approach to atomic physics, and
extends it to the realm of neuroscience. Von Neumann's formulation, like
the Copenhagen formulation, brings in a process, Process 1, that is not
controlled by the Schroedinger equation, which is the local
deterministic quantum generalization of the classical laws. This lack of
mechanical determinism opens a causal gap that is filled in practice,
without conflicting with any other law of contemporary physics, by
injecting directly into the dynamics choices made by the observer about
how he or she will act upon the system being probed The theory then
entails a certain dependence of the behavior of the probed physically
described system upon how the agent chooses to probe it. The existence
of this choice-controlled effect is strikingly confirmed by the
empirically verified Quantum Zeno Effect, which can cause an atom to
remain in an excited state longer than normal by increasing the
frequency of the probing events. The same equations applied in the Von
Neumann formulation to the behavior of a brain\-\-- which is the Von
Neumann analog of the system being directly probed \-\-- entail a
dependence of brain behavior upon "attentional density," i.e., the
frequency at which the Process 1 events occur.

If one moves to an ontological level, then one can pose the question
"what it is that controls the attentional density." Is it an 'individual
soul', or a 'global consciousness,' or a rather mindless process that
'causes' consciousness? Orthodox contemporary quantum mechanics gives no
answer this question. However, it does have a natural and causally
efficacious place for the empirically controllable variable "density of
directed attention." This parameter plays the causal role in brain
dynamics that William James assigned to "Volition" or "Effort of
attention."

The most prominent alternatives to the orthodox (Copenhagen/Von Neumann)
approach to quantum theory are the pilot-wave model of David Bohm (1952)
and the many-worlds approach of Hugh Everett III (1957). Both attempt to
eliminate the intervention of the psychologically described conscious
observer, and his or her choices, in favor of a mathematically described
process based on mathematically defined localized properties.

One failing of the Bohm pilot-wave model is that, in spite of intense
efforts, it has never been generalized from its original
non-relativistic form to cover the premier quantum theory, quantum
electro-dynamics. The Von Neumann approach, on the other hand, has been
extended from its original non-relativistic form to cover general
relativistic quantum field theory (Tomonaga 1946; Schwinger 1951).

Bohm (1986, 1990) recognized that mind and consciousness need to be
brought in. But his method of doing so involved equating conscious
essentially to an infinite tower of realities, each of which was guided
by the one above it. This complexity vitiates the great virtue of his
original model, its simplicity. Consequently, it is unlikely that the
Bohm approach will be as testable and useful in neuroscience as Von
Neumann's theory. Moreover, the complexity of Bohm's theory of
consciousness, with its infinite tower, undercuts the main thrust of the
original model, which was to eliminate the non-algorithmic intrusion of
"the observer" into the dynamics. If the choices made by the observer do
play a complex dynamical role, as even the Bohm model now suggests, then
it is scientifically advantageous to introduce these choices into the
dynamics the most direct possible way. That is what Von Neumann's
Process 1 does.

Most careful readers of Von Neumann's work are initially led to the
attractive idea of eliminating his mysterious Process 1, and letting the
dynamics be controlled wholly by Process 2. This idea jumps out of Von
Neumann's work because he focuses largely on "ideal measurements" in
which an interaction with a fixed device specifies the projection
operator P that corresponds to a distinctive experiential feedback (or
specifies, perhaps, a *set* of P's that correspond one-to-one to a *set*
of distinguishable outcomes). Since each of the possible outcomes
corresponds to a separate possible branch of reality that, for all
practical purposes, never interferes with any of the others, one can
assume that all of the possibilities exist "in parallel," with the
consciousness associated with each branch unaware of the other branches,
but somehow assigned the appropriate statistical weight. This leads to a
many-worlds conception of reality.

But focusing on one fixed ideal measurement eliminates the problem that
Process 1 was introduced to resolve: what fixes that ideal measurement?
The solution that immediately comes to mind is to let "the environment"
play the role played in Von Neumann quantum theory by the consciously
choosing agent. But the details of such an approach have never been
completely worked out Stapp (2002). The problem is that if the dynamics
is controlled exclusively by Process 2 then any possible device would be
part of a smeared out continuum of possibilities, and it has never been
shown how a discrete set of P's corresponding to distinctive experiences
can emerge from this continuum by means of Process 2 alone. In practice
the cognitive scientists who contemplate, for example, quantum
computation must in the end introduce the agent-controlled devices, in
place of the smeared out collection of possibilities that an
unrestricted Process 2 would generate.

Thus the initial promises of the pilot-wave and many-worlds alternatives
have not been borne out, and they would appear in any case to be far
less useful in neuroscience than Von Neumann's theory.

The other prominent quantum approach is the gravity/microtubule model of
Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff (1996). That theory, like the present
one, is built upon Von Neumann's Process 1. But it ties the timing of
Von Neumann's Process 1 events to gravity rather than directly to the
psychological concepts of William James, and to the empirically
reportable and largely controllable variables of the psycho-physical and
psycho-neural experiments. Also, it requires a strong persistence of
macroscopically extended quantum interference effect in a warm, wet
brain that is strongly interacting with its environment. Most physicists
find the claim that such interference could persist under these
conditions to be unrealistic. A principle virtue of the model proposed
here is that it does not depend on any macroscopic interference effect.

These considerations argue for the conclusion that although other
interpretations of quantum theory have indeed been advanced, they have
liabilities that make them less attractive than Von Neumann's as a
testable and useful model of the mind-brain connection.

# 9. Conclusions and summary

The philosophy of materialism has no basis in contemporary physics.
There is no support in current fundamental physics for the notion that
the physical world is made out of, or even contains, what Isaac Newton
(1721) called "solid, massy, hard, impenetrable movable particles," or
that our conscious thoughts are patterns of motions of such entities.
There is also no basis in physics for the idea that every thought is
*caused* purely by local mechanical processes, or that our conscious
thoughts merely *seem* to be causing our bodily actions. On the
contrary, contemporary orthodox physical theory provides no mechanically
deterministic cause for our conscious choices, yet allows these
conscious choices to influence physical behavior. And it instantiates
the causally efficacious mathematical properties of nature in a
structure that is ontologically more like information, knowledge, or
potentiality for information-changing events to occur, than like the
material substance postulated by classical physics.

The benefits of adopting the pragmatic quantum approach could be as
important to progress in neuroscience and neuropsychology as they were
in atomic physics. It allows the deferred-to-the-future question of how
mind and consciousness are connected to classically described brain to
be replaced by the partially answered question of how mind and
consciousness are connected to quantum mechanically described brain.
This switch allows the psychological data of psycho-physical and
neuropsychological experiments to be treated as descriptions of the
causally efficacious *psychological part* of contemporary pragmatic
dualistic physical theory. Mind and consciousness are no longer coerced
into being an aspect of a mechanical approximation that systematically
strips them of their causal power.

Ackowledgements

The work of the second-named author (HPS) was supported in part by the
Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics,
Division of High Energy Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under
Contract DE-AC03-76SF00098. The work of the third-named author (MB) was
supported by the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRSQ).

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