`Funda-Mentality': is the conscious mind subtly linked to a basic level of the universe?

The physicalist view that consciousness emerges solely from neural networks is insufficient to fully explain mental experience. A complete account requires supplementing physicalism with panpsychist or pan-experiential philosophy expressed through modern physics. In one scheme, proto-conscious experience is a basic property of reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity: Roger Penrose's 'objective reduction' (OR), a self-organizing collapse of the quantum wave function tied to instability in space-time geometry. In the Penrose-Hameroff 'orchestrated objective reduction' (Orch OR) model, OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within neurons. Consciousness involves brain activities coupled to self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Age-old battle lines over the puzzling nature of mental experience are shaping a modern resurgence in the study of consciousness. On one side are the long-dominant `physicalists' who view consciousness as an emergent property of the brain's neural networks. On the alternative, rebellious side are those who see a necessary added ingredient: proto-conscious experience intrinsic to reality, perhaps understandable through modern physics (panpsychists, pan-experientialists, `funda-mentalists'). It is argued here that the physicalist premise alone is unable to solve completely the difficult issues of consciousness and that to do so will require supplemental panpsychist/pan-experiential philosophy expressed in modern physics. In one scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity. The proposed process is Roger Penrose's `objective reduction' (OR), a self-organizing `collapse' of the quantum wave function related to instability at the most basic level of space-time geometry. In the Penrose-Hameroff model of `orchestrated objective reduction' (Orch OR), OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brain's neurons. The basic thesis is that consciousness involves brain activities coupled to self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality.