---
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 a self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality."
altloc:
- http://www.u.arizona.edu/~hameroff/tics.html
chapter: ~
commentary: ~
commref: ~
confdates: ~
conference: ~
confloc: ~
contact_email: ~
creators_id: []
creators_name:
- family: Hameroff
given: Stuart R.
honourific: ''
lineage: ''
date: 1998-04
date_type: published
datestamp: 1998-11-28
department: ~
dir: disk0/00/00/03/69
edit_lock_since: ~
edit_lock_until: ~
edit_lock_user: ~
editors_id: []
editors_name: []
eprint_status: archive
eprintid: 369
fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/369/1/tics.html
full_text_status: public
importid: ~
institution: ~
isbn: ~
ispublished: pub
issn: ~
item_issues_comment: []
item_issues_count: 0
item_issues_description: []
item_issues_id: []
item_issues_reported_by: []
item_issues_resolved_by: []
item_issues_status: []
item_issues_timestamp: []
item_issues_type: []
keywords: 'consciousness, quantum computation, microtubules, Penrose-Hameroff theory, Orch OR, pan-experientialism, qubit, cytoskeleton, spacetime geometry, panpsychism, volition, face recognition, tubulin, gap junctions, quantumstates, quantum collapse, pre-conscious processing, quantumsuperposition, objective reduction, orchestrated objectivereduction, non-computability, general relativity, neurophysiology, proteins, protein conformational dynamics, synaptic function, London forces, van der Waals forces, pan-protopsychism, metaphysics, Whitehead, actin, sol-gel transitions, isolation, environmental decoherence, quantum coherence, entanglement, quantum computing, freewill, cognition, modern physics'
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:53:51
latitude: ~
longitude: ~
metadata_visibility: show
note: ~
number: 4
pagerange: 119-127
pubdom: FALSE
publication: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
publisher: ~
refereed: TRUE
referencetext: ~
relation_type: []
relation_uri: []
reportno: ~
rev_number: 8
series: ~
source: ~
status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:27:02
subjects:
- bio-theory
- phil-mind
succeeds: ~
suggestions: ~
sword_depositor: ~
sword_slug: ~
thesistype: ~
title: '"Funda-Mentality": is the conscious mind subtly linked to a basic level of the universe?'
type: journalp
userid: 170
volume: 2