Mitchell J Porter, <mjporter@U.Arizona.EDU>, writes:
> My aim would be to get people to consider, as a serious
> possibility, that the mind is essentially quantum in
> some regard. This is not a wild contingency or an idle
> speculation; it's only a few steps away from things we
> already know, and if true it is likely to have profound
> consequences for the shape of things to come.
Of course this idea has been advanced for a number of years by such
people as Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Other names include Beck,
Eccles, Bohm, Hiley, Jibu, Yasue, Marshall, Stapp, Vitiello, Walker, Wolf.
One resource for ideas on the topic is the moderated Quantum Mind mailing
list, http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/quantum-mind.html.
I found an amusing article on that list, "Magnetic quantum coherence in
muscle contraction",
http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0104&L=quantum-mind&F=&S=&P=1256.
Apparently QM coherence may play a role in the actin-myosin interaction
which causes muscle contraction. We could speculate that not only the
mind but the body as well is essentially quantum.
Reviews of Penrose's books often contain critiques of these quantum-
mind models. (They also criticize Penrose's Godelian proof that
computationalism is inadequate as a model for mind.) See for example
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-08-baars.html.
Hal
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