archived as http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/Consciousness_01.doc
more related articles at http://www.stealthskater.com/Science.htm#Emergent
note: because important web-sites are frequently "here today but gone tomorrow", the following was archived from
http://www.metanexus.net/archives/message_fs.asp?listtype=Magazine&ARCHIVEID=7736 on March 10, 2003. This is NOT an attempt to divert readers from the aforementioned website. Indeed, the reader should only read this back-up copy if the updated original cannot be found at the original author's site.
Morality at the Planck Scale:
A Chat with Stuart Hameroff
by Jill Neimark
Metanexus: Views. 2002.12.13. 2898 words
"Assume consciousness is indeed occurring at the level of fundamental space-time geometry at the Planck scale," says Stuart Hameroff, Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and of Psychology at the University of Arizona, "connected to our brains by quantum processes in microtubules. Then if the brain stops working, the quantum information at the Planck scale could persist and remain coherent because of quantum entanglement, leaking out into space-time geometry outside the head. It's possible that the soul could be a particular distributed pattern in fundamental space-time geometry at the Planck scale."
Now this, if true, could create interesting problems and possibilities. Consider a future debate in medical ethics about brain death occurring at the quantum level, for instance. Or the notions of personal responsibility as Hameroff notes:
"Either Evil is implicit at the Planck scale along with Good. Or evil people are wired differently biologically for whatever reason and are influenced in an aberrant way. But even so-called 'good' people must allow themselves to be influenced by Platonic values rather than ignoring or overriding them due to some needs or gratification."
Today's interview is part of an ongoing discussion with serious thinkers about Life, the Universe, and everything conducted by New York-based writer and editor Jill Neimark. Previous interviewees include physicists Chris Isham, Antony Valentini, and Marcelo Gleiser (Metanexus: Views: 2002.11.01, 2002.10.18, and 2002.07.12 respectively); cosmologist Lee Smolin (Metanexus: Views, 2001.12.24); theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman (Metanexus: Views, 2002.02.18); Catholic theologian Mariano Artigas (Metanexus: Views, 2002.04.29); and philosopher of science Sherrilyn Roush (Metanexus: Views, 2002.05.03).
-Stacey E. Ake
Subject: Good and Evil at the Planck Scale: An Interview with Stuart Hameroff from Jill Neimark Email: <>
Stuart R. Hameroff, M.D. is Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and of Psychology, and Associate Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He divides his time between clinical practice and teaching of anesthesiology in the surgical operating rooms at University of Arizona Medical Center, and research into the mechanism of consciousness.
[Jill]: You're an anesthesiologist who's exploring the frontiers of consciousness research. What are the links between the two?
[Stuart]: In medical school, I became interested in how the brain produced consciousness. I thought that I'd go into a specialty like neurology or psychiatry. But in 1975, the Chairman of Anesthesiology at the University of Arizona -- a renaissance clinician/scientist named Burnell Brown -- suggested that to understand consciousness, I should study how general anesthetics work.
Anesthesia is a tangible physical process acting on an otherwise study how general anesthetics work. Anesthesia is a tangible physical process acting on an otherwise unmeasurable phenomenon. And the mechanism was -- and still is -- largely unknown. Anesthesia is powerful but subtle. The right amount of anesthesia erases consciousness while other brain functions continue. The gas anesthetics are the most interesting because they work by very weak, purely physical, Quantum Mechanical interactions. They don't form chemical or ionic bonds of any kind. They're not polar molecules. They don't bind to receptors. And they can be inert. For example, the inert gas Xenon is an anesthetic.
Anesthetics are very soluble in lipid environments and, in fact, their potency directly correlates with their lipid solubility. So for many years, it was assumed that since neural membranes are mostly lipids, gas anesthetics worked by getting into lipid portions of neural membranes and impairing their function. But in the 1980s, it was realized that anesthetics work directly on proteins which account for the dynamic actions of membranes (for example, protein receptors and ion channels).
Within proteins are specific tiny pockets that are lipid-like. It turned out that anesthetic gas molecules were sucked into these little pockets. Once there, the anesthetic molecules didn't form chemical bonds like other drugs but bound only by very weak quantum forces known as van der Waals London forces. 1-or-2 anesthetic molecules per protein were enough to do the trick. The question is why would such very, very weak Quantum Mechanical forces in such tiny regions of certain proteins have such profound effects?
The answer seems to be that proteins normally dance back-and-forth between different forms and shapes to perform their functions. And what controls this "dancing" are Quantum Mechanical forces in these pockets. The pockets are like the tiny brain within each protein. What choreographs them all together is quantum coherence. It seems that brain proteins dance synchronously due to coherence among quantum actions in the pockets throughout wide regions of the brain. So by forming their own quantum interactions in the pockets, anesthetics inhibit normally-occurring Quantum Mechanical forces necessary for consciousness.
[Jill]: You speculate that there has to be a certain biological complexity in order to actually give rise to genuine consciousness. If I recall correctly, you suggest that consciousness probably arises once we get to the evolutionary complexity of a nematode worm. That sounds like emergence to me, although your view of emergence is richer and more complex than a simple brain-as-neuronal-network paradigm.
[Stuart]: The standard answer to how we get consciousness is definitely emergence -- the idea that sufficiently complex computation among the brain's neurons produces consciousness. The basic idea that a critical level of complexity in a hierarchical system gives rise to new novel properties is important in Nature. For example, wetness out of water. And hurricanes out of dust and gas molecules. A candle flame is an emergent phenomenon - emergence is real.
But on the other hand, none of these recognized emergent phenomena are conscious, though there are equations which predict the onset of their emergence. There is no equation or prediction for how many neurons interacting in any particular way will produce consciousness. Artificial Intelligence (AI) people would like there to be such an equation so that sufficiently complex computers can be conscious. But there isn't any. Just saying that consciousness emerges from complexity is like waving a magic wand and trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Emergence may be part of the story, but I think consciousness must be related to something irreducible or fundamental.
[Jill]: You've suggested that consciousness arises when the quantum wave function collapses in structures in the brain's neurons called microtubules. Are you saying that collapse is an emergent phenomenon?
[Stuart]: That depends on what type of collapse -- or reduction -- you're talking about. Few people agree on this. If you have a quantum wave function -- a quantum superposition of multiple coexisting possibilities, for example, which interacts with its classical environment -- it is said to decohere (a type of collapse). Interaction with a classical, non-quantum system destroys the quantum state. But if a quantum system remains isolated and avoids environmental decoherence, then what?
This is the enigma of Schrodinger's Cat in-a-box which remains in quantum superposition of both dead and alive until the box is opened. Roger Penrose's idea is that any quantum superposition will eventually reach a specific, objective threshold for collapse (or reduction). Thus Objective Reduction (or 'OR'). His rationale is that quantum superposition is actually a separation in underlying reality the Universe shreds at its most basic level. This is something like the Everett-Wheeler "Many Worlds" hypothesis in which every superposition branches off to form a new universe. However in Roger's view, these separations are unstable and -- after a specific time -- will reduce and choose one reality or the other.
[Jill]: How did you and Penrose get together?
[Stuart]: Roger had proposed that quantum computation which reduced by this type of 'OR' self-collapse was the essential feature in consciousness. So you could say that consciousness emerged when 'OR' occurred. Initially, Roger didn't have a good structural candidate in the brain for such occurrences. I had been studying the microtubules within neurons and thought that they acted like some type of computational device because their structure and functions resembled computers. I suggested to Roger that microtubules might be performing the quantum computation with 'OR' that he was looking for. So we teamed up and developed a model of consciousness in which the microtubule quantum processes were orchestrated by inputs from the synapses. We called it Orchestrated Objective Reduction (now known as Orch OR).
[Jill]: So what constitutes a "conscious event"?
[Stuart]: Each 'Orch OR' is essentially a conscious event. And a sequence of these events is our stream of consciousness. From the indeterminacy principle, we could predict, for example, how many microtubules and how many neurons would be involved in conscious events which occur on a time scale matching physiological events known to occur in the brain
So for example, we can have conscious events 40 times per second. Looking at evolution, very simple organisms have fewer microtubules and so would require a long time until reaching threshold for a conscious event. Even a single electron in isolated superposition would eventually have an OR conscious event. But not for 10 million years.
[Jill]: Then where does consciousness begin?
[Stuart]: A single-cell organism would require a few minutes of quantum isolation which seems unlikely. Although single-cell paramecia are absolutely still during sex, so maybe primitive sexual experience was the first form of consciousness. It turns out that at the level of roughly 300 neurons, the time scale becomes reasonable to maintain quantum coherent superposition.
That's about 1/10th of a second. This is the level of small urchins and worms such as the nematode you mentioned -- organisms similar to those present at the beginning of the Cambrian evolutionary explosion. This was the period about 540 million years ago when all the animal phyla appeared on the scene. So maybe that's when consciousness emerged and accelerated evolution.
[Jill]: I've come to think of myself as an "aspectist" in the tradition of Spinoza. He believed that mind and body were just 2 aspects of an underlying, absolute reality. How would you classify yourself?
[Stuart]: I don't disagree with that. But I'd call myself a "panprotopsychist" -- the notion that whatever gives rise to consciousness is implicit and exists inherently everywhere in the Universe. Protoconsciousness is an irreducible, fundamental feature of the Universe like spin or charge waiting to be acted upon to produce consciousness.
One philosopher who took a comparable view was Whitehead. He said the precursor of conscious experience was everywhere in the Universe. And also that the Universe is a process, made up of events rather than things. He viewed consciousness as a sequence of events -- occasions of experience -- occurring in a wider field of protoconscious experience. Whitehead's occasions of experience are compatible with -- and perhaps equivalent to -- quantum state reductions (for example, Roger Penrose's 'OR' events). Here, we finally have a connection between Philosophy and Science.
[Jill]: So you believe the universe is, in part, built of protoconsciousness.
[Stuart]: Roger's 'OR' is based on the idea that quantum superpositions are separations at the most basic level of the Universe at the Planck scale. So you ask yourself, what is this basic level? What is the Universe made of?
Even mass is not fundamental according to Einstein. Atoms are mostly empty space as is most of the Universe. So what is the Universe made of? This argument has been going on since the Greeks. Is there a background fabric or just an empty void?
In the last few decades, there's been a lot of intense work trying to understand the background pattern of the Universe. It turns out that as we go down in scale (well below the size of atoms), things are smooth and featureless until we get to the apparent basement level of the Universe known as the Planck scale (some 25 orders of magnitude smaller than atoms). Empty space seems smooth. But at the Planck scale, things get coarse and irregular with a vast amount of information and energy. It's kind of like viewing the surface of the ocean from an airplane at 33,000 feet. The ocean seems smooth. But if you were on the surface in a small boat, you'd be tossed about by waves.
How can we describe the Planck scale (basically quantum gravity)? String theory has tried. But others -- for example, Lee Smolin -- argue for spin networks (i.e., Loop Quantum Gravity) based on Roger Penrose's original idea that at this level everything is spin. The Universe is made of spiderwebs of spin which define ultra-small Planck volumes or pixels of reality.
[Jill]: "Pixels of reality" -- that's a fetching image.
[Stuart]: I'm oversimplifying it. But the number of possible shapes and edges and spins for each pixel is huge. And the number of pixels, for example, in the volume of our brains is incredibly vast. So the amount of information at the Planck scale is absolutely mind-boggling! And it is also non-local. That is, it is distributed -- something like a hologram.
[Jill]: So how do you tie this into panpsychism?
[Stuart]: Everything -- matter, energy, you name it -- comes from curvatures, patterns, and other properties originating at the Planck scale. If consciousness does have some fundamental irreducible precursor, it must originate as some sort of pattern at the same basic level of the Universe.
Philosophers call the raw components of conscious experience qualia. We're suggesting that qualia are specific patterns or properties at the Planck scale. Why not? If there's something fundamental and irreducible about consciousness or its precursors as Spinoza and Whitehead said, then it has to exist somewhere. And the Planck scale is all there is.
[Jill]: But you usually don't translate from that level to this one we're living in. There isn't a direct correlation.