Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference, HongKong, June 11-14, 2009

[Ruggero Rapparini]

TSC Conference Hong Kong
Abstract Title: Quantum Consciousness: Lost in the Wood ?
Primary Topic Area: [01.04]........Qualia
Secondary Topic Area: [01.09]........Epistemology and philosophy of science
Abstract: This paper deals with an innovative role for qualia in quantum cognition.Consciousness studies in the West are lost in the wood.Neurophysiology assumes that brain mechanisms (the trees) will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena: the mind, the self, etc. Our left brain thinks in details, strings them in linear and methodical configuration, manifests its computational skills and the concept of time whereby our moments are divided into the past, the present, and the future. In fact, in so doing, we are using our brain as if the two hemispheres were surgically separated.
Consciousness in the East is a holistic experience involving the whole of the brain in contemplative Buddhist practice where the mind is considered a sense organ having concepts, thoughts, etc. as its object, complementing the computational dimension with the representational one (qualia). All experiential, phenomenological representations, irrespective of what kind, qualify for the status of qualia defined as the objects of our cognition. Our right brain is designed to remember things as they relate to one another, it perceives the big picture at the present moment. To the right mind no time exists other than the present moment, the moment of now is timeless and abundant! .The mind as the perception of the self, the psyche's image of totality (the wood) and wholeness embodied in its organizational closure: the whole is not the sum of its parts; it is the organizational closure of its parts.
Quantum dimension in conscious cognition results from the acknowledgment that the observer and the observed form an entangled unit. The observer (the brain) is part of the physical world (the observed) whose representation (qualia), as generated by the brain, includes the representation of the brain itself. It is at this level of wholeness that qualia play a major role in quantum cognition that has not been recognized so far to its full extent. Qualia are not the subjective phenomenological representation of 'reality', they are the objective neurophenomenological reproduction of the inner workings of the brain. The brain is the thinking substance. The result of thinking is the mind, the brain's quale, namely the quale of the inner workings of the brain, producing the feeling of our own self: the conscious subject. By having a neurophenomenological representation of oneself from inside (the perceiver perceives himself in his mind, the part has the same power as the totality) we introduce self-referentiality in a natural way.
This ˜mentalistic" view is rooted in a physical fact, that everything, even the mind, takes materially place inside our head although it cannot be separated from the entire organism.The function of qualia, born out of the melting of observer and observed, is to merge the objectivity (ontology) of the physical world with the subjectivity (epistemology) of what we can know about it, thus closing the explanatory gap and making possible for the mind to change the brain (neuroplasticity) from within.
Email: [e-mail]
Publishing Organization: www.quantumbionet.org
Comments: J. Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight, A brain scientist's personal journey
Viking 2006, ISBN 978-0-670-02074-4
This book played a major role in understanding the role of the brain. I suffered myself a stroke, far less important, one year ago. Recommended reading.