Rodney Daut writes: > I ask you if you have been following the research > of Stewart Hameroff at the U. of Arizona, > and if so, what your reactions might be. It is perhaps essential, if we are to try to understand the answers that Kierkegaard formulated, to confront ourselves first with problems such as Kierkegaard addressed, one of which is restated in the research of Stewart Hameroff, which Rodney Daut brought to our attention. In the "medline" database, I found 40 publications for which Hameroff was named author or co-author. Many of them are concerned with the chemical and physical mechanisms by which anesthetic agents exert their effects. The work to which Rodney referred if summarized in the following abstracts: Authors Jibu M. Hagan S. Hameroff SR. Pribram KH. Yasue K. Institution Department of Anesthesiology, Okayama University Medical School, Japan. Title Quantum optical coherence in cytoskeletal microtubules: implications for brain function. Source Biosystems. 32(3):195-209, 1994. Abstract 'Laser-like,' long-range coherent quantum phenomena may occur biologically within cytoskeletal microtubules. This paper presents a theoretical prediction of the occurrence in biological media of the phenomena which we term 'superradiance' and 'self-induced transparency'. Interactions between the electric dipole field of water molecules confined within the hollow core of microtubules and the quantized electromagnetic radiation field are considered, and microtubules are theorized to play the roles of non-linear coherent optical devices. Superradiance is a specific quantum mechanical ordering phenomenon with characteristic times much shorter than those of thermal interaction. Consequently, optical signalling (and computation) in microtubules would be free from both thermal noise and loss. Superradiant optical computing in networks of microtubules and other cytoskeletal structures may provide a basis for biomolecular cognition and a substrate for consciousness. ============== Authors Lahoz-Beltra R. Hameroff SR. Dayhoff JE. Institution Department of Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. Title Cytoskeletal logic: a model for molecular computation via Boolean operations in microtubules and microtubule-associated proteins. Source Biosystems. 29(1):1-23, 1993. Abstract Adaptive behaviors and dynamic activities within living cells are organized by the cytoskeleton: intracellular networks of interconnected protein polymers which include microtubules (MTs), actin, intermediate filaments, microtubule associated proteins (MAPs) and other protein structures. Cooperative interactions among cytoskeletal protein subunit conformational states have been used to model signal transmission and information processing. In the present work we present a theoretical model for molecular computing in which Boolean logic is implemented in parallel networks of individual MTs interconnected by MAPs. Conformational signals propagate on MTs as in data buses and in the model MAPs are considered as Boolean operators, either as bit-lines (like MTs) where a signal can be transported unchanged between MTs ('BUS-MAP'), or as bit-lines where a Boolean operation is performed in one of the two MAP-MT attachments ('LOGIC-MAP'). Three logic MAPs have been defined ('NOT-MAP, 'AND-MAP', 'XOR-MAP') and used to demonstrate addition, subtraction and other arithmetic operations. Although our choice of Boolean logic is arbitrary, the simulations demonstrate symbolic manipulation in a connectionist system and suggest that MT-MAP networks can perform computation in living cells and are candidates for future molecular computing devices. If I interpret these abstracts correctly, Hameroff and his coworkers are attempting to understand how certain elements of brain cells, the microtubules, might serve as "non-linear coherent optical devices" and suggest that laser-like optical phenomena within these tubules might provide explanations for cognition and consciousness. Although Hameroff's work seems to me to be in its very early, speculative stages, far from conclusive, and even farther from spawning useful diagnostic or therapeutic applications, it seems to me an apt example of the way in which technological advances in one field (scanning electron microscopy) complement technological advances in another field (laser physics), to generate new theory, and occasionally new technological breakthroughs. But existential significance is another matter. A chemist can analyse the human body and tell me that I am "nothing more" than so many grams of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen. That may give very useful information about how many carrots and how many potatoes I should eat each day, and how much wine it will take to make me drunk, but it says very little about my thoughts and desires, about my hopes and my fears. He tells me not much more when he informs me that my consciousness or for that matter, my conscience, is "nothing more" than lectro-optic phenomena in the microtubules of brain cells that function as "non-linear coherent optical devices". Scientific "knowledge" does not receive existential validation from the circumstance that it enables me to act; and conversely, effective action does not bestow existential truth on the "knowledge" which makes that action possible. It is in a true Aristotelian spirit, I believe, that one seeks to understand phenomena by reducing them to logically prior, simpler principles. But either the reductionist postulates are in error, or they are erroneously applied. In any event, the fruits of science have not satisfied our existential concerns in the past and they seem, to me at least, unlikely to do so in the future. At the same time, the ontic significance of scientific effort is generally exaggerated, by the scientists themselves, from lack of perspective, by the fascinated spectator, from lack of knowledge. Kierkegaard would have been adamantly opposed to reductionism as he was to the objective, positive science that nourishes it. In the German translation of his journals there appears the statement "Die Wissenschaft ist Luege." That judgment applies specifically to the presumption to reduce the consciousness of the individual as an existing being to "Quantum optical coherence in cytoskeletal microtubules." To my mind, polemics is not the answer. If our understanding is sufficiently broad and sufficiently deep, then it should be able to encompass even the most recondite of scientific investigations and the most presumptuous of scientific claims - as efforts of existing individual human beings to orient themselves in, and to find answers to, the enigmas of their respective existences. That notwithstanding its highly successful application, scientific theory is, in the light of existential experience, so profoundly flawed, makes our effort to understand science all the more challenging. Ernst Meyer review@netcom.com http://www.he.net/~review http://www.thenerve2.com/lit/