Searching I

Table of Contents
Foreword, F. Riffert and M. Weber ................................................. 10 List of Contributors........................................................................ 16 Introduction, F. Riffert and J. Cobb ................................................ 22
Part I. Neurophysiology
Value in Mind and Nature, J. Brown .............................................. 42 Consciousness, Whitehead and Quantum Computation, S. Hameroff ... 64 Consciousness, M. Kinsbourne ....................................................... 90 The Common Origin of Perception and Action, A. Schweiger ...... 106
Part II. Psychology

Whiteheads Faculty-Psychology, J.-C. Dumoncel ...................... 118 Psychology Moves Towards Whitehead, J. Pickering ................. 140 On Scientific Confirmation of Causal Efficacy, F. Riffert............ 156 What is Called Feeling ?, P. Rodrigo .......................................... 186 The One and the Many, L. Vanzago ............................................ 194
FOREWORD
Part III. Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy in Process, J. Cobb ................................................ 212 The Promise of Process Psychology, D. Roy................................ 232 The Universality of Impermanence, C. Sherlock .......................... 238 The Art of Epochal Change, M. Weber........................................ 252
Foreword
Franz G. Riffert and Michel Weber
Part IV. Philosophy of Mind

A Psychology for the Ecosystem, L. Albertazzi............................ 284 Mind as Process, M. Bickhard ....................................................... 294 Direct Realism in Perception and Memory, P. Farleigh .............. 304 Untangling Self, Person, and I, D. Galin ........................... 322 Whitehead and the Revival (?) of Panpsychism, W. Seager ......... 342 Psychology and Physics Reconciled, A. Weekes .......................... 354
Critical Apparatus
General Bibliography .................................................................. 384 Index of Subjects ........................................................................... 419 Index of Names ............................................................................. 432 Analytic Table of Contents........................................................... 438
Whitehead claimed that to sustain a civilization with the intensity of its first ardour requires more than learning. Adventure is essential, namely, the search for new perfections (Adventures of Ideas, 258).1 Since humility ismore than everurgently needed in scholarship, we have chosen to qualify our conceptual adventure as a search for new contrasts, thus invoking an essential Whiteheadian concept. As the reader will have already understood, contrast does not mean here contention, or strife, or even comparison between fields that are essentially foreign to each other; it means emphasizing the complementariness of differences and the promotion of synergies.2 Since this book is the first publication of the recently-created Whitehead Psychology Nexus (Jan. 1, 2001)3, we will specify the scope and goal of this new learned society before introducing to the book itself. The Whitehead Psychology Nexus is an international open forum dedicated to the cross-examination of Alfred North Whiteheads organic or process philosophy and the various facets of the contemporary psychological field of research and debate. It seeks to encourage psychology in a Whiteheadian atmosphere and Whiteheadian scholarship informed by psychology. Bold speculations balanced by complete humility before logic, and before fact (PR 17) are especially valued. It is a disease of philosophy, stresses Whitehead, when it is neither bold nor humble, but merely a reflection of the temperamental presuppositions of exceptional personalities (PR17). Openness (as in open forum) means hereat the very least two things. With regard to the focus of the evoked cross-elucidation: no philosophical or psychological system of thought is a priori excluded, provided that it allows discussion in a Whiteheadian spirit. With regard to the membership: ideologies and other forms of dogmatism are the sole contra-indications known at this hour. The Nexus initial structure
SEARCHING FOR NEW CONTRASTS
FOREWORD
is minimalist in order to allow as much freedom of becoming as possible. There is however a distinction between active members and inactive members. The former commit themselves (i) to write a paper per year (3000-9000 words) on a topic relevant to the domain of scholarship defined and (ii) to lead discussions on the submitted papers. The latter do not make such commitments; they are kept aware of the Nexus activities and participate according to their own agenda. A rather comprehensive understanding of at least one of the two targeted fieldsWhiteheadian philosophy or a given current in psychologyis expected from the members. Franz Riffert (Salzburg) and Michel Weber (Louvain-la-Neuve) coordinate the WPN; they are assisted by Anderson Weekes (New York), who acts as secretary. The coordinators and the secretary are active members choosing to invest themselves especially in the successful achievement of the purpose of the Nexus. Their number and identity might fluctuate with time. According to various contemporary psychological schools, the question of the soulor psyche []is no longer relevant to Psychologys field of expertise. It seems fashionable (more empiricorational?) to probe the mindor nous []or even simply the brain. As a result, one can dare to ask if such a discipline ought not to be called a noology. Furthermore, the psychological expertise is often focused on the study and classification of illnesses and corresponding therapies. It is then properly speaking a nosology (from , illness) that is constantly in danger of giving up the attempt to understand the healthy individual. On the other hand, speculative philosophy remains, by virtue of its Socratic legacy, the science (in the fundamentalnot narrowsense of episteme) of the psyche: it continues to be a gnosiological adventure in all the dimensions of the human beings existence in the world. Here dwells, de jure and de facto, the concept of psyche. Furthermore, the very concept of expertise is here bypassed to allow a focus on the healthy individual. It is a genuine hygiology (from , healthy). This being stated, it is obvious that philosophy so often lacks the pragmatic standpointor even the interest in applicability. In Whiteheads terms, it is more focused on logical consistency and/or on the unreachable ideal that is adequacy. On the other hand, psychology, precisely for the sake of its direct applicability, usually cannot afford to question, again and again, its foundations. Sometimes even immediate therapeutical impact or quick results packaged for publication are the primary goal.
There is, in other words, not only room, but urgent need of a philosophy informed by psychology, and of a psychology that is philosophically sound. For instance, the factual conjunction that seems to exist between noological and nosological trends should be questioned for itself. The evidence for this is far from being new (let us think, e.g., of W. James, E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty and of the contemporary pioneering work of K. W. M. Fulford); we would like to interrogate this evidence from the vantage point of the imaginative generalizations of Alfred North Whitehead (18611947). From that perspective, the debated question becomes mainly twofold : on the one hand, how to assess the present state of Whiteheadian scholarship and of the psychological field; on the other hand, how to define what could be expected from a synergy with Whiteheada puzzle that asks not only how psychologys trajectory could be bent by the gravitation of Whiteheads categoreal framework, but also how the latter could be improved in the field of such an interaction. As a result, the editors have sought to gather two types of provocative communications by prominent international scholars: on the one hand, discussions of the present state of affairs in psychology; and, on the other hand, critical studies of the relevance of the imaginative generalizations of Whitehead for psychology and/or of the impact contemporary psychology on Whiteheads system of thought. The common denominator of all these inquiries is the process worldview understood in its widestHartsho-Rescherian, if you like4sense, not a strict use of PRs technicalities (although they were encouraged). Since the topics treated overlap various fields, the grouping of the papers was not always easy to establish; they are, however, distributed in four main sections: Neurophysiology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and the Philosophy of Mind. We aim at a volume of significant value for anyone interestedby profession or by leisurein the contemporary state of psychology (including its relevance to philosophy) and in the contemporary trends in philosophy (including its impact on psychology). The critical apparatus should prove to be a handy companion for further research. It consists of four main tools: (i) a General Bibliography that mentions separately, on the one hand, all Whiteheads Cited Works and, on the other, the works of importance or available in the field5; (ii) a generous Index of Subjects; (iii) an Index of Names gathering all the authors mentioned; and (iv) an Analytic Table of Contents.
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FOREWORD
11
Of course, the administration of any antidote to parochial narrowness takes the risk of a rather tessellated outcome; such is the price to pay for seeking new contrasts. Lucas writes:
When Russell was invited to deliver the William James Lectures at Harvard (subsequently published as The Philosophy of Logical Atomism in 1940), Whitehead, who was by then a professor emeritus at Harvard, was asked to introduce him. This is my friend, Bertrand Russell, he informed the audience. Bertie thinks that I am muddleheaded; but then I think that he is simpleminded.6
For Whitehead, exactness of the sort desired by most philosophers from Descartes to Russell is a fake In that regard, it is of interest to know that our initial goal included the circumscription, by means of a concluding chapter, of the vices and virtues of the epistemological field created by the evoked philosophical-psychological overlapping, and we hoped thereby to propose a programmatic argument of the manifesto type. We have lately discovered that this would be rather difficult, especially at this early stage. It will be seen that the contributor who has come the closest to such a feat is Jean-Claude Dumonceland that his axiomatization needs further polishing to reach any consensus. Before opening the floor to the discussion, let us say a quick word on the forthcoming activities of the WPN. At this point, we are (i) planning to hold an annual Spring research meeting, usually together with a proper conference; and (ii) organizing two book projects, one on consciousness studies and the other on the contrast of process psychotherapies in Eastern and Western traditions. On the conference front, there will be a meeting next April (2003) in Avignon; and we have the following (tentative) schedule that partially springs from the fact that the three main figures evoked earlier are not explored for themselves in this volume: some form of dialogue between the perspectives of Whitehead and James will be organized at the Sorbonne in 2004 (the contact person is Mathias Girel <girel@univ-paris1.fr>); between the perspectives of Whitehead and Husserl at the University of Salzburg in 2005 (the contact person is Franz Riffert <Franz.Riffert@sbg.ac.at>), and between the perspectives of Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty at the University of Dijon in 2006 (the contact person is Pierre Rodrigo <pierre.rodrigo@laposte.net>). The editors are deeply indebted to all contributors who, when need be, never hesitated to modify their paper in order to improve the
coherence of the whole. All know that panic of error is the death of progress; and love of truth is its safeguard. (MT 16)7 The reader will understand as well that there was no need to adopt one common linguistic pattern: some contributions are written in American, others in English. Two members deserve a special mention: Anderson Weekes, who has been tremendously helpful at all the stages of the project, and Jason Brown, who masterly co-organized the first annual WPN meeting in 2002. On the 22nd and 23rd of May, 2002, the WPN held its first annual meeting in Fontarches (near Avignon, France). A total of eight research seminars were given and the papers of this volume were discussed by the participantsJean-Claude Dumoncel, Gbor Karsai, Olivier Nannipieri, John Pickering, Guillaume Durand, Stuart Hameroff (who eventually had to give his seminar in Brussels), Clive Sherlock and Alain Sotto. Carine Brown, Marcel Crabb, Celeste Mc Guinness, Rosane Azevedo Neves da Silva and Raymond Veranneman de Watervliet have to be thanked for their decisive logistical support to the Nexus. Last but not least, Marc Laurent, the demiurge behind the esthetical scene of the volume, deserves a (very) special mention as well.
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
13
Footnotes
Hereafter AI. Whiteheads works will be cited according to the editions and abbreviations listed in the General Bibliography. 2 For a technical account of Whiteheads theory of contrasts, see, e.g., PR 24. 3 During its first year, WPN actually stood for Whitehead Psychology Network. Since then, the use of Network has spreadstarting with the creation of the International Process Networkand the decision has been made to use Nexus instead, a concept that carries a proper ring in everyday English while furthermore benefiting from its Whiteheadian use (relational unity or particular fact of togethernessPR, passim). 4 Cf. Hartshornes Whitehead as Central but not Sole Process Philosopher (1984a) and Reschers recent synthesis (1996 and 2000). 5 For the sake of completion, even Percy Hughes (1941) rather unreliable account of Whiteheads Psychology is mentioned. 6 Lucas 1989, 109, reporting the recollections of Paul Grimley Kuntz (cf. Kuntz 1988). 7 A more well-known Whiteheadian motto can be found in AI 244: It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest, and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one. Also action in accordance with the emotional lure of a proposition is more apt to be successful if the proposition be true. And apart from action, the contemplation of truth has an interest of its own. But, after all this explanation and qualification, it remains true that the importance of a proposition lies in its interest.
1
List of Contributors
Dr. Liliana Albertazzi is Associate Professor at Trento University [Dipartimento di Sociologia e ricerca sociale Via Verdi, 26, 38100 Trento, Italy; <liliana.albertazzi@soc.unitn.it>], and Director of the Mitteleuropa Foundation (Bolzano, South Tyrol). She has published 4 books, and more that 100 publications in Italian journals, in foreign journals and in collected works, as well as editing 18 books. Her main research interests are metaphysics, psychology and cognitive semantics. Dr. Mark H. Bickhard obtained his Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Chicago. He is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Cognitive Robotics and the Philosophy of Knowledge at Lehigh University [17 Memorial Drive East, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA; <mark.bickhard@lehigh.edu>]. His research program consists of developing naturalistic models of the person, spanning the entire range from the emergence during evolution of biological functions and knowing to the characteristics of full cultural persons. Dr. Jason W. Brown is Clinical Professor in Neurology in New York University Medical Center [550 First Av, NY10016, USA; <drjbrown@hotmail.com>] and, since 1993, Visiting Scholar at New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He has served as attending physician at University (Tisch) Hospital in the NYU Medical Center and at Bellevue Hospital since 1984. Author of over 150 professional articles on neuropsychology and philosophy of mind, he has published six books over the last three decades (cf. the General Bibliography at the end of this volume). Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr. is Professor emeritus from the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University [1325 North College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711 3199, USA; <cobbj@cgu.edu>]. He continues active as a co-director of the Center for Process Studies. Among his books are Process Theology: an
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Introductory Exposition (with David Griffin), For the Common Good (with Herman Daly) and Process Theology and Pastoral Care. Dr. Jean-Claude Dumoncel has taught logic, aesthetics and the history of mathematics in the Universit de Caen [Dpartement de Philosophie, Esplanade de la Paix, 14000 Caen, France; <j.cl.dumoncel@free.fr>]. His research focuses on the universal schematic that emerges in Bergson and Wittgenstein, and on the concept of multiplicity in the Deleuzian sense. Needless to say, both notions are of primary relevance to the psychological field. Of special interest for the reader are his 1991, 1996, 1998 and 1999 books. Peter Farleigh has degrees in physics, mathematics, electrical engineering and is presently a research student in philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is a founding member of the Australasian Association for Process Thought [Box 23, Wentworth Building, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia <p.farleigh@ieee.org>] and an editor of Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought. His research interests include the philosophy of mind, time and relativity, and the nature and differences between organisms and machines. Dr. David Galin (M.D.) is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute [5 Mt. Hood Ct., San Rafael, CA 94903-1018 <dgalin@itsa.ucsf.edu>]. His research includes neuro-psycho-physiology in animals and humans on cerebral hemisphere specialization, dyslexia, and neuropsychological aspects of psychiatry. His current interests include psychology of religious experience, and rehabilitating the concept spirit for the non-religious and the scientifically minded. Dr. Stuart Hameroff (M.D.) is Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Associate Director, Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson [Tucson, AZ 85721, USA; <hameroff@u.arizona.edu>]. He combines clinical practice of anesthesia with research into the mechanism of consciousness, collaborating with the British mathematical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose. His work is described at www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff. Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne, M.D., graduate of Oxford University, became University Lecturer in Psychology and Fellow of New College. As of 1967, he held professorships at Duke University and University of Toronto (Neurology and Psychology), and currently teaches at Tufts University (Cognitive Studies) and New School University [Department of Psychology, 65 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10003 <Kinsbourne@aol.com>]. His 400 monographs, edited books, research and theoretical articles consider mental functions, their development and disorders, and the implications for cognitive neuroscience. Dr. John Pickering has degrees in psychology from Edinburgh and Sussex Universities (UK). He has worked in the US at Rochester and Stanford Universities and teaches now at Warwick University [Psychology Department, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; <j.pickering@warwick.ac.uk>]. Following his interests in Buddhism, he has also worked in India, Sri Lanka and China. His initial work was in experimental psychology but his interests now lie in consciousness, ecological psychology and the renewed interaction between cognitive science and phenomenological traditions. Dr. Franz Riffert has studied and earned degrees in philosophy, theology and psychology at Salzburg University. He got grants to study at the Center for Process Studies (1988) and at the Catholic University at Eichsttt (1992-1994). Since 1995 he has been working at the department of educational science at Salzburg University [Institut fr Erziehungswissenschaft, Akademiestrae 26, 5020 Salzburg, Austria; <Franz.Riffert@sbg.ac.at>]. His work is in the fields of empirical education (diagnosis and therapy, educational methods of intervention, teacher training, school development and evaluation) and philosophical foundations of education (with special emphasis on process philosophy). Dr. Pierre Rodrigo teaches philosophy in the Universit de Bourgogne [Facult de Lettres et Philosophie, 2 Boulevard Gabriel, 21000 Dijon, France; <pierre.rodrigo@laposte.net>]. He investigates the phenomenological field and has published three books on Aristotles philosophy (1995, 1997, 1998), a study on Bergson (1998) and an essay on Art (2000). He focuses now on Merleau-Pontys and Patockas reinterpretations of Husserlian Phenomenology, and on their convergence with Whiteheads thought. He is also working on an International Symposium project on Merleau-Ponty and Whitehead (University of Dijon, France). Dr. David E. Roy (Ph.D.) has been a practising psychotherapist for 25 years [5475 N Fresno St #109, Fresno Ca 93710-8334, USA; <drdavid@adobecreations.com>]. He has authored one book and several articles related to the integration of process thought and psychotherapy. Recently, he has developed workshops for psychotherapists on Mindfulness in Psychotherapy and Process Psychotherapy.
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He did his Ph.D. at the Claremont School of Theology (USA) under John B. Cobb, Jr. Dr. William Seager is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto at Scarborough [215 Huron Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A2, Canada; <seager@utsc.utoronto.ca>]. His main interests are in the philosophy of mind, especially the problem of consciousness, and the philosophy of science. He has published two books on the nature of mind and consciousness: Metaphysics of Consciousness (1991) and Theories of Consciousness (1999). Dr. Avraham Schweiger (Ph.D. from the Psychology Department, UCLA, major in cognitive psychology). Associate professor of Behavioral Sciences, Academic College of Tel Aviv, Israel [4 Antokolsky St. Tel Aviv, Israel; <schweige@mta.ac.il>]; Research associate, Souraski Medical Center, Tel Aviv; Division of advanced brain imaging; Adjunct professor, Department of Speech & Hearing, The Graduate Center, City University of New York; Director of Neuropsychology, at the Center for Cognition and Communication, New York. Current research interests: functional imaging of recovery following brain damage using fMRI and PET scans, and the application of the process approach in the context of such brain imaging studies. Dr. Clive R. F. Sherlock is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Cambridge, UK [<crfsherlock@adaptationpractice.net>]. He pioneered and developed Adaptation Practicea unique therapy that implements a practical philosophy of impermanence and no-self. He works in Cambridge and London, runs residential courses for students of Adaptation Practice and trains other therapists in adaptation practice. Luca Vanzago studied in Italy, at the universities of Pavia and Napoli, and in Belgium, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he is about to receive a PhD. He graduated with a dissertation on Whiteheads conception of temporality, after which he devoted his research mainly on phenomenology and its relationships with Process Thought. He is the author of many essays on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and Whitehead. At present he is working on a monograph devoted to Husserls conception of temporality. He is assistant for the chair of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Pavia [Dipartimento di filosofia, piazza Botta 6, 27100 Pavia, Italy; <lucavanzago@libero.it>].
Dr. Michel Weber received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Universit catholique de Louvain (Belgium), where he is currently membre coopt of the Centre de logique [Collge Mercier, 14 place Mercier, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve; <Weber@risp.ucl.ac.be>]. His research program mainly consists of developing the activities of three networks he has created with his peers : the Chromatiques whiteheadiennes, the European William James Project and the Whitehead Psychology Nexus. He is co-editor of the European Studies in Process Thought. Dr. Anderson Weekes holds a Doctorate in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Trained in Ancient Philosophy, German Idealism, and Phenomenology, his research interests are not limited by school, period, or tradition [456 W. 22nd St., New York, NY 10011; <Philoponos@aol.com>]. He is Secretary of the WPN.
INTRODUCTION
19
Introduction. Reconnecting Science and Metaphysics: General Considerations and Pioneer Works on Process-Psychology
Franz G. Riffert and John B. Cobb, Jr.
The aim of the present article is not to investigate the potential contribution of Whiteheads process metaphysics to psychology in detail on some specific psychological field but to give a broad overview of the pioneer work undertaken up to the present day. More detailed discussions of the implications of Whiteheads philosophy will be presented in the other essays of this book. Before giving this overview (sec. 2), however, it is appropriate to reflect on the relation between philosophy (specially metaphysics) and the sciences in general (sec. 1), thereby putting Whiteheads position into a broader philosophical context.
1. Philosophy and ScienceIn Search of Balance

Modern academic disciplines, especially the sciences, have emancipated themselves from philosophy, starting with physics in the 17th century. This emancipation has led to disputes about the relation between science and philosophy. On the one side, some philosophers have proclaimed the subordination of the sciences to philosophy. Hegelianism, with its absolutist and intolerant overall-approach based on the dialectical method, had little to offer to the scrappy achievements of the sciences other than disdain. Somewhat similarly, the proponents of Phenomenology thought they had exceptional access to absolute truth by means of the so the called Wesensschau, so that they had no need for scientific assis-
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INTRODUCTION
21
tance. And classical Kantianism shared this philosophical arrogance, arguing that, as reflection on the (necessary) transcendental conditions of all science, philosophy has primacy over the fallible sciences. Even Ordinary Language Philosophy (Oxford School) implies that philosophy has unique access to truth, and the sciences are devalued as mere piece-meal producers. They proceed by their method of trial and error, and accordingly, it is implied, they fail to reach deeper insight into the nature of reality. Such insight can only be obtained by description and analysis of the deep grammatical structures of natural languages (interestingly enough, primarily the English language), which is the work of philosophy. Of course, when philosophy thus defines itself as the study of ordinary language, it runs the risk of rendering itself superfluous, since this is also the subject of linguistics, whose methods may well prove superior. On the other side, some have argued for the subordination of philosophy to the sciences. The Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle, for instance, postulated diverse criteria of meaning in order to separate what they regarded as meaningful scientific language from illusionary, and therefore meaningless, metaphysical speculation.8 The only roles remaining to philosophy were (a) criticism of ideologies (including metaphysical systems) and (b) reflection on the methods and procedures of the sciences. In this way, philosophy was reduced to ideology criticism and/or philosophy of science. Even so, a hint of Kantian arrogance remains. It is implicitly presupposed that philosophers understand scientific methods better than scientists! In its extreme forms, nevertheless, positivism advocated the dissolution of philosophy (A. Comte, 1848/1956) or at least of some parts of it. The early Quine (1975, 97-126), for instance, proposed that all epistemological tasks should be transferred from philosophy to psychology. There is yet another position in respect to the relationship between science and philosophy: pure mutual neglect! In this case, philosophers usually are content to play a solitary, self-contained game, wholly self-referential in mirroring solely their own historical problems. They propose solutions for second order questions, instead of dealing with essential ones. According to Lobkowicz, more than 70% of all academic philosophical work is self-reproduction (Lobkowicz 1974, 87) of this sort. The consequence of all these positions has been a deepening gap between science and philosophy. The desperate attempts on the side of philosophy to escape to unique philosophical methods allowing for
the final foundation of truth claims have not succeeded. They are always overtaken and refuted by scientific results, leading to a considerable loss of credibility of philosophy as a whole. Accordingly, the talk of the end of philosophy (see for instance: Marquard 1974, 117) can hardly be surprising. Of course, this growing separation has not been unchallenged. There have been individual philosophers who have tried to overcome it, and even philosophical schools. But in recent decades these have been exceptions moving against the dominant currents. There have beenif we see correctlyfour main philosophical schools that aimed to keep in touch with the sciences and sometimes even cultivated this mutual relationship: Pragmatism (Peirce, Dewey), Neo-Kantianism (Cassirer, Rickert), Critical Rationalism (Popper, Bunge) and Process Philosophy (Whitehead, Hartshorne). We will concentrate in this article on Critical Rationalism and Process Philosophy only, leaving Pragmatism and Neo-Kantianism aside. Critical Rationalism is singled out here for comparison to Whiteheads position because the relationship to the other two schools (Pragmatism (Dewey and Peirce) and Neo-Kantianism (Cassirer)) is well known, whereas the similarity between Critical Rationalism and Process Philosophy on the issue of the relationship between philosophy and sciences requires some substantiation. Today there is a widespread consensus among the proponents of Critical Rationalism that philosophy, including its metaphysical function, is meaningful. (Specht 1978, 163 translation). Karl Poppers convincing criticism of the Logical Positivists criterion of meaning and his substitution of a weaker criterion of demarcation, which was meant to connote no devaluation of philosophy whatsoever, marks an important turn in Critical Rationalism and even Analytical Philosophy. It was the first step towards re-opening doors for exciting cooperation between science and philosophy. One of the first steps, gently proposed, but in those days still daring, in the direction of rehabilitating metaphysics among Critical Rationalists was undertaken by Paul Weingartner. In his article, Der Gegenstandsbereich der Metaphysik (1969), Weingartner did not rest content with an abstract proclamation of the mutual relevance of metaphysics and sciences (in his case study: Parmenidean metaphysics and modern 20th century physics). He also showed in detail how the relevance can be realized. After carefully examining several forms of the Positivists criterion of meaning and rejecting them all for different
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INTRODUCTION
23
reasons, he posed the following cautiously formulated question: Would it not be thinkable that a metaphysical theory (i.e., one which would be designated as metaphysical in the traditional philosophical usage of the term) logically excludes empirical sentences (basis sentences [Basisstze]), so that it would be falsifiable? (Weingartner 1969, 111 our translation) Hans Albert, another well known Critical Rationalist, blows the same horn when he writes: After positivisms theses of meaninglessness have proven questionable, it is recommendable to set the connection between science and metaphysics and the factual importance of philosophical speculation for knowledge into its true light. (Albert 1980, 48 our translation) If one takes seriously Poppers claim that perception is theory-laden (for instance: Popper 1974, 86)and countless psychological experiments have confirmed itthen Poppers falsificationism cannot be used to place science on an objective basis. Such an extreme position is not warranted by psychological research, and today it must be rejected as nave falsificationism since statements describing perceptual contents are themselves fallible (because of their theory-ladenness). Therefore calling them falsifying instances does not mean that they definitively falsify hypotheses. Theories direct our attention and thereby distort our perceptions; this may and often will cause one to miss falsifying instances. It follows that alternative, rival theories are indispensable for progress, since they direct attention to different, otherwise neglected, aspects of reality. Metaphysical theories, thus, open fresh theoretical perspectives. Science progresses neither through inference of certain truths from evident intuitions with the help of deductive procedures, nor through inference of such knowledge from evident perceptions by use of inductive procedures, but rather through speculation and rational argumentation, through construction and critique. And in both respects metaphysical conceptions may gain significance. They do so by providing counter-intuitive and counter-inductive ideas that break our habits of thinking and perceiving, thereby sketching alternative possibilities of explaining real interconnections by which a critical illumination of hitherto accepted convictions is possible. (Albert 1980, 47 our translation) Hans Lenk also holds that [m]etaphysical speculations have proven to be indispensable engines of scientific progress [and] that it [therefore] makes sense to demand and promote a resurrection of metaphysical thought. (Lenk 1978, 58 our translation) But he imme-
diately adds: Of course the niveau of precise methodology attained in analytical philosophy must be fully preserved and utilized. (Lenk 1978, 59 our translation) Thus, not only is the construction of metaphysical theories on the analytical level of methodological precision possibleaccording to the Critical Rationalistsbut also such theories play an indispensable role in and for the sciences. Mario Bunge has developed, as fully as anyone, the formal and material criteria for metaphysics. Contemporary metaphysical systems not only must be based on basic notions of wide generality and apply modern formal tools such as logical and mathematical theories, they also have to take into account the results of current scientific research. Only such metaphysical systems qualify as scientific metaphysics (Bunge 1977, 7)9. Bunge holds that: ontology is general science and the factual sciences are special metaphysics. In other words, both science and ontology inquire into the nature of things but, whereas science does it in detail [] metaphysics is extremely general (1977, 16). Bothmetaphysics and scienceoperate by the hypotheticodeductive method: boldly developing (logically) interconnected hypotheses (theories), which by deductive extension are made testable. The test for scientific theory is empirical fact as observed in the context of experimental designs. Such an observation-mediated appeal to empirical fact for metaphysical theories, because of their abstractness and generality, seems, if at all, only scarcely possible. (1977, 21) Therefore the evidence for a theory in scientific metaphysics consists of judgements about its ability [] to cohere with science []. In short, the test for scientific metaphysics is science. (1973, 158) Metaphysics, while finding in the sciences a critical corrective of its speculative impetus, also contributes new ideas to the process of scientific research and thereby influences the course of scientific development. There is, according to Bunge, a critical-creative interplay between the general metaphysical theory and the more special theories of science, which enhances the development of both and therefore contributes essentially to the ongoing search of truth. Turning to process philosophy we will concentrate on Whitehead. According to him [i]t has been a defect of modern philosophies that they throw no light whatever on any scientific principles. (PR 116) Scientists similarly neglected philosophy because the triumph of Newtonian physics and its mainstream philosophical interpretation seemed to have clearly established its metaphysical position of materialist physicalism once and forever. Accordingly, scientists felt no
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INTRODUCTION
25
need for any alternative metaphysical doctrine. This mutual neglect during the last three hundred years has produced limitations of thought on both sides. (FR 61) Whitehead noted a growing need for a fundamental turn in general outlook: We have now come to a critical period of general reorganisation of categories of scientific thought. (FR 61) This need was primarily energized by radically new physical theories, such as quantum mechanics and Einsteins relativity physics. But Whitehead thought that there was a similar need in other disciplines such as psychology and physiology [which] are hovering on the edge of the crevasse separating science from philosophy. (FR 61) According to Whitehead, like science, metaphysics has to be undertaken in a systematic manner; both proceed by building systems or schemes of thought. But whereas the sciences are content with abstracting certain features from concrete fact and building schemes of limited scope, metaphysical categories are tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities. (PR 8) According to Whitehead, metaphysics and science both use the same, hypothetico-deductive method, which he terms the logic of discovery (FR 67). This logic follows the following criteria:
(i) Conformity to intuitive experience: (ii) Clarity of the propositional content: (iii) Internal Logical consistency: (iv) External Logical consistency: (v) Status of a Logical scheme with (a) widespread conformity to experience, (b) no discordance with experience, (c) coherence among categoreal notions, (d) methodological consequences. (FR 67-68)
If the first four criteria could be appropriately met, the fifth criterion would be superfluous. But this is not the case: Neither are we capable of definitively settling whether a single proposition indeed conforms to some content of experience since there is no immediate observation devoid of thought (FR 72), nor can we reach clarity in our linguistic
expressions, since thoroughgoing analysis exhibits that the clear-cut content of our concepts vanishes into the dim vagueness of a related semantic background. The same doubts also hold for criteria (iii) and (iv): if we are not able to state the propositions clearly, we must realistically (due to our limited mental capacities) expect to arrivesooner or laterat some internal as well as external contradictions. (see: MT 10 & FR 69) Criterion five, however, is evidently a procedure, to remedy the difficulty of judging individual propositions, by having recourse to a system of ideas, whose mutual relevance shall lend to each other clarity, and which hang together so that the verification of some reflects upon the verification of the others. (FR 69) Whereas isolated propositions are infected by vagueness, a scheme built on logically interwoven concepts, which define each other indirectly in a reciprocal way, yields much greater definiteness. It is a matrix from which true propositions applicable to particular circumstances can be derived. (PR 9) The logical relationships between the basic notions of the system, moreover, (a) give rise to more deductions, thereby extending the realm of empirical tests (FR 71) and (b) allow for indirect co-testing of those notions which otherwise would hardly be testable empirically. (FR 70f) These are the advantages Whitehead had in mind when he advocated metaphysics as an endeavour to frame a logical, necessary system of general ideas (PR 3). Now let us turn to the relation between metaphysics and science. It has been mentioned before that, according to Whitehead, metaphysics is the endeavour to frame the most general system of reality and real entities, while sciences aim at more special systems of a limited scope of applicability. But how do these two systems interrelate? The cosmological scheme should present the genus, for which the special schemes of the sciences are the species[] A special scheme should either fit in with the general cosmology, or should by its conformity to fact present reasons why the cosmology should be modified. (FR 76; see also: PR 116) But again: how should we understand fit in with in this passage? Whitehead is a bit clearer in the following sentence: Metaphysics is not a mere juxtaposition of the various sciences. It generalizes beyond any special science, and thus provides the interpretative system which expresses their interconnection. (FR 86) The ideal interconnection seems to be hypothetico-deductive: Metaphysics provides a most general scheme of reality from which (with the help of additional specify-
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ing hypotheses and limiting conditions) more specific notions can be logically derived, which function as basic concepts in a science and thereby throw new light on old problems, transform them and initiate new scientific research strategies and experiments. These notions also may disclose hitherto neglected problems of the old research paradigm. On the other hand, it is just as true that sciences are the critics of metaphysics. The more special schemes of the sciences mediate between the abstract and general metaphysical scheme and empirical fact as disclosed by experimentally guided observation (experience) the greater is the possibility that the metaphysical system receives indirect empirical criticism. If a scientific approach that is initiated by a metaphysics does not lead to fruitful new insights issuing in new experiments yielding positive, i.e., confirming results, not only must this scientific approach be modified, but also the initiating metaphysics has to be reconsidered. Thus the cosmology and the schemes of the sciences are mutually critics of each other. (FR 77) But since all this implies that we ought to have explicit logically formulated metaphysical as well as scientific systems, which of course today we still widely lack, we have to be satisfied with some less ambitious characterization of the relationship between metaphysics and sciences. This is why we have to draw implications from a metaphysics for a certain scientific field more intuitively and with less precision. Hence any refutation must be considered much more hesitantly and cautiously. Whitehead, himself a mathematical physicist for many years of his professional life, gave a few informal characterizations of basic physical notions suggested by his process metaphysics. (PR 116f; SMW ch 7 & 8) And some contemporary physicists10 have followed Whiteheads lead and investigated the implications of a process-metaphysical outlook for modern physics. But Whitehead not only held that his metaphysical outlook could be profitable for physical research. He also believed that what he called psychological physiology (PR 103) could profit from process philosophical insights: These principles [of a process-oriented psychological physiology] are not necessitated by this cosmology; but they seem to be the simplest principles which are both consonant with that cosmology, and also fit the facts. (PR 103 italics added) The recent debate about consciousness and the related mind-body problem shows that there is a growing awareness among philosophers, (neuro-)physiologists and psychologists that only a fundamental shift
in basic theoretical perspective can provide an acceptable solution of these long standing problems. William Seager, for instance, is well aware that [] metaphysical views form an indispensable background to all science. They integrate our world views and allow us to situate our scientific endeavours within a larger vista and can suggest fruitful new lines of empirical enquiry (as for instance Fechners psycho-physics suggests). (Seager & AllenHermanson, 2001) And he goes on: As long has there been science, science has informed this speculation and in return metaphysics has both helped to tell us what the point of science is and paved the way for new science. (Seager & Allen-Hermanson, 2001, ch 5) This positive evaluation of the role metaphysics can play for sciences allows Seager to argue for the metaphysical position of panpsychism as one possible candidate for providing a better explanation of consciousness than do emergentist-materialist accounts. David Chalmers, to name another leading figure in the consciousness debate, distinguishes between two aspects of this problem: the conceptual and the empirical. While the empirical problems can be approached with the standard methodological tools of contemporary cognitive science, the conceptual aspect is more difficult, calling for far reaching conceptual reversions. Its core is the problem of the obvious existence of active subjectivity in a world of mere inert matter. Why should physical processing give rise to a richer inner life at all? (Chalmers 1995, 201) Colin McGinn similarly asks: How could the aggregation of millions of individually insentient neurons generate subjective awareness? (1991, 1) Thomas Nagel was blowing the same horn when he wrote: But the reasons against a purely physical theory of consciousness are strong enough to make it seem likely that a physical theory of the whole of reality is impossible. Physical science has progressed by leaving the mind out of what it tries to explain, but there may be more to the world than can be understood by physical science. (1987, 36f) And while Seagers appeal to panpsychism as a possible solution of the problem of consciousness is still quite vague, David Chalmers proposes a more concrete strategy for solving the problem. This solution comes surprisingly close to Whiteheads fundamental metaphysical intuition. It consists in conceiving experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world. (1995, 210 italics added) It is obvious that by using this strategy Chalmers hard conceptual problem seems to be re-framed, yet transformed in a way that offers challenging new perspectives for possible solutions. The unbridgeable
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gap between active subjectivity and inert matter, so painfully obvious in the emergentist-materialist world view, has vanished. Writing from a Whiteheadian perspective, David R. Griffin has provided the most distinguished contribution to this discussion thus far in Unsnarling the World KnotConsciousness, Freedom, and the Body-Mind Problem. (1998; see also: Griffin 1997b) The scope of the present book is not restricted to the topic of consciousness. It tries to investigate more broadly the implications Whiteheads metaphysical scheme yields for the whole range of psychological research. But since this book is not the first excursion into this new frontier, a brief overview of the pioneer writings on process philosophy and psychology follows in the second part of this article.
2. Process Metaphysics and Psychology: Some Pioneer Works

Psychology refers to many different fields of research within which many diverse, even contradictory research strategies have been employed. Some entirely avoid considering the psyche or experience as subjective. Radical behaviorists deal exclusively with behavior observable to others. Physiological psychologists mainly focus on what happens in the brain. Even among those forms of psychology that take the psyche more seriously, there is great diversity. Some branches focus on perception, others on cognition. Standing to one side of all of this is depth psychology, largely developed with psychotherapy in view. Here, too, there are many schools, with varying relations to behavioral, empirical, and physiological psychologies. In some schools, the unconscious dimensions of human experience are considered to be of great importance. Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies have developed out of depth psychology. Still further removed from the mainstream of academic psychology is parapsychology, which is widely viewed with special suspicion, but which is of great interest to the general public. From time to time bridges are built between different approaches, and the boundaries between them shift. But there is little prospect of a unifying understanding arising from any one of the distinct approaches now being followed. The ways they locate reality, identify their data, and develop their methods are too diverse. One approach often seems to exclude the validity of others.
Whitehead himself did not contribute directly to the academic discipline of psychology. Nevertheless, his analyses of individual actual entities and of their organization into societies provides a context in which the various psychologies can root themselves. He analyzes ordinary sense experience into two modes of perception, showing how the presentational immediacy that dominates consciousness grows out of a more basic, causal impact on us of external and bodily events. He shows how all relations include an emotional or affective element. He explains both how profoundly experience is grounded in bodily events and also how it is distinct from them and transcends them. He provides an explanation of how, despite the predominance of a single unified experience being formed in the human brain, in some cases multiple personalities may appear sequentially. Or, when the lobes are separated, more than one human experience can occur concurrently. He shows that, despite the overwhelming importance of continuity in the physical world, it is not a metaphysical requirement of influence. He makes clear that despite the importance of consciousness, most of the unified psychic experience is not conscious. By providing an analysis that is not limited to human experience, he makes possible a fruitful study of animal psychology and its relations to human psychology. (See: Susan Armstrong Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis, 1989)11 A student of Whiteheads, A. H. Johnson reviewed the range of Whiteheads discussions of issues relevant to psychology in 1945 (The Psychology of Alfred North Whitehead). His essay remains unrivalled as a summary of Whiteheads contribution to this topic. Johnson shows the breadth, as well as the depth, of Whiteheads insights. The article also makes clear, however, that Whiteheads contribution is philosophical rather than scientific. Because Whiteheads ontological approach to psychology provides grounds for a great variety of scientific approaches, one contribution that his philosophy may some day offer to psychology is a context in which the many approaches can be seen as complementary, and in which an account of the psyche can be developed that draws on all of them. Whitehead provides a way of understanding the relation of the brain to the psyche that in principle allows the incorporation of what is learned from physiological psychology into the study of the psyche as such. His conceptuality also provides a way of understanding the relation of the psyche to human behavior that could enable behavioral and directly psychological studies to fructify one another. It locates
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the nonconscious dimensions of psychic experience in their relations both to physiology and to conscious experience, and it provides useful categories for understanding conscious experience as well. By relativizing sense experience it shows the possibility of nonsensory experience, including what are called parapsychological phenomena. By showing the social character of individual experience, Whitehead offers a basis for effectively integrating a social or systems approach to psychology with the still dominant individualistic ones. Whitehead himself proposed supplementing physiological psychology with psychological physiology. His point was that the cells that make up the body have a subjective aspect that is neglected in physiological psychology. Also, psychic events affect somatic ones. Thus far interest in this idea has been largely limited to philosophers, but one physiological psychologist has written about it appreciatively (George Wolf, Psychological Physiology from the Standpoint of a Physiological Psychologist, 1981). Among early interpreters of Whiteheads thought, the one who related it most insightfully and imaginatively to issues important for academic psychology is J.M. Burgers (Experience and Conceptual Activity: A Philosophical Essay Based Upon the Writings of A.N. Whitehead, 1965). He shows how conceptual activity can arise out of more elementary forms of experience. He sets this psychological contribution in the context of the whole physical world. Obviously, the ability of Whiteheads conceptuality to provide for integration in principle does not go far toward helping practising psychologists. They work much more closely with the fragmented data. Their interpretation of these data is shaped by traditions that have developed in the fragmented disciplines. Thus far, process thought in general and Whiteheads philosophy in particular have played a negligible role in these developments. This means that in order for the several fields to be unified, considerable reinterpretation of the data will be needed. It will be important that this reinterpretation prove itself immediately valuable in each field as well as enabling integration to occur. Although most of the work remains to be done, there are hopeful signs, including this volume. There are stirrings of interest in Whitehead among persons trained in various branches of psychology. These can draw on scattered, but significant, work that has already been done.
The first foray into the use of process thought in the study of psychology remains one of the most interesting. The first book published by Charles Hartshorne was entitled The Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation (1934). Hartshorne opposed the dominant view that each type of sensation, such as visual, auditory, and olfactory, is completely distinct from all the others. Instead, he argued, there is an affective continuum underlying the various types of sensa, so that the connections commonly made by poets and in ordinary conversation about the warmth of a color or the sweetness of a musical phrase are grounded ontologically. Although the affective continuum has not received much attention from physiological psychologists, a few have recognized its plausibility and the potential fruitfulness of the idea. (See: George Wolf, The Place of the Brain in an Ocean of Feelings, 1984.) Thus far the most extensive work relating Whiteheads philosophy to psychology has been in the field of psychotherapy and the theoretical reflection that accompanies it. The leaders in this endeavor have been pastoral counselors, beginning with Seward Hiltner and Gordon Jackson. James Poling is an example of a more recent writer in this field. He brings process thought to bear on issues raised by the sexual abuse of children. (The Abuse of Power: A Theological Problem, 1991) Robert Brizee has developed his theory and practice of counseling through reflecting on Whiteheads analysis of the concrescence of actual occasions. (This and other recent examples of relating process philosophy to counseling can be found in the focus section in Process Studies, Spring-Summer, 2000, 97-167) Several process thinkers have engaged in serious discussion with particular schools of psychology that relate to therapy. Elizabeth Kraus published an extended critical evaluation of behaviorism. She identifies ways in which process thought can enrich and deepen behaviorism as well as challenge it. (Individualism and Society: A Whiteheadian Critique of B. F. Skinner, 1975). Thomas Regan (The Matrix of Personality: A Whiteheadian Corroboration of Harry Stack Sullivans Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry 1990) has explored the parallels of Whiteheads basic philosophical notions and Harry Stack Sullivans interpersonal psychotherapy. Mary Elizabeth Moore has engaged co-dependency theory in a similar way. She affirms its relevance and value but questions its implicit individualism (Critiquing Codependence Theory and Reimaging Psychotherapy: a ProcessRelational Exploration, 2000) David Roy has shown that the gestalt
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psychology of Frederick Solomon Perls can be effectively interpreted and modified using Whiteheads categories. (Toward a Process Psychology: A Model of Integration, 2000) Depth psychology is partially distinct from psychotherapy. Its practitioners tend to be open to wide-ranging and speculative discourse; so they are natural partners with process thinkers, and conversations have occurred over the years. The relation of Whiteheads conceptuality to Karl Jung and James Hillman has been seriously explored in a conference, and a book has emerged. (See David Griffin, ed., Archetypal Process, 1989.) Transpersonal psychology is a further development from depth psychology, and it has attracted considerable interest from process thinkers. John Buchanan has written a dissertation at Emory University analyzing the ideas that have emerged from transpersonal psychology in Whiteheadian terms. Conferences have been held to explore this relation more fully. At the other end of the psychological spectrum, work has begun in physiological psychology. Roger Sperry found process thought useful in interpreting his findings on the relation of the two lobes of the brain. (See: Roger Sperry, Mental Phenomenas Causal Determinants in Brain Function, 1975) Avraham Schweiger has employed Whiteheads thought in the interpretation of the experience of those whose brains have been damaged. (The Process Approach in Perception, 1999) The issues of physiological psychology intersect directly with the philosophical discussion of the mind-body problem. To this topic Whitehead contributed extensively, and the way in which he overcame this dualism while maintaining the distinction between the psyche and the soma has been one of his great attractions to process thinkers. Nevertheless, it has attracted little attention in the wider philosophical community and among physiological psychologists in general. In a book mentioned above, David Griffin has undertaken to rectify this situation by critically engaging the dominant theories in the field from a Whiteheadian perspective and displaying the strength of Whiteheads position on the subject. (Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem, 1998) Between psychotherapy, on the one side, and physiological psychology, on the other, lies the vast field of academic psychology. Perhaps the most promising work here by process thinkers has been in building bridges between Piaget and Whiteheads philosophy. Reto Luzius Fetz and Franz Riffert have made significant conceptual advances.
(See: Reto Fetz, Zur Genese Ontologischer Begriffe. Fr eine Verbindung Whiteheadscher und Piagetscher Anstze, 1984 and Whitehead, Cassirer, Piaget: Drei Denkerein gemeinsames Paradigma, 1999; and Franz Riffert, Whitehead und Piaget. Zur interdisziplinren Relevanz der Prozessphilosophie, 1995 and On NonSubstantialism in PsychologyConvergences between Whitehead and Piaget, 2002) Jason Brown has developed his own process psychology and neuro-physiology influenced by the gestalt-psychological Wrzburger school, especially by Sanders work on percept-genesis. (The Life of the Mind, 1988 and Mind and NatureEssays on Time and Subjectivity, 2000) Although many of those interested in relating process thought to psychology share the general, negative, academic attitude toward parapsychology, Whitehead, like James and Bergson, was open to this dimension of experience. The data for mental telepathy should be evaluated critically but not rejected simply on the grounds that it offends ones metaphysical sensibilities. The hostility toward parapsychology arises chiefly from a priori convictions that there can be no action at a distance, a conviction that is not so clearly supported by recent developments in physics. In contrast to most modern and postmodern philosophers, Whitehead provided a conceptuality that can, in principle, explain many parapsychological phenomena, relating them coherently to other psychological knowledge. He speculated that whereas pure physical prehensions are only of contiguous occasions, this limitation does not apply to prehensions of conceptual feelings, i.e., hybrid prehensions. (Process and Reality, 307-308.) Part of the promise of a Whiteheadian contribution to psychology is to bring even this stepchild back into the fold. Here, too, David Griffin has taken the lead. (Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality: A Postmodern Exploration, 1997a) How can we assess what has been accomplished thus far? Negatively, it is clear that the process perspective is still virtually invisible in psychology in general. Its most extensive development has been in pastoral counseling, but since most pastoral counselors look to the broader movements of psychotherapy for guidance, even there its role is minor. Griffin has gained the attention of parapsychologists, and transpersonal psychologists take Buchanans work seriously. But these positive contacts with marginalized forms of psychology hardly help to establish influence or even credibility in more mainstream contexts.
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Positively, many of the particular probes over the years have been successful. They have demonstrated that thinkers influenced by Whitehead can interact effectively with work in a variety of fields of psychology. They can interpret a wide variety of data coming from many fields in a coherent framework. This capacity must still be shown again and again. The work has just begun. But that, in principle, it can succeed is no longer in serious doubt.
Footnotes
8 Of course this echoes A. Comtes classical positivist position (see for instance: 1848/1995) that philosophy is characterized by a deficient kind of rationality, not fully developed yet and that it therefore has to be replaced by full scientific rationality. 9 The term scientific metaphysics was first usedas far as we knowby one of the founders of Pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce (see the chapter, Scientific Metaphysics, in Hartshorne & Weiss 1960). Lakatos (1970, 136) and Elkana (1974, 198, 218, 227) have used this term too. 10 See for instance: Shimony (1965), Bohm (1980), Eastman (1997, 2002), Fagg (1997), Finkelstein & Kallfelz (1997), Papatheodorou & Hiley (1997 & 2002), Rosen (1997, 2002), Jungerman (2000, 2001 & 2002), Chew (2002), Hansen (2002), Finkelstein (2002), Hansen (2002), Henry & Valenza (1998), Malin (2001 & 2002), Stapp (2002), Tanaka (1997, 2002). 11 In order to allow the reader to decide whether the mentioned papers and books are of interest the titles are added in this section.
Part I. Neurophysiology
VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE
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Value in Mind and Nature

Jason W. Brown
Kill thy activities and still thy faculties if thou wouldst realize this birth in thee. Meister Eckart
This paper extends the microgenetic theory of the mind to a process psychology of value with the goal of interpreting moral feeling from the standpoint of an evolutionary model of the mind/brain state. The psychology is based on the temporal extensibility of basic objects and the continuum from the physical to the cognitive inferred from microgenetic patterns in actualization (Brown, 2000). The evolutionary transition is from the intrinsic value (existence) of inorganic entities, as the envelope of their waveform, through the realness of organic life, in which process becomes directional, to the conceptual feeling of human cognition, in which desire and worth precipitate as the affective content of object-concepts at their subjective and objective polarities. Value is the subjective dynamic over an act of cognition according to the segment in microgenetic process that dominates a momentary actuality. Specifically, value is a creation of feeling at successive points in its objectification. For process theory, the dynamic in a mental content lies in its immediate prehistory, not its causal surface. The change from one state of mind or world to the next is a novel becoming or near-replication of the immediately preceding state. An image, a thought, a feeling, an object in perception, do not cause something to occur; they appear, disappear and are replaced by a subsequent state. The present state may be conceived as the effect of its antecedent, but it is a novel actualization constrained by the state it replaces. In human mentation, the contents of awareness are actualities or finalities that perish, not
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solids with cause force. The process of actualization, not what actualizes, is the focus of change in mind and world. In this change, the progression is from potential to actual. Dewey wrote that the source of the duality of mind and body was the shift from explanations based on potential and actuality to those based on causality. The shift from causality back to potential and actualization reverses the trend to a bifurcation of nature, to which the concept of causal or external relations inevitably leads. A psychology of value coherent with a physics of nature requires, in my view, a theory of actualization and recurrence in which feeling and conceptuality inhere in the actualization process. The individuation of potential to actual is by way of internal relations, in physical entities and in the mind/brain state. In both, the transition incorporates a series of phases that leads from an arising to a perishing, in the momentary recurrence of a noncognitive entity and, in human cognition, from the instigation of an act or object as a construct in the unconscious to its actualization in consciousness. Value develops in the transition from subject to object as an evolution of conceptual feeling at successive points in the materialization of non-cognitive entities, and in the objectification of the perceptual world. In the actualization process, mind and world are not parallel endpoints. The self is an intermediate phase in the object that is an objectification of subjective phases in the mind/brain state. Do entities independent of the mind also have subjective phases? Whitehead thought so and wrote of the subjective aim of objective entities. The aim is realized in the transition to an actuality. The transition requires, and establishes, a duration. All entities have some duration, a thickness or a temporal extensibility. In Buddhist philosophy, the point-instant is said to be durationless but it has a temporal thickness that covers the arising and perishing of the point. The thickness or temporal extension consists of those phases through which the entity is deposited. In this respect, all entities are the same. Every atom or mind/brain state is a near-replicate of its set of internal relations that are iterated within its duration. Idealist philosophies regard the contents of the mind and the objects of perception as the phenomenal derivatives of a covert underlying reality. Concepts and objects, however, are not veils to formative process; they are the process that deposits them. Whether an object is conceived as real or phenomenal, there is still a development, a microgenesis or phase-transition concealed within its surface form. The pat-
tern of the phase-transition within an object is its reality, whether the unconscious process of the mind or the microphysical process of noncognitive nature. Fundamental to this line of thought is that a common process underlies the multiplicity of forms in nature and the diversity of contents in human cognition.
1. Microgenesis and process theory

A brief outline of microgenetic theory may help to orient the reader to the theory of value proposed in this paper. The concept of microgenesis was first developed in experimental psychology (see Smith et al, 1993), and has been further articulated in relation to brain process through the study of clinical errors with pathological lesions (Brown, 1972; 1988b; 1996; 1991/2002). The term microgenesis, coined by Heinz Werner, refers to the actualization in the present (Aktualgenese) of a momentary cognition over phase transitions in the mind/brain state. These phases retrace growth patterns in phyloontogeny. The recapitulation of historical growth, i.e., the unfolding of an act of cognition over evolutionary and maturational stages, entails a traversal of stages that phyletic or ontogenetic process lays down. Specifically, phases in cognition are entrained in a sequence that reflects forebrain evolution and development. However, the search for specific objects in thought, action or language acquisition with pathological breakdown, i.e., Jacksonian re-representation or the regression hypothesis, was unsuccessful. Pathology does not unpeel in the reverse order the onion skin of phylo-ontogeny. The reason for this failure is that stages or behaviors are not recapitulated. What is recapitulated are the configural aspects of the process through which the stages actualize. In a word, the process is revived, not the actual elements into which it deposits. This process consists of iterated whole-to-part or context-item specifications that recur in rhythmic overlapping waves. The sequence is adaptive, obligatory, cyclical, unidirectional. The cascade of wholepart shifts over evolutionary growth planes leads from a core in upper brainstem through limbic formations to the neocortical rim. The progression is from the intrapsychic to the extrapersonal, from potential to actual, from past to present, from mind (self) to world (objects). In each microgeny, phases serve as conceptual anchors of a change that is novel and continuous. Phases are not resting points but the dominant segments in a continuum, a sheet of mind from self to world,
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insubstantial, like waves in the ocean, each a potential (whole) for an ensuing partition. The process is adaptive. Specificity or definiteness is the outcome of evolutionary process. The concept of parcellation in neuronal growth, differentiation, analysis, increasing specificity of function in maturation, the individuation of Gestalts to features, surround-center, frame-content, context-item theory, are all attempts, in different ways, to capture the same process. Support for this theory lies in the detailed investigation of symptoms in brain-injured cases. The theory was pursued independent of process philosophy, but at some point after it achieved a relative maturity of expression, connections to Whitehead, and to Buddhist thought became apparent. These have been discussed in recent publications (Brown, 1998 on time, concrescence; Brown, 2000, on the Buddhist theory of momentariness, the metapsychology of Freud).
2. Value and evolutionary gradualism

A process theory of consciousness or value, no less than a causal theory, must decide between panpsychism and continuity on the one hand, or a sudden emergence, a mental Rubicon, on the other. Either consciousness is continuous from top to bottom or it emerges at some point in evolution. The same distinction applies to value but the discontinuity is starker. Few would argue that a stone is conscious, but we would all agree that stones can have value, as gems, bricks, weapons, etc. Unlike consciousness, which apprehends objects but is not invested in them, and is evident in animals, value is generally conceded to be a uniquely human feeling that is projected onto external objects as a bridge from the subjectivity of the observer to the objectivity of the world. More than consciousness, value brings the objectivity of the physical world into relation with human emotion and conceptuality. However, the idea that the value of a stone is a subjective addition to nature divides the physical from the mental and is an impediment to a naturalist theory of value. Either non-cognitive entities receive their value from human cognition or it is superimposed on an intrinsic value that is mind-independent. Yet, the value created by human cognition owes to the physical entity, brain. The mind is a configured pattern of brain activity. Value is generated by the physical constituents of this activity. On the continuity hypothesis, the brain equivalent of value would be continuous with that of other non-cog-
nitive entities such as a rock. A rock is not a solid piece of matter; rather, as Whitehead said, it is a mass of raging particles. On this view, the dynamic of process creates intrinsic value independent of the presence of a mental state. The intrinsic, or foundational, value in a physical entity such as a brain would then not be different from that of any other physical entity. A rock is like a brain in that it replicates itself through a certain duration of process. If process in a non-cognitive entity is a distant precursor of human cognition, a continuum might exist from the inner life of the observers brain to the inner dynamic of the smallest particle. If value runs through all things great and small, it must be present, in some mode of occurrence, even in the most elementary entity. Some suggestions along these lines, e.g. an uncollapsed wave-packet, virtual photons (Romijn, 2002), microdurations, are critiqued by Hunt (2001). Dombrowski (2001) has written of the microscopic sentiency found in cells, atoms, and particles. To say that human valuation is continuous with value in simple physical entities is to claim that value is grounded in the cosmology of process metaphysics, even if the precursors of value in rocks or particles are far removed from their final manifestations in the human mind. In other words, there is a bottom-up continuum from the intrinsic value of physical entities to the subjective valuations of human cognition. Moreover, since objects are realizations of subjective process, the nature of value in human cognition would provide a basis for value in perceptual objects. The value attached to an external object would be an extension of the value experienced inwardly as feeling or desire. For most of us, however, it is difficult to understand how a precursor of value might exist in a rock or a particle. How could one support such a claim? To demonstrate that value is continuous from mind to nature, one would have to show that feeling and conceptuality do not arise spontaneously in human cognition as emergents of complexity or as effects of learning and culture, but have their roots planted deeply in the nature of things and their evolutionary histories, in other words, that culture enhances or elaborates what is nascent in basic entities. When this nascent something that is the intrinsic value of the object becomes a value in the human mind, or the valuation and desirability of its objects, it has moved quite far from the primordial state, but even in this I believe there is an orderly progression. If we are looking for the antecedents of human valuation, it would be helpful at the start to bracket the notion of value as worth or desir-
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ability, and seek a formulation that extracts patterns from human cognition that are applicable to basic entities. Value is an intrinsic something ingredient in the mind/brain state, wholly within the subject. By intrinsic I mean that value is endogenous to the mind/brain state or that it is wholly within a non-cognitive entity from the perspective of that entity. It is not ab origo an estimation of the worth of an object or its meaning or utility, nor the desire or need for an object, nor an essence, property or substance, nor is it an ethereal or spiritual quality. This intrinsic something in physical entities is the antecedent of what eventually becomes human valuation. The concept of intrinsic value traces to an ancient debate in metaphysics centering on the opposition of the Aristotelian qualitative and the Platonic quantitative modes of analysis. The tension in these modes of thought is expressed in cognition in the distinction of the qualitative feel of inner experience and the quantitative science of objects. The feeling of a qualitative something in the mind lacking in physical objects is the basis of the dialectic between subject and object, or between inner experience and outer reality. This tension is at work in the opposition of a quantitative logic of reason and the qualitative experience of emotion, or between what a thing is and what it feels like. What a state is, is its objective existence. What a state feels like, is the dynamic within the state. This contrast at a more fundamental level is that of change and persistence, or the extremes of annihilation and eternalism that delimit the Buddhist middle way. A psychology of value that recognizes the centrality of conceptual feeling and subjectivity begins with the internal relations and qualitative change of basic entities. Such an approach can provide a coherent account of the evolution of value over the physical and mental series. The inner dynamic of an entity, its actualization or becoming, is the basis for the intrinsic relatedness of the entity over some duration of process. Intrinsic value can only be explained by a theory of intrinsic relations. One must start with internal relations for the psychology cannot regain them at advanced stages when the interioricity of feeling is at stake. The argument is as follows: The intrinsic value (existence) of all physical entities arises in a waveform of energy that establishes the entity over its temporal extension, i.e., the minimum duration of process needed for the entity to be what it is. In this bare epoch of existence, the waveform of the thing is reversible or isotropic. The vibratory or oscillatory structure of the entity is not determined by the direction of its formative process.
Gradually, the internal relatedness of an expanded epoch becomes the nucleus of what eventually is a shift from energy to feeling. This occurs as process takes on a direction and becomes anisotropic or irreversible. The progressive expansion of the internal relations that are ingredient in the epoch and the enlargement of the duration of the process giving the intrinsic value or existence to a complex entity are the basis for an elaboration of simple feeling to the feeling of realness in the organism. This is the shift from vegetative forms of organic life to organisms that show purposeful activity. The shift to a direction is the seed of an aim. A further development carries the feeling of realness to value, as experiential constraints and learning induce instinctual and drive-based affects to develop into the conceptual feelings that accompany the object formation outward into (as) the perceptible world. In what follows, these stages in the evolution of processenergy, feeling and valueare described in greater detail.
3. Intrinsic value and existence

A particle is a fundamental entity, not an aggregate like a rock. Science represents such entities as self-identical over time and in different contexts. Yet a proton in a stellar mass is different from one in a hydrogen atom, as a brain cell in a tissue culture differs from one in an active brain (Birch, 1990). An elementary particle can be conceived as a waveform of energy that is epochal or, if quasi-epochal, developing out of a space-time continuum such as Bohms implicate order. The epoch is the temporal extensibility of the particle. It comprises a duration sufficient for the particle to exist. The energy is the process that deposits the particle, the duration is the epoch or category that makes the particle the entity that it is. The minimal
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epoch of process that accounts for the existence of an object, a particle or a brain is its intrinsic value. Specifically, the existence of an entity is its intrinsic value. It is a long way from a particle to a brain, yet the pattern of process is comparable. The brain is a complex physical entity. Like a particle, it exists as a duration of its constituent phases. A brain state requires a certain pattern of neuronal activity. This pattern develops over rhythmic phases. The phases of a brain state are oscillatory and cyclical, analogous to the vibrations of a particle (see Gunter, 1999). These phases constitute a hierarchic series of vibratory patterns that pulse each moment into existence. The temporal extension of a mind/brain state is the complete set of phases that actualize in a momentary act of cognition. The complete set of phases is the intrinsic value (existence) of the mind/brain state. What distinguishes the activity of a neuron or a collection of neurons in the brain state from the coherent transformations that generate an act of cognition is unknown. A neuron exists as the momentary envelope of its activity pattern. We have no knowledge of psychic experience associated with a neuron nor, for that matter, with the discharge of innumerable neurons in a normal brain, nor the presumably quiescent neurons in a sleeping brain. A complex pattern of activity is essential if the brain state is to generate a cognition. This requires not only a spatial configuration of neuronal activity but a temporal sequence of activity in large populations of neurons over distributed phases in forebrain evolution. The configuration transforms in a direction from archaic to recent, or past to present (potential to actual), over an evolutionary stratification, such that the completeness of the sequence determines what psychic experience, if any, will occur. A particle exists as the epoch of its waveform. A perception exists as a transition from inception to termination in a single epoch of brain process. On the completion of its phase-transition, the mind/brain state becomes a physical existent that perishes for the next cycle of actualization. The discharge of a cell, the field effects of cell populations, the coherence of brain activity in an act of cognition, are all physical entities irrespective of whether they are accompanied by psychic experience. In the evolution of particles to brains, the duration enclosing a vibratory cycle enlarges from within to accommodate a progressive expansion of its constituent phases. The vibrations of a particle are isotropic; there is no repeatable temporal direction; even temporal order is indefinite. Presentness or actu-
ality is achieved when the epoch of energy is realized. Entities evolve. The vibrations of inorganic entities become phase transitions. The transition becomes directional; eventually, anisotropic [Figure 1]. The direction marks a gradual development from the dynamic of the waveform. Intrinsic value as existence transforms to value as feeling, or from existence as a packet of energy to life as a vector of feeling. At the stage of intrinsic value (existence), the dynamic is a non-directional becoming of process within the being of entity. The temporality of the process within the entity, and the spatiality of the category that constitutes the entity, are different perspectives on the becoming and being that are the entity. At the stage of feeling, the becoming into being is a process from earlier to later. The reversibility of the process is antecedent to its directionality and anisotropy. The energy of elementary as of complex entities is quantal. For the entity, there is no gap between quanta. Existence pertains to the duration of quanta, or epochs, not the interstices of their renewals. For the entity, these interstices are durationless, thus non-existent. The mind/brain state is also epochal, or modular. Experience is limited to the epochs of states, not the intervals between them. Process is relational, temporal. The change that occurs over a process is stabilized by the duration it fills. A duration of process, i.e., an epoch bounding a series of relations, is the kernel of a category. Categories are static, timeless. The relation of duration to phase is like that of category to member, the latter being a category for a further partition. For example, the item dog in the category animals is itself a category for various kinds of dogs. Within a given breed, say a collie, a specific dog is also a category of its perspectives, states of existence, selfidentical moments, etc. Categories are wholes to their parts, as the duration of an entity is a whole to its phases. The parts or phases contained in the whole are also categories for a further decomposition. The apparent substantiality of objects and the continuity of the psychic life are illusions of permanence and identity, or repeatability, that arise in the overlap of momentary epochs (Brown, 1996; 2000) Human valuation is derived from the intrinsic existence of elementary objects. The duration of process or temporal extensibility that establishes the existence of elementary entities is foundational to the development of feeling and valuation in complex ones. At some point, feeling becomes realness. The entity not only exists but is real, or has a feeling of realness. As with existence, the feeling of realness is not predicated on an object as a quality or property. Croce, Urban and
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others have taken this approach. Nor is valuation in the sense I have used it a judgment. Meinong argued that every valuation entails an implicit judgment that affirms or denies the existence of an object, in other words, that judgment is prior to value. On this view existence is, rightly, prior to judgment since judgment affirms existence, but for Meinong, judgment is essential for valuation, so that value is consequent to judgment. I would give the priority to existence and realness as manifestations of value early in evolutionary process, with judgment a metapsychological attitude consequent to the valuation that arises in character. Otherwise, value or desire would be an outcome of reason, which is clearly not the case; in process theory, reason (judgment) serves to justify valuations. An object evokes the desire latent in its antecedents or the choice implicit in action. Were an act of judgment itself a valuation, we should have to explain how any object stimulates (cathects, etc.) a feeling. In brief, a judgment that affirms or denies is a proposition (linguistic object) that is itself a valuation. The dynamic of intrinsic value transforms by degrees to feeling, realness, then instinct, drive and desire. The shift from intrinsic value (existence) to the feeling of realness to the feeling of desire seems to be a shift to drive or emotion in which feeling appears to be a kind of energy attached to an object. Affect theories postulate drive energy as a dynamic extrinsic to ideas or representations. For example, Freuds postulate of a (qualitative) drive energy that circulates among the inert (quantitative) traces, activating them by way of external relations. If, however, the existence of an object is its process or, put differently, the existence of the mind/brain state is the process it actualizes, an object would not be activated or energized by feeling, but rather, would be an epoch that feeling creates. The internal dynamic of the transition and the stability of its duration are the nucleus of what will become feeling in object-concepts.
cannot be determined until after they have occurred. An entity is the category of its phases. The transition from earlier to later gives it direction or aim. More precisely, the duration establishes the entity as an existent, while the process over which the duration extends is a kind of vector. In elementary entities, this is an aim to actuality. In the human mind it is, in addition, a direction from self to world. In taking the mind/brain state as a model for non-cognitive entities, we can say that, like the mind/brain state, the latter do not persist over time but create their own time as they replace themselves. Once an entity actualizes, the actualization recurs to deposit another entity to replace the prior one. There is a cyclical coming-into-existence and a passing-into-nonexistence for the momentary life of every entity. The birth and death of each particle, or act of cognition, recalls once more the arising and perishing of the point-instants in the Buddhist theory of momentariness. Existents are not created out of nothing. Non-existence refers to the cessation of change on the completion of a cycle or phase-transition and the establishment of an epoch, with overlap by the ensuing cycle. The conclusion of one cycle coincides with an epoch of existence as the succession or time-order of the entity actualizes. Duration is a virtual arch over phases that exist by virtue of the epoch in which they are retroactively subsumed. The phases, being relational, are unlike instants with definite boundaries.
5. Being and becoming

Categories, durations and their constituents have indistinct boundaries, but one difference is that duration has a posterior and anterior limit. Another is that the temporal succession within a duration has a direction from earlier to later, or takes on a direction once the transition is complete, while a category and its members are spatial and timeless. Phases have direction, collies do not. In its spatiality and atemporality, the categorical nature of duration, or the durational category of an entity, takes the entity out of time and makes it thing-like or substantive. Conversely, the directionality or transition over phases takes the entity back into time in the form of process or change. There is a dual aspect to every entity. Being and substantiality reflect the epochal nature of duration. Becoming and change refer to intrinsic process. Becoming does not exist unless it is encapsulated by being, as being is the compresence of becoming in duration. The evolution of intrinsic value from basic to complex entities is the evolution of the
4. Duration and existence

The generality of value is a direct inference from temporal extensibility. Some duration of process is necessary for the existence of any entity, a physical object like a rock or a mind/brain state. The minimal duration encloses earlier and later phases of its coming-into-existence. Prior to the completion of its process, it is uncertain exactly what entity will materialize. In cognition, an incomplete sequence can result in sleep, dream, psychosis, aphasia. In an atom, orbital direction and spin
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temporal extensibility of elementary particles to object categories which subtend their internal process as a direction or an aim. In brief, value is the being of an entity, or the being (substantiality) of an object, over the becoming of a momentary category of phases (see Brown, 2000). This way of thinking allows us to unify the temporality of change with the timelessness of category. Quantity arises in the existence of an entity as its duration actualizes. Quality arises in the process through which the entity actualizes. Similarly, objectivity, as an external perspective on an object, derives from the solidification of its category. Subjectivity, as the internal perspective of the object or entity, derives from the change through which category is laid down. Yet all entities are fundamentally the same, so the distinction turns on the emphasis of either the categorical (substantial) or transitive (processual) aspect of the same entity. Concepts and intentions refer to objects and actions, or to the substantial and processual aspects of the mind/brain state. The categorical nature of duration is the origin of conceptuality, as the processual nature of actualization is the origin of intentionality. If an object is the objective segment of a subjective process, and the subjectivity of the process is, so to say, buried in the object, which for this reason is not barren of subjective content, all objects or entities have subjective and objective phases. From the standpoint of human perception and, I would venture, from a mind-independent perspective as well, conceptuality extends all the way down to the most basic entities. The conceptuality and categorical nature of the minutest particle derive from the duration of its existence. In the enfolding of cycles within epochs, or transitions within durations, the entity exhibits, in statu nascendi, the conceptuality of the whole. The actualization of the entity has an aim that is satisfied when its momentary cycle is completed. This aim is realized in the duration of phases necessary for its accomplishment. All objects share this pattern, an aim toward definiteness, that is the seed of purpose. Whitehead put it nicely: the lowest stage of effective mentality, controlled by the inheritance of physical pattern, involves the faint direction of emphasis by unconscious ideal aim.
6. Realness
The relationality of the process of inorganic entities is perhaps not yet their subjectivity, unless defined broadly as, or in the
Whiteheadian sense of, intrinsic relations, but it is the ground on which subjectivity develops. The subjective appears when intrinsic process takes on direction, and especially when there is a goal or aim. At some point in evolution, the energics of inorganic matter generate subjective process. The distinction is somewhat arbitrary. I would locate the subjective at that point where process is no longer isotropic, i.e., when directionality is crucial to a particular existent. At that point, one could say, energy shifts to feeling as the reversibility of intrinsic process becomes untenable. The presence of feeling imports realness to the phase-sequence. Feeling arises in the succession of process from earlier to later. The forward actualization of organism is the basis of aims, instincts. Organism feels realness in existence, it struggles to survive. Organism is real for itself, the flower that enjoys the air it breathes. Even the most primitive organism does not merely exist, it exemplifies tacit realness, in tropism, adaptation, survival. A discrimination is an aim. The feeling in objects, Whitehead said, is their reality. Feeling is the difference between a rock and a flower. The rock exists but does not yet have feeling. Without feeling, it cannot have realness for itself. When the rock is penetrated by perceptual feeling it has realness for others. A flower is real for its own sake. There is growth, death, competition. Near the beginnings of organism, as the energic feelings of physical process give rise to the organic feelings of life, the intrinsic value of existence transforms to the value of realness. Realness is not a judgment of whether something is real or notthe entity already exists and is part of reality. The feeling of realness is not a criterion of reality. Unreal images can feel real, and vice versa. It is, rather, the feeling of vitality and movement in organism and in the world. The organism and its world count for something. Dewey wrote, feeling is a name for the coming to existence of those ultimate differences in affairs which mark them off from one another and give them discreteness. The shift from existence to realness in the evolution of valuation is marked by a motion that is an aim and a discrimination. Every contrast is not a value, but every distinction that arises in organism is a primitive signification. Perry said, value develops as conation, tendency, a striving in physical nature. Realness is felt before it is known. Knowing comes later. The act of knowing arises out of felt realness, and is directed by interest to a determination of signification or object-meaning (worth). In human
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cognition, feeling takes on specificity, not from its objects, but from their anticipatory concepts. When an object actualizes, specificity increases as the object becomes real. A specification of feeling accompanies the individuation of object-concepts. The realness that inhabits organism and its objects transforms to feeling in object-concepts, then to the part-objects they give rise to. An intenser expression of intrinsic value does not increase the existence of the entity; the entity exists or does not exist. Similarly, the feeling of realness is not a quantity that admits of degrees. As with existence, an intenser manifestation of realness does not make the organism or its objects more real, though their import or signification may differ. The feeling of realness is undifferentiated from the organism to its environment. The realness is for the organism and its objects equally. This feeling is evenly present over the actualization sequence with no segment of process felt as more or less real than any other. When feeling is withdrawn, in pathological states, the realness of all objects is in danger. In human cognition, knowing a thing is real implies an awareness of its unreality. The psychotic for whom people are unreal feels this unreality in the foreground of an unreal world. The feeling of realness (or unrealness) pervades the observer and his objects. It is not distinct for a given object or a portion of the field of perception. The unreal is a marker for a disturbance that is generalized. The loss of this feeling does not penetrate the ground of existence. In normal circumstances we know that horses are more real than unicorns but a horse is not felt as more real than a unicorn. Similarly, one can question whether the self or world exists, but the question is conditioned on their existence. Thinking about the state of an object is not part of the objects state, it constitutes another state of thinking that incorporates the other state as an object of thought.
7. Transition to human valuation

Feeling as realness is the vitality of lower forms that exist in a mode of sensory experience as it makes contact with the environment. Feeling reaches into the sensory organs and promotes movement in a reflex arc. The poverty of individuation of organism mirrors its rudimentary individuation in space. The organism is part of a community of other more or less identical organisms, e.g. insects, fish. As feeling transforms to instinct, the circularity of the sensori-motor contact of organism with environmentthe Gestaltkreis of von Weizsacker
shifts to a unified act-object. The closed circuit of reflex shifts to a simultaneous construct that is the core of a mental representation. For example, when the frogs tongue captures a fly, perception and action occur as a unit. Gradually, the response bias of instinct gives way to the potential of drive. The enhancement of antecedent phases of possibility at the expense of the rigid interlocking sensori-motor dependencies of instinct helps to individuate organism and enlarge its affective repertoire. With the drivesaggression, fear, appetitethere are many routes to satisfaction. The fractionation of drive is the threshold of individuality. The subjectivity of the actualizing organism is more emphatic as its objective segment, the perceptual world, is articulated by feelings in objects of interest. Inner and outer worlds are the subjective and objective phases of a single perception. These phases take on meaning, signification or value as a unit. The organism values itself and its objects. Drive energy invests the object-formation and flows outward with objects as they actualize. Feeling in the form of drive distributes into objects as an immediacy of signification, or meaning, that is the satisfaction of the drive. An equilibrium is established between feeling in a subjective mode, and feeling in the objective mode of the organisms perceptual space. This stage of object and activity awareness in animals or human infants was described by Piaget. The next stage transforms this pattern to a mature human cognition. This occurs through an accentuation at a phase previously bypassed in the immediacy of object actualization where conceptual primitives invested with drive energy allocate feeling to the emerging objectconcepts that give rise to perceptual objects. In this phase of conceptual feeling, the affective tonality of object-concepts replaces the objectbound drives with the concept-bound desires. The feeling in a concept replaces the feeling in or for an object. The individual feels desire (fear, etc.) for absent or not yet realized objects. Desire is feeling in preobjects, i.e., object-concepts, whether or not objects are present. When present, the object serves as a receptacle for desire. The outflow of feeling deposits valuation or worth in the object, i.e., in the objective segment of the mind/brain state [Figure 2]. Feeling that is midway between subject and object, that is, partly subjective, partly objective, is felt as interest, not having the full subjective intensity of desire, nor the full objective value of worth. Perry wrote that which is an object of interest is eo ipso invested with value.
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Interest is a form of value. It is the form feeling takes at an intermediate stage in conceptual objectification, a tentative desire, a threshold object valuation. When feeling invests object-concepts lacking the potential to be objects of intentional feeling, e.g. the self, or abstract concepts such as loyalty, these object-concepts are felt as worthy or unworthyin the case of the self as esteem or, from the standpoint of others, as virtue or wickedness. Feeling is like a river that recurs from a source in the mind to a destination in the world, one moment surging up at a proximal phase, another, cascading downstream, yet all the while, an interior dynamic of a larger object, the mind/brain state, that is constantly pouring out objects.
8. Perception and value

As Heraclitus said, the road up and the road down are the same. Having taken the upward path, deriving realness and cognitive valuation from the progression of energy to feeling and realness as intrinsic value, we turn to human perception and attempt to show how the pattern of object formation is related to that in elementary entities. We might as well begin with perception since we are captive to our own mind/brain states, and have no choice but to describe them in
every description of nature. An account of human perception is critical to the so-called observer error in physics but it is also necessary to bring novel insights to physical theory. The pattern of process that gives a perception, or the pattern of actualization of the mind/brain state, provides a model for intrinsic value in physical objects. The process that underlies a perception consists of a succession of (probably) rhythmic phases ordered from earlier to later that unfolds in a fraction of a second. The cycle of a human mind/brain state is about 0.1 second. Every object has its own cycle of existence. Dividing the length of an electron by the speed of light, Whitrow defined a chronon as the shortest interval of time, 10-24th seconds. A mind/brain state as with all entities exists in duration even though the duration varies from one entity to another. Case studies of brain-damaged subjects have indicated the presence of an orderly sequence of phases over the duration of a perception (Brown, 1986; 2001). Early phases, mediated by older brain formations, deposit a primitive concept that is a kind of implicit belief. The neural configuration that corresponds to this belief is the deep structure of a perceptual object. It is both conceptual and drive-based. This fusion of pre-object and drive in conceptual feeling is comparable to the drive-representations of psychoanalytic theory, except that ideas contain feeling-tone, they are not cathected from outside by libidinal energy. The construct has an ideational or conceptual and an energic or processual aspect. One does not infect the other, they are different aspects (quality, quantity) of the same configuration. Intermediate phases support the self and inner experience (Brown, 1999; 2002). The unconscious or core self is equivalent to character, the conscious self, or self-concept, its momentary expression. Conceptual feeling derives from the self-concept and its affective charge, and transforms to a phase of personal experience and dreamlike space, where relations of meaning and experiential memory are primary. Dream and some forms of hallucination represent the expression of this phase as an incomplete perception. The configuration is then sculpted to a phase of three-dimensional object relations and, finally, by way of sculpting effects at the primary cortices, the features of the object individuatecolors, tones, fine discriminationin a space that is perceived as independent of the body. Action and language undergo a parallel derivation. The transition is guided at successive points by physical sensation, which constrains a fully subjective, i.e., endogenous, sequence to an externalized image of the world.
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On this view, the objective segment of a perception is not the output of its prior subjective phases but carries with it, as meaning, feeling, recognition, all of the antecedent phases in its production. Antecedent phases are not causal precursors that give their effects and disappear, but are embedded in the final outcomes. An object actualizes the complete process and incorporates all of the phases in its structure. This structure is a dynamic sheet of mind from the physical unconscious, through the self to the external world. The objective segment of a perception is the world we perceive. The subjective segment is the route through which it gets there and the self that perceives it. The self and experiential memories are laid down in the wake of the object as deep structures in its actualization. The mind/brain state is a wave of process that stretches from the core of the mind to the rim of the world.
9. Desire and worth

As the object individuates from its inception in conceptual feeling to a position in the external world, the drive aspect undergoes an affective transformation that continues into the object as its affective residue. Specifically, object-concepts differentiate out of conceptual feeling with their affective tonalities, the fears, hopes, preferences and opinions that are part of human valuation. This phase is tapped in percept-genetic studies that show unconscious affect and meaning engaged at formative stages in object development (Smith and Hentschel, 1993). When the object exteriorizes as a thing in the world it retains a portion of this feeling in the sense of realness, which is the least quota of feeling that accompanies the object outward from its conceptual core to a locus in space. This feeling is a tributary of subjectivity that binds the object to the mind of the perceiver. It can be interpreted as a piece of mentality that extends the conceptual feeling of intrapsychic space outward as a space around the observer. This final trickle of affect into object space can be withdrawn, as in the derealization of psychotics. When this occurs, objects, including other people, may, for the observer, become mechanical automata devoid of feeling and realness. Intrinsic value in a mind-independent entity corresponds to intrinsic value in the mind/brain state, conceived as a physical entity in both its subjective and objective segments. The intrinsic value (existence) of an object in perception is not located in the perceptual object but
is distributed over the mind/brain state as a whole. Intrinsic value grounds the feeling of realness in those objects realized in the state regardless of whether they are objective or subjective. The intrinsic value of an hallucination or a perceptual object is the value generated in the phase-transition of the mind/brain state. Intrinsic value is augmented at both its subjective or objective pole into the feeling of realness (of the mind and its objects). Not only must the object exist, the self must also exist. Self and object exist as the internal and external segments of the wholeness of the state. The feeling of realness cannot be altered at one pole and leave the other pole untouched. When the object no longer seems real, the realness of the self is imperiled, while a change in the realness of the self is accompanied by an alteration of its objects (Brown, 1999). The intrinsic value (existence) of the mind/brain state extends throughout the state in the same manner that existence applies to every phase in the duration of non-cognitive entities. The mind/brain state exists as a physical entity in primitive cognitive systems, or in sleep, or apart from what the observer perceives. The realness accentuates the ground of intrinsic value over its full temporal extent. The subjective pole is as real as the objective pole. Realness is the heightening by feeling of the dynamic of the entire state. The ground of existence is augmented in the feeling of realness, which is then allocated to the proximal or distal polarity of the mind/brain state so as to enhance intrinsic value and realness to desire or worth. Desire is an accentuation of the subjective polarity, worth of the objective polarity. Yet, intrinsic value is the basis on which realness and desire develop as the first stage in the conceptual valuation of the object. The perceiver brings interest to the object. Interest is the accentuation of that objects share in the objective segment of the mental state. Experiential memory in the self-concept provides emphasis to objectconcepts developing out of attentional and motivational biases, of
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which interest is a superficial mark. Interest is the qualitative shift in value from realness to worth. The conceptual feeling that is channeled into the object heightens its affective content. The object stands out, it signifies something beyond itself. An object of desire that has interest or worth can also be a concept or an idea distinct from the desire for it by the self. The value of a diamond, a vacation, the face or thought of ones lover, can shift from one feeling to another, from worth and desire to disinterest and avoidance, and we realize that feeling is continuous over its subjective and objective segments. Yet its objects remain as real as ever. Interest can be momentary. For that moment, however long, i.e., the frequency of its recurrence, the object usurps a greater portion of the perceptual field. One can say, the object inherits a disproportionate share of the affective load that normally would be more equitably distributed over the entire field. Put differently, with the emphasis on a pre-object phase in perception, the object retreats to a segment where its subjective valence is evident. It is no longer a neutral entity. Interest accentuates worth when it distributes into the object. Conceptual feeling individuates the intrapsychic phase of the mind/brain state and settles on the objective segment of the objectdevelopment. The object itself becomes valuable or desirable (threatening, disgusting, etc.). The valuation is extrapsychic or object-centered. When interest accentuates the intrapsychic phase of the object formation, the valuation is felt as desire. The feeling is subject-centered, it belongs to the observer. The self wants (loves, desires) the object. The feeling of valuation is closer to the self-concept because the accentuation affects the object-concept as it individuates the selfconcept. Often it is difficult to decide if the valuation is intra or extrapsychic. Is an object beautiful because I desire it, or do I desire it because it is beautiful? The relative emphasis on a proximal-subjective or distal-objective segment in the mental state determines whether valuation will be felt in the perceiver as desire, or in the object as worth. In sum, a perception is a transition over phases leading from self to world. A single transition, an act of cognition, is a mind/brain state. An object includes all of the phases in its development. Basic entities also exist as durations. Intrinsic value is the existence of a physical entity over its phases. The intrinsic value of an entity, or a mind/brain state, is its non-cognitive existence. This is the foundation of its initial subjective valuation as realness. Physical entities exist before they
are felt as real. They cannot have the feeling of realness without being existents, even if those existents are hallucinatory or virtual. Realness is the accentuation of existence in organism. The object not only exists but feels real. As intrinsic value grounds realness, so realness grounds a more developed valuation. The affect stream can be allocated to its objective or subjective portion. When the objective portion is accentuated, the feeling of realness in the object is the foundation of its valuation as worth. When the subjective portion is accentuated, i.e., with emphasis on antecedent phases in the perceptual process, valuation is the feeling of desire. An allocation of affect to the self-concept independent of its objects, or prior to the individuation of object-concepts, gives the feeling of worth centered in the subject, i.e., self-esteem. The transition is from the intrinsic value (existence) of inorganic entities, as the envelope of their waveform, through the realness of organic life, in which process becomes directional, to the conceptual feeling of human cognition, in which desire and worth precipitate as the affective content of object-concepts at their subjective and objective polarities. Acknowledgements My thanks to Mohammed Valady, Mark Germine and John Cobb for helpful comments on the manuscript.
CONSCIOUSNESS, WHITEHEAD AND QUANTUM COMPUTATION
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Consciousness, Whitehead and Quantum Computation in the Brain: Panprotopsychism Meets the Physics of Fundamental Space-Time Geometry
Stuart Hameroff
Whitehead described consciousness as a sequence of events (occasions of experience) occurring in a wider field of proto-conscious experience. Philosopher Abner Shimony observed that Whiteheads occasions were comparable to quantum state reductions. The Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR model suggests consciousness involves quantum state objective reductions occurring in microtubules within the brains neurons. Roger Penroses objective reductions are processes of fundamental space-time geometry, the most basic level of the universe. Taking fundamental space-time geometry as Whiteheads pan-experiential wider field of proto-conscious experience and objective reductions as occasions of experience ties philosophy of mind to modern science, and gives consciousness an ontological place in nature.
1. Introduction: The problem of consciousness and the emergence approach

Ever-increasing understanding of brain function has failed to illuminate the nature of consciousnessthe subjective awareness, or phenomenal experience of mental states which sets us apart from intelligent machines and other complex entities (e.g. Nagel, 1974; Chalmers, 1996). Indeed it is difficult to even define or describe our first person consciousness, much less explain how our brains evoke
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what philosophers call qualia, raw components of subjective experience which give rise to our inner life. Examples of qualia (or of composites of qualia) might include the redness of a rose, the sound of an oboe or the feeling of love. Despite the difficulties, we nonetheless (presumably) have and know our own personal consciousness. Incorporating the conscious mind into a scientific world-view will require the union of an appropriate philosophy with modern science. In an attempt to do so, this paper brings together the philosophical approach of Alfred North Whitehead with current vanguard theories in physics and neurobiology. Broadly speaking, there are three types of approaches to the problem of consciousness: dualism (consciousness lies outside knowable science), emergence (consciousness arises as a novel property from complex computational dynamics among relatively simple components in the brain), and some form of panpsychism, pan-protopsychism, or pan-experientialism (essential features or precursors of consciousness are fundamental components of reality which are accessed and organized by brain processes). In addition to the problem of subjective experience (1), other related enigmatic features of consciousness persist, defying technological and philosophical inroads. These include (2) the binding problem how disparate brain activities give rise to a unified sense of self or unified conscious content. Temporal synchronybrain-wide coherence of neural membrane electrical activities, for example coherent 40 Hz oscillationsis often assumed to accomplish binding, but what is being synchronized? What conscious components are being coherently bound and why should they be unified by temporal coincidence? Moreover brain-wide temporal synchrony appears to be too precise (zero phase lag) to be accounted for by conventional neural synaptic explanations, suggesting an actual quantum coherence (John, 2001a; 2001b). Another enigmatic feature is 3) the transition from pre-conscious processes to consciousness itself. Most neuroscientists agree that consciousness is the tip of an iceberg, that the vast majority of brain activities is not conscious, and that consciousness can occur in brain regions which at other times are not conscious. But there is no explanation for a threshold, or transition from non-conscious, sub-conscious or pre-conscious processes to consciousness itself.12 Yet another enigmatic feature is 4) the problem of free will. Do we indeed have free willagency of choiceor are we merely epiphenomenal helpless spectators, following a deterministic behavioral
path shaped by our genes and environment? Finally, 5) what is the nature of subjective time? Does time actually flow? And if so, in what does it flow? To our conscious minds time does seem to flow, and conscious moments seem to have definite durations (e.g. William James specious present (James 1890, I 609). However in physics there is no necessity for a flow of time, and some contend that time does not actually exist as a dimension or continuity, but rather as a collection of disjointed moments (Barbour, 2000)! Why is the flow of time such an intrinsic feature of our conscious experience? Conventional neuroscientific approaches to the enigmatic features of consciousness are based on contemporary understanding of the brain as a collection of neurons acting as fundamental units. A century ago the Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon-y-Cajal showed the brain to be comprised of individual nerve cellsneurons rather than a woven-together reticulum, as had been suggested earlier by Camille Golgi (Cajal, 1899; Hameroff, 1999). From Cajals discovery ensued the neuron doctrine which implies that the brain operates by interactions among fairly simple individual neuronal units, exchanging signals at connections known as synapses. The development of classical silicon computers which also operate by interactions among fundamental units (e.g. bits) has fostered the notion that the brain functions in an essentially similar way. Indeed in the 1980s the development of artificial neural networks, self-organizing computers which can alter connection (synaptic) strengths and thus learn, bolstered the analogy between classical computers and the brain. Based on historical comparisons between information processing technology and brain functions (e.g. from the Greeks seal ring in wax as memory, to the telegraph, hologram and silicon computer as the conscious mind) the idea has become prevalent that the brain is a computer. But what about consciousness? Is consciousness a form of computation? If so, why arent computers conscious? One answer is dualism, systematized by Ren Descartes (consciousness lies outside science) or its modern mysterianism counterpart, i.e., Colin McGinns notion that, while consciousness may lie within science, we are not capable of understanding it (e.g. McGinn, 1991). The conventional, most popular answer is emergence which suggests that conscious experience emerges at a critical threshold of computational complexity among the brains neurons. Emergence (in its purest form) is a mathematical construct from non-linear dynam-
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ics in which novel properties emerge at thresholds in hierarchical complex systems (Scott, 1995). For example the property of wetness emerges from simple interactions among simple water molecules which individually lack wetness. Weather patterns, including the Great Red Spot on Jupiter arise from simple interactions among simple gas molecules and dust particles. Candle flames and self-organizing computer programs are also emergent phenomena. Is consciousness an emergent property of simple synaptic interactions among simple neurons? Perhaps, but simple single cell organisms like paramecium can learn, avoid predators, find food and mates and have sex, all without benefit of a synapse (they apparently do through activities of their internal cytoskeleton including microtubules).13 Furthermore complex weather patterns and computer programs are not conscious as far as we can tell (determining whether a system is conscious is admittedly another problem). Furthermore the emergence view offers no apparent threshold nor testable predictions. In the emergence approach, consciousness has no ontological status setting it apart from non-conscious systems.
2. Whitehead and Pan-protopsychism

An alternative set of philosophical positions which does ascribe ontological status to consciousness, or its precursors, includes panpsychism, pan-protopsychism, and pan-experientialism.14 These view consciousness as being related to a funda-mental, irreducible component of physical reality, something like mass, spin or charge. These components just are. Panpsychism stems from ancient Greek philosopherse.g. Democritus atomismand holds that primitive, dim consciousness is a quality of all matter: atoms and their subatomic components having subjective, mental attributes (e.g. Spinoza, 1677; Rensch, 1960). Mentalists such as Leibniz (1768) and Whitehead (PR, AI) contended that systems ordinarily considered to be physical are constructed in some sense from more basic mental entities. Bertrand Russell (1954) described neutral monism in which a common underlying entity, neither physical nor mental, gave rise to both. Bishop Berkeleys idealism suggested that consciousness creates reality, that consciousness is all there is. Wheeler (1990) has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe,
and from this Chalmers (1996) proposes a double-aspect theory in which information has both physical and experiential aspects. Ascribing features of conscious experience to fundamental reality raises two new questions: 1) what IS fundamental reality (or fundamental information) e.g. as describable by modern physics, and 2) how are conscious and non-conscious systems different? Among philosophical approaches, the pan-protopsychist or pan-experiential philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (PR, AI) seems best suited to connect consciousness to the physics of reality. Whitehead viewed the universe as being comprised not of things, but of eventsas a process of atomistic happenings, each with duration but independent of others (a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming). Leibniz (1768) had quantized reality, describing fundamental monads as the ultimate entities of reality but to account for consciousness Whitehead transformed monads into actual occasions occurring in a basic field of proto-conscious experience (Shimony, 1992), conferring ontological atomicity. Whitehead occasions are spatio-temporal quanta, each endowed usually on a very low levelwith mentalistic characteristics like experience, subjective immediacy, appetition. However the experience of each fundamental occasion is dull, monotonous, and repetitious (and thus not noticeable to physical observation). Whitehead viewed our high level mentality, consciousness, as being extrapolated (?emerging) from temporal chains of occasions. In his view highly organized societies of occasions permit primitive mentality to become intense, coherent and fully conscious. Meanwhile the functionings of inorganic matter remain intact amid the functionings of living matter. It seems that, in bodies that are obviously living, a coordination has been achieved that raises into prominence some functions inherent in the ultimate occasions. (AI 207) Whiteheads occasions are consistent with modern views of time (e.g. Barbour, 2000) as independent snapshots, or Nows with our conception of the flow of time being an illusion based on memory. Whitehead reconciles our conception of a continuous flow by his concept of concrescence. From the objective many concresces a subjective one; from the past World arises a new actuality (cf. Weber, 2000). Thus Whitehead is consistent with modern views of time. More specifically, Abner Shimony (1993; 1997) recognized that Whiteheads approach was potentially compatible with modern quan-
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tum physics, with quantum state reductionsactual eventsappearing to represent occasions. Quantum theory is a description of reality at small scales. To appreciate Shimonys modern Whiteheadianism and bridge the gap between philosophy and physics for a scientific description of consciousness we must first attempt to come to grips with the unsettling features of quantum theory.
3. Reality: The quantum and classical worlds

At first glance, at least, reality (like consciousness) appears dualistic. In our everyday classical world, matter and energy are predictable and well behaved, following Newtons laws of motion and Maxwells equations for electromagnetics. However at small e.g. atomic scales governed by quantum theory everything changes and behaviors are so strange that the American physicist Richard Feynman once commented anyone who claims to understand quantum theory is either lying or crazy. In the quantum realm (and the boundary between the quantum and classical worlds remains mysterious) objects may exist in two or more states or places simultaneouslymore like waves than particles and governed by a quantum wave function. This property of multiple coexisting possibilities, known as quantum superposition, persists until the superposition is measured, observed or interacts with the classical world or environment. Only then does the superposition of multiple possibilities reduce, collapse, actualize, choose or decohere to specific, particular classical states. Early experiments seemed to show that even if a machine measured a quantum superposition, the multiple possibilities persisted until the machines results were observed by a conscious human. This led leading quantum theorists including Bohr, Heisenberg and Wigner to conclude that consciousness caused quantum state reduction, that consciousness collapsed the wave function (the Copenhagen interpretation, reflecting the Danish origin of Niels Bohr, its leading proponent). To illustrate the apparent absurdity of this conclusion, in the 1930s Schrdinger devised his famous thought experiment known as Schrdingers cat. A living cat is placed in a closed box into which poison can be released by a quantum event, e.g., sending a photon through a half-silvered mirror. Being a quantum entity, the (unobserved) photon must be in superposition of both passing through and
not passing through the mirror, thus both releasing and not releasing the poison. Consequently, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, until a conscious being were to open the box to observe, the cat is both dead and alive. Schrdingers point was that this scenario was absurd and that the conscious observer interpretation was incorrect. Modern interpretations would say that any interaction with the environment (i.e., opening the box regardless of whether a conscious observer was present) would decohere the quantum superposition. Nonetheless the fate of an isolated quantum superposition, for example an isolated large scale system evolving from, or amplified by, a small scale superposition, remains unknown. Thus events in the quantum realm are not only bizarre, the boundary between the quantum realm and our everyday macroscopic classical world remains obscure.15 Another quantum property is entanglement, or quantum coherence, in which components of a system become unified, governed by one common quantum wave function. If one member of an entangled system is measured or perturbed, other members are instantaneously affected, even over great distances. One example of entanglement is the famous EPR pairs (after Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen who posed the problem as a thought experiment in the 1930s). Imagine two members of a quantum system (e.g. two electrons with complementary spin: if one is spin up, the other is spin down, and vice versa). If the paired electrons (both in superposition of both spin up and spin down) are separated by being sent along different wires, say to two different villages miles apart from each other, they each remain in superposition. However when one superpositioned electron is measured by a detector at its destination and reduces/collapses to a particular spin, (say spin up), its entangled twin miles away instantaneously reduces/collapses to the complementary spin down. The experiment has been done repeatedly with electron spin pairs, polarized photons and other quantum systems and always results in instantaneous reduction to the complementary classical state (e.g. Aspect et al, 1982). The instantaneous, faster than light coupling, or entanglement remains unexplained. Another form of entanglement occurs in quantum coherent systems such as Bose-Einstein condensates (proposed by Bose and Einstein decades ago but realized in the 1990s). A group of atoms or molecules are brought into a quantum coherent state such that they surrender individual identity and behave like one quantum system, marching in
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step and governed by one quantum wave function. If one component is perturbed all components feel it and react accordingly. Despite the mystery, quantum superpositions and entanglements are used technologically in quantum computers which promise to revolutionize information processing (and perhaps make comparisons between the brain/mind and quantum computers inevitable). Conventional classical computers represent digital information as bits of either 1 or 0. In quantum computers information may be represented as quantum superpositions of both 1 and 0 (quantum bits, or qubits). While in superposition qubits interact with other entangled qubits allowing computational interactions of enormous speed and near-infinite parallelism. After the computation is performed the qubits are reduced (e.g. by environmental interaction/decoherence) to specific classical states which constitute the solution. Although the decoherence introduces some probabilistic randomness, this may be overcome by parallel redundancy. Quantum computing (and related quantum information technologies quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation) promise to revolutionize information processing and other aspects of society. However the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. What does it mean for an object to be in potential being of multiple places or states simultaneously? How does potential being relate to actual being? How can nonlocal entanglement occur? What happens to isolated quantum superpositions? These questions force us to reconsider our view of reality. Seeking a deeper understanding, as well as a mechanism for consciousness, British mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose has addressed these issues.
an infinite number of parallel universes corresponding to the infinite number of superposition possibilities which have ever existed. For the Schrdingers cat story, each time the box is opened the universe bifurcates into one universe with a live cat, and another universe with a dead cat. Assuming for a moment that the multiple worlds view is at least partially correct (and many believe it is correct), how do we envision the universe separating? How do we envision the fabric of reality? According to modern physics, reality is rooted in 3-dimensional space and a 1-dimensional time, combined together into a 4-dimensional space-time. But most of our universe is empty, devoid of mass. Atomic nuclei and electrons occupy only a small fraction of an atoms volumeso most of an atom is empty space. What is empty space? Democritus described empty space as a true void whereas Aristotle saw a background plenum filled with substance. Maxwells 19thcentury luminiferous ether sided with Aristotle but attempts to detect the ether failed and Einsteins special relativity suggested that there was no background pattern or structure. However Einsteins general relativity related mass to curvature in a geometric space-time metric and swung the pendulum back to Aristotles view of an underlying pattern. But where is it? What is it?
4. Penrose objective reductions: Whitehead occasions in fundamental space-time geometry?

The puzzle of quantum superposition has baffled science. Although modern physics emphasizes decoherence in which any interaction with environment causes loss of quantum superposition, the fate of isolated superpositions (e.g. Schrdingers cat) remains unresolved. One solution was put forth by Hugh Everett in his multiple worlds view (e.g. Everett, 1973). Everetts idea was that superposition is a separation in underlying reality, that the universe at its fundamental level splits, or separates, and that each possibility branches off to form a new universe, a new reality. Thus, according to this view, there exist
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Figure 1. Empty space from a protein to the Planck scale: a) a tubulin protein is on the order of 10-8 centimeters (nanometers), b) an atom is on the order of 10-9 centimeters (angstroms), c) below the level of atoms and subatomic particles is the vacuum, i.e., empty space at 10-25 centimeters, d) the vacuum at 10-30 centimeters: some granularity is apparent, e) nearing the Planck scale at 10-32 centimeters: an aerial view of spin networks, f) the Planck scale at 10-33 centimeters: spin networks describe Planck scale volumes, or pixels of reality. At very small scales space-time as a 4-dimensional geometry breaks down because of quantum uncertainty which dictates that position and momentum cannot both be known. The very concept of space becomes unclear, replaced by a seething foam of particles and energy popping into and out of existence, and perhaps ultra-tiny black holes. Nonetheless as we go smaller and smaller we eventually reach a level of quantized granularity. Imagine viewing the ocean from an airplane. The ocean surface may look perfectly smooth. However if you were in a small boat on the ocean surface youd be tossed about by the roughness of the sea invisible from high above. Similarly as we go down in scale from the size of atoms (10-8 centimeters) empty space seems smooth until eventually we find granularity at the incredibly small Planck scale (10-33 centimeters, 10-43 seconds; Figure 1). There are several types of descriptions of the Planck scale, for example string theory, the quantum foam, and loop quantum gravity. In the context of loop quantum gravity, Penrose (1971) portrayed the Planck scale as a dynamical spider-web of spin. Taking spin as an irreducible, fundamental entity, spin networks define spectra of discrete Planck scale volumes and configurations which dynamically evolve and define space-time geometry. (Figure 2: Rovelli and Smolin, 1995a; 1995b; Smolin, 1997). The amount of potential information in Planck scale spin networks is vast; each Planck scale volume, or pixel of reality may be shaped by a huge variety of combinations of edge lengths, number of spins per edge, and nonlocal interactions. In addition to the enormous potential variety in each Planck scale pixel, their sheer number compared to our macroscopic scale is enormousthere are roughly 10107 Planck volumes or pixels in the volume of a human brain, far greater than the number of particles in the universe.
Figure 2. A spin network. Introduced by Roger Penrose (1971) as a quantum mechanical description of the geometry of space, spin networks describe a spectrum of discrete Planck scale volumes and configurations (with permission from Smolin, 1997; Rovelli and Smolin, 1995a; 1995b). Average length of each edge is the Planck length (10-33 cm). Numbers indicate quantum mechanical spin along each edge. Each quantum state of space-time is a particular spin network (Smolin, 1997). So the universe may be constructed of Planck scale spin networks whose configurations and dynamics lead to all matter and energy. If consciousness derives from fundamental, irreducible entities (e.g. proto-conscious qualia) then proto-conscious qualia must also be embedded in Planck scale spin networks (where else could they be embedded; fundamental space-time geometry is all there is!). Let us return to the problem of superposition. As previously mentioned, Everetts multiple worlds view describes separations in underlying reality. For simplicity and illustration we can condense our 4-dimensional space-time with a basement level of Planck scale spin networks into a 2-dimensional space-time sheet: one spatial dimension and one time dimension (Figure 3, top). This space-time is slightly curved, in accordance with Einsteins general theory of relativity, in a way which encodes the gravitational fields of all distributions of mass density. Each mass densityeach object or particleeffects a spacetime curvature, albeit tiny for small objects.16 Consequently we can view any mass in one location as space-time curvature in a particular direction, and location of the mass in a different location as spacetime curvature in another direction. Therefore quantum superposition of a particle in two locations may be considered simultaneous curvatures in opposite directions (Penrose, 1989; 1994). As in the multiple worlds view, the space-time sheet separates into two opposing curvatures, resulting in a bubble or blister in underlying reality (Figure 1, bottom).
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Figure 3. 4-dimensional space-time may be simplified as a 2-dimensional space-time sheet, with time running vertically along the y-axis. Top: two mass locations correspond with two space-time curvature histories, e.g. one particular location is represented as curvature into the plane of the space-time sheet (left) and another particular location is represented as curvature out of the plane of the space-time sheet (right). Arrow indicates classical movement of the mass between the two locations. Bottom: quantum superposition of both mass locations represented as simultaneous curvature in both directionsa separation, bubble or blister of spacetime geometry (adapted from Penrose 1994, 338).17 What is the fate of superpositions/space-time separations? Modern physics has focused on environmental decoherence, loss of quantum superposition due to thermal or other physical interactions with the classical, macroscopic worldbreaching quantum isolation. At first glance the very possibility of quantum isolation seems hopeless (Schrdingers cats box being a cartoon version) since atomic scale interactions are inevitable. Nonetheless quantum superpositions occur all the time, for example in the famous double slit and entanglement experiments and in the behavior of atomic scale particles. Quantum behaviors appear to be washed out at larger scales, but how can they occur in the first place when complete isolation is impossible? Nonetheless they do. The question remains: what is the fate of quantum superpositions which remain isolated, which do not significantly interact with the classical environment? In the multiple worlds view each space-time sheeteach side of the blisterevolves into a separate universe. However in Penroses view these separations, bubbles, or blisters are unstable, and somewhat like bubbles in a bubble bath will eventually reduce, or collapse to one particular curvature or the other. The instability is inherent in the properties of space-time geometry (quantum gravity) and constitutes an objective threshold for an isolated quantum state reduction, hence objective reduction (OR).
In the Penrose formulation, objective reduction due to the quantum gravity properties of fundamental space-time geometry occurs at a time T given by the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle E=h/T, in which E is the magnitude of superposition/separation, h is Plancks constant over 2, and T is the time until reduction. The magnitude E is related to the gravitational self-energy of the superposition and may be calculated from the amount of mass separated from itself and distance of separation. Since E is inversely related to T, small separations/superpositions (if isolated) will reduce at a long time T, and large separations/superpositions (if isolated) will reduce quickly. For example an isolated superpositioned electron would reduce only after 10 million years. A large object, such as a one kilogram cat, would reduce after only 10-37 seconds (too quickly for anyone to notice). The point is that Penrose objective reductions are actual events occurring at the level ofactually in the medium offundamental space-time geometry. Following a pan-protopsychist philosophy, proto-conscious qualia may be embedded in this medium, for example as particular configurations of Planck scale spin networks. Accordingly Penrose OR events could qualify for Whitehead occasions in a wider field of proto-conscious experience (Shimony, 1992). This is the key point I wish to propose: Penrose OR events are equivalent to Whitehead occasions of experience (Hameroff and Penrose, 1996b; Hameroff, 1998). When quantum superpositions reduce by interactions with the environment (decoherence) the choice of the particular classical state is probabilistic (a feature with which Einstein famously disagreed: God does not play dice with the universe). However following Penrose OR, the particular choice of Planck scale geometry is said to be influenced by Platonic information embedded in the fine grain of space-time geometry, information presumably embedded there since the Big Bang. Because of this influence these types of reductions are neither algorithmic nor random, but what Penrose terms non-computable, a property he also ascribes to conscious thought. Thus each OR event selects a particular set of proto-conscious qualia, or volitional act, influenced by Platonic values.
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5. Could Penrose objective reductions (Whitehead occasions of experience) occur in the brain?
If we equate Penrose objective reduction (OR) in fundamental space-time geometry with Whitehead occasions of experience, then a sequence of OR events/conscious moments occurring in the brain could give rise to our familiar stream of consciousness. Quantum computers utilize quantum superpositions/space-time separations, however following completion of the computation the quantum state reduction in such devices occurs by decoherence (loss of isolation) before the OR threshold may be met. In quantum computational devices the superpositions are generally of electrons, atoms or photons, hence of very low mass and thus very low gravitational self-energy E. According to E=h/T, for small values of E, T would be very long, perhaps years. (In the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR model, described below, E is also related to the intensity of conscious experience, and Whitehead proposed that subjective consciousness derived from highest grade occasions. So even if such superpositions of low values of E and prolonged T persisted until the OR threshold was met they would be of extremely low intensity experience by both Whitehead and Orch OR criteria.) Since the technological quantum computations are fast, the superposition is interrupted following the computation so that the solution may be obtained. Consequently such quantum computers will not be conscious by the OR criteria, at least in the foreseeable future. Thus consciousness requires fairly stringent conditions: superpositions/space-time separations must be large enough to reach threshold in a brief time period (i.e., on the order of brain processes less than one second), yet able to be isolated/protected from disruption by environmental decoherence. Technological quantum computers require extreme cold (near absolute zero) and strict isolation to avoid decoherence by thermal vibrations during brief periods of superposition, yet the brain operates at a very warm 37.6 degrees centigrade. Consequently quantum computation in the brain has appeared highly unlikely to most scientists. On the other hand biology has had billion of years to solve these problems and quantum computation and consciousness would certainly be beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint. Given the stipulations of the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR model (described below) for quantum isolation and coherence, calculations indicate that microtubule
quantum superpositions may persist long enough for neurophysiological processes (Hagan et al, 2002).18 Where/how could quantum computation involving isolated quantum superpositions of information (qubits) occur in the brain and be linked to known brain processes? The Penrose-Hameroff model of orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) proposes that quantum computations occur in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brains neurons, isolated and shielded from environmental decoherence by a variety of evolutionary adaptations (Penrose and Hameroff, 1995; Hameroff and Penrose 1996a; 1996b; Hagan et al, 2002). Figure 4. Interiors of neurons and other cells are structured by networks of microtubules (MTs) interconnected by microtubuleassociated proteins (MAPs), as shown in this immunofluorescent micrograph. MTs are arrayed horizontally, connected by vertical MAPs. Scale bar (lower right): 100 nanometers). With permission from Hirokawa (1991).
Figure 5. Left: Microtubule (MT) structure: a hollow tube of 25 nanometers diameter, consisting of 13 columns of tubulin dimers arranged in a skewed hexagonal lattice (Penrose, 1994). Right (top): Each tubulin molecule may switch between two (or more) conformations, coupled to London forces in a hydrophobic pocket. Right (bottom): Each tubulin can also exist in quantum superposition of both conformational states (Hameroff and Penrose, 1996a).
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Microtubules are main components of each cells cytoskeleton (Figure 4), originally thought to provide only bone-like structural support but now appreciated also as the cells information processing system, or on-board computer. Microtubules (MTs) are polymers of the protein tubulin, arranged in a skewed hexagonal lattice wrapped in a hollow cylinder (Figure 5). Each peanut shaped tubulin may switch between two or more structural conformations, governed by quantum mechanical forces within the protein interior and interact with neighboring tubulins to account for information processing and signaling. The switching occurs rapidly, in the nanosecond (10-9 sec) scale, and seems to be coherently driven by metabolic energy so that MTs behave somewhat like lasers. There are roughly 107 tubulins/neuron switching at ~109/sec, so the potential information processing capability of a single neuron at the microtubule level is roughly 1016 operations/second, as much as is suggested for the entire brain operating at the level of neuronal synaptic switching (Rasmussen et al, 1990). This capacity can account for the complex behavior of single cell organisms, and enhances the projected capacity of the brain enormously (and raises the bar for conventional artificial intelligence AI attempts to simulate the brain, e.g. Moravec, 1987) but fails to account for the enigmatic features of consciousness. An essential feature of the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR model is that tubulins become quantum superpositions of both conformations, and function as qubits by interacting nonlocally (entangling) with other tubulin qubits so that MTs act as quantum computers (Figure 6). When enough entangled tubulins are superpositioned long enough to reach OR threshold by E=h/T, a conscious event/Whitehead occasion of experience occurs. The classical tubulin states chosen in the OR event proceed to regulate classical neural activities, e.g. trigger axonal membrane action potentials, adjust synaptic strengths and rearrange the cytoskeleton, thus exerting causal efficacy, learning and memory. Figure 6. An Orch OR event/Whitehead occasion. a) Microtubule simulation in which classical computing (step 1) leads to emergence of quantum coherent superposition and quantum computing (steps 2 & 3) in certain (gray) tubulins. Step 3 (in coherence with other microtubule tubulins) meets critical threshold related to quantum gravity for self-collapse (Orch OR). A conscious event (Orch OR) occurs in the step 3 to 4 transition. Tubulin states in step 4 are noncomputably chosen in the OR collapse, and evolve by classi-
cal computing to regulate neural function. b) Schematic graph of proposed quantum coherence (number of tubulins) emerging versus time in microtubules. Area under curve connects superposed mass energy E with collapse time T in accordance with E=h/T. E may be expressed as Nt, the number of tubulins whose mass separation (and separation of underlying space time) for time T will self collapse. For T = 25 msec (e.g. 40 Hz oscillations), Nt = 2 x 1010 tubulins. MTs are interconnected into networks by linking proteins called microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs). These MAPs attach at specific sites on the MT lattice, and the pattern of attachment determines MT network properties as well as cell shape, movement and function. The MAP attachments and network properties can dynamically change, for example to alter neuronal synaptic strength in learning. MT-MAP networks are very much like neural networks, but at smaller scale, occurring within each neuron of a neural network (something like a fractal sub-dimension of neural networks, a forest within each tree).
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Figure 7. Quantum coherent superposition of microtubules orchestrated by microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) in two neuronal dendrites connected by a gap junction. Dendritic lamellar bodies attached to MTs may facilitate quantum tunneling, entanglement and spread of unified quantum state between neurons, and throughout large regions of brain. Simulations of MT dynamics show that MAPs tend to attach at resonant nodes on the MT surface (Samsonovich et al, 1992), thus MAPs may tune MT quantum activities (somewhat like frets in a guitar), providing feedback and orchestrating MT quantum computations (thus the model of Orchestrated objective reductionOrch OR; Figure 7). MTs whose tubulins are in quantum superposition in a particular neuron may entangle with those in other neurons via quantum tunneling across window-like gap junctions between neurons. Thus brain-wide entangled quantum states can occur within neurons whose interiors are continuous through gap junctions (Woolf and Hameroff, 2001; Figure 7). Brain processes occur in time scales on the order of tens to hundreds of milliseconds. For example sensory responses are on the order of up to 500 milliseconds (1/2 second), alpha EEG is roughly 100 milliseconds (1/10 second), and coherent 40 Hz, the brain-wide synchrony which seems to correlate with conscious activity, is on the order of 25 milliseconds (1/40 second). For OR/Whitehead events in the brain to correspond with known neural events we can use E=?/T and assume T is on the order of such events. For T=25 milliseconds (coherent 40 Hz), we can calculate E in terms of number of tubulins, and estimating for percentage of tubulins/neuron involved in consciousness, find that 10,000 to 100,000 neurons are involved in each OR/Whitehead/conscious event which occur 40 times/second. Figure 8. An Orch OR event (continued from Figure 6. a) (left) Three tubulins in quantum superposition prior to 25 msec Orch OR. After reduction (right), particular classical states are selected. b) Fundamental spacetime geometry view. Prior to Orch OR (left), space-time corresponding with
three superposed tubulins is separated as Planck scale bubbles: curvatures in opposite directions. The Planck scale space-time separations S are very tiny in ordinary terms, but relatively large mass movements (e.g., hundreds of tubulin conformations, each moving from 106 to 0.2 nm) indeed have precisely such very tiny effects on the space-time curvature. A critical degree of separation causes Orch OR and an abrupt selection of single curvatures (and a particular geometry of experience). c) Cognitive facial recognition. A familiar face induces superposition (left) of three possible solutions (Amy, Betty, Carol) which collapse to the correct answer Carol (right). d) Cognitive volition. Three possible dinner selections (shrimp, sushi, pasta) are considered in superposition (left), and collapse via Orch OR to choice of sushi (right).
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Each OR event is instantaneous, so the 25 milliseconds/conscious events are in the pre-conscious quantum superposition phase of multiple possibilities of perceptions or choices. For example imagine you briefly see a womans face, is it Amy, Betty, or Carol (Figure 8)? During the pre-conscious superposition phase there are quantum superpositions of all 3 possibilities which then reduce/collapse/choose one particular possibility at the moment of OR (Aha, it is Carol!). Or you are studying a menu deciding what to order for dinner, and have e.g. superpositions of shrimp, sushi or pasta. After time T you reduce/collapse/choose and decide Ill have sushi! The pre-conscious superposition phase may also be equated with the Freudian sub-conscious including dreams and perhaps altered states. Figure 9. Quantum superposition/entanglement in microtubules for 5 states related to consciousness. Area under each curve equivalent in all cases. A. Normal 40 Hz experience: as in Figures 6 & 8.. B. Anesthesia: anesthetics bind in hydrophobic pockets of brain proteins and prevent quantum delocalizability and coherent superposition. C. Heightened Experience: increased sensory experience input (for example) increases rate of emergence of quantum superposition. Orch OR threshold is reached faster, and Orch OR frequency increases. D. Altered State: even greater rate of emergence of quantum superposition due to sensory input and other factors promoting quantum state (e.g. meditation, psychedelic drug etc.). Predisposition to quantum state results in baseline shift and collapse so that conscious experience merges with normally sub-conscious quantum computing mode. E. Dreaming: prolonged sub-threshold quantum superposition time.
Both Whitehead and the quantum approach suggest that consciousness is a stream of discrete events, rather than a continuous state (Figure 9). Obviously we perceive our world as continuous rather than as discrete events, but a movie appears continuous though it is in fact a sequence of frames. Of course a movie has an external conscious observer, whereas in the Whitehead/Orch OR quantum approach each OR (self-collapse) event is the conscious observer.
6. How can the Whitehead/quantum approach account for the enigmatic features of consciousness?
In the first section a set of enigmatic features of consciousness was described. Here we review how those features are addressed by an approach based on Whiteheads philosophy in the context of the Orch OR model of consciousness. 1) The hard problem of subjective experience, or qualia is accounted for by ascribing proto-conscious qualia to properties of fundamental space-time geometry, e.g. as particular configurations of Planck scale spin networks. Each OR event selects a particular configuration from among multiple possibilities of space-time-embedded qualia, somewhat like an artist may select fundamental colors from a palette to create a complex painting. A rose is a particular pattern of space-time geometry, both the space-time which is the rose, and the same pattern recreated in the brain (Figure 10).
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Figure 10. Are mental qualia like the redness of a rose fundamental patterns in space-time geometry? 2) Binding, or unity of conscious experience is accomplished by quantum coherence/entanglement (Marshall, 1989). Proto-conscious qualia selected in a single OR event are governed by one wave function; they are essentially one common entity. 3) The transition from pre-conscious processes to consciousness itself is the collapse, or reduction inherent in ORa Whitehead spatiotemporal quantum with the threshold given by E=h/T. 4) The problem of free will relates to the issue of whether our actions are completely deterministic, algorithmic and/or random. Penrose non-computability provides an alternative; our actions are algorithmic/deterministic but with an added ingredientinfluence by Platonic values embedded in fundamental space-time geometry. Our experience of free will is that of our deterministic processes influenced by these Platonic influences, not truly free, but augmented by unseen forces (Figure 11). In Whiteheads view free will also entails creativity, whereby we can create new and novel ideas. Selection from among a set of superpositioned space-time geometries in one sense limits the possibilities, however the geometries themselves may be evolving with new inherent possibilities (Smolin, 1997).
Figure 11. Free will may be seen as the result of deterministic processes (behavior of trained robot windsurfer) acted on repeatedly by non-computable influences, here represented as a seemingly capricious wind. 5) Subjective time flow is a function of discrete, irreversible events ratcheting forward in time. As we become excited we experience more conscious events per clock time, thus the outside world seems to slow down. If our consciousness is partially suppressed, say weve had too much alcohol to drink, we have fewer conscious events per clock time and the outside world appears faster (dont drink and drive!). In the case of general anesthesia (which prevents quantum interactions in key brain proteins) subjective time ceases entirely. Several lines of evidence suggest that the brain can project information backwards in time, i.e., from the near future to the present (Libet et al, 1979; Bierman and Scholte, 2002). In the quantum world time is also indeterminate, and quantum state reductions may send quantum information both forwards and backwards (Aharonov and Vaidman, 1990). This may account not only for precognition and premonitions, but also play a role in day-to-day, moment-tomoment activities in which we may act, then decide only slightly afterwards how to do so. Whiteheads notion of more or less independent occasions which give rise to our seeming stream of consciousness due to concrescence is compatible with certain views in modern physics (e.g. Barbour, 2000) in which the continuity of time is illusory, with the seeming flow being due to memory in each independent moment, or Now. In both cases, the impression of a flow of time is a function of consciousness.
7. Conclusion
Explanations for consciousness have traditionally fallen along separate lines of either philosophy, neuroscience, psychology or physics. Whiteheads philosophical approach is consistent with modern physics, and only such a union of philosophy and science can account for consciousness. Specifically Whitehead occasions in a wider field of proto-conscious experience may translate to Penrose objective reductions in pan-protopsychist fundamental space-time geometry. The Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR model incorporates neuroscience and psychology along with physics and philosophy to produce
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a complete theory. The theory may be wrong, but it is testable and hence falsifiablethe type of comprehensive unified theory which will be required to explain the enigmatic features of consciousness. Acknowledgements: Supported by the Fetzer Institute, YeTaDeL Foundation, and The Center for Consciousness Studies and Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona. I am grateful to Roger Penrose for his insight and collaboration and to Abner Shimony for his connection of Whitehead to quantum state reductions. I am also indebted to Dave Cantrell for artwork, to Michel Weber for suggesting and supporting this work, to Patti Bergin for reference management, and to Christina Heller for manuscript review.
Footnotes
There are at least two aspects to this problem. One is attention: the selection of specific content from among possible sensory and internal inputs, or what Bergson described as filtering. In this aspect non-selected content may remain non-conscious. The other aspect is selection of one possible choice from among a number of possibilities, as in selecting one dish from a dinner menu. In this aspect, the non-selected possible choices may be conscious, preconscious, or sub-conscious (Woolf and Hameroff, 2001). 13 Describing the complex behaviors of single cell organisms the famed neuroscientist Charles Sherrington (1953) remarked: of nerve there is not trace, but the cytoskeleton may serve. Thus was born the idea that the cytoskeleton, normally considered as merely the cells structural scaffolding also acts as each cells nervous system (e.g. Hameroff and Watt, 1982). 14 In this paper pan-protopsychism and pan-experientialism are equated. It should be noted that Whitehead eschewed the notion of panpsychism, while his ideas are associated with the concept of panexperientialism. I take fundamental experience as proto-conscious qualia (or protopsychist qualia, or proto-qualia, depending on semantic value placed on the term qualia). The point is (as shall be elaborated) that an irreducible component of reality, embedded at the Planck scale, undergoes a process of objective reduction to give rise to full blown consciousness. 15 It is a major contention of this paper that consciousness exists on this boundary. However only certain conditions, i.e. objective reduction, result in the proper self-organizing, sharply demarcated boundary whereas environmental decoherence which also serves as a boundary, is insidious and random and does not result in consciousness. 16 Many are familiar with the idea of large objects causing large space-time curvature. Einstein had predicted that the space-time curvature of our sun would bend light from stars, distorting their perceived position e.g. in special cases making them visible when in fact they lay behind the sun from our vantage point. Some 10 years after this prediction, Sir Arthur Eddington made the critical observations during a solar eclipse to prove Einsteins hypothesis. However the idea of small, quantum objects causing small space-time curvatures was put forth by Penrose. 17 Strictly speaking the separations cannot be considered to have any true width, or length as space-time defines its dimensions, rather than exists in dimensions. However metaphorically we can consider that the distance between the separated space-times (width) is on the order of a Planck length (10-33 centimeters) whereas the length may be macroscopic, on the order of
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the mass separation distance, e.g. nanometers (10-8 centimeters) or larger, or the distance over which mass separation distance occurs (e.g. ~10 centimeters, as may occur in the brain-see next section). That such narrow separations have significant consequences may seem surprising, however an analogy may be drawn to earthquakes in which the earth separates only slightly, but over a great length or faultline with significant consequences. 18 To be consistent, any Penrose OR event/Whitehead high-grade occasions of experience would be conscious. Where else could such events occur? Given the quantum isolation problem, long term quantum superpositions seem unlikely except where biological evolution created specific isolation mechanisms, i.e. brains. However, it is conceivable that large scale superpositions may occur on cosmological scale, for example in the cores of neutron stars. Such large scale superpositions would very quickly reach threshold and OR events would be happening almost continuously. Presumably such events would lack organized information, i.e. memory, feedback, intelligence, causal efficacy, adaptability, in short they lack cognition. So there may indeed be moments of pure consciousness with no attached cognition nor sequelae. On the other hand cosmologist Paola Zizzi (2000) has suggested that the inflationary period of the Big Bang terminated due to an OR event, and accordingly that the early universe had a cosmic conscious moment (The Big Wow). She maintains that the early universe did indeed entail organized information and that our present day consciousness is related to this original conscious moment, or occasion of experience.
Consciousness: The Brains Private Psychological Field

Marcel Kinsbourne
The private psychological field is merely the event considered from its own standpoint. The unity of this field is the unity of the event. (SMW 150)
The unit of subjective experience corresponds to the brains pattern of activation at that moment. Mind, self, and consciousness have no existence separate from the networks trajectory through its state space. The trajectory of this activation is internally driven, but constrained by waves of stimulation from the body and the world. Corresponding to the primacy of the interior life of the mind/brain, the forebrain is an interconnected and recursive neural net of nets, self organizing, regulating, and stabilizing. No brain module instantiates consciousness per se. Consciousness is not an entity but a process. Whitehead (SMW 177) characterizes an event as a process whose outcome is a unit of experience. I propose that the moments conscious experience reflects the current configuration of the firing of brain cells in the neural network. This configuration is the brains tissued meaning, in Kunitz (1958, 57) words. As each successive change in the continually changing state of the brain becomes complete, the conscious psychological field changes correspondingly. I will discuss the neural process that creates the event. In doing so I have to discard dualistic distinctions between the private psychological field and the publicly accessible physical state of the brain. Given the cumulative gains in knowledge in the brain sciences, this is not hard to do. It is more intriguing to ask: why have dualistic distinctions
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between body and soul, and alternatively, between an anatomically or functionally unique brain consciousness system and the rest of the brain, been so persistent in the absence of empirical support?
1. Soul as a social construct

Not content with material success, some yearn for a higher meaning, and insist on a higher purpose and an interminable future. However, the more we learn about the universe, and our place in it, the less remains to flatter our self-importance. Science has confined humans to an ever shrinking corner of the playing field, a cameo appearance within an eye blink in the life of the universe, on a second rate planet circling a second rate sun in one among billions of galaxies. Equally lacking in distinction are humans remote origins, from an unplanned and unsupervised physicochemical interaction that crossed the imaginary line between the inanimate and the living. As for our recent origins, these turn out to be more ape-like than angelic. Is it in response to this cumulative demotion that, in Whiteheads words, modern philosophy is tinged with subjectivism, as against the objective attitude of the ancients (SMW 140)? Aristotle exhibited no interest in subjectivity. As Whitehead points out (SMW 28), the importance of an individual thinkerdepends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds of his successors. Descartes speculations mined a rich vein of acquiescence with a multitude of successors. He invoked, as last resort, our spirit, our allegedly immortal soul. This too, is under siege.
rience, thinking could not develop, because it would be void of contents. Although in a thought experiment philosophers can imagine a thinking brain developed in a vat, I suggest that such a brain would no more be capable of thought than the liver or the spleen. Nietzsche, alias Zarathustra, remarked: the awakened and knowing say: Body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.
3. Intuition
One can base advocacy of the dualism of soul or spirit versus the body and other material things on faith, reason or intuition. The tenets of faith incorporate a circular logic that is invulnerable to reason. The exercise of reason, relying on the proceeds of systematic observation, is embodied in the scientific method. It has found no support for dualistic constructs. Rationality is, however, often confused with the pretensions of intuition (sometimes euphemistically dignified as common sense). Sweeping intuitions exert a powerful grip on philosophical and even on scientific discussion of consciousness. According to Whitehead (SMW 140), The individual subject of experience has been substituted for the total drama of all reality. An intuitive dissatisfaction with the notion that one is a biochemical machine can be encapsulated in the claim there must be something more. I shall criticize intuition as evidence about reality, and then suggest a reason why it exerts so powerful a grip on the consciousness debate. An intuition is a pragmatic shortcut to the resolution of doubt and ambiguity, based on unanalyzed experience, or perhaps even on genetic transmission of point of view. One answer feels right, whereas the others do not. Having an intuition makes it unnecessary to explain oneself further. Intuitions are most useful and work best when they economically summarize a wealth of experience, so as to offer a basis for quick decision and action, as when an experienced clinician arrives at a diagnosis, which, though correct, she cannot explain to others. Intuitions are suited to the everyday contexts in and for which they were developed. They are disastrous guides to issues that transcend the ordinary. Intuition is a pragmatic shortcut for everyday choices, not to be overextended to address fundamental issues. Intuitions are particularly apt to mislead when they are self-serving, as they are apt to be when they are applied to the problem of personal consciousness.
2. The body
Knowing little about the body, and less still about the brain, the ancients understandably resorted to a higher agency than flesh and bones, and that pinkish-gray blob of tissue in its head. This disdain for the brain based on its outward appearance, more recently echoed by Schopenhauer, qualifies for an adaptation of William Blakes metaphorical rebuke to Satan: Thou dost mistake the garment for the man. This essay attempts to cut the soul down to size, by comparison to the truly spectacular brain. The increasingly well-defined wonder of the body weakens the need to assume a soul. Although the brain does the thinking, the rest of the body provides the parameters of thought. Without a body to acquire and generate organized expe-
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The most fundamental truths about the universe are counterintuitive, and violate common sense or nearer everyday experiences: Relativity theory and quantum theory, the world as a spinning sphere, or aircraft that weigh hundreds of tons flying self-propelled through the air. The sheer scale of the macrocosm, and of the microcosm, defies our imagination. Nonetheless, scaling up and scaling down, we override our intuitions. We will increasingly freely draw upon our ability to suppress intuitive common sense and entertain apparent impossibilities, since the discoveries of the future are likely to be dramatically counterintuitive. Intuitively appealing discoveries would most likely already have been accomplished. Whitehead cites William James with approval (SMW 3): I have to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts. In brain science intuitions are worse than useless. They impede progress. (For an instance, see Kinsbourne, 2000.) They have done so in the study of consciousness.
ple who value themselves most dearly will presumably most strenuously strive to stay alive. As a result of their longer life they gain more time to reproduce. Their offspring perpetuate this powerful meme, their self-serving intuition, their consciousness narcissism. Their fantasies of a personal special status that is worthy of being perpetuated until the end of time, become disseminated in the species. However solid the evidence may be that consciousness is no more than an attribute of the functioning of neural networks, consciousness narcissists will remain unconvinced, because that is not how it seems to them subjectively. What, then, is the evidence? Is the human brain constructed, and does it function, as though guided by an agency other than itself? Or is it a self-organizing, self-regulating, self-stabilizing, self-maintaining adaptive device? Does it appear to be complete in itself and self-sufficient?
5. Soul-brain interaction
Descartes, the great propagandist for the independent status of subjectivity (the first person perspective) famously hypothesized that immaterial mind (subjectivity) and material brain are two different though interacting substances. He chose the midline pineal gland as hub of the brain, locating the mind-brain bottleneck centrally with respect to both halves of the brain, and particularly the ventricles, that transmit the animal spirits. His intuition was of a hierarchical arrangement; mind influence reaching an elite brain locus, to modulate the functioning of the machine-like brain. I have referred to such hypothetical architecture as the centered brain. Contemporary philosophers agree that the human mind in its entirety results from the workings of the human brain. Absent evidence for a soul, a fall back position postulates a special, elite area in the brain that functions in more complex fashion than mundane nerve nets, as the mechanism of consciousness. Though they uniformly profess to reject dualism, most brain scientists nevertheless still favor a hierarchical quasidualistic model for the organization of the brain. This is a subtle persistence of Cartesian thinking. The Cartesian Theater of consciousness (Dennett and Kinsbourne, 1992) becomes intrinsic to the brain, a central hub that views, on the screens of a virtual theater, and disposes of, issues presented to it by outlying brain regions. It is as though they pulled the soul through the skull into the brain, and there installed it in the best seat in the house. Thinking in
4. Consciousness Narcissism
Why is the notion that consciousness is a function of the brain and nothing more so grossly counterintuitive? What fuels the self-serving intuition based on which people tenaciously exalt consciousness, beyond any available evidence, into a phenomenon sui generis, qualitatively different from the mundane stuff and workings of natural things? I suggest that this intuition is fueled by wish fulfillment, as follows: I, my Self, am my consciousness. If consciousness is rare and wonderful, then that is what I am. If it merely reflects the working of a biological machine, then I am no more than a machine. A meme is an idea that competes with rival ideas for a place in peoples minds. Dawkins has likened the competitive interaction of memes to those of selfish genes. Whitehead (SMW 140) credits the Christian Church for generating an affinity for what we may consider to be a tenacious meme about an egotism of intellectual outlook: For century after century it insisted upon the infinite worth of the individual human soul. Accordingly, to the instinctive egotism of physical desires, it has superadded an instinctive feeling of justification for an egotism of intellectual outlook. This socially constructed instinctive feeling of justification I call consciousness narcissism. I suggest that this social construct prevailed, not because it captured anything real, but because of its biological survival value. Those peo-
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terms of hierarchies is intuitively seductive. After all, we experience ourselves as being at the focal point of many convergences. Ambient sources of information converge onto the persons receptor surfaces. The receptors transmit the transduced information centrally, converging on to the brain. Extrapolated, these lines of communication would simply further converge inside the brain, on to their intersect, a vantage point, a conscious awareness system (CAS), as it has been called. Perhaps even, it is this CAS which qualitatively distinguishes us from all other animals, being so special and so cunningly wrought that other animals have not evolved it (yet?). The elite CAS would thus salvage some human self-respect. On this view, the extra-CAS brain, its non-conscious shell, is no more than a sophisticated conduit to awareness and of decision. But is the brain in fact organized hierarchically, or will we have to rationalize our self-respect in some other manner? I propose that hierarchy is not the controlling principle in brain organization. I now characterize the brain as a self sufficient, heterarchical (reciprocally interconnected) adaptive device.
Input is received continually, but it only occasionally perturbs the brain enough in its ongoing self-preoccupation to modify its pattern of activity. The same applies to our stream of awareness, the continual internalized flux of words and images. This we only occasionally interrupt in order to act, react or communicate with each other. The life of the brain is internal. From time to time a movement of the body opens up the receptor surfaces to change of sensory input. In this way the motor neurons set up novel stimulation for the sensory neurons indirectly by means of a loop across the body and the world. The substance of the nerve cells chatter, as it were, is of course largely cognitive and affective, and is referable to sensations and memories, intentions and plans, emotions and motivations. It extends far beyond what would be expected of a conduit for information. It is the dynamic organization of a living thing. 6.2. Its connectivity The cortex and the underlying earlier evolved subcortical nuclei are not substrates for information highways. They form a network, the units of which interact with each other. Each neuron is a locus of convergence of the processes of thousands of neurons, and the processes of each neuron diverge to project on to thousands of neurons. This is how the neurons constitute the neuropil, the feltwork of cells in cortex. Most connections in cortex are local; fewer are at a distance. There is no principle of general convergence from sensory areas, or general divergence to motor areas in cortex. The vast majority of neurons connect with other neurons, that is, they are interneurons. Those local nerve nets that are directly interconnected are interconnected reciprocally. Projections from rear to front are met by equally powerful projections in the opposite direction, in parallel streams. Those that are indirectly connected form loops, across serially arranged neurons that project back to where the loop could be said to originate. Thus cell assemblies feed back (back-propagate) their inputs from other cortical cell assemblies, either directly or along multisynaptic loops. The back-propagation sets up reverberating circuits. These maintain representations long enough for them to contribute to conscious experience (Kinsbourne, 1996). Sometimes interactions loop outside the brain, between bodily movement and the resulting changed stimulation of receptor surfaces. We discover a substrate that is conducive to self-organization.
6. Design of the brain

Each individual activity is the mode in which the general activity is individualized by the imposed conditions (SMW 177)
6.1. Its flux The brain stands out among organs of the body for its complexity (one hundred billion neurons, one hundred trillion synaptic connections between neurons) and the interactivity of its elements. Specialized though the network is in its various parts, no more than three degrees of separation intervene between any neuron in the brain and any other. Around the clock, in waking and in sleep, lifelong, this signaling between units, this neuronal chatter, does not stop. Individual neurons are anything but inert. Even when unperturbed by external change, they fire at individually characteristic rates. External change may modify the rate of firing, but the chatter goes on regardless. This dynamism is the essence of the brain, just as its constant play of ideas and impressions is the essence of consciousness. The cessation of this turbulence of brain, its transition from a dynamic to static mode, is tantamount to death (brain death). Only the brain, and no other organ, not even the heart, provides criteria for mortality.
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Counterpoint to the connectivity of cortex, is its equally exquisite differentiation. The cortex is laminate (layered). Primitive cortex is represented by two structures: the piriform paleocortex, the foundation of the ability to identify, and the hippocampal archicortex, the foundation of the ability to locate. Their cerebral elaborations are respectively located dorsolaterally and ventromedially in the primate brain, and in humans, respectively more left and more right localized. Primitive cortex is three-layered. In creatures with relatively evolved forebrains the primitive cortex remains three-layered, but is massively supplemented by more recently evolved neocortex, which is six-layered. This organization, suited to computing exquisitely specific distinctions, is more differentiated than the earlier evolved nucleate formations in the upper brain stem, and the still earlier reticular (weblike) organization, in the lower located pons and medulla. So the cortex is arranged as though it might contribute definition and differentiation to patterns of activity that arise from lower levels, or flow centrally from receptor surfaces. All in all, we discover what appears to be a self-sufficient organization at multiple reciprocally interacting levels. 6.3. Its pattern of activity 6.3.1. The predominance of internal activity Behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology and neuropsychology until recently conceived of the brain as a unidirectional informationtransmitting device, that transduces stimulus into response. Impressionistically, the assumption seems natural. When we observe others, we note the stimulus, and we note the response. We are not privy to intervening events in others. However, we can also listen in to the neuronal gossip that proceeds regardless of the stimulusresponse circumstances, at least in ourselves. Our constantly active stream of consciousness captures, from a first person perspective, some fraction of the networks incessant interactive flux. We experience something much more self-sufficient, much less dependent on the stimulus environment, than even contemporary experimental paradigms allow. The network talks to itself. External changes at most bias or constrain the contents of the neural interaction, which nonetheless carries on in much the same general way. One perspective would be to consider the body and the environment as sources of stimulation for the brain, which it draws upon for self-stabilizing pur-
poses when necessary. Or, they are a gap across which it may be convenient for certain neuronal populations to interact. The circling dance of the neurons closes its circle through the body and the world. Of course the brain is an adaptive device, which commands and steers the body in such a manner as to make maximal survival and procreation as probable as circumstances permit. Those forms of brain activity that happen to be most adaptive have been perpetuated by natural selection. It is on account of this shaping and sorting that brains have evolved into marvelously adaptive devices. Nonetheless, what they do is self-organize, self-stabilize and self-maintain. The network has its own life; the consequences for other organs and the body as a whole merely happen to be largely beneficial. 6.3.2. The collision of opposing waves Experience is fashioned out of intention and prediction, anticipation and discrimination. The individuals current action is preceded by the mental image of the target, to which it is matched when the target is encountered. The perceptual field is anticipated during movement, to be encountered when the postural change is complete. Again the anticipated perceptual field is matched to that which is actually experienced. Mismatches, that signal something novel or unexpected, release alerting responses, exploration, and revision of plans. Critical in this sensorimotor counterpoint is the matching of two opposing waves of neural activation: A mighty incoming wave composed of neurons firing in specific configurations and temporal succession, emanates from the receptor surfaces of the five sense. It is met by an equally powerful wave of patterned nerve cell firing that flows in the opposite direction, fuelled by neural activity that originates in the inner core, the more ancient brain regions that are concerned with emotion, evaluation and anticipation. The clash of colliding waves sets up a composite pattern of evanescent nerve cells activity, that represents the experiential content of the fleeting moment. In it both the neural machinery and the subjective experience of intention and prediction, anticipation and discrimination are inextricably concatenated. The peaks or maxima of this evanescent standing activation manifold instantiate the salient aspects of the conscious experience of that moment. Whitehead wrote: every actual occasion is a limitation imposed on possibility. The centrifugally progressing wave embodies possibilities and the centripetally advancing wave embodies limitations.
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Experience and intention are fashioned from the perpetually recurring interaction of opposing wave fronts of nerve cell activity. That interaction constitutes the event, as one entity, not as the sum of its parts (SMW 150). Consider that the neural architecture is precisely what the above account would call for. They are the recursive arrangement of the global network. 6.3.3. Network of networks The neuron is the unit and the column of neurons is the unit network (module) of cerebral cortex. Columns aggregate into hypercolumns. These in turn line up and combine to form processing units (such as V1, the visual receiving area in occipital cortex). A linear series of processing units forms a trend, such as the well known dorsal and ventral visual stream, though the name stream is misleading, since in a trend the stream flows in both directions. Except for scattered areas of polymodal cortex that respond to input from several modalities nondifferentially, and are mostly early evolved, the cerebral mantel, or gray matter, is the sum total of its constituent processing trends. The peripheral end of each processing trend is a highly differentiated, recently evolved cortex, which interfaces with sources of input. At the other end is relatively undifferentiated, primitive cortex, arising from the brain itself. The most differentiated units are the relatively peripheral input-output processors. The least differentiated units are at the core of the brain. They connect with the archaic limbic system. Centripetal waves of precisely configured activation travel from architecturally more differentiated cortex to less differentiated cortex. Arising in primitive limbic cortex, more loosely specified centrifugal waves travel in the opposite direction. The centripetal waves ride on the energy of the stimulus environment. The centrifugal waves are powered endogenously by projections that mediate ascending activation. The two waves travel along different though interlocking layers of cortex. They modulate each other by parallel vertical interaction across columns. The outcome of the interaction is the local networks state (attractor state) of the moment. The global network establishes distinctive patterns of neuronal activity that are widely but specifically distributed across cortex and subcortex. The global pattern is the composite of local activity. This blueprint of the brain is uncentered. There is no central area that interrogates or supervises the others. Similarly, consciousness is not
the product of a unique vantage point in the brain. It is property of the pattern of activity of the network as a whole. The foregoing has characterized in broad brush strokes the underlying anatomy and physiology. These sciences have indirect implications for the brain basis of consciousness. I now resort to the science that directly reveals the organization of consciousness in the brain, that is, neuropsychology.
7. Neuropsychology of consciousness
7.1. Can a focal injury abolish consciousness as a whole? Inherent in the construct of the centered brain is the existence of a privileged location at which information is entered into consciousness. In space, the information needs to be concentrated at one point. In time, the concurrent activity of various areas of cortex needs to reach an integrative module simultaneously, to preserve their binding (allegedly in 25 millisecond packages, 40 per second). The integrative hub must therefore be equidistant from all sections of the cortical mantel. Composed of neurons, albeit with special properties, the hypothetical key locus is therefore available to study by the methods of neuropsychology. Like the rest of the brain, it must be vulnerable to injury. If there were such a structure, reports should exist of patients with cerebral injury in whom consciousness was abolished by a lesion that, though limited in size, happened to be strategic in location. If consciousness is separate and separable from the action of the rest of the brain, then the no longer conscious patients behavior should proceed as heretofore (the zombie scenario). If consciousness is a command module, then this small lesion should abolish all voluntary activity. In a hundred years of investigative neuropsychology, a patient in whom such a lesion caused either type of deficit has never been reported. Consciousness can be eliminated either by widespread, if not total, inactivation of the cerebrum, or by interruption of activating circuits that ascend from the brain stem. As an instance of the latter, at the level of the thalamus such ascending projections pass through a narrow funnel in the region of the intralaminar nuclei. Small bilateral lesions of these nuclei can abolish consciousness and voluntary behavior. These circuits do not have enough carrying power for the con-
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tents of consciousness, though they may act as on/off switches. But at the level of the cerebral cortex, where information is processed in detail, small lesions, or even large ones, cannot do this. This neuronal architecture supports the alternative model, the uncentered brain. 7.2. How does damage to local cerebral circuits affect consciousness? A variety of selective deficits in experience and skill can result from injury to diversely located brain areas. The patient is typically fully aware of the ability, which he had, should have, but no longer has. However, in another type of deficit the patients awareness of the body part itself is compromised. Not merely does the patient deny any disability in the use of that limb which is objectively apparent (e.g. unawareness of hemiplegia). She often does not acknowledge that the limb is even hers. She does not attend to, think about or attempt to use it. It simply is outside the ambit of her consciousness. The range of the patients consciousness has become constricted. This type of deficit has decisive implications for the brain basis of consciousness. It demonstrates that consciousness is not concentrated at a point in the brain. Different regions contribute awareness of different aspects of a persons functioning. If any such region is inactivated, awareness is correspondingly restricted.
8. Dominant configuration
Cognitive deficit in full awareness could occur in a centered brain. Centered brain models are communication networks. Information shuttles from point to point, until it reaches a place where the buck stops. The cortical analyzer for the function in question is inactivated or its messages are cut off from the inner observer. The inner observer notes the deficiency. Cognitive deficit of which the patient is unaware is more compatible with uncentered brain organization. The locally damaged area itself contributed the contents of its specialization to awareness. To explain disorders of awareness, one has to invoke a distributed model: Awareness is inherent in those brain areas that are active at the moment. It is not a matter of transporting or entering the information into consciousness. The state of each sector of the cortical field biases, to a varying extent, its other parts. Just as the global network is no more than the sum of the local networks,
so the global field of awareness, external and internal, is no more than the activity of the whole brain, settled into an attractor state that is weighted in favor of those brain areas, which are engaged by the circumstances of the particular moment. So at any time a pattern of activation exists, that is shaped by the interaction of the constraints of the ambient physical circumstances and the persons feelings, knowledge, memory, expectations and evaluations (see SMW 177). This individualized configuration of global activation determines the concurrent state of readiness or expression of the output control centers for movement and speech. The configurations currently most salient aspects, its peaks of activation, I have called the dominant focus. It is the momentary shifting centerpiece of the integrated cerebral field model for consciousness (Kinsbourne, 1988, 1996). The cortical manifold is an arena of competition. It is not the absolute amount of activation at any locus that qualifies its representational content for consciousness. It is the amount relative to that of other peaks of activation in the network, the apex of the configuration, that represents the appearance or thought or intention that is at the focus of the moments attention. Indeed, the distribution of attention corresponds to the pattern of maximal activation, two ways of invoking the same concept. Nothing is shuttled from cortical point to point, toward an elite consciousness awareness system, nor does an internal searchlight bring various representations, one after the other, into focus. Instead, what is conscious is contributed by the currently configured activity of the circuitry, all brain cells being active, to varying degrees, all of the time. The highlights of what one experiences are the subjective aspects of the activation peaks that constitute figure against the activity of the rest of the network, which is its background. Adapting Whiteheads statement, the brain considers the event from its own standpoint. Being conscious is what it is like for the brain to be in certain states of activation. The set of possible states is a state space. Our shifting awareness describes a trajectory through that state space. It constitutes the brains subjective access to its own states. Whitehead (SMW 151) characterized consciousness as the function of knowing. It is the completed, albeit evanescent, states of the network, its momentary though fugitive resting points, that constitute the stream of consciousness. If the brain as a whole generates its mental states, then consciousness is not the product of highly specialized or even unique neural circuitry. Instead it is a quite general attribute of neural networks.
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Accordingly, in less refined fashion it perhaps characterizes the simpler networks that control the behavior even of cognitively quite simple species, as well as human infants. There is no compelling need for a fancy solution to the mind-brain problem (force fields, collapse of the quantum function). The mind and the brain are one, and the neurons do the mental work. Consciousness is a mode of action of the brain.
10. Merely a better machine?

Will the properly appreciated wonder of the brain prove to be a satisfactory replacement for Brownings puff of vapor, the human soul? Not for everyone, for sure. Henri-Frederic Amiel, writing at a time of spiritual upheaval, remarked in 1870: Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faiththat is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. For religion, read mysticism of any sort. If anything, the clutter of sects, cults and idiosyncratic belief systems is more plentiful now, in the age of peak scientific accomplishment, than it has ever been. However, it is salutary to reflect, with Zarathustra, how greatly the wonder of the workings of their brains excels the mundane products and trite pronouncements of all but the finest human minds. There is more reason in your bodies than in your best wisdom (Nietzsche, 1883).
9. Implication for free will

Like the soul, free will is more readily characterized by what it is not than by what it is. It is not an automatic reaction to an external change, not an act constrained by obvious present necessities, nor preordained, but spontaneous. What is truly spontaneous? Spinoza (1677) remarked that only one who is totally unaffected by external causes can claim true freedom. No human being could make such a claim. He concludes that true freedom can only obtain for the universe as a whole, not for any one of its teeming creatures. Only those actions that are random and meaningless, the results of the roll of cognitive dice, are truly unconnected to discrete causes (overt or covert). The power of the construct of free will is not in its appeal to logic, but in its appeal to intuition. We experience our actions as freely undertaken. This is because their antecedents are preconscious, and not available to experience. So the subjective plausibility of free will is inherent in the limitations of consciousness. We gain the subjective impression that we have free will precisely because we are so little aware of the causal machinery of our brains. We are conscious of the products of our mental machinery, but not of the manner in which the neural network arrives at these products. Thoughts and intentions do indeed arise in awareness without obvious antecedents. Seeming to come out of nowhere, they are experienced as free. Random mental functions that are totally out of touch with reality would, though free, in truth be of little worth. The freedom we have is the freedom to adapt, self-organize, self-regulate, self-equilibrate, and self-perpetuate. What remains for the consciousness narcissists still to be proud of? They can congratulate themselves on being the most sophisticated, intricate and awe-inspiring devices in the known universe. For those who have some inkling of the marvelous complexity and efficacy of the human brain, that might suffice.
THE COMMON ORIGIN OF PERCEPTION AND ACTION
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The Common Origin of Perception and Action: A Process Perspective,

Avraham Schweiger
According to Piaget (1976), even the adult process of understanding involves action (whether apparent, using the imagination, or effectiveas in the actual doing). We understand a concept when we can turn it in our head, imagine its consequences, apply it in a novel context or utilize it. Thus, understanding a foreign language can be judged in its usage. Understanding a work of art is not an exploratory act of finding what is already there, waiting to be discovered. It is an act of constructing meaning out of otherwise incomprehensible experience. When perception is considered as an act of construction, the distinction between perception and action becomes the difference between internal and observed behavior. Is solving a problem in ones head action or perception? Can the two be separated in such a process? Is the act of imagining the objects of the problem to be solved different than the act of manipulating these objects? Therefore, when considering the process of perception from the perspective of the nervous system, not from that of the outside observer, there is essentially no difference between perception and action. Reflection on the motor action of muscles teaches us that muscular activity involves perception in every stage. And just as action is a process (the word action implies movement and change of some sort), so is perception, and so are their continuous products: objects. By implication, then, our world with its stable objects is, as Whitehead would have itin a constant process of becoming.
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1. Introduction
It has been common in neuroscience to treat perception and action as two different modalities of interaction between the organism and its environment. Perception is traditionally considered as a passive registration and interpretation of given environmental information. Action is constituted by the behavioral response to perceived stimuli in the service of survival. These two modalities are viewed as having different and distinct, albeit interconnected and coordinated, neuroanatomical substrates in the cortex: for example, a motor system with specific motor neurons leading to the motor cortex, in the posterior aspect of the frontal lobe (M1). In contrast, a sensory system is described from sense organs to the other side of the Rolandic fissure, the primary sensory cortex. (S1). Such distinctions usually come from anatomical and pathological studies, as well as from in vivo recordings from these areas. The data seem to indicate that, for example, stimulation of points in the primary motor cortex (M1) results usually in motor activation, whereas damage to this area often results in contralateral motor problems, even paralysis. Analogous results obtain for the tactual sense when the primary sensory area (S1) is involved. These distinctions also seem to be continuous with the gross spinal cord division into the anterior-motor system and the posterior-sensory system. Thus it seems that such schism between perception and motor systems is justified and well founded on extensive experimental and clinical research. Such a distinction, however, is embedded in a view of the organism as a system that receives information from the objective reality around it, and in order to respond appropriatelyit must interpret the information accurately. Only once this is done, can the organism be in a position to respond in an adaptive manner. Such a view assumes the formation of some representation in the nervous system, on which the organism operates. However, the perception/action distinction ignores the common origin and natural unity of perception and action, while it raises difficult conceptual questions, of which bonding is a well known example: if perception and action are two distinct systems, how do they come to act so well in concert during normal functioning (for example, in the coordination needed for riding a bicycle), as is clearly the case? Of all the information available in the environment, what parts of it become focused upon for processing and on what basis? That is, if selective processing of information is
done on the basis of the relevance of the material to be processed, how is this selection done prior to processing the material? In addition, questions arise as to who decides which are the appropriate aspects of the environment, as represented in the nervous system, to which an appropriate response should be made and on what basis (the homunculus problem)? In this paper an alternative approach is proposed, in the framework of Whiteheads process approach (cf. SMW), which was later elaborated by others (e.g., Piaget, 1971; Brown, 1977; Varela et al., 1991). It is argued that understanding the relationship of perception and action requires a view of the two as originating together (or co-originating, in the words of Varela et al., 1991) and forming two aspects of a constructive process, by which the organism actively differentiates its environment into meaningful objects, motivated and constrained by survival needs. It is assumed that the environment is not a given for the organism, as the latter must actively select those aspects in the environment that are relevant to its existence. It is argued further that the observed differentiation of perception and the motor acts develops with the elaboration of a nervous system, with its ability to inhibit or facilitate and, more generally, modulate motor activity, and seen perhaps most dramatically in the case of the development of the frontal lobes (see below).
2. From unification to differentiation

For organisms with primitive nervous systems, perception and action are not separable. The very act of identifying an object of interest (food, enemy, or a mate) is bound up with the appropriate action (e.g., consummatory behavior, approach/avoidance). This is particularly true for organisms without a nervous system, such as amoeba (cf. discussion in Maturana & Varela, 1987). Thus ethologists and behaviorists speak of certain meaningful objects as triggering or releasing behaviors. But this triggering can be seen as only a convenientif arbitraryway of separating a continuum into seemingly separate temporal units from the perspective of an outside observer. From the perspective of the organism there is no such distinction. It was Piaget (e.g., 1971) who pointed out that in human infants, there is an initial unity of perception and action. Later, abstract cognitive concepts of objects develop out of sensory-motor schemata: the very action on objects generates, or eventuate later in that objects perception. In
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other words, an object is not given a priori, waiting for the organism to perceive it. It is in the interactions between the organism and the object-to-be that a percept is formed. This fact explains, for example, the common experience that familiar objects are perceived as wholes even when they are visually occluded or otherwise distorted. In short, the environment is differentiated into objects that are more meaningful, or less so, for the developing organism through that organisms action on the environment. In this sense, an object is the exteriorized interactions with the environment and the accommodative changes in the nervous tissue which the organism has undergone. Furthermore, the more complex the nervous system, the more opportunity exists for articulating the environment into finer and finer distinctions, i.e., objects (cf. Maturana & Varela, 1987). It should be noted here that accommodative changes refer to actual changes in the metabolic and other physiological processes of neurons, such as in their membranes and synapses. Whereas Piaget described accommodation and assimilation at the cognitive realm, these are viewed here as continuous and analogous to processes at the level of biological functioning. Consider a simple, monosynaptic reflex arc: the activity in such a simple system constitutes the reflex, regardless of what is the stimulus, as long as it results in activation in the sensory neuron. That is, the system is rigid and functionally undifferentiated, so that any environmental perturbation may activate it. One can speak of a stimulus and response only in the sense that activity (i.e., action potential) travels in this system in one direction (from a sensory nerve cell to a motor neuron). But the motor response is not to a stimulus. Rather, it is simply part of any activation of the unit, which usually begins at the receptor side of the arc. In organisms with more elaborate nervous systems, this simple unit becomes interconnected with the rest of the neuronal tissues through an increasingly greater number of interneurons. Thus, for example, all sensory systems no longer connect directly to motor systems, these two aspects having been differentiated long ago in the evolutionary development: they are interconnected by many millions of neurons, at least in primates. At the point where the nervous system is highly developed and differentiated into richly interconnected subsystems, such as we see in mammals, the very anatomical structure precludes any direct sensory-motor connection. But why should the nervous system develop this way? Wouldnt the fastest, most efficient way of responding to a stimulus be a direct connection to the motor system? Probably so, but at a great price, that the
response will be undifferentiated, or global: any change in the environment may cause the system to react in a stereotyped manner, without any flexibility to make accommodative changes. Increasing complexity in the nervous system comes with differentiation and specialization. Different parts of the system become selectively sensitive to a narrower range of environmental perturbations. Thus specialized nerve cells appear in the form of sensory receptors, some highly sensitive to electromagnetic radiation within a narrow range, others to chemical changes or physical pressure. Now, in a system where no one-to-one connections exist between input and output, these connections being interrupted by inter-neurons with efferent influence from the central nervous system, it becomes possible to discern a separation between input and output. In other words, with descending modulation at all levels of pathways from receptors to the central nervous system, the previously unified system of receptoreffector now includes influences of activity from other parts of the nervous system. That is, the chain of environmental perturbation > neuronal activity > motor action is differentiated and elaborated by incorporating other neuronal influences into the activation on the effector side. In addition, changes on the receptor side, even down at the level of the receptor cells themselves (as is the case in hearing), now involve on-going processes higher in the brain as well. Again, this is done through the efferent system of connections from the central nervous system down to the sensory pathways to the receptors (for review of sensory systems anatomy and functions see Coren et al, 1999). Such descending influence precludes any simple transmission of information along a pathway from the receptor to the cortex. It also provides intervening influence on sensory input, so that there is a chance to construct meaning of sensory changes before any motor activity takes place. Such intervention allows for the organisms behavior to be modulated by prior experience. Meaning in the present context refers to the relations of the present event, i.e., the constructed stimulus, to prior experience with similar or related events. This can be seen at the level of a single organisms ontogeny (in which case we say that the organism learned from experience), or at the phylogenetic level within a species, in which case we refer to the behavior as being innate. As an example, consider the sight of food: it is meaningful when construed as an edible entity, based on prior, usually multi-sensory, interactions with similar substances. Such meaning is expressed in the
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context of other ongoing activity in the nervous system with its efferent influence from higher neural structures in the brain. In other words, prior historical accommodative changes in the nervous system now come into play in the present, in the very act of perceiving, by providing the context for the present interaction of the organism with its environment. This context affects both identifying the stimulus, its value to the organism and the repertoire of appropriate action. The interaction of prior experience with present changes in complex neural units implies that activity on the effector side, or the motor response, can be suppressed, so as to allow for contextual (or historical) influence. This will ensure that motor responses will not be unleashed automatically with activation on the receptor side, as it is in the case of the simple reflex arc described above. As noted already, when the motor response is subjected to modulating influences from the central nervous system, there is an opportunity for prior experience to intervene. This intervention, typically in the form of inhibiting an immediate response, allows for cognition to step in between activation of the receptor and of the motor system. Such inhibition constitutes, essentially, the temporal division into sensory and motor aspects, which in organisms with complex nervous system can be separated by a wide temporal gap.
3. From Differentiation to Integration

In organisms with simple nervous systems, all neurons may make connections with different types of motor and receptor cells. With the growth of complex nervous systems, more and more neurons make contact with other neurons. In the human nervous system, the greatest number of contacts neurons make are with other neurons, compared with contacts with sensory or effectors (muscle) cell. These resulting rich neuronal networks allow for an almost infinite patterns of interactions, into which perturbations in the environment are integrated as infinitely rich shades of distinctions (stimuli). The networks also enrich behavioral repertoire that constitute human culture. In the neuronal networks, activity defines any present perturbations from the environment as stimulus by assimilating it into categories of prior experience with similar stimuli. Only in that sense the present stimulus receives its identity as an object by the organism. But viewed in this way, the stimulus is no longer an object independent of the organism, given as information to be interpreted by sense
organs. Rather, the stimulus is a process of construction by the nervous system through its interaction with the organisms environment. This construction is, of course, very rapid for the adult organism, so that to an outside observer it may seem that perception is immediate. But from the perspective of the nervous system, the act of perceiving a stimulus is a process of perturbations in ongoing activity to which an adaptive change is required. This perturbation and adaptation, then, constitute the perception of an object outside. Adaptation in the present context constitutes the two complementary processes described by Piaget (1971) as assimilation and accommodation. Traditional cognitive psychology acknowledges the contribution of the perceiver to the act of perception, in the form of selective attention. That is, perceivers are typically observed to focus their attention on some aspects of the environment and not on others. Such selection is not random, but is affected by a variety of variables, such as salience and importance of the stimuli to the perceiver. Adducing selective attention as a construct to explain the common observation of the organisms active role in perception, however, raises the problem of circularity mentioned above: how can the organism select an aspect of the environment to be perceived (presumably on the basis of importance and the like), prior to the perception of the very material to be perceived? In the framework of perceiving as a constructive process in the context of ongoing neuronal activity, perceived objects emerge as processes of adaptive changes in ongoing neuronal activity. That is, perceiving emerges out of meaning in the sense described above, and thus is directed by it. The idea above, of object perception emerging through meaning in interactions between the organism and its environment is not new. In a somewhat different form it was formulated by H. Werner in his microgenetic approach (1948), according to which the process of object perception is a re-tracing of the developmental history of the organisms perception in general, from diffuse meaning to a well defined object. It was J. Brown (cf. 1972, 1977, 1991) who integrated the concept of microgenesis into a theory of brain/behavior processes, and specifically to perception as a momentary re-tracing of neuronal waves from archaic, mid-brain structures to the cortex through constraints imposed by present interactions with the environment. The common thread of these approaches and the present one is the view of object perception not as a passive retrieval of a representation in response to outside information, but as an active process of ongo-
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ing construction, the products of which are experienced as individuated stable objects outside the organism. Moreover, as objects are seen as the product of ontogenetic construction, they are regarded as reflecting processes, the identity of which depends on the perceiving organism and its interactions with the environment. It is very unlikely that a copy, or a static representation, of any objects exist somewhere in the nervous system, and that perceiving the object involves evocation of this representation. One reason is that if object perception is a function of the organisms motor and perceptual ontogeny, reflected in the present dynamic activity of neuronal networks specific to an organism, any new and old perturbations of such activity is necessarily diffuse. Perhaps a factual example can illustrate the foregoing claim: typical objects in daily life (e.g., furniture) seem to have solidity and stability. But we know that in reality nothing remains constant, from the subatomic level of matter, to the level of activity in the perceiving receptor tissue. Even if we examine the eyes, we find that under normal circumstances, they exhibit saccadic movements: rapid, constant small jumps of the eyeballs. Despite this constant movement, we do not experience the visual field with the objects in it to be in constant motion, as should have been the case if perception was the result of direct registration of light reflected from solid objects. On the contrary, if an image is artificially stabilized on the retina, such that the image falls on the same receptors (for example, when eye movements are prevented relative to the object), the image rapidly disappears. The latter observation is seen in all sense modalities (referred to also as habituation or sensory adaptation) and has been known for a long time. However, a theory of perception which assumes that perceiving the world is processing information from the objective environment, cannot adequately explain these phenomena. Solidity and constancy are not, then, inherent to objects. They are properties emerging from the ontogeny of the perceiving organism, constructed over time into abstract schemata, and into which present processes are assimilated. The result is the experience of stable objects.
4. The Frontal Lobes

Perhaps a brief discussion of the frontal lobes dysfunction can illustrate the common origin of perception and action. Probably the most distinct anatomical feature of Homo sapienss nervous system is the
significant enlargement of the frontal lobes. It seems that most of the tissue (save for the motor strip) in these structures does not have direct and specific sensory or motor function. Massive fibers connect the frontal lobes with just about every other cortical and subcortical structure in the central nervous system. Studies of the frontal lobes functioning teach us that the influence exerted by the frontal lobes is largely inhibitory (e.g., Fuster, 1989). There have been many speculations on the role of these lobes, especially in higher cognitive functions such as planning, benefiting from feedback, categorizing, reasoning, etc. It is instructive to consider symptoms of frontal lobes pathology in appreciating their functioning: both animal experiments (Fuster, 1989) and human clinical studies (e.g., Levine et al., 1991; Miller & Cummings, 1998) show a variety of behavioral pathologies following damage to the frontal lobes, which can be characterized as problems of inhibiting responses. Such failures are not of correctly responding in the normal sense, but of responses in their inappropriate context. Thus, animals and humans with frontal lobe damage exhibit stimulus boundedness: difficulties in dissociating a response appropriate to the stimulus but not the more global context. Thus, Lhermitte (1986) described patients who would utilize objects correctly but inappropriately (upon entering an apartment as a visitor, a patient attempted to hang on the wall a picture left on the floor, with a hammer and nails near by). Animals with such damage could not delay a response to a salient object (say, food) until the appropriate time to receive a reward (Fuster, 1989). Patients with frontal damage are well known to perseverate in a variety of contexts, this behavior being defined as problems in inhibiting a response that was appropriate but is no longer so in the present context. For this reason, such patients also exhibit rigidity in thinking and occasionally difficulties in monitoring their own performance. Symptoms of impaired abstract thinking are also seen often in these patients. Separating perception from action is common to all these symptoms. Animals and humans with frontal damage exhibit impairment in their ability to utilize inhibitory influence on the process of perception and action. The perception of food, for example, cannot be easily separated from eating. Establishing one mode of behavior cannot be easily switched to another (e.g., in drawing alternate forms). Abstract thinking, which requires manipulation of objects in their absence, planning of future actions and entertaining their possible consequences and sensitivity to contextual cues are difficult for these
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patients. Some patients with frontal damage exhibit social disinhibition, much to the embarrassment of their families. For instance, a young patient with bilateral frontal damage we saw in the clinic reacted daily to every wastebasket in the office by spitting into it, despite being asked repeatedly to stop this behavior. Accordingly, animals such as dogs, which have much smaller frontal lobes relative to the rest of the brain, require hard work to learn the inhibition of consummatory behavior in the presence of food or potential mate. It seems that the frontal lobes provide the contextual network discussed above, within which the organisms perception and action differentiate through meaning and inhibition, which in turn give rise to constructive imagination and abstract thought.
Summary
According to Piaget (1976), even the adult process of understanding involves action (whether apparent, using the imagination, or effective as in the actual doing). We understand a concept when we can turn it in our head, imagine its consequences, apply it in a novel context or utilize it. Thus, understanding a foreign language can be judged in its usage. Understanding a work of art is not an exploratory act of finding what is already there, waiting to be discovered. It is an act of constructing meaning out of otherwise incomprehensible experience. When perception is considered as an act of construction, the distinction between perception and action becomes the difference between internal and observed behavior. Is solving a problem in ones head action or perception? Can the two be separated in such a process? Is the act of imagining the objects of the problem to be solved different than the act of manipulating these objects? Therefore, when considering the process of perception from the perspective of the nervous system, not from that of the outside observer, there is essentially no difference between perception and action. Reflection on the motor action of muscles teaches us that muscular activity involves perception in every stage. And just as action is a process (the word action implies movement and change of some sort), so is perception, and so are their continuous products: objects. By implication, then, our world with its stable objects is, as Whitehead would have it in a constant process of becoming.
Part II. Psychology

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Table of Contents

Part II. Psychology

Part III. Psychotherapy

Part IV. Philosophy of Mind

SEARCHING FOR NEW CONTRASTS

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1. Philosophy and ScienceIn Search of Balance

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2. Process Metaphysics and Psychology: Some Pioneer Works

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

Value in Mind and Nature

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

1. Microgenesis and process theory

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

2. Value and evolutionary gradualism

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

3. Intrinsic value and existence

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

5. Being and becoming

4. Duration and existence

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

7. Transition to human valuation

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

8. Perception and value

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

9. Desire and worth

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VALUE IN MIND AND NATURE

CONSCIOUSNESS, WHITEHEAD AND QUANTUM COMPUTATION

1. Introduction: The problem of consciousness and the emergence approach

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CONSCIOUSNESS, WHITEHEAD AND QUANTUM COMPUTATION

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CONSCIOUSNESS, WHITEHEAD AND QUANTUM COMPUTATION

2. Whitehead and Pan-protopsychism

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CONSCIOUSNESS, WHITEHEAD AND QUANTUM COMPUTATION

3. Reality: The quantum and classical worlds

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CONSCIOUSNESS, WHITEHEAD AND QUANTUM COMPUTATION

4. Penrose objective reductions: Whitehead occasions in fundamental space-time geometry?