skakos wrote:Interesting idea. I haven't read it in whole, but I will.
Could you summarize it?
I will try.
The first thing to remember is that this is fringe science, so many physicists and philosophers would disagree with the following.
Basically the idea is that the brain operate like a hologram and the universe operate like a hologram. If we accept the analogy then it is fairly easy to argue that both the brain and the universe interact with each other.
The use of the world,"hologram" is only to be used as an analogy, but it is the best analogy they could come up with. I am assuming that quantum mechanics has taken up this idea are found that it fits well with the idea of quantum consciousness. But that's another story.
By hologram they mean reality is 'fluid', perhaps a better way of explaining it would in terms of a quantum wave function, and naturally terms such as superposition and non-locality come into play. In some sense the image on a hologram is non-local and wave like. I am not an expert in holographic images so you will have to take the following with a grain of salt. If you drop a particular type of holographic image, you can pick and any piece of the shattered image and it will contain the whole image. But again, this doesn't apply to all types of holographic images.
The reason I am saying this is because I can see an analogy between the removal of worms head and the memory still being retained by the organism. In other words, its memory is not restricted to just one location.
As I said before the idea of a holographic brain leads to the refinement of the idea in terms of the brain carrying out quantum functions. In some sense, it can be argued that the physicalists are correct when they see the brain in terms of computer type consciousness. The difference here is that the brain functions like a quantum computer whereby information distributed through the system with all information being retrievable. It is anyone's guess if this information distribution is just restricted to the internal environment.
As I said before, this stuff is very much fringe science, but people such as Hameroff and Penrose take it seriously. Seriously in terms of trying to demonstrate their theory using the scientific method. Anyway that's the best I can come up with. Someone such as yourself may be able to come up with a better explanation.
