TA6 elicited five commentaries ('C5' was in fact a response to C4). I would like to respond briefly to all of them, as all were interesting and thoughtful. Some of the issues raised by Chris Lofting and Gary Schouborg have been explored at greater length in private correspondence and elsewhere.

C1 (Chris Lofting).

The general point made in this commentary is the one that Chris has so ably developed elsewhere in this forum: namely that particular theories and findings say a lot more about the structure of our minds, and especially their incorrigible tendency to deal in either wholes or dichotomies, than about any aspect of 'reality'. Thus one should not expect any theory of consciousness, quantum or otherwise, to do other than reflect back to us what is already built into our brains.

It is clearly true that our theories are greatly constrained by the nature of our own brains and imaginations, but questions remain as to whether this is such an absolute limitation on our ability to ascertain the 'real' nature of anything as Chris implies and whether the limitation takes the form that he proposes. My own view is that science does take faltering steps towards the ever-receding goal of describing truths about reality; indeed our minds restructure themselves to accommodate these truths though always with a considerable (often generational) time lag. Despite Chris's ingenious derivation of wave/particle dualities from our basic tendency to dichotomize I share Herbert Muller's doubts, set out at length in Note 22, concerning the precise form that the limitation or 'template' takes.

C2 (Varadaraja Raman).

Although Professor Raman starts off his commentary by appearing to disagree with my article it is soon apparent that there is only one major point on which we in fact disagree, plus a few minor misunderstandings too trivial to be worth pursuing here. His statement 'My own hunch is that quantum physics and neuroscience may one day merge . . .'.[7] and his final para. [14] precisely summarise much of what I was trying to say in TA6.

The important point on which we disagree concerns his statement in [7] that 'transrational dimensions of brain activity' roughly correspond with Primas' ontic realm. They don't and can't since all aspects of our experience, of internal conscious states as well as of the world out there, belong to Primas' epistemic realm which is described by a different sort of mathematical object from the ontic realm (a W* algebra as opposed to a C* algebra). 'Transrational dimensions' may reflect aspects of onticity, but they don't correspond with them. The relative precision of Primas' ideas is their major advantage (their disadvantage being that the maths is far more cumbersome to handle than the standard wave mechanics).

C3 (Gary Schouborg).

Gary's commentary rightly chides my loose terminology in TA6. If only there were an accepted terminology for discussing consciousness! As it is, the terms we use tend to reflect our underlying assumptions; in my case the assumption is that awareness is the basic phenomenon underlying consciousness; it is analagous to a searchlight 'illuminating', so to speak, all other aspects of mind to produce conscious experience. He also , in [5], argues that my use of the term 'acausality' was illogical. It would have been if I had used the term in the most general sense, but in fact I was using it in its technical sense, referring to lack of causation due to transfer of wave packets of one sort or another, which was O.K.

Gary's main two points were that trying to reach a scientific explanation of consciousness is precisely like, and just as hopeless as, aiming to explain existence scientifically. Nevertheless we can hope to reach some sort of satisfactory understanding of consciousness by actively developing in ourselves the capacity for 'pure' awareness whose development is facilitated by the contemplation of koans.

Explaining existence in any fundamental sense would seem to depend on having a coherent concept of non-existence, but unhappily it is impossible to hold such a concept. It is easy enough to hold a concept of zero, the empty set or whatever, but these concepts are themselves something. Any concept of absolute nothing that we might try to develop is always something and so is for ever unattainable. Thus Wittgenstein's aphorism 'whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent' holds in relation to any fundamental attempt to discuss existence. But this does not stop one aiming for a scientific account of the necessary conditions for existence and related questions many of which would count as 'explanations of existence', of a sort. The same, by Gary's analogy, applies to attempts to understand consciousness. Whether his koan method provides an alternative route to a valid understanding is a fascinating question which deserves much further exploration.

C4 (Paul Jones).

Dr. Jones takes the view that consciousness is an emergent, group phenomenon, so aiming to explain it by neuroscientific or quantum theoretical means is a waste of effort. He appreciated my 'irony' concerning the achievements of neuroscience, but I had intended no such irony as I find them hugely impressive. There are obvious weaknesses in his position which were spelled out by Chris Lofting in TA6C5 but, given some alteration, there's also much that is valid and true.

If Jones had been referring to the CONTENT of consciousness, rather than the phenomenon of awareness, few of us would have had much quarrel with what he wrote since it is clear that the content of our experience is often moulded to a remarkable extent by poorly understood social and group mechanisms. This is an area concerning which Russian psychologists in particular have made major contributions, though much of their work has only recently come to the attention of people in the West.

I personally have less quarrel than most with Jones' views because of my liking for the notion that consciousness can be in some sense identified with brain quantum fields. There seems to be no reason in principle why such fields should not be shared by groups of brains so that, in a sense, consciousness might sometimes (though certainly not always) be best considered a group phenomenon.

C6 (Henry Swift).

It is briefly stated in this commentary that Amit Goswami's ideas about Consciousness being the fundamental basis of everything may provide a more satisfactory alternative to those discussed in TA6. I'm personally happier with dual aspect views (cs. may be an aspect of all or part of the basis of reality) than with Goswami's more thoroughgoing approach. My main reason for this is that I can see little difference between what I know of Goswami and Berkeleian Idealism. It's a perfectly respectable philosophy but probably irrefutable and therefore sterile. However, I'm open to correction about this as I believe it has been claimed that Goswami has made predictions that could in principle be refuted.

CONCLUSIONS.

As these discussions so often demonstrate, we've all got hold of a different bit of the elephant, apart from myself and Raman who are probably fingering the same appendage from slightly different angles. But all our approaches need vigorous exploration as who knows which will first provide evidence of the links that must exist between our present understandings?

[Chris Nunn
<chrisnunn@compuserve.com>]