Neural networks and quantum neurology: a speculative heuristic towards the formal architecture of psychism

Abstract

A new line of investigation known as quantum neurology has been born in recent years. One of its objectives is to accomplish a better explanation of psychism. It basically explains the unity of consciousness, its holistic character, and the indeterminism of its responses. How is this “phenomenological explicandum” explained in classical neurological architecture? After commenting on the properties of classical architecture, we focus on the proposal of Edelman, since we consider it as probably one of the better proposals explaining psychism. The discussion of Edelman’s proposal, from the viewpoint of the problem about the “physical support” of psychism in classical physics, allows us to evaluate the strengths of his proposal, as well as the remaining insufficiencies in his explanation. The “heuristic” way of quantum neurology offers a new approach to the “phenomenological explicandum” that does not contradict, but completes classical architecture. The discussion regarding the Hameroff–Penrose hypothesis allows us to propose that the psycho-bio-physical ontology would have an architecture with three levels (or sub-architectures) and two (or three) interface systems among them. This hypothetical architecture permits us to reflect on the production of ontologies, architectures, and functional logics (real and artificial). In any case, the new quantum neurology would suggest new formulations of the psycho-bio-physical ontology by means of the graph theory (classical neurology) and of topology (quantum neurology).