Nerve Terminals and the Need to Use Quantum Theory

Abstract

Many neuroscientists who study the relationship of consciousness to brain processes want to believe that classical physics will provide an adequate rational foundation for that task. But classical physics has bottom-up causation, and the direct rational basis for the claim that classical physics is applicable to the full workings of the brain rests on the basic presumption that it is applicable at the microscopic level. However, empirical evidence about what is actually happening at the trillions of synapses on the billions of neurons in a conscious brain is virtually nonexistent, and, according to the uncertainty principle, empirical evidence is in principle unable to justify the claim that deterministic behavior actually holds in the brain at the microscopic (ionic) scale. Thus the claim that classical determinism holds in living brains is empirically indefensible: sufficient evidence neither does, nor can in principle, exist.