QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

and what makes states belong to the same class is not their similar physical character, for
example their neurophysical characteristics, but their identical causal role. 383
Within a mechanistic-deterministic frame of reference, it is difficult to explain how a specific
causal role, a multibly-realisable functional state which cannot be reduced to a certain physical
basis, can be born out of matter. 384 At the beginning of the 1980s, many philosophers critical of
cognitive science blurred its identity to such an extent that now, during the first years of the 21 st
century, there is no consensus about the fundamental nature of cognitive science. Also, in more
general terms, philosophical theories concerning the fundamental character of the human mind
are currently in a state of ferment. Even though both brain research and cognitive psychology,
which attempt to describe and explain, among other things, perception, thinking , the making of
decisions and the production and understanding of language, have been making progress, so far
no single unifying theory has been conceived which at the same time provides a solid theoretical
foundation for multi-disciplinary cognitive research and also takes account of the new results
obtained from empirical research. It has been particularly difficult to provide a tenable
explanation of the subjective character of the phenomena of consciousness. 385 Scientific
explanation of these phenomena cannot perhaps succeed within a mechanistic-deterministic
framework, but as will be discussed in Chapter 5, the quantum framework may offer preferable
options.
The mathematician Keith Devlin, a researcher into language and communication, has come to
the conclusion that the truly difficult problems of the information age are not technological but
concern ourselves – what is it to think, to reason and to engage in conversation. He has found
growing evidence that the existing techniques of logic and mathematics – i.e. the whole
traditional scientific method - are inadequate for the task of understanding the human mind. The
main reason that we come up against the limits of the traditional framework in the human and
cognitive sciences is that any statement always makes a claim about some situation. Cartesian
science, the great investigative tradition which has freed the study of phenomena from all
context, is not suitable for the investigation of human reasoning and communication. It is
Devlin’s view that in trying to develop an understanding of mind, language, and everyday
reasoning, we should abandon Descartes’ decontextualised approach and go back to the view
383
Revonsuo 2001, 56-58. In Daniel Dennett’s (1978) functional decomposition theory, complicated mental states
are reduced to simple ones through different levels of description and explanation. It is supposed that the level of
extremely simple functions is comparable to those in digital computers.
384
The author suggests that the new concept of state in quantum physics might offer new tools to deal with the
problem. See also Section 5.2.
145