Consciousness and the Brain, Part Three: Quantum Consciousness, with Stuart Hameroff

Stuart Hameroff, MD, is a professor of anesthesiology and psychology at the Banner University Medical Center of the University of Arizona in Tucson. He is also co-founder and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. He is author of Ultimate Computing: Biomolecular Consciousness and Nanotechnology. Since 1994, he has organized the “Toward a Science of Consciousness” conferences at the University of Arizona and elsewhere. Working with Sir Roger Penrose, he is the co-author of the “Orch OR” theory of consciousness.

Here he describes his collaboration with Sir Roger Penrose in the development of the “Orch OR” theory of consciousness. Penrose is a highly respected mathematician and theoretical physicist who worked with Stephen Hawking to develop the theory of black holes. In the 1990s, he wrote a book about consciousness called The Emporer’s New Mind. In that book, he applied Gödel’s incompleteness theorem to demonstrate that human consciousness was not merely a complex computer. He offered a theory of the mind based upon quantum mechanical principles. The founders of quantum physics also developed similar theories. Upon reading this book, Hameroff proposed to Penrose that the microtubule structures of the brain provided the link between the quantum and the classical worlds. Hameroff emphasized that quantum processes are very different than those observed in the world of large objects. For example, through superposition, sub-atomic particles can be thought of as being in two places at once.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). His master’s degree is in criminology. He teaches parapsychology for ministers in training with the Centers for Spiritual Living through the Holmes Institute. He has served as vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and is the recipient of its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities. His American Indian name, chosen at age eight, is Soaring Eagle.

(Recorded on August 4, 2015)