Quantum Human & Animal Consciousness: A Concept Embracing Philosophy, Quantitative Molecular Biology & Mathematics

Abstract

Biology and culture, consciousness and the world, subject and object, inner and outer have continuity and find, in the "creative transcendence” of consciousness and its experiences, a privileged degree of understanding. The aims of this paper are: (1) to stress the validity of the phenomenological approach to consciousness and the subsequent interpretation of memory, expression of the “ego” as a continuous narrative of “self”; (2) to show that a molecular structure, such as tubulin, can effectively modulate the state of consciousness through the changes that occur within it; (3) to formulate a plausible hypothesis about the existence of different levels of consciousness in animals; (4) to introduce a hypothesis concerning the involvement of membrane viscosity and serotonin as regulatory agents in different levels of consciousness such as mood disorders and hallucinations. It is suggested that consciousness persists even in the face of minimal conditions, perhaps even in traumatic brain injuries. Such a suggestion is justified at the bio molecular level through introduction of the hypothesis that Schrödinger proteins (i.e. tubulins) are the biological interface from quantum to classical computation, underlying quantum/classical consciousness processes and at the crossroad of memory and learning capacities.