Volume 20, Issue 2, 2022


Aesthetics of Music, on Psychedelics
Alan C. Gibbs, Philadelphia, USA

Audible exposure to a particular music track results in a (sub)- conscious "binning" where the track is regarded somewhere on a continuum from positive to neutral to negative. If non-neutral, the music may elicit emotion or feeling, and if regarded positive an enhancement of mood or well-being follows. If the music is perceived with special positivity and recognized as beautiful it may be notably therapeutic for the psyche. Analogously, ingestion of psychedelic compounds under appropriate conditions is known to improve well-being and existential outlook (Richards 2015). A recent clinical co-administration of psychedelics and music, in which the author was a participant, provided personal insight to the therapeutic potential of this combination. Specifically, an understanding of the underlying basis of efficacy in music/psychedelics co-therapy emerged. Its (maximum) effectiveness lies in its ability to enable true Schopenhauerian aesthetic contemplation of music, a transient freedom from servitude to the will.


The Self and Its Time - A Non-Reductive Neuro-Phenomenological Perspective on the Brain's Spontaneous Activity
Georg Northoff, Mind, Brain Imaging and Neuroethics, Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, Canada and
Saša Horvat, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Social Sciences and Medical Humanities, University of Rijeka, Croatia

The self has been inherently connected with time, i.e., duration and temporal continuity, in the phenomenological approaches by Husserl and others. The key concept here is pre-reflective selfconsciousness featured by its inherently temporal nature as distinguished from reflective self-consciousness. Taking a non-reductive neuro-phenomenological perspective, we propose that the intimate connection of the self with duration/temporal continuity on the phenomenological level can be linked to the temporal structure of the brain's spontaneous activity. Specifically, we show that the role of the brain's spontaneous activity for the self also includes its temporal structure, as quantified with dynamic measures like scale-free activity and autocorrelation window. This suggests a close and intimate connection of self and time, i.e., duration/temporal continuity on the neural level as somewhat analogous to the phenomenological level. In conclusion, we provide a  first exploratory step towards a non-reductive neuro-phenomenological synthesis of self and time. We tentatively postulate a convergence of neural and phenomenological levels with regard to their inherent relationship of self and time as described by the brains scale-free activity (empirical) and pre-reflective self-consciousness (phenomenological).


Measurements as Sentences: Outlines of a Dialectic-Idealist Interpretation of Quantum Theory
Pauli Pylkkö, Taivassalo, Finland

An idealist interpretation of quantum theory is outlined such that the underlying logic is dialectic (dialetheic). An updated version of a Hegelian (dialectic) view of sentential intensions is sketched. This thoroughly non-classical view of sententiality is then used to explore the quantum measurement situation, and it is shown that quantum measurements exemplify sentential intensions. In other words, they are sentence-like processes in the Hegelian sense of sentencehood. Among other things, the sketched framework solves the so-called measurement problem (or Wigner's friend paradox) in the sense that it prevents it from arising. It is suggested that such ("quantum-friendly") studies of natural language and natural thinking that use quantum-theoretical mathematics might bene t from this approach.


Embracing Weird: Quantum Context and Quantum Social Sciences
David Rooney, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and
Sudip Patra, School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University, Delhi, India

Quantum-like modeling provides new capabilities for social science research. Quantum-like modeling is already used in decisionmaking and cognition research but has broad potential for understanding complex phenomena in, for example, organizational research as well. This paper discusses how quantum-like modeling offers new ways to deal with context in organizational research where context includes intersubjective minds such as culture as a whole. Hilbert space, as the state space of quantum mechanics, is best understood as context, and allows us to quantitatively and comprehensively account for context including those variables that are the constituents and products of intersubjective minds. Moreover, the analytical tools available to quantum theory have powerful and direct application in social science because of their agility in dealing with context probabilistically. We therefore argue that there are excellent philosophical, logical, and conceptual tools that might usefully be borrowed from quantum theory to better account for context. These tools have already been used for researching probability and cognitive state updating (learning). However, they are not currently used in mainstream organizational research, although organizations are ideal places to employ these new approaches because of their relatively well-dedined boundaries. In this current paper, we present a discussion of contextuality in a quantum framework and its possible extension to modeling highly context-sensitive behavior in organizational settings by laying out the foundations for behavioral quantum-like modeling.


Stuart Kauffman's Quantum Theory of Consciousness: A Critical Review
Santiago Sánchez-Migallón Jiménez, Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Granada, Spain

I analyse one of the most recent quantum theories of consciousness, Stuart Kauffman's. I describe his attempt to substantiate the insu ciency of Newtonian physics and classical computation to explain consciousness; his proposal of an ontology that bases the collapse of the wave function from the interpretation of von Neumann and Wigner; his argument that the collapse of the wave function is experienced as a quale; and his proposal to achieve general arti cial intelligence (GAI) through Trans-Turing systems. I offer a critique of multiple aspects of the theory that, at the same time, can be extended to most quantum theories of consciousness, and in the end, I reflect on the possibilities and new directions of Kauffman's theory and quantum theories of consciousness in general terms.


A Response to Santiago Sánchez-Migallón Jiménez
Stuart Kauffman, Institute of Systems Biology, Seattle, Washington, USA


Last revision: 5 December 2022