we know comes to us via our body, so continuing the study of percep-
tion, action, and neural correlates of consciousness will be valuable.
Moreover, look to the interior of the cell—continue to push the
limits, as more microscopic analysis becomes technically possible. As
yet undiscovered processes deep within cells may yield new insight
into the nature of life itself. And there is no reason to assume that
neural computation involves only electrodynamic couplings between
cells, just because that’s all we’ve been able to investigate so far. For
example, one scenario (due to Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff)
posits that subcellular structures such as microtubules may be in-
formation storage and computational devices, with aspects of their
component tubulin structures acting something like information
bits in a computer. And not just bits, but qubits—units of quantum
information. A qubit is in a superposition of two different states at
the same time, rather than one state or the other state, such as is the
case for a classical bit. This allows for a substantial increase in com-
putational power—what is called quantum computation. Thus, it is
hypothesized, microtubules may be quantum computers, processing
information and making decisions deep within cells—pretty wild
stuff!
- Refined analysis of mental experience. William James (1842-1910)
suggested that a science of mind be based upon a multifaceted empir-
ical approach—study of behavior (psychology), study of the biological
underpinnings of behavior (neurobiology), and study of the mental
phenomena themselves (introspection). The first two approaches
have been well developed in the century of scientific progress since
James’s time. However, investigation of mental experience has not yet
seen the same level of development within the scientific enterprise.
James stated in his 1890 Principles of Psychology that empirical