Some Vital and Unrecognized Roles of Attention in Quantum Theories of Consciousness

Abstract

As the quantum models of consciousness are becoming more and more prominent for theoretical models of consciousness, more dimensions of consciousness are being discovered. At the same time, the need to pin-point the element of consciousness is becoming more and more important. Parallal to these researches, several cognitive models of consciousness have also been propounded. With more and more results of cognitive studies, we are coming to know that like consciousness, attention is also a basic function of human psychology and both are very intricately related to each other, some- times even overlapping with each other. Perhaps this has been the reason either the cognitive functions of attention have been completely over-looked or have been mistakenly used synonymously with consciousness in the theories of the latter. This is especially true for QM theories of consciousness. Because of not taking attention into account, some of the most basic assumptions of QM models of consciousness have been erroneous. In this article, we review the literature of basic theories of QM and at the same time, we will see that several important roles of attention in these theories are missing. This is because in most of the theories, attention has either been completely ignored or has been confused with consciousness, where as both are two distinct cognitive functions. In this preliminary exploration, we will try to address three basic issues on QM in relation to consciousness: 1)The measurement problem 2) The quantum reduction or wave function collapse and 3) The free choice of consciousness. We propose that future models of consciousness should take into account the vitality of understanding attention.