心脳問題は生理学の問題たりうるか

抄録

The seminal paper by Crick and Koch (2003) opened a gate to the bland new realm of research in science. A decade ago, the problem was still called "mind-body" problem and was thought of as a somewhat obsolete topic in philosophy. I would like to discuss the problem of 'self-awareness.' In particular, I will focus my attention on "network science" and "quantum mechanics" and the possible role they might play in brain science. First of all, does self-awareness somehow emerge out of classical, i.e. non-quantum, networks? If so, is it limited to biological networks such as human brain, or is it possible for the inorganic networks, Internet for example, to have self-awareness? I will argue that Alexa, a web search program launched in 1996, had changed the whole landscape of Internet. Before Alexa, the flow of information on the Internet was 'one-way,' due to the original design, i.e. HTML. After Alexa, truly two-way or feedback flow emerged. I will discuss some implications of this (seemingly innocuous) 'add-on.' Next, does quantum mechanics have anything to do with self-awareness, and with the function of human brain system in general? Extravagant as it may seem, the claim that quantum mechanics is vital when we try to understand the origin of self-awareness, is far from dismissible. (I will cite some examples from the standard text books.) Finally, and most importantly, I must utter the following question: do all the above argument have anything to do with physiology? [Jpn J Physiol 54 Suppl:S50 (2004)]