Being and Field Theory: Review Article

This article arises from the remarkably multi-faceted book Brain and Being edited by Gordon Globus and others, hereafter referred to as B&B. It raises questions (though not unusually, few answers) about several related areas: the way in which quantum theory might endow the physical matter of the brain with surprising, though still essentially classical, properties; the possibility that quantum field theory might shed a wholly new light on aspects of consciousness, in both the subjective and neurological approaches; and, at the most speculative, the suggestion that the nature of being, as disclosed subjectively, can be understood in the light of one or other of the interpretations of quantum theory. I will consider these in turn