Latest psychophysics/QM brain article

Any thoughts on the plausibility of the below suggestions for a role of
quantum physics in neuroscience/psychology?

------------------------------
J.M. Schwartz, H.P. Stapp & M. Beauregard (2005) "Quantum physics in
neuroscience and psychology: a neurophysical model of mind-brain
interaction", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of
London B,
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1598

ABSTRACT: Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behaviour
generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to
explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems
from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles
and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can
therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these
elements. Thus, terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential
content (e.g. 'feeling', 'knowing' and 'effort') are not
included as primary causal factors. This theoretical restriction is
motivated primarily by ideas about the natural world that have been
known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than three-quarters of a
century. Contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from
classic physics on the important matter of how the consciousness of
human agents enters into the structure of empirical phenomena. The new
principles contradict the older idea that local mechanical processes
alone can account for the structure of all observed empirical data.
Contemporary physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the
overall causal structure certain psychologically described choices made
by human agents about how they will act. This key development in basic
physical theory is applicable to neuroscience, and it provides
neuroscientists and psychologists with an alternative conceptual
framework for describing neural processes. Indeed, owing to certain
structural features of ion channels critical to synaptic function,
contemporary physical theory must in principle be used when analysing
human brain dynamics. The new framework, unlike its
classic-physics-based predecessor, is erected directly upon, and is
compatible with, the prevailing principles of physics. It is able to
represent more adequately than classic concepts the neuroplastic
mechanisms relevant to the growing number of empirical studies of the
capacity of directed attention and mental effort to systematically
alter brain function.
-------------------

By "contemporary basic physical theory", the authors mean the
particular interpretation of quantum mechanics that is favoured by
Stapp. I'm far from sure what this interpretation says, but from what I
understand the basic idea is that (i) a mind cannot be described in
terms of something else, (ii) the collapse of QM superpositions is a
real process that happens in two steps--- first a mind chooses an
eigenfunction basis and then nature randomly decides to which
eigenfunction the superposition should collapse to. There also seems to
be some philosophical distinction, which I don't understand, between
probabilities in certain mixed states and "classical" probabilities
("improper mixtures" vs. "proper mixtures") so that decohered, mixed
states are still regarded as "quantum" and "non-classical" in some
sense. How is this distinction supposed to work?

.

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