Hi Alan,

Even though this might be out of place, as Harv admonishes, I will answer your question since you asked.

I may have been the one who suggested Johnjoe McFadden's "Quantum Evolution". But if it was me, I suggested it before I read it. Now that I have read it, I can report:

I found it to be an excellent book for explaining the aspects of QM that might be involved in an ultimate explanation of life and consciousness in a way that I can understand them. McFadden seems to feel that he is on to the beginnings of such an explanation in purely physical terms with no need of anything supernatural. His hypothesis is that there is some kind of conscious electromagnetic field, or the "Cem-field" at the root of consciousness and life. It sounded to me a lot like the morphogenetic field posited by Rupert Sheldrake in his "A New Science of Life" published quite a while ago.

Of course I passed McFadden's ideas through my own filter, partly to see if I thought his ideas made sense, and partly to see if they were strong enough to poke holes in my filter. I came away with my filter intact and with the opinion that his ideas make sense as far as they go. He has not explained how the integrated Cem-field has gained, or even how it can have at all, the capacity to know the high level state of high level structures. Conscious awareness and free will require such knowledge, in my opinion.

I think that simply by positing a primordial and/or unitary consciousness, which is in a position to use this Cem-field as a medium for communication with the brain in same way we use the EM field as a medium for cell phone communications, a complete explanation becomes obvious and simple.

Sorry to keep playing this same tune at every opportunity, but it makes sense to me and I solicit any jabs you or anyone else thinks might puncture my filter.

Warm regards,

Paul