Thought and Energy

Originally posted by Iere man
OK Taoman, I now have better understanding of your original queries...and I do have a couple of followup ideas which of course are my interpretation and should not be taken seriously unless it resonates with a lot of other posters...
firstly, we may keep the distinction I made between mental work and physical work, treat them as systems and then break down he same physical energy conversions as I mentioned before in previous post...

I post the below short summary excerpt from Wiki article on consciousness and see it as related to this question of energy. You may identify something of your own stance amongst the various put forth.
I am persuaded that ultimately a quantum related process is involved in the holonomic nature of thought, and thus the thought/energy question would relate in final "output" to energies involved in quantum states. But as a quantum state is a "field" of potential probabilities, we may well be no clearer?

Buddhist philosophers would state that such emerges from a potent indescribable, unlocatable "Emptiness" or "Absence" that does not equate to nothing at all, but that approximates to what is being described by quantum science and is a core aspect of the original nature of existence itself, and a form of monist idealist philosophy.

Black Beetle has made references to an article by Smetham in above posts. It is a well argued one, seeking to relate the two, quantum science and buddhist philosophy. An extension to the OP but related in my mind.


From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
[Reference numbers edited out by me]

"Physical
Since the dawn of Newtonian science with its vision of simple mechanical principles governing the entire universe, some philosophers have been tempted by the idea that even consciousness could be explained in purely physical terms. The first influential writer to propose such an idea explicitly was Julien Offray de La Mettrie, in his book Man a Machine (L'homme machine).

The most influential modern physical theories of consciousness are based on psychology and neuroscience. Theories proposed by neuroscientists such as Gerald Edelman and António Damásio, and by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett, seek to explain access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness in terms of neural events occurring within the brain. Many other neuroscientists, such as Christof Koch, have explored the neural basis of consciousness without attempting to frame all-encompassing global theories. At the same time, computer scientists working in the field of Artificial Intelligence have pursued the goal of creating digital computer programs that can simulate or embody consciousness.

Some theorists—most of whom are physicists—have argued that classical physics is intrinsically incapable of explaining the holistic aspects of consciousness, but that quantum theory provides the missing ingredients. The most notable theories falling into this category include the Holonomic brain theory of Karl H. Pribram and David Bohm, and the Orch-OR theory formulated by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Some of these QM theories offer descriptions of phenomenal consciousness, as well as QM interpretations of access consciousness. None of the quantum mechanical theories has been confirmed by experiment, and many scientists and philosophers consider the arguments for an important role of quantum phenomena to be unconvincing."