Subjective reality and brain topology: Inversion transformations on non-orientable atomic surfaces of membrane channels

Abstract

Subject–object relations reflect the relation of phenomenology and physics and are at the centre of interest in brain research and neuro-psychology. The unresolved dichotomy behind this relation is one of the most challenging questions of our time. Setting out from causal modelling I suggest a particular topology for subject–object relations and argue that we can find a physical realization in living organism that provides a continuous transform between both domains. In a geometrical metaphor this transform has the topological properties of a one-sided surface or non-orientable flat. I argue that such a surface can be found within the electronic organization of atomic linings in the filter region of ion-conducting membrane proteins. Electron transfer along these atomic surfaces makes chiral induced spin changes to a promising signature of subject–object relations and has found experimental evidence in previous studies. I finally advocate the view that there is a basic dualism between subject and object which is physical on both sides and realized by an inversion relation along one-sided surfaces. The transition between these two aspects however is non-physical and hosts the phenomenology that characterizes subjectivity.