Zing went the Strings of my theory

"If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly backwards to diversity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. Nature is the manifold. The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Plato; or, the Philosopher", Representative Men

There are two basic types of string theories: those with closed string loops that can break into open strings and those with closed string loops that can't break into open strings. String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles) that are the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics. For this reason, string theories are able to avoid problems associated with the presence of point-like particles in theories of physics, in particular the problem of defining a sensible quantum theory of gravity. Studies of string theories have revealed that they predict not just strings, but also higher-dimensional objects. String theories are classified according to whether or not the strings are required to be closed loops, and whether or not the particle spectrum includes fermions. In order to include fermions in string theory, there must be a special kind of symmetry called supersymmetry, which means for every boson (particle that transmits a force) there is a corresponding fermion (particle that makes up matter). So supersymmetry relates the particles that transmit forces to the particles that make up matter.

Quantum fields are well-known to violate all the pointwise energy conditions of classical general relativity. 'Invoking a new paradigm is not too radical since since the prevailing model of physical reality has regularly undergone paradigm shifts and this has always involved moving ever further from our common-sense notion of reality. The standard dichotomy between matter and mind arose at a time when one could adopt the simplistic view that the arena of reality is 3-dimensional space. However, since then the physicist's world-view has changed profoundly and it is clear that our physical sensory systems reveal only a very limited aspect of reality. In particular, General Relativity explains gravity by proposing that the world is 4-dimensional and Kaluza-Klein theory explains electromagnetism by adding a fifth dimension; this is wrapped up so small that it cannot be observed directly but its existence neatly explains Maxwell's equations.'*

 Modern extensions of this idea propose that the other physical interactions can be accounted for by invoking further wrapped-up dimensions. In "M-theory", for example, the total number of dimension is 11, while in the "superstring" theory it is 10. One thus has an 4-dimensional "external" space and a 6 or 7-dimensional "internal" space. In the most recent variant of this idea, proposed by Randall and Sundrum, the extra dimensions may not even be compactified and the physical Universe is regarded as 4-dimensional "brane" in a higher dimensional "bulk". This is very far removed from the naive view of reality adopted by the sort of reductionist materialists who reject psychic phenomena out of hand.

Perhaps an example from modern physics may help make better sense of this. "String Theory" posits that the all the fundamental particles in nature are constituted by strings vibrating in nine-dimensional space. As Brian Greene explains:

Nicholas Humphreys joins some more dots with Seeing Red.

Just as a violin string can vibrate in different patterns, each of which produces a different musical tone, the filaments of superstring theory can also vibrate in different patterns.

But these vibrations don't produce different musical notes; remarkably, the theory claims that they produce different particle properties. A tiny string vibrating in one pattern would have the mass and the electric charge of an electron; according to the theory, such a vibrating string would be what we have traditionally called an electron. A tiny string vibrating in a different pattern would have the requisite properties to identify it as a quark, a neutrino, or any other kind of particle.

Thus String Theory claims that the vibrating string is an electron because it has all the properties of an electron. My theory of consciousness claims that a subject who is creating the appropriate activity in a reverberating circuit in his brain is having a red sensation because he has all the properties of a subject having a red sensation.
Well, perhaps both these ideas are hard to grasp. But it's not clear that the latter is necessarily so much harder than the former.

*B. Carr (2001), "Can physics be extended to accommodate psi?", Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Meeting of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association, ed. Arleta Griffor, ANPA (anpa-list@sitename.com, using 'yahoogroups' for the sitename).

... (2003), "Is there space for psi in modern physics?" abstract for Euro-PA 2003 conference, http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/psi/carr2003.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html