The late science-fiction writer James Blish (whose scientific speciality was biochemistry) gave (pardon the pun) considerable thought to this subject, and decided, on reflection, that the speed of thought was not the speed at which neurons fire or nerve impulses travel. His reasoning was that memory, regardless of the distance in time involved, acts instantaneously.
Blish, of course, assumed that the act of remembering was not the retrieval of stored data, but a mental transmission to and from the point at which a specific memory was collected in the first place. His concept of memory, as a form of transport or communication, rather than recording, was therefore akin to Marcel Proust’s.
As a consequence, Blish decided that memory was proof of the existence of the hypothetical faster-than-light particle, the tachyon, first mooted in the early 1960’s, by Professor John Wheeler of Princeton University’s Institute of Advance Studies. As a consequence of its super-luminal velocity, the tachyon, as the elementary particle of thought, would permit such apparently paranormal phenomenon as telepathy.
Whether Blish really believed his carefully reasoned proposition is another matter, but he argued his case very plausibly. So plausibly, indeed, that at least one reported hoax involving an allegedly haunted computer, was promulgated on the basis that tachyon signals from minds either long-dead, or as yet unborn minds are responsible for ghosts.
