And so, I finished my chapter in a book I am writing concerning consciousness itself, what I think it is all about and whether it has any place in physics. I want to post it here, it's quite a long read. Enjoy!
Consciousness
Up till now I have been slowely preparing the reader for this chapter, which will contain my own theory on consciousness. It will involve many concepts. It will explore new idea's. It will explore old idea's brought forth by famous physicists of our time. Consciousness is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in physics. We are not sure how important consciousness really is or how it should fit into quantum mechanics if, that is, quantum field theory has anything to say at all about it. If we manage to find a model in our future which helps explain consciousness, the next step would be to formulate a quantum field theory of consciousness (that is if such a feat can be managed) also assuming that quantum field theory has anything to say about consciousness.
One thing I have attempted to do is by slowely introducing some very important concepts involving time in our last chapter which have some pivotal roles for consciousness. Time is so interwoven into the perception of the human being's psyche that there may be no such thing as a difference between the two. A physicist who share's this opinion is Fred A. Wolf. He believes that the past and future are absolutely required to have a working mind and for many various reasons this makes supreme sense.
We know matter has something to do with it as well. Afterall, the mind is made of this matter-stuff - consciousness is
like a quantum field which may exist around a peice of matter. It eminates from the physical brain through what seems like a bunch of electrical and biochemical interactions. Through all sorts of complex biochemical and electrical distributions of information the complex mind can arise.
Why Should Consciousness be Described by Quantum Physics?
The idea that biological entities could require some kind of quantum description has been accepted for quite a long time now. In fact it was coined as ''quantum biology'' [1] [2] by the Legendary Erwin Schrodinger, the man who created the wave equation of matter in his infamous book ''What is Life'' [3] in 1946. Actually, Schrodinger made a number of predictions in his book, such as predicting a crystal-like structure which would encode the information of a single strand of DNA, it was later discovered and named the Double Helix. It was said, that his prediction was a brilliant one, made from the postulates of quantum mechanics.
Quantum biology includes concepts of superpositioning, quantum tunneling and entanglement. It may also involve other concepts which cannot be explained except for inferring on quantum behaviour. Many plantforms make good use of quantum behaviour, such as photosynthesis. Even birds make good use of quantum behaviour. Their magnetoreceptors are directly caused by the quantum phenomenon of the zeno effect, a subject which might be important for consciousness, as we will see later.
It would seem therefore, folly to assume that consciousness has absolutely no place in quantum mechanics. We haven't studied all the dynamics relating to consciousness to draw such a conclusion. There has been some suggestions that there are magnetites located in the human noes or eye which may have some effects on our own types of magnetoreceptors; in other words, the types of quantum effects on consciousness could be vast. We will not know, until we have a full-working theory of consciousness which might or might not work well within the classical low energy limit of nuerons.
The Binding Problem, Qualia and the Hard Problems of Consciousness
For a while, it has been known that the way consciousness binds reality together seems to be a bit of mystery. In fact, it is such a problem, it has in fact been dubbed as one of the ''Hard Problem of Consciousness''
Qualia are the things that consciousness attaches to ''raw feelings''. Such examples may be the color blue associated to the sky, maybe the taste of a specific cheese to even perhaps the kind of drug-induced effects we may experience from taking a drug. Here is a question, are qualia attached with a physical meaning? Erwin Schrodinger did not seem to believe so, as he is qouted saying:
"The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so."
In fact, so odd is this problem of consciousness that qualia are often used in arguements against the physical nature of consciousness, or more specifically, the mind-body problem. Daniel Dennett has identified four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. These are:
ineffable; that is, they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience.
intrinsic; that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience's relation to other things.
private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness: that is, to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.
Another problem of consciousness related to qualia results from the question, how can the eye collect just as much information from a written text to one who simply hears it? But what if the experience of seeing a color does not hold all the relevant information that someone who simply listens to an experience can know everything there is to know about the said experience? For instance, if someone see's the color blue they may be unable to attach some experience to this perception, yet someone who is simply hearing about the experience can in theory know everything there is to know about the experience.
The Inverted Spectrum Arguement is perhaps the best way to explain whether a quale is a physical manifestation or not. In this arguement, proposed by John Locke explains that if you woke up one morning and found all the colors of nature had inverted, such as the grass had turned red, but no physical change has been found in the brain, then it would stand to reason that qualia would seem to be a subjective phenomenon, one part of our perception and experience alone rather than being tied to a physical explanation.
It must be noted that some take this arguement very seriously, while other's find it difficult to comprehend an explanation for qualia which requires a purely imaginative thought experiment, which, can never in principle be measured. However, I believe it is an important arguement.
I contend that qualia are not physical. They are part of the experience of a human observer. One could explain this as part of a specific ''conditioning'' of reality, that we tune into the specific kind of experiences we all agree on, because that has been the way we have been taught. We don't for instance, assume the color blue is a warm color normally, yet, if someone had been brought up believing this, then surely it is possible to condition someone to that erreneous fact. Assuming also you keep out of their way, any associations between the color blue and the de facto that it is usually attributed to cold experiences.
Qualia therefore, arise from three arguements:
1)
Conditioning
2)
Experience (personal attachment which will affirm the attribution between the qualia in question)
3)
Self-consistency (a recurrance of the same experience which will solidify the original experience)
If we woke up one morning and found out that every color had indeed inverted, then this would violate 3) and would soon effect 1) and 2). Thus, things do not invert in color, we know certain qualia because of a conditioning of our upbringing. After being told about something, we may come to experience, or we may experience it first then be told about it. And finally, to make sure that it remains a consistent experience, it must be one which occurs again and again.
Choice and Determinism
The zeno effect might be the next revolutionary idea for consciousness.
Henry Stapp in his book ''Mindful Universe'' actually seems to share a common idea with me. I have stated in the past that the ability to have choice is in fact analogous to having a superposition of possibilities - it is only when we make a decision on something does a collapse of the wave function happen. Henry stapp believes that the quantum zeno effect is the method in which the brain uses a superposition when in attention. Interestingly, I had not known of his model till now, so if his conclusions are right, then I have drawn similar conclusions independantly.
I decided on my own contentions when I decided to view the many choices an individual could have as being the same as having a superpositioning of different states. The importance of Stapp's conclusions is that he has given a quantum mechanical mechanism which involves our perception. He believes it is this phenomenon which brings about the conscious will of change.
Attention has probably been best described by William James in 1890 in his textbook Principles of Psychology
''Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.''
It is this, taking the possession by the mind out of several possible options which makes the analog for my arguement of choices existing side-by-side in superposition which there must be a collapse of the wave function before any one of these choices arise. I think it seems likely that if there was going to be a quantum framework of consciousness, one should begin with like principle's to create the basis of such a theory. The bells ringing with the principle's of consciousness often correlate well with the principles of quantum mechanics. I think they are often overlooked however because consciousness is generally unclear or it might not seem obvious at first how quantum mechanics combines with the description of consciousness, if it even needs one.
When we speak about superpositions we think of equations like:
$$|\Psi> = \frac{1}{2}i|A> + \frac{1}{2}|B>$$
This will, not in a physical sense, but a subjective sense describe the possibilities that may arise from either state which depend on their orientation to each state in the complex plane, assuming that we replace $$A$$ and $$B$$ with a definition stating they are the possible ''choices''. Upon measurement, of either playing card in the subjective subliminal sense will yeild the value upon the measurement of either card to account for the collapse of the wave function postulate which is traditionally given as:
$$\int_{\Omega} |\psi|^2$$
Where $$\Omega$$ is our boundary. So everytime we think of something, decide something, or maybe even hold a certain thought for a while, will involve concepts of superpositioning and the zeno effect (the latter here I did not arrive to independantly of Henry Stapp).
The Geometry of Consciousness
So what model of physics best suits consciousness? Some people can argue probably many types of models - some of course, argue there are none. I stipulate a new way to view consciousness and such a model is actually built from a different question - one which asks the question, which many scientists have, ''does consciousness require an energy?''
Many people will find that quite an easy question to ask but the context I am meaning it may not seem so clear. For instance, those who believe in a fully working theory of consciousness from the classical dynamics of nuerons will argue that everytimes a nueron fires it will require an energy. This much is true, but what about consciousness in terms of high energy physics?
Fred Alan Wolf postulates, even to this day that consciousness arose from the big bang, but I do not share his contentions. By using what is called Geometrogenesis (the study of the emergence of geometry in a universe) I can model consciousness to almost perfect accuracy when and were consciousness makes it's appearance and I am afraid that it has no primordial (big bang) appearance at all.
To answer this question, we should ask first of all, is consciousness a high-energy phenomenon, or a low energy phenomenon?
Believe it or not, but at first glance this question might seem impossible to try and prove. However I can show using Geometrodynamics, the study of the emergance of geometry in a vacuum can provide some insights to these questions surrounding consciousness.
I now realize however, that if consciousness was a geometrodynamical phenomenon that any of the elements that go with high energy physics cannot be applied to consciousness. A quick schematic of the thoughts brought forth include:
That consciousness is a low energy phenomenon. It is concerned with topics such as locality, translational and relational subsystems. We can talk about Geometry and we may be allowed to envoke the dimension of time because of consciousness itself. And of course, possibly most important of all, but low energy physics is attributed to matter - and as we are all usually quite a aware of, matter and consciousness are interconnected strongly. The world of locality arising from consciousness seems like a matter of fact, since we are local in measurements from this phenomenon we call perception.
Is what I wrote when speculating on the similarities between low energy phenomena and high energy phenomena, which in regards to the latter here, I had to say:
High energy phenomena might include the big bang. No locality. No subsystems and not relational. It is attributed to permutation symmetries as well.
So as far as we are aware, consciousness is a late phenomena of the universe concerned completely as far as we are aware, of events located in the low energy epoch. So it seems, using the catagories of the low energy phenomenon, we can actually fit consciousness in to a very neat accurate picture.
For instance, locality is very significant to the human being. Because of some local principle of consciousness, we can experience subjective feelings and subjective time delays. Time is a local phenomenon after all.
We can speak of subsystems, which if the mind exists in space must be in some mathematical sense a subspace. The low energy epoch invokes the idea of geometry in the vacuum and it seems that consciousness ''tunes'' into reality with the understanding that the vacuum needs to be a three dimensional object (whether it has a forth dimension is debatable). Still, it must be noted that there is a serious unanswered question in physics, such as how the brain actually takes a two dimensional object and recasts it into the three dimensional phenom known as perception?
And has been noted, most importantly the low energy range includes the appearance of matter itself. This low energy epoch means the appearance of consciousness itself then, since consciousness without matter is folly, and so consciousenss without energy must be equally reject.
So in conclusion, it must be drawn that by no mere speculation but by a matter of relating consciousness to a model which best fits, shows us that consciousness will require some energy. It does afterall, fit into the low energy epoch so fantastically well. This is actually the first kind of QM model of consciousness of it's kind.
Is Consciousness a Subdimension?
Here, from now on, I will for this take assume that a subset is a subdimension. There are specific conditions which make that so, being a subdimension of a larger system.
If our experiences are contained in spacetime and the bubble of perception is a real case then the thing we call
consciousness is not outside of physics, or the laws contained therein. I use the same arguement to support that perhaps the wave function smears out possibilities in consciousness as well, giving rise to superpositioning of possible choices an individual ''feels'' as though they have.
Let us denote consciousness (and everything related to) as a set $$\mathcal{B}$$. Let the universe then be the set $$\mathcal{A}$$. Thus if $$\mathcal{B}$$ is a subset of $$\mathcal{A}$$ then I can write
$$\mathcal{B} \subseteq \mathcal{A}$$
It is taken for fact that $$\mathcal{B}$$ exists as a subset of $$\mathcal{A}$$ that it cannot be an exact copy. No subsystem can model precisely the larger system it is made of. This is conjectured because I believe that $$\mathcal{B}$$ can never contain all the information contained in $$\mathcal{A}$$.
A final conjecture would be, that the mind exists but the universe doesn't
depend on the mind whilst the mind does depend on the universe. This should clear up, once and for all the dichotomy of whether the universe is mind-dependant or not. Taking into consideration that the mind seems to be a late low-energy phenom as well, the mind emerges from the universe not the other way around.
The Flow of Time Within Consciousness
And now, we come to the final part of my model; it is the question of time itself and how important it is concerning consciousness.
In the chapter titled ''What is Time'' we covered an array of different topics. The main points raised, that we will quickly rehash is that time does not have a flow, (which was brought recently to light by Julian Barbor [4] [5]) which is an important piece of evidence suggesting also that there is no such thing as a past or future, independant of the timelessness found in General Relativity, that any distinction of a flow extending from our past to future must be some kind of internal illusion brought about consciousness.
Whether the universe is truely timeless or not, is something which will be left to the reader to decide, but what is for sure, is that our subjective of experiences of time is not the kind of time physics deals with in the world outside. Time according to us, creates a distinction of a past and future, where we feel like we ''have an experience of what was past'' where the future lies ahead of us waiting to be experienced. It causes the illusion that perhaps somehow thoughts and wishes may exist beyond the observer.
I do not need to explain all over again that the only time that is the real time, is the now, the present time that has only ever existed. However what I will state is that our ability to have ''memory'' soley depends on this illusion it has created for itself. It is clear, atleast to myself, I cannot speak for anyone else, that the ability to have consciousness seems to be rooted from the fact that my memory does not seem to be stuck here in the present frame always, that my experiences feel like they extend from some past and I remember that past.
It is just like how Fred Alan Wolf once said, ''A mind without a past is no mind at all,'' and it is a very true statement. It seems that whilst the present is a collection of all that has happened, all that has happened in my frame of reference is really what keeps my mind going. As soon as we understand this, we might even say that evolution decided to make our brains into these history-remembering machines so that we could have the ability to self-reflect, know thyself, as it were.
And so, I will leave my theory of consciousness at this. It does not cover absolutely everything concerning the problems of consciousness today, but it has highlighted some of them atleast mostly from a quantum physics viewpoint. Let's not let consciousness fall away from physics, never to be seen again. The concepts and implications of consciousness in our understanding of the world are still very vast, let's try and bring some important back to observer were it belongs!
[1] ^ Quantum Biology. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group.
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/quantum_biology/
[2] Garab, G. (1999). Photosynthesis: Mechanisms and Effects: Proceedings of the XIth International Congress on Photosynthesis. Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-0792355472.
[3] Erwin Schrödinger. What is Life?, Cambridge, 1944.
[4]
http://www.platonia.com/nature_of_time_essay.pdf
[5] Anderson, Edward (2004) "Geometrodynamics: Spacetime or space?" Ph.D. thesis, University of London. -------- (2007) "On the recovery of Geometrodynamics from two different sets of first principles," Stud. Hist. Philos. Mod. Phys. 38: 15.
