Quantum No-Go Theorems and Consciousness

Andréa Oldofredi

Adrian Kent

We discuss Wiseman, Cavalcanti and Rieffel's "thoughtful" local friendliness no-go theorem and the experimental programme they propose to test local friendliness inequalities. We argue that, to prove the theorem, the assumptions need to be strengthened to exclude the possibility of variable numbers of thoughtful agents existing in different phases of the experiment. We argue further that this possibility may arise naturally, even in one-world versions of quantum theory. We also query whether the motivations they give for their assumptions hold up well under their definition of "thoughtfulness" as displaying human-level cognitive ability, and suggest that their justification requires replacing "thoughtfulness" by "consciousness" or "conscious thoughtfulness".

David L. Wilson

Subhash C. Kak

Creating machines that are conscious is a long term objective of research in artificial intelligence. This paper look at this idea with new arguments from physics and logic. Observers have no place in classical physics, and although they play a role in measurement in quantum physics there is no explanation for their emergence within the framework. There is suggestion that consciousness, which is implicitly a property of the observer, is a consequence of the complexity of specific brain structures, but this is problematic because one associates free will with consciousness, which goes counter to causal closure of physics. Considering a nested physical system, we argue that even if the system were assumed to have agency, observers cannot exist within it. Since complex systems can be viewed in nested hierarchies, this constitutes a proof against consciousness as a product of complexity, for then we will have nested system of conscious agents. As the existence of consciousness in cognitive agents cannot be denied, the implication is that consciousness belongs to a dimension that is not physical and machine consciousness is unattainable. These ideas are used to take a fresh look at two well-known paradoxes of quantum theory that are important in quantum information theory.

Tien D. Kieu, M. Danos

Walter John Wilkinson

It is fair to say that Bell’s Theorem leaves a nasty taste in the mouths of many physicistsbecause test results seem to suggest that non-local, i.e., superluminal, communicationof some sort is going on all around us and maybe not just at the quantum level. ButBell’s Theorem has been aptly demonstrated to date, and Quantum Mechanics (QM) is,if not the most successful theory devised by man, certainly one of them. To some, andespecially to Einstein, one of the least favorable aspects of QM is its statistical nature.This paper embraces QM’s statistical nature and employs quantum entanglement toshow that superluminal communication may be possible albeit, most likely, initially, ata very low bit rate.