The Role of Consciousness in Physical Reality

R. G. Jahn, Brenda J. Dunne

R. G. Jahn, Brenda J. Dunne

R. G. Jahn

Dick J. Bierman

Cumulating evidence suggests that anomalous correlations occur between mental (conscious and non-conscious) states and apparently unrelated physical or mental phenomena at a distance in space and time. In spite of the fact that the evidence is very strong, these correlations are difficult to replicate. Several examples are given of ‘failures’ to empirically replicate1 original anomalies. It is speculated that this failure to replicate, rather than indicating that the original findings are due to statistical flukes or errors, suggests that when consciousness interacts with matter, an underlying reality arises. This reality is somewhere in between the purely objective shareable reality and the purely subjective reality of one’s individual consciousness. Efforts to ‘push’ anomalous phenomena observed in this intermediate reality into the objective one apparently destroy the phenomena. Possible explanations within a physical and within a system theoretical model are discussed. The physical model is based upon an analysis of the role of consciousness in the so-called ‘Measurement Problem’ in Quantum Physics. Based upon these discussions a new systematic experimental approach for the study of anomalous phenomena is suggested.

Paavo Pylkkänen

Western philosophy and science have a strongly dualistic tradition regarding the mental and physical aspects of reality, which makes it difficult to understand their possible causal relations. In recent debates in cognitive neuroscience it has been common to claim on the basis of neural experiments that conscious experiences are causally inefficacious. At the same time there is much evidence that consciousness does play an important role in guiding behavior. The author explores whether a new way of understanding the causal role of mental states and consciousness could be provided by the ontological interpretation of the quantum theory (Bohm and Hiley, Phys. Rep. 144:323–348, 1987; Bohm and Hiley, The undivided universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory. Routledge: London, 1993). This interpretation radically changes our notion of matter by suggesting that a new type of active information plays a causal role at the quantum level of reality. The author thus considers to what extent the alleged causal powers of consciousness involve information, and then moves on to consider whether information in (conscious) mental states can be connected to the information at the level of quantum physics. In this way he sketches how quantum theory might help to throw light upon one of the grand challenges facing the social sciences and the humanities, namely the question of whether consciousness plays any genuine causal role in the physical world.

John Nwanegbo-Ben