Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

A Practical Perspective. It’s about time.

Theodore J. St. John

Published Feb 1, 2018• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to present a perspective on the meaning of “time”– a perspective that was once considered obvious but now has become a subject of debate. If time is something that was created along with the rest of the universe in the big bang, then it is fair to ask the question, “what happened before the beginning of time”. In this paper, by treating time as a measure of motion, relations in quantum physics and relativistic physics can be integrated into a single model that makes practical sense of the particle-wave duality, the transformation of future into past, the reason that the speed of light is not relative to its source, and the Schrodinger wave equation. Finally, it provides a practical basis for studying the holographic nature of physical reality and the field of consciousness.

Related papers

Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics

Jonathan Simon

This book is a treat, a collection of essays about the relationship between consciousness and quantum mechanics that is guaranteed to move the needle: serious, original, and relatively accessible. The essays develop cutting-edge views by thought-leading authors on questions that matter for the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of mind, and while to follow along you need to know what supervenience is and what an eigenstate is, the majority of essays should be accessible to advanced undergraduates (i.e., those who have taken a rigorous introductory course in quantum mechanics as well as a course or two in the philosophy of mind).Why care about the relationship between consciousness and quantum mechanics? If you are coming from physics, your point of entry is probably the measurement problem. When you let quantum systems evolve according to the Schrödinger equation, they enter into superpositions of mutually incompatible states. How can this be reconciled with the testimony of our senses that such systems are always in one state or the other when we measure them (with a probability distribution given by the Born rule)? This is the measurement problem, and it concerns consciousness because it draws from the testimony of our senses.If you are coming from the philosophy of mind, your primary concern is probably the mind-body problem: the task of accounting for how consciousness arises out of or fits into physical reality. If consciousness is reducible, how might the details of quantum mechanics make it harder, or easier, to establish that reduction? If consciousness is irreducible, how might the details of quantum mechanics make it harder, or easier, to explain why consciousness exists, or to find some work for it to do in the world? You may also be concerned with the structure and function of consciousness: for example, you may hold that minds can do things that classical digital computers cannot, and take it that we must look to the quantum realm to discover how.If you are not already entrenched, you might just wonder what kind of world we live in. The mechanistic philosophy of centuries past seemed to disenchant the world, rendering it a place of barren corpuscles banging into one another, leaving no room for mind or meaning, except perhaps as patterns in the collisions, or useless epiphenomena. But quantum mechanics and its relativistic generalizations force a rethinking of the mechanistic picture from the ground up. Once the dust has settled—if it ever does—we may find reasons to relegate consciousness once again to the shadows. But we may also find reasons to give it pride of place. If you are after scientific reasons to reenchant the world, this is a good place to look.The entries in this volume address these questions and others besides. The volume is organized into three parts. The first part contains four essays about the idea that consciousness causes (or constrains) quantum collapse. The second part contains eight essays discussing other ways that consciousness might contribute to theories of quantum mechanics. The third part contains five essays about how quantum mechanics might contribute to an ultimate theory of consciousness. I’ll follow the book’s order.In chapter 1, David Chalmers and Kelvin McQueen develop a new consciousness-triggered collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics. On their approach, consciousness has a strict physical correlate (perhaps given by quantum integrated information theory), it is approximately superposition-resistant, and collapse dynamics are continuous (à la Philip Pearle). They respond to the standard objections that a consciousness-collapse link makes the collapse mechanism imprecise and requires dualism, as well as to worries about Quantum Zeno, among others. Crucially, their approach allows that superpositions of consciousness are possible: their motivation is to give the view a run for its money and to find work for consciousness to do in the universe, not to rid the world of all traces of superposed consciousness. One question: In taking consciousness itself to be superposition-resistant (rather than the environmental systems it asks questions about, as Henry Stapp suggests), we appear to favor internalism over externalism. What would an externalist variant look like? Another question: How exactly would experimental results—for example, that simple enough systems with maximal Φ remain in coherent superposition—constrain our theoretical options? If to accommodate this we have to impose an experimentally determined threshold for the minimal absolute Φ for consciousness, will that mean that on the physicalist version of the view, the property we privilege for superposition-resistance is just an arbitrary collection of atoms?In chapter 2, Elias Okon and Miguel Angel Sebastian defend a consciousness-collapse theory that they call the Subjective-Objective collapse model. Like Chalmers and McQueen, Okon and Sebastian invoke a Pearle-style continuous collapse dynamics and think of consciousness as only weakly superposition-resistant. A key contribution is the treatment of a worry about multiple realizability (i.e., the way that some property of biological neurons and some other property of artificial neurons might both realize the state of being in pain). The problem is that it is not straightforward to define Hermitian operators whose eigenstates are disjunctions of the eigenstates of other Hermitian operators: you must ensure orthogonality (“being red or being a circle” is not orthogonal to “being red or being square”). In answer, the authors point out that we don’t need each multiply realizable phenomenal state to be an eigenstate of our collapse operator; it suffices that each way of realizing each phenomenal state is an eigenstate. One question is whether this problematizes the dancing qualia argument. A second worry is that we still must find a suitable basis for Hilbert space. But theories of consciousness may constrain both position and momentum: for example, both distances between neurons and how energy is transferred. We can talk about wave packets, but these will not get us eigenstates of a Hermitian operator.In chapter 3, J. Acacio de Barros and Carlos Montemayor suggest that if a mentality-triggered collapse theory is what you want, you should opt for intentionality rather than phenomenality. This is because, first, we have evidence from psychophysics that there is unconscious perception. Second, the first-personal data that motivate collapse theory concern intentionality: we remember only recording definite values; our decisions about what to measure affect the outcomes we see. First question: Can the reasons we have for thinking that there is unconscious intentionality extend into a case for unconscious primitive intentionality? Another question is how the proposal here would differ from Stapp’s treatment of what questions a mind asks of the universe. A third is how we contend with Quantum Zeno, the effect that forces both Chalmers-McQueen and Okon-Angel Sebastian to say that consciousness is only weakly superposition-resistant. Those authors note the possibility that the relevant superposed states of consciousness might overflow access consciousness (in Ned Block’s sense). We may have an easier time ensuring that access conscious states only rarely enter into superposition, if we set them back from our front line of superposition-resistant states.In chapter 4, Adrian Kent explores objective collapse theories—mass-dependent continuous spontaneous localization models. Consciousness may not be in the spotlight on these theories, but they should at least ensure that collapse happens faster than the time it takes for a stimulus (e.g., a system of several photons) to make it from a retinal impact to consciousness. Angelo Bassi, Dirk-André Deckert, and Luca Ferialdi (2010) argue that for a range of theories this constraint is respected, with collapse for a system of several photos happening at around 100 ms. Kent problematizes their argument, showing that their estimation may be off by an order of magnitude or more. Kent’s point is compelling: more work is needed to refine the estimate and to conceptually clarify the import of the constraints from perception.Part 2 consists of eight essays on various ways that consciousness might figure in or constrain quantum theories. In chapter 5, Phillip Goff argues that 3N-dimensional wave function monism cannot accommodate ground truths about consciousness, pressing on worries that the view imposes too few structural constraints to allow for the unambiguous recovery of ordinary 3D reality. While I agree that wave function monistic accounts of ordinary reality (e.g., Albert’s functionalism or Ney’s priority monism) yield an explanatory gap (even given the 3D-ish structure of GRW jumps), I was puzzled here. All type-B physicalists confront an explanatory gap where consciousness is concerned. Isn’t this a point in support of wave function monism, since it amounts to a companions-in-guilt argument against opposition from other type-B materialists?In chapter 6, Peter Lewis raises some sensible worries about the use of phenomenal consciousness as an unanalyzed primitive or special case in quantum theory. He objects to the suggestion made by some Bohmians that we can be directly aware of the particles in our brains. Another target is John von Neumann, who appeals to intuitions about psychophysical connections to justify a collapse hypothesis. These are nice points: I would be curious to know whether Lewis thinks they apply to the justifications for mentalistic collapse theories from part 1.In chapter 7, Jenann Ismael first argues that the hard problem of consciousness is of no concern to physics per se: “If consciousness enters the problem space of physics, it does so by making a difference to the behavior of physical objects.” She then offers some clarifying remarks about how we might reconcile Van Gelder-style dynamicist conceptions of mentality with (virtual) machine functionalism. I find much to agree with here, though I do wonder how strictly to take Ismael’s claims about the irrelevance of the hard problem. If there is a tie between two theories of physics over predictive accuracy, elegance, and naturalness, but one yields a more satisfying analysis of consciousness than the other, are we not even allowed to treat that as a tie-breaker?In chapter 8, Shan Gao defends a mentalistic characterization of the measurement problem in reply to Andrea Oldofredi (2019). The question is whether the key premise of the measurement problem should be that measurements take on definite values or only that we (definitely) experience them as taking on definite values. Of course, our reasons for thinking that they do arise from our seeing or remembering that they do, but we can distinguish between the claim and our evidence for it. Gao argues that the underlying mentalistic claims are more inextricable from the dilemma than that. Many dilemmas involve premises for which the evidence is perceptual, though they make no mention of perception. Here, however, solutions to the problem require special attention to the nature of that evidence.In chapter 9, Paul Skokowski illustrates one reason that we must pay special attention to the nature of that evidence. Jeffrey A. Barrett’s (1999) bare theory is a minimalistic reading of Everett on which measurement outcomes are only definite if they obtain on all branches. One question is whether this means that observers have blatantly false disjunctive beliefs: let someone measure an electron’s spin and then ask, Do you believe that you got a definite measurement outcome, either “UP” or “DOWN”? The observer will say yes, because on each branch they saw one and not the other. However, by the lights of the theory, this disjunctive belief is false. Skokowski’s insight is that while the observer definitely says yes, it does not follow (by the lights of the bare theory) that the observer has a (definite) false belief, since the neural realizer for the disjunctive belief will be different on each branch and therefore not correspond to a common eigenstate (compare the worry from chapter 2 about multiple realizability). But isn’t this just to move from the frying pan to the fire, as it seems now that our observer has no (definite) beliefs at all?In chapter 10, Michael Silberstein and W. M. Stuckey advocate for a psi-epistemicist perspective that vindicates many phenomenological intuitions, including the one that experimental outcomes are definite (and intersubjectively consistent). The approach requires that we rethink naïve realism about the wave function and that we rethink mind-body duality, in favor of a neutral monist ontology governed by constraints. This is an exciting approach, though I’m not fully clear on how to differentiate neutral monism from its idealist, dual aspect, or panpsychist cousins.In chapter 11, Michael Bitbol suggests a phenomenology-first approach to interpreting quantum mechanics. Bitbol favors a QBist participatory realism, tempered by phenomenology, that could perhaps also be described as neutral monist. He notes that the phenomenology of embodiment (à la Merleau-Ponty) acquaints us with how something can be both active and passive, both minded and incarnate, and he traces the error of believing in a separate, physical world (an error participatory realism corrects) to the tendency of self-separation: the tendency to try to project ourselves beyond ourselves, discussed in Heidegger, Sartre, and Michel Henry. These phenomenological insights are enlightening, though I am still not quite clear on how the underlying (neutral?) ontology works. Who, precisely, are the observers? Do electrons have feelings, or are they just fictions we use to cope with ours?In chapter 12, Lucien Hardy describes an experiment in which humans might be used to determine the settings in a Bell experiment. Hardy suggests that the outcome may be a violation of quantum theory consistent with the Bell inequality. He argues that this result would support (superdeterministic) mind-body dualism and also could serve as a new more objective Turing test. This is a fascinating proposal: it remains only to do the experiment.This brings us to part 3: accounts that move from quantum mechanics to consciousness, rather than conversely. In chapters 13 and 14, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff give a comprehensive account of the current state of their ORCH-OR theory of quantum collapse and consciousness. Among other things we find here a nice presentation of Goodstein’s theorem as an example of a theorem that is noncomputable but easy enough for humans to understand, and a nice discussion of how retroactivity might equip us with something to say to Benjamin Libet about the role of consciousness in action selection. I’ll note, though, that I asked ChatGPT to explain Goodstein to me and it did a fairly good job, suggesting something like understanding. On Libet, I’m not sure what exactly we need retrocausality for: Why not just content ourselves that awareness of the action plan leaves time for a veto, as Libet and others have suggested?In chapter 15, Basil J. Hiley and Paavo Pylkkänen explore another route to a comprehensive theory of consciousness, drawing from the materials of a theory of quantum reality. Here, that theory is the Bohmian implicate order picture, with special attention to the notion of active information that arises there. This is another approach with neutral monist overtones, but here the wave function of a system behaves something like a customized hylomorphic form for the system while at the same time imbuing it with intentionality. There are interesting claims here about the continuity between life and mind, the unity of consciousness, and protopanpsychism, as well as some speculation of how the theory might align with the various scientific theories of consciousness inspired by psychophysics, like higher-order or global workspace theories.In chapter 16, William Seager offers a helpful discussion of the kinds of intelligibility at issue in these debates, distinguishing between mundane, mathematical, and metaphysical intelligibility, weaving together insights from Leibniz and others to argue that a Bohmian approach offers the best bet for a metaphysically intelligible world view. I sympathize with the positive aspects of his argument, though I think that other papers in this volume showcase the metaphysical intelligibility of rival approaches.Finally, in chapter 17, Lee Smolin describes a completion of quantum mechanics, also echoing Leibniz, which could support a theory of quantum gravity and which offers a new conception of consciousness: the causal theory of views, alongside the principle of precedence. This yields a novel sort of protopanpsychism in which the world is a collection of (background-independent) causal views, where views are conscious when they have a few extra features, including being unprecedented and being maximal. This is an exciting approach. One question is how we reconcile the claim that experiential states are maximal with the (mental) problem of the many, the problem that there are ties between composites (that differ over a stray ion or two) over which has best claim to be me.In closing, this is a fantastic volume. I commend Shan Gao for his editorial work: he would make a wonderful DJ. There are subtle symmetries in the way that each entry segues to the next, and the collection has a remarkable coherence.

The Philosophical Review•Jul 1, 2024•0 citations

The Problem of Time

Andrea Rau

Time – what it is and its nature – has from the beginning held mysteries for layman, philosopher, and physicist alike. Periodic phenomena from motions of heavenly bodies and pendulums to quantal atomic clocks provide the means to measure time intervals, and Newton’s absolute time is a background flow against which classical and non-relativistic quantum physics is played out. While internally consistent, these two fields of physics are incompatible with the requirement of treating space and time on an equal footing. Quantum field theories provide the answer, as both treated as parameters, physics residing instead in the states and operators. But even in classical physics and quantum mechanics, time-independent descriptions provide an alternative to an explicitly time-dependent one. These, including a general method of approach called invariant imbedding, are discussed as alternative representations of an underlying reality that is the concern of physics.

Oxford University Press eBooks•Sep 25, 2014•0 citations

The Holomorphic Quantum: A Systems Approach to Understanding the Nature of Reality

Theodore J. St. John

Quantum Mechanics is appropriately named because it is mostly about the mechanics of working out probability problems as they apply to the mysterious effect of measurement that makes energy present as quantum particle-waves. It is easy to visualize a quantum particle but there seems to be no way to visualize a “probability wave” so there has never been a clear interpretation of what quantum physics tells us – or should tell us – about the underlying essence of reality. Fortunately, a new approach was discovered and proven to work in biology that treats the mystery of life like a locking system and provides not only the key, but also the keyhole and the direction in which to turn it. In this paper the systems approach is introduced, including some background information on the history of how the systems approach has integrated elements of substance philosophy with process philosophy and has become a powerful tool for use in science. Here, it is applied to physics and used to represent the transformation of implicit energy into an explicit space-time quantum domain superimposed on a relativistic time-space background. These two “products” are then correlated with two of four blocks in a basic control-system diagram (input and output) commonly used in control-systems engineering. (The four blocks are input, transfer function, output and feedback function) Because they are explicit, they can be drawn explicitly on the space versus time plot as a map of motion. We emphasize that this is a map – an explicit projection of an implicit function (in this case, a plot of space versus time is a projection of the variance we call motion) represented as an implicit domain (a perpendicular dimension). We recognizing that a feedback function is equivalent to and therefore implies a back-projection or reflection back “up” into that “implicate order.” These two implicit functions (projection and reflection) are then correlated with the transfer function and feedback function in the control system. The motion function is related to the probability wave by the name used in statistics – the “variance” of a statistical distribution – and we point out that each axis of the space-time domain is scaled by standard “deviations,” which define the explicit scales. Because a standard deviation is the square root of a variance, the square space that maps as a relativistic scalar plot (a standard Cartesian coordinate system) of space versus time or “space-time” actually represents one of two square roots of the implicit variance we call motion. In essence, our measurements of this domain keep us rooted in physical reality. However, this coordinate system is shown to be just the root – one part of a “whole system” that includes a non-physical implicit feedback function. The feedback function is correlated with the “reflection” of the explicit domain, i.e. inverse-space and inverse-time, presented as a phase space called time-space and represented as a unit of spatial frequency versus temporal frequency. These frequency representations are shown to be the two well-known equations for quantum energy from quantum mechanics and they are used to identify energy-space as “the quantum domain” inside of, or superimposed on the background “relativistic domain,” which is a scalar space. These two domains are then shown to be coupled at the point where both scales are equal to “1”. As a whole, and in the language of quantum field theory, this model is a graphical representation of an energy-momentum tensor and as a visual model, it provides a clear conceptual interpretation of complexity theory, in which reality is expressed as the superposition of a self-organizing control system that convolves with a dissipative open system or “sea of disorder” and transforms it into physical units of order. This “holomorphic systems approach” is similar to, but much simpler and visually illustrative than the mathematically rigorous discussion On Symmetry and the Reality of Holomorphic Hartree–Fock Wavefunctions [1] or the Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory [2]. Furthermore, it reveals that the question about the beginning of time is a question fallacy, by representing the equivalence of space and time as S=Tc2, and presents it geometrically to be the exact same relation as the mass-energy equivalence equation E=mc2. The model also reveals that quantized energy (which Huynh and Thom refer to as self-consistent fields or SCF) projects as a characteristic and allows one to visualize the solution to the particle-wave duality “problem” as being a change in perspective. It’s the change in perspective that makes the particle-like property and wave-like property appear as “emergent” – analogous to what would appear when one visualizes an object from two different perspectives – at rest with respect to one’s own body yet in motion relative to some other “moving” body. The approach also reveals how the transfer function and feedback function act to transform matter, adding the fourth component (the Controller) and making it a complete control system: a self-organizing, self-sensing system that can see itself explicitly and reflect upon itself implicitly. How that correlates with living systems becomes obvious.

Book Publisher International (a part of SCIENCEDOMAIN International)•Aug 24, 2021•0 citations

Definition of Time in Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics from the Perspective of Bridgman’s Operationalism

Jakub Róg

•Oct 1, 2025•0 citations

The Holomorphic Quantum: A Systems Approach to Understanding the Nature of Reality

Theodore J. St. John

Quantum Mechanics is appropriately named because it is mostly about the mechanics of working out probability problems as they apply to the mysterious effect of measurement that makes energy present as quantum particle-waves. It is easy to visualize a quantum particle but there seems to be no way to visualize a “probability wave” so there has never been a clear interpretation of what quantum physics tells us – or should tell us – about the underlying essence of reality. Fortunately, a new approach was discovered and proven to work in biology that treats the mystery of life like a locking system and provides not only the key, but also the keyhole and the direction in which to turn it. In this paper the systems approach is introduced, including some background information on the history of how the systems approach has integrated elements of substance philosophy with process philosophy and has become a powerful tool for use in science. Here, it is applied to physics and used to represent the transformation of implicit energy into an explicit space-time quantum domain superimposed on a relativistic time-space background. These two “products” are then correlated with two of four blocks in a basic control-system diagram (input and output) commonly used in control-systems engineering. (The four blocks are input, transfer function, output and feedback function) Because they are explicit, they can be drawn explicitly on the space versus time plot as a map of motion. We emphasize that this is a map – an explicit projection of an implicit function (in this case, a plot of space versus time is a projection of the variance we call motion) represented as an implicit domain (a perpendicular dimension). We recognizing that a feedback function is equivalent to and therefore implies a back-projection or reflection back “up” into that “implicate order.” These two implicit functions (projection and reflection) are then correlated with the transfer function and feedback function in the control system. The motion function is related to the probability wave by the name used in statistics – the “variance” of a statistical distribution – and we point out that each axis of the space-time domain is scaled by standard “deviations,” which define the explicit scales. Because a standard deviation is the square root of a variance, the square space that maps as a relativistic scalar plot (a standard Cartesian coordinate system) of space versus time or “space-time” actually represents one of two square roots of the implicit variance we call motion. In essence, our measurements of this domain keep us rooted in physical reality. However, this coordinate system is shown to be just the root – one part of a “whole system” that includes a non-physical implicit feedback function. The feedback function is correlated with the “reflection” of the explicit domain, i.e. inverse-space and inverse-time, presented as a phase space called time-space and represented as a unit of spatial frequency versus temporal frequency. These frequency representations are shown to be the two well-known equations for quantum energy from quantum mechanics and they are used to identify energy-space as “the quantum domain” inside of, or superimposed on the background “relativistic domain,” which is a scalar space. These two domains are then shown to be coupled at the point where both scales are equal to “1”. As a whole, and in the language of quantum field theory, this model is a graphical representation of an energy-momentum tensor and as a visual model, it provides a clear conceptual interpretation of complexity theory, in which reality is expressed as the superposition of a self-organizing control system that convolves with a dissipative open system or “sea of disorder” and transforms it into physical units of order. This “holomorphic systems approach” is similar to, but much simpler and visually illustrative than the mathematically rigorous discussion On Symmetry and the Reality of Holomorphic Hartree–Fock Wavefunctions [1] or the Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory [2]. Furthermore, it reveals that the question about the beginning of time is a question fallacy, by representing the equivalence of space and time as S=Tc2, and presents it geometrically to be the exact same relation as the mass-energy equivalence equation E=mc2. The model also reveals that quantized energy (which Huynh and Thom refer to as self-consistent fields or SCF) projects as a characteristic and allows one to visualize the solution to the particle-wave duality “problem” as being a change in perspective. It’s the change in perspective that makes the particle-like property and wave-like property appear as “emergent” – analogous to what would appear when one visualizes an object from two different perspectives – at rest with respect to one’s own body yet in motion relative to some other “moving” body. The approach also reveals how the transfer function and feedback function act to transform matter, adding the fourth component (the Controller) and making it a complete control system: a self-organizing, self-sensing system that can see itself explicitly and reflect upon itself implicitly. How that correlates with living systems becomes obvious.

•Aug 24, 2021•0 citations

On foundation of quantum physics

Е. А. Соловьев

Some aspects of the interpretation of quantum theory are discussed. It is emphasized that quantum theory is formulated in the Cartesian coordinate system; in other coordinates the result obtained with the help of the Hamiltonian formalism and commutator relations between “canonically conjugated” coordinate and momentum operators leads to a wrong version of quantum mechanics. The origin of time is analyzed by the example of atomic collision theory in detail; it is shown that the time-dependent Schrödinger equation is meaningless since in the high-impact-energy limit it transforms into an equation with two time-like variables. Following the Einstein-Rozen-Podolsky experiment and Bell’s inequality, the wave function is interpreted as an actual field of information in the elementary form. The concept “measurement” is also discussed.

arXiv:1001.2683•Physics of Atomic Nuclei•May 1, 2009•14 citations
The purpose of this essay is to present a perspective on the meaning of “time”– a perspective that was once considered obvious but now has become a subject of debate. If time is something that was created along with the rest of the universe in the big bang, then it is fair to ask the question, “what happened before the beginning of time”. In this paper, by treating time as a measure of motion, relations in quantum physics and relativistic physics can be integrated into a single model that makes practical sense of the particle-wave duality, the transformation of future into past, the reason that the speed of light is not relative to its source, and the Schrodinger wave equation. Finally, it provides a practical basis for studying the holographic nature of physical reality and the field of consciousness.
This book is a treat, a collection of essays about the relationship between consciousness and quantum mechanics that is guaranteed to move the needle: serious, original, and relatively accessible. The essays develop cutting-edge views by thought-leading authors on questions that matter for the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of mind, and while to follow along you need to know what supervenience is and what an eigenstate is, the majority of essays should be accessible to advanced undergraduates (i.e., those who have taken a rigorous introductory course in quantum mechanics as well as a course or two in the philosophy of mind).Why care about the relationship between consciousness and quantum mechanics? If you are coming from physics, your point of entry is probably the measurement problem. When you let quantum systems evolve according to the Schrödinger equation, they enter into superpositions of mutually incompatible states. How can this be reconciled with the testimony of our senses that such systems are always in one state or the other when we measure them (with a probability distribution given by the Born rule)? This is the measurement problem, and it concerns consciousness because it draws from the testimony of our senses.If you are coming from the philosophy of mind, your primary concern is probably the mind-body problem: the task of accounting for how consciousness arises out of or fits into physical reality. If consciousness is reducible, how might the details of quantum mechanics make it harder, or easier, to establish that reduction? If consciousness is irreducible, how might the details of quantum mechanics make it harder, or easier, to explain why consciousness exists, or to find some work for it to do in the world? You may also be concerned with the structure and function of consciousness: for example, you may hold that minds can do things that classical digital computers cannot, and take it that we must look to the quantum realm to discover how.If you are not already entrenched, you might just wonder what kind of world we live in. The mechanistic philosophy of centuries past seemed to disenchant the world, rendering it a place of barren corpuscles banging into one another, leaving no room for mind or meaning, except perhaps as patterns in the collisions, or useless epiphenomena. But quantum mechanics and its relativistic generalizations force a rethinking of the mechanistic picture from the ground up. Once the dust has settled—if it ever does—we may find reasons to relegate consciousness once again to the shadows. But we may also find reasons to give it pride of place. If you are after scientific reasons to reenchant the world, this is a good place to look.The entries in this volume address these questions and others besides. The volume is organized into three parts. The first part contains four essays about the idea that consciousness causes (or constrains) quantum collapse. The second part contains eight essays discussing other ways that consciousness might contribute to theories of quantum mechanics. The third part contains five essays about how quantum mechanics might contribute to an ultimate theory of consciousness. I’ll follow the book’s order.In chapter 1, David Chalmers and Kelvin McQueen develop a new consciousness-triggered collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics. On their approach, consciousness has a strict physical correlate (perhaps given by quantum integrated information theory), it is approximately superposition-resistant, and collapse dynamics are continuous (à la Philip Pearle). They respond to the standard objections that a consciousness-collapse link makes the collapse mechanism imprecise and requires dualism, as well as to worries about Quantum Zeno, among others. Crucially, their approach allows that superpositions of consciousness are possible: their motivation is to give the view a run for its money and to find work for consciousness to do in the universe, not to rid the world of all traces of superposed consciousness. One question: In taking consciousness itself to be superposition-resistant (rather than the environmental systems it asks questions about, as Henry Stapp suggests), we appear to favor internalism over externalism. What would an externalist variant look like? Another question: How exactly would experimental results—for example, that simple enough systems with maximal Φ remain in coherent superposition—constrain our theoretical options? If to accommodate this we have to impose an experimentally determined threshold for the minimal absolute Φ for consciousness, will that mean that on the physicalist version of the view, the property we privilege for superposition-resistance is just an arbitrary collection of atoms?In chapter 2, Elias Okon and Miguel Angel Sebastian defend a consciousness-collapse theory that they call the Subjective-Objective collapse model. Like Chalmers and McQueen, Okon and Sebastian invoke a Pearle-style continuous collapse dynamics and think of consciousness as only weakly superposition-resistant. A key contribution is the treatment of a worry about multiple realizability (i.e., the way that some property of biological neurons and some other property of artificial neurons might both realize the state of being in pain). The problem is that it is not straightforward to define Hermitian operators whose eigenstates are disjunctions of the eigenstates of other Hermitian operators: you must ensure orthogonality (“being red or being a circle” is not orthogonal to “being red or being square”). In answer, the authors point out that we don’t need each multiply realizable phenomenal state to be an eigenstate of our collapse operator; it suffices that each way of realizing each phenomenal state is an eigenstate. One question is whether this problematizes the dancing qualia argument. A second worry is that we still must find a suitable basis for Hilbert space. But theories of consciousness may constrain both position and momentum: for example, both distances between neurons and how energy is transferred. We can talk about wave packets, but these will not get us eigenstates of a Hermitian operator.In chapter 3, J. Acacio de Barros and Carlos Montemayor suggest that if a mentality-triggered collapse theory is what you want, you should opt for intentionality rather than phenomenality. This is because, first, we have evidence from psychophysics that there is unconscious perception. Second, the first-personal data that motivate collapse theory concern intentionality: we remember only recording definite values; our decisions about what to measure affect the outcomes we see. First question: Can the reasons we have for thinking that there is unconscious intentionality extend into a case for unconscious primitive intentionality? Another question is how the proposal here would differ from Stapp’s treatment of what questions a mind asks of the universe. A third is how we contend with Quantum Zeno, the effect that forces both Chalmers-McQueen and Okon-Angel Sebastian to say that consciousness is only weakly superposition-resistant. Those authors note the possibility that the relevant superposed states of consciousness might overflow access consciousness (in Ned Block’s sense). We may have an easier time ensuring that access conscious states only rarely enter into superposition, if we set them back from our front line of superposition-resistant states.In chapter 4, Adrian Kent explores objective collapse theories—mass-dependent continuous spontaneous localization models. Consciousness may not be in the spotlight on these theories, but they should at least ensure that collapse happens faster than the time it takes for a stimulus (e.g., a system of several photons) to make it from a retinal impact to consciousness. Angelo Bassi, Dirk-André Deckert, and Luca Ferialdi (2010) argue that for a range of theories this constraint is respected, with collapse for a system of several photos happening at around 100 ms. Kent problematizes their argument, showing that their estimation may be off by an order of magnitude or more. Kent’s point is compelling: more work is needed to refine the estimate and to conceptually clarify the import of the constraints from perception.Part 2 consists of eight essays on various ways that consciousness might figure in or constrain quantum theories. In chapter 5, Phillip Goff argues that 3N-dimensional wave function monism cannot accommodate ground truths about consciousness, pressing on worries that the view imposes too few structural constraints to allow for the unambiguous recovery of ordinary 3D reality. While I agree that wave function monistic accounts of ordinary reality (e.g., Albert’s functionalism or Ney’s priority monism) yield an explanatory gap (even given the 3D-ish structure of GRW jumps), I was puzzled here. All type-B physicalists confront an explanatory gap where consciousness is concerned. Isn’t this a point in support of wave function monism, since it amounts to a companions-in-guilt argument against opposition from other type-B materialists?In chapter 6, Peter Lewis raises some sensible worries about the use of phenomenal consciousness as an unanalyzed primitive or special case in quantum theory. He objects to the suggestion made by some Bohmians that we can be directly aware of the particles in our brains. Another target is John von Neumann, who appeals to intuitions about psychophysical connections to justify a collapse hypothesis. These are nice points: I would be curious to know whether Lewis thinks they apply to the justifications for mentalistic collapse theories from part 1.In chapter 7, Jenann Ismael first argues that the hard problem of consciousness is of no concern to physics per se: “If consciousness enters the problem space of physics, it does so by making a difference to the behavior of physical objects.” She then offers some clarifying remarks about how we might reconcile Van Gelder-style dynamicist conceptions of mentality with (virtual) machine functionalism. I find much to agree with here, though I do wonder how strictly to take Ismael’s claims about the irrelevance of the hard problem. If there is a tie between two theories of physics over predictive accuracy, elegance, and naturalness, but one yields a more satisfying analysis of consciousness than the other, are we not even allowed to treat that as a tie-breaker?In chapter 8, Shan Gao defends a mentalistic characterization of the measurement problem in reply to Andrea Oldofredi (2019). The question is whether the key premise of the measurement problem should be that measurements take on definite values or only that we (definitely) experience them as taking on definite values. Of course, our reasons for thinking that they do arise from our seeing or remembering that they do, but we can distinguish between the claim and our evidence for it. Gao argues that the underlying mentalistic claims are more inextricable from the dilemma than that. Many dilemmas involve premises for which the evidence is perceptual, though they make no mention of perception. Here, however, solutions to the problem require special attention to the nature of that evidence.In chapter 9, Paul Skokowski illustrates one reason that we must pay special attention to the nature of that evidence. Jeffrey A. Barrett’s (1999) bare theory is a minimalistic reading of Everett on which measurement outcomes are only definite if they obtain on all branches. One question is whether this means that observers have blatantly false disjunctive beliefs: let someone measure an electron’s spin and then ask, Do you believe that you got a definite measurement outcome, either “UP” or “DOWN”? The observer will say yes, because on each branch they saw one and not the other. However, by the lights of the theory, this disjunctive belief is false. Skokowski’s insight is that while the observer definitely says yes, it does not follow (by the lights of the bare theory) that the observer has a (definite) false belief, since the neural realizer for the disjunctive belief will be different on each branch and therefore not correspond to a common eigenstate (compare the worry from chapter 2 about multiple realizability). But isn’t this just to move from the frying pan to the fire, as it seems now that our observer has no (definite) beliefs at all?In chapter 10, Michael Silberstein and W. M. Stuckey advocate for a psi-epistemicist perspective that vindicates many phenomenological intuitions, including the one that experimental outcomes are definite (and intersubjectively consistent). The approach requires that we rethink naïve realism about the wave function and that we rethink mind-body duality, in favor of a neutral monist ontology governed by constraints. This is an exciting approach, though I’m not fully clear on how to differentiate neutral monism from its idealist, dual aspect, or panpsychist cousins.In chapter 11, Michael Bitbol suggests a phenomenology-first approach to interpreting quantum mechanics. Bitbol favors a QBist participatory realism, tempered by phenomenology, that could perhaps also be described as neutral monist. He notes that the phenomenology of embodiment (à la Merleau-Ponty) acquaints us with how something can be both active and passive, both minded and incarnate, and he traces the error of believing in a separate, physical world (an error participatory realism corrects) to the tendency of self-separation: the tendency to try to project ourselves beyond ourselves, discussed in Heidegger, Sartre, and Michel Henry. These phenomenological insights are enlightening, though I am still not quite clear on how the underlying (neutral?) ontology works. Who, precisely, are the observers? Do electrons have feelings, or are they just fictions we use to cope with ours?In chapter 12, Lucien Hardy describes an experiment in which humans might be used to determine the settings in a Bell experiment. Hardy suggests that the outcome may be a violation of quantum theory consistent with the Bell inequality. He argues that this result would support (superdeterministic) mind-body dualism and also could serve as a new more objective Turing test. This is a fascinating proposal: it remains only to do the experiment.This brings us to part 3: accounts that move from quantum mechanics to consciousness, rather than conversely. In chapters 13 and 14, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff give a comprehensive account of the current state of their ORCH-OR theory of quantum collapse and consciousness. Among other things we find here a nice presentation of Goodstein’s theorem as an example of a theorem that is noncomputable but easy enough for humans to understand, and a nice discussion of how retroactivity might equip us with something to say to Benjamin Libet about the role of consciousness in action selection. I’ll note, though, that I asked ChatGPT to explain Goodstein to me and it did a fairly good job, suggesting something like understanding. On Libet, I’m not sure what exactly we need retrocausality for: Why not just content ourselves that awareness of the action plan leaves time for a veto, as Libet and others have suggested?In chapter 15, Basil J. Hiley and Paavo Pylkkänen explore another route to a comprehensive theory of consciousness, drawing from the materials of a theory of quantum reality. Here, that theory is the Bohmian implicate order picture, with special attention to the notion of active information that arises there. This is another approach with neutral monist overtones, but here the wave function of a system behaves something like a customized hylomorphic form for the system while at the same time imbuing it with intentionality. There are interesting claims here about the continuity between life and mind, the unity of consciousness, and protopanpsychism, as well as some speculation of how the theory might align with the various scientific theories of consciousness inspired by psychophysics, like higher-order or global workspace theories.In chapter 16, William Seager offers a helpful discussion of the kinds of intelligibility at issue in these debates, distinguishing between mundane, mathematical, and metaphysical intelligibility, weaving together insights from Leibniz and others to argue that a Bohmian approach offers the best bet for a metaphysically intelligible world view. I sympathize with the positive aspects of his argument, though I think that other papers in this volume showcase the metaphysical intelligibility of rival approaches.Finally, in chapter 17, Lee Smolin describes a completion of quantum mechanics, also echoing Leibniz, which could support a theory of quantum gravity and which offers a new conception of consciousness: the causal theory of views, alongside the principle of precedence. This yields a novel sort of protopanpsychism in which the world is a collection of (background-independent) causal views, where views are conscious when they have a few extra features, including being unprecedented and being maximal. This is an exciting approach. One question is how we reconcile the claim that experiential states are maximal with the (mental) problem of the many, the problem that there are ties between composites (that differ over a stray ion or two) over which has best claim to be me.In closing, this is a fantastic volume. I commend Shan Gao for his editorial work: he would make a wonderful DJ. There are subtle symmetries in the way that each entry segues to the next, and the collection has a remarkable coherence.
Time – what it is and its nature – has from the beginning held mysteries for layman, philosopher, and physicist alike. Periodic phenomena from motions of heavenly bodies and pendulums to quantal atomic clocks provide the means to measure time intervals, and Newton’s absolute time is a background flow against which classical and non-relativistic quantum physics is played out. While internally consistent, these two fields of physics are incompatible with the requirement of treating space and time on an equal footing. Quantum field theories provide the answer, as both treated as parameters, physics residing instead in the states and operators. But even in classical physics and quantum mechanics, time-independent descriptions provide an alternative to an explicitly time-dependent one. These, including a general method of approach called invariant imbedding, are discussed as alternative representations of an underlying reality that is the concern of physics.
Quantum Mechanics is appropriately named because it is mostly about the mechanics of working out probability problems as they apply to the mysterious effect of measurement that makes energy present as quantum particle-waves. It is easy to visualize a quantum particle but there seems to be no way to visualize a “probability wave” so there has never been a clear interpretation of what quantum physics tells us – or should tell us – about the underlying essence of reality. Fortunately, a new approach was discovered and proven to work in biology that treats the mystery of life like a locking system and provides not only the key, but also the keyhole and the direction in which to turn it. In this paper the systems approach is introduced, including some background information on the history of how the systems approach has integrated elements of substance philosophy with process philosophy and has become a powerful tool for use in science. Here, it is applied to physics and used to represent the transformation of implicit energy into an explicit space-time quantum domain superimposed on a relativistic time-space background. These two “products” are then correlated with two of four blocks in a basic control-system diagram (input and output) commonly used in control-systems engineering. (The four blocks are input, transfer function, output and feedback function) Because they are explicit, they can be drawn explicitly on the space versus time plot as a map of motion. We emphasize that this is a map – an explicit projection of an implicit function (in this case, a plot of space versus time is a projection of the variance we call motion) represented as an implicit domain (a perpendicular dimension). We recognizing that a feedback function is equivalent to and therefore implies a back-projection or reflection back “up” into that “implicate order.” These two implicit functions (projection and reflection) are then correlated with the transfer function and feedback function in the control system. The motion function is related to the probability wave by the name used in statistics – the “variance” of a statistical distribution – and we point out that each axis of the space-time domain is scaled by standard “deviations,” which define the explicit scales. Because a standard deviation is the square root of a variance, the square space that maps as a relativistic scalar plot (a standard Cartesian coordinate system) of space versus time or “space-time” actually represents one of two square roots of the implicit variance we call motion. In essence, our measurements of this domain keep us rooted in physical reality. However, this coordinate system is shown to be just the root – one part of a “whole system” that includes a non-physical implicit feedback function. The feedback function is correlated with the “reflection” of the explicit domain, i.e. inverse-space and inverse-time, presented as a phase space called time-space and represented as a unit of spatial frequency versus temporal frequency. These frequency representations are shown to be the two well-known equations for quantum energy from quantum mechanics and they are used to identify energy-space as “the quantum domain” inside of, or superimposed on the background “relativistic domain,” which is a scalar space. These two domains are then shown to be coupled at the point where both scales are equal to “1”. As a whole, and in the language of quantum field theory, this model is a graphical representation of an energy-momentum tensor and as a visual model, it provides a clear conceptual interpretation of complexity theory, in which reality is expressed as the superposition of a self-organizing control system that convolves with a dissipative open system or “sea of disorder” and transforms it into physical units of order. This “holomorphic systems approach” is similar to, but much simpler and visually illustrative than the mathematically rigorous discussion On Symmetry and the Reality of Holomorphic Hartree–Fock Wavefunctions [1] or the Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory [2]. Furthermore, it reveals that the question about the beginning of time is a question fallacy, by representing the equivalence of space and time as S=Tc2, and presents it geometrically to be the exact same relation as the mass-energy equivalence equation E=mc2. The model also reveals that quantized energy (which Huynh and Thom refer to as self-consistent fields or SCF) projects as a characteristic and allows one to visualize the solution to the particle-wave duality “problem” as being a change in perspective. It’s the change in perspective that makes the particle-like property and wave-like property appear as “emergent” – analogous to what would appear when one visualizes an object from two different perspectives – at rest with respect to one’s own body yet in motion relative to some other “moving” body. The approach also reveals how the transfer function and feedback function act to transform matter, adding the fourth component (the Controller) and making it a complete control system: a self-organizing, self-sensing system that can see itself explicitly and reflect upon itself implicitly. How that correlates with living systems becomes obvious.
Quantum Mechanics is appropriately named because it is mostly about the mechanics of working out probability problems as they apply to the mysterious effect of measurement that makes energy present as quantum particle-waves. It is easy to visualize a quantum particle but there seems to be no way to visualize a “probability wave” so there has never been a clear interpretation of what quantum physics tells us – or should tell us – about the underlying essence of reality. Fortunately, a new approach was discovered and proven to work in biology that treats the mystery of life like a locking system and provides not only the key, but also the keyhole and the direction in which to turn it. In this paper the systems approach is introduced, including some background information on the history of how the systems approach has integrated elements of substance philosophy with process philosophy and has become a powerful tool for use in science. Here, it is applied to physics and used to represent the transformation of implicit energy into an explicit space-time quantum domain superimposed on a relativistic time-space background. These two “products” are then correlated with two of four blocks in a basic control-system diagram (input and output) commonly used in control-systems engineering. (The four blocks are input, transfer function, output and feedback function) Because they are explicit, they can be drawn explicitly on the space versus time plot as a map of motion. We emphasize that this is a map – an explicit projection of an implicit function (in this case, a plot of space versus time is a projection of the variance we call motion) represented as an implicit domain (a perpendicular dimension). We recognizing that a feedback function is equivalent to and therefore implies a back-projection or reflection back “up” into that “implicate order.” These two implicit functions (projection and reflection) are then correlated with the transfer function and feedback function in the control system. The motion function is related to the probability wave by the name used in statistics – the “variance” of a statistical distribution – and we point out that each axis of the space-time domain is scaled by standard “deviations,” which define the explicit scales. Because a standard deviation is the square root of a variance, the square space that maps as a relativistic scalar plot (a standard Cartesian coordinate system) of space versus time or “space-time” actually represents one of two square roots of the implicit variance we call motion. In essence, our measurements of this domain keep us rooted in physical reality. However, this coordinate system is shown to be just the root – one part of a “whole system” that includes a non-physical implicit feedback function. The feedback function is correlated with the “reflection” of the explicit domain, i.e. inverse-space and inverse-time, presented as a phase space called time-space and represented as a unit of spatial frequency versus temporal frequency. These frequency representations are shown to be the two well-known equations for quantum energy from quantum mechanics and they are used to identify energy-space as “the quantum domain” inside of, or superimposed on the background “relativistic domain,” which is a scalar space. These two domains are then shown to be coupled at the point where both scales are equal to “1”. As a whole, and in the language of quantum field theory, this model is a graphical representation of an energy-momentum tensor and as a visual model, it provides a clear conceptual interpretation of complexity theory, in which reality is expressed as the superposition of a self-organizing control system that convolves with a dissipative open system or “sea of disorder” and transforms it into physical units of order. This “holomorphic systems approach” is similar to, but much simpler and visually illustrative than the mathematically rigorous discussion On Symmetry and the Reality of Holomorphic Hartree–Fock Wavefunctions [1] or the Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory [2]. Furthermore, it reveals that the question about the beginning of time is a question fallacy, by representing the equivalence of space and time as S=Tc2, and presents it geometrically to be the exact same relation as the mass-energy equivalence equation E=mc2. The model also reveals that quantized energy (which Huynh and Thom refer to as self-consistent fields or SCF) projects as a characteristic and allows one to visualize the solution to the particle-wave duality “problem” as being a change in perspective. It’s the change in perspective that makes the particle-like property and wave-like property appear as “emergent” – analogous to what would appear when one visualizes an object from two different perspectives – at rest with respect to one’s own body yet in motion relative to some other “moving” body. The approach also reveals how the transfer function and feedback function act to transform matter, adding the fourth component (the Controller) and making it a complete control system: a self-organizing, self-sensing system that can see itself explicitly and reflect upon itself implicitly. How that correlates with living systems becomes obvious.
Some aspects of the interpretation of quantum theory are discussed. It is emphasized that quantum theory is formulated in the Cartesian coordinate system; in other coordinates the result obtained with the help of the Hamiltonian formalism and commutator relations between “canonically conjugated” coordinate and momentum operators leads to a wrong version of quantum mechanics. The origin of time is analyzed by the example of atomic collision theory in detail; it is shown that the time-dependent Schrödinger equation is meaningless since in the high-impact-energy limit it transforms into an equation with two time-like variables. Following the Einstein-Rozen-Podolsky experiment and Bell’s inequality, the wave function is interpreted as an actual field of information in the elementary form. The concept “measurement” is also discussed.