Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness: Some Views from a Novice

Ulrich Mohrhoff

This article was written in response to a request from an editor of American Vedantist. It is shown that the idea that consciousness is essential to understanding quantum mechanics arises from logical fallacies. This may be welcome news to those who share the author's annoyance at consciousness being dragged into discussions of physics, but beware: The same fallacies may underlie the reader's own way of making sense of quantum mechanics. The article ends up embracing a Vedantic world view, for two reasons. For one, such a world view seems to the author to be the most sensible alternative to a materialistic one. For another, quantum mechanics is inconsistent with a materialistic world view but makes perfect sense within a Vedantic framework of thought.

Henry Margenau

Richard A. Mould

Michael Silberstein, W. M. Stuckey

We discuss the implications for the determinateness and intersubjective consistency of conscious experience in two gedanken experiments from quantum mechanics (QM). In particular, we discuss Wigner's friend and the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment with a twist. These are both cases (experiments) where quantum phenomena, or at least allegedly possible quantum phenomena/experiments, and the content/efficacy of conscious experience seem to bear on one another. We discuss why these two cases raise concerns for the determinateness and intersubjective consistency of conscious experience. We outline a 4D-global constraint-based approach to explanation in general and for QM in particular that resolves any such concerns without having to invoke metaphysical quietism (as with pragmatic accounts of QM), objective collapse mechanisms or subjective collapse. In short, we provide an account of QM free from any concerns associated with either the standard formalism or relative-state formalism, an account that yields a single 4D block universe with determinate and intersubjectively consistent conscious experience for all conscious agents. Essentially, the mystery in both experiments is caused by a dynamical/causal view of QM, e.g., time-evolved states in Hilbert space, and as we show this mystery can be avoided by a spatiotemporal, constraint-based view of QM, e.g., path integral calculation of probability amplitudes using future boundary conditions. What will become clear is that rather than furiously seeking some way to make dubious deep connections between quantum physics and conscious experience, the kinds of 4D adynamical global constraints that are fundamental to both classical and quantum physics and the relationship between them, also constrain conscious experience. That is, physics properly understood, already is psychology.

Huping Hu, Maoxin Wu

We have recently theorized that consciousness is intrinsically connected to quantum mechanical spin since said spin is embedded in the microscopic structure of spacetime and is more fundamental than spacetime itself, that is, spin is the “mind-pixel.” Applying these ideas to the particular structures and dynamics of the brain, we have developed a qualitative model of quantum consciousness. In this paper, we express our fundamental view that spin is a primordial self-referential process driving quantum mechanics, spacetime dynamics and consciousness. To justify such a view, we will draw support from existing literatures, discuss from a reductionist perspective the essential properties said spin should possess as mind-pixel and explore further the nature of spin to see whether said properties are present. Our conclusion is that these properties are indeed endowed to spin by Nature. One of the implications from our fundamental view is that the probabilistic structure of quantum mechanics is due to the self-referential collapse of spin state that is contextual, non-local, non-computable and irreversible. Therefore, a complete theory of the self-referential spin process is necessarily semantic, that is, it should be based on internally meaningful information.

Max R. Bennett