This chapter shows that the Conscious Action Theory (CAT) model of interacting conscious beings is a superset of quantum theory. Quantum theory itself will be derived as a linear approximation applicable when disturbances in the material-producing experiences are small enough to be reversible oscillations around a dynamic equilibrium state. Historically quantum theory grew out of classical physics as an attempt to explain how light interacts with matter to produce the colors that were observed spectroscopically. The chapter shows how the essential components of quantum theory already model an action cycle. It aims to assume the interior matter beyond or internal to a Hilbert space-cell boundary is composed of mass and charge densities. The mass and charge densities move relative to each other in order to maintain their equilibrium positions. However, once we must deal with the growth and destruction of the memory cells, which surely happens, it will be necessary to adopt CAT and the event-oriented world view.
This chapter shows that the Conscious Action Theory (CAT) model of interacting conscious beings is a superset of quantum theory. Quantum theory itself will be derived as a linear approximation applicable when disturbances in the material-producing experiences are small enough to be reversible oscillations around a dynamic equilibrium state. Historically quantum theory grew out of classical physics as an attempt to explain how light interacts with matter to produce the colors that were observed spectroscopically. The chapter shows how the essential components of quantum theory already model an action cycle. It aims to assume the interior matter beyond or internal to a Hilbert space-cell boundary is composed of mass and charge densities. The mass and charge densities move relative to each other in order to maintain their equilibrium positions. However, once we must deal with the growth and destruction of the memory cells, which surely happens, it will be necessary to adopt CAT and the event-oriented world view.
Abstract Incorporating a conscious 1st person observer in scientific theories has been hampered by the lack of physically viable mind/body models. I will present a Cognitive Action Theory (CAT) model of an integrated mind/body system and identify the process of creating conscious experience as the basic building block of reality. This building block is a cyclic process in time, connecting the 1st-person experience with its 3rd-person physical models so that conscious phenomena are possible. We therefore propose a fundamental shift to consider what we do to be conscious as an a-priory activity that must be happening for us to be able to ask the question, “How can conscious beings exist in our physical world?” This activity contains both qualia and an explanation to produce what Archibald Wheeler described as a self measuring explanatory cycle. At this level of definition such a cycle of activity can accommodate any belief system defining physical reality as an explanation for personal experience and therefore provides a framework which accommodates most scientific and spiritual traditions. However visualizing abstract activity as the motion of masses and charges that together compose matter allows us to couple what we do to the formalism of classic physics thus describing a Reality of interacting events. Such a theory integrates the subjective and objective aspect of our experience in a single physical framework, reducing to the linear quantum formalism when the motions involved are small enough to be reversible.
Conscious Action Theory provides a logical unification between the spirit and the material, by identifying reality as an event that processes personal experiences into explanatory memories, from which personal experiences are regenerated in a never-ending cycle of activity. Baer explores the idea that our personal feelings are undeniable facts that have been systematically excluded from the basic sciences, thereby leaving us with a schizophrenic division between objective materialism and spiritual idealism. Cognitive Action Theory (CAT) achieves this unification by recognizing that the observer’s existence is the foundational premise underlying all scientific inquiry. It develops as an event-oriented physical theory in which the first-person observer is central. By analyzing the methods through which we human observers gain knowledge and create the belief systems within which our experiences are explained, we discover a fundamental truth: all systems are observers and exhibit some form of internal awareness. Events, not the objects appearing in them, are the fundamental building blocks of reality. The book is comprised of three parts: the first addresses the paradigm shift from an object to an event-oriented world view, the second develops the foundations of action physics for an event-oriented world view and the third provides examples of how these new ideas can be applied to move our knowledge up the next evolutionary step of human development. This book will benefit anyone questioning their role in the universe, especially those in interdisciplinary fields of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and medicine, who seek understanding of quantum theory as the physics of conscious systems that know the world.
Incorporating a conscious 1st person observer in scientific theories has been hampered by the lack of physically viable mind/body models. I will present a Cognitive Action Theory (Baer 2020) model of an integrated mind/body system and identify the process of creating conscious experience as the basic building block of reality. This building block is a cyclic process in time, connecting the first person experience with its 3d person physical models so that conscious phenomena are possible. To allow the construction of such a basic building block we propose a fundamental shift to consider what we do to be conscious as an a-priory activity that must be happening for us to be able to ask the question, “How can conscious beings exist in our physical world?” This shift means first asking, “How does the memory of a physical world exist in a conscious being”? The answer to this question leads to Conscious Action Theory (CAT) and the physical formulation of a conscious being as a self contained action cycle with the mental and physical phases. This activity contains both qualia and its explanation to produce what physicist Archibald Wheeler [1,2] described as a self measuring explanatory cycle. At this level of abstraction such a cycle of activity can accommodate any belief system defining physical reality as an explanation for personal experience and therefore provide a framework which accommodates both scientific and spiritual traditions. Visualizing such an abstract activity as the motion of masses and charges allows us to couple what we do to the formalism of classic and quantum physics. Such a theory integrates the subjective and objective aspect of our experience in a single physical framework, reducing to the linear quantum formalism when the motions involved are small enough to be reversible [3,4].
Conscious Action Theory provides a logical unification between the spirit and the material, by identifying reality as an event that processes personal experiences into explanatory memories, from which personal experiences are regenerated in a never-ending cycle of activity. Baer explores the idea that our personal feelings are undeniable facts that have been systematically excluded from the basic sciences, thereby leaving us with a schizophrenic division between objective materialism and spiritual idealism.
Cognitive Action Theory (CAT) achieves this unification by recognizing that the observer’s existence is the foundational premise underlying all scientific inquiry. It develops as an event-oriented physical theory in which the first-person observer is central. By analyzing the methods through which we human observers gain knowledge and create the belief systems within which our experiences are explained, we discover a fundamental truth: all systems are observers and exhibit some form of internal awareness. Events, not the objects appearing in them, are the fundamental building blocks of reality. The book is comprised of three parts: the first addresses the paradigm shift from an object to an event-oriented world view, the second develops the foundations of action physics for an event-oriented world view and the third provides examples of how these new ideas can be applied to move our knowledge up the next evolutionary step of human development.
This book will benefit anyone questioning their role in the universe, especially those in interdisciplinary fields of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and medicine, who seek understanding of quantum theory as the physics of conscious systems that know the world.
Quantum theory is essentially a rationally coherent theory of the interaction of mind and matter, and it allows our conscious thoughts to play a causally efficacious and necessary role in brain dynamics. It therefore provides a natural basis, created by scientists, for the science of consciousness. As an illustration it is explained how the interaction of brain and consciousness can speed up brain processing, and thereby enhance the survival prospects of conscious organisms, as compared to similar organisms that lack consciousness. As a second illustration it is explained how, within the quantum framework, the consciously experienced {open_quotes}I{close_quotes} directs the actions of a human being. It is concluded that contemporary science already has an adequate framework for incorporating causally efficacious experimential events into the physical universe in a manner that: (1) puts the neural correlates of consciousness into the theory in a well defined way, (2) explains in principle how the effects of consciousness, per se, can enhance the survival prospects of organisms that possess it, (3) allows this survival effect to feed into phylogenetic development, and (4) explains how the consciously experienced {open_quotes}I{close_quotes} can direct human behaviour.
Theory of everything must include consciousness. In Part I (Vimal, 2010b) of this series of 3 articles, the subjective experience (SE) aspect of consciousness was introduced in classical physics by examining the invariance of various components of theories under PE-SE transformations, where PEs (proto-experiences) are precursors of SEs. We found that (i) classical physics is invariant under the PE-SE transformation, (ii) SEs are embedded in spacetime geometry for the structure of spacetime in superposed form, (iii) SEs can move with spatiotemporal coordinates of matter for matter field because both mental and material aspects are always together in the dual-aspect-dual-mode optimal PE-SE framework, and (iv) our specific SE is the result of matching and selection processes and can change with space and time. For example, experiencing redness has neural correlates of V4/V8/VO-red-green neural-net with redness state. When a subject moves, the specific SE redness also moves with the subject’s correlated neural-net. In the current Part II, the SE aspect of consciousness is introduced in orthodox quantum physics by examining its invariance under the PE-SE transformations. We found that the followings are invariant under the PE-SE transformations: Schrodinger equation, current, Dirac Lagrangian, the Lagrangian for a charged self-interacting scalar field, and Standard Model (the Lagrangian for free gauge field and Lagrangian for the electromagnetic interaction of a charged scalar field (Higgs Mechanism)). In Part III (Vimal, 2010c), the SE aspect of consciousness will be introduced to unify it with fundamental forces in loop quantum gravity and string theory of modern quantum physics. All parts together lead us towards the theory of everything.