The article proposes a new model of consciousness of living organisms, based on an extension of the de Broglie-Bohm theory, which is also meeting the principles of the Quantum Field Theory. In particular, the article starts from the consideration that living organisms are similar to open systems, operating far from the thermodynamic equilibrium: in fact, they are subjected to continuous internal flows and exchanges of energy, matter and information with the surrounding environments. On a deeper physical level, however, these exchanges are mediated by quantum wave oscillations and interactions, so that it is argued that living organisms are even operating far from quantum equilibrium. Therefore, leveraging on a prior art arguing that quantum theory might be a special case of a much wider physics, where systems are far from quantum equilibrium, the article proposes a wider perspective of the de Broglie-Bohm theory for modeling consciousness. Consciousness is modelled as a special quantum wave field whose associated potential is elaborated as active information by living organism and accounts, with different complexity levels, for consciousness phenomena in life. Moreover, the article proposes that the form or curvature of the consciousness wave field can be expressed in terms of Nambu Goldstone bosons condensations (as described in Quantum Field Theory) associated to symmetry breaking phenomena in living organisms.
The article proposes a new model of consciousness of living organisms, based on an extension of the de Broglie-Bohm theory, which is also meeting the principles of the Quantum Field Theory. In particular, the article starts from the consideration that living organisms are similar to open systems, operating far from the thermodynamic equilibrium: in fact, they are subjected to continuous internal flows and exchanges of energy, matter and information with the surrounding environments. On a deeper physical level, however, these exchanges are mediated by quantum wave oscillations and interactions, so that it is argued that living organisms are even operating far from quantum equilibrium. Therefore, leveraging on a prior art arguing that quantum theory might be a special case of a much wider physics, where systems are far from quantum equilibrium, the article proposes a wider perspective of the de Broglie-Bohm theory for modeling consciousness. Consciousness is modelled as a special quantum wave field whose associated potential is elaborated as active information by living organism and accounts, with different complexity levels, for consciousness phenomena in life. Moreover, the article proposes that the form or curvature of the consciousness wave field can be expressed in terms of Nambu Goldstone bosons condensations (as described in Quantum Field Theory) associated to symmetry breaking phenomena in living organisms.
Electromagnetic quantum field interactions provide a deeper understanding of the emergence of consciousness through an ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics. Quasiparticle interactions in brain matter can produce virtual particles, hitherto mathematical conveniences, which reflect the manifold images of brain activities in terms of effects on charged particles that have physical quantum effect similar to the Aharonov-Bohm effect in quantum field theory. Electromagnetic potentials in the quantum domain pervade the entire brain through causative interactions. The exchange of energy quanta during quantum field interactions emerge as distinct patterns of quasiparticles and their entanglement produces waves of virtual particles with periodicities of discrete energies tethered through a common quantum potential as they interact and collectively represent the emergence of self-awareness as a quantum dynamic effect carried on the magnetic vector potential throughout the brain. This is caused by the magnetic dipole moments sensitivity to the phase shifts entrained by the zeitgeber acting on dipolar molecules in interfacial water. The emergence of consciousness is inseparable (spatiotemporally) in the sense that the endogenous electromagnetic field (and therefore the forces acting on the particles) vanish yet neurophenomenologically separate from the physical through the magnetic dipole moments sensitivity to the phase shifts of the coherent system. The subjective aspect of consciousness or phenomenal consciousness facilitates qualia as quantum information through information-physical interactions that metastabilize into rhythms unfolding through resonance into access consciousness as cognizable associable representations of subjective experiences. The transition from subjectivity occurs non-reductively from the microlevel to the macrolevel as a mechanism of spontaneous breaking of symmetry resulting from photon behavior of interfacial water instantiated by macroergic effects in the nuclei of neurons through a continuous supply of metabolic energy. The emergence of consciousness in living organisms disappears once autopoietic processes in populations of neurons cease to function.
A number of modern scientists adheres to the point of view that, despite the fact that quantum mechanics does not allow to explain the existence of mental phenomena in the physical world, with the help of its inherent ontological principles and mathematical formalism, it is possible to understand the functioning of consciousness and the unconscious. Based on the analogy between quantum and mental processes, the unconscious can be represented as a superposition of mental states, and consciousness — in the form of decoherence of unconscious experiences. From an evolutionary point of view, consciousness can be considered as a consequence of the accumulation of a sufficient amount of information during the interaction of the organism with the surrounding environment, when the transition from the quantum state of the unconscious to the classical state of consciousness is carried out at the psychic level of being, by analogy with the accumulation of a sufficient amount of information by a quantum system during interaction with the environment, when at the physical level of being the collapse of the wave function. In psychotherapy and psychodiagnostics, one can see an analogy with the measurement process in quantum mechanics and a quantum leap from one mental state to another. However, the analysis of this point of view carried out in the article shows that the parallels between quantum mechanics and psychology today look insufficiently substantiated, since the mathematical model of the psyche, which allows describing human behavior on the basis of the laws of quantum mechanics, has not yet been built, which is why, firstly, the use of quantum-physical terminology in the understanding of mental experience does not rise to the level of scientific theory, remaining a metaphor, and, secondly, quantum psychology has a predictive potential, in contrast to the psychology of the classical type.
In two 1952 papers David Bohm proposed a hidden-variables interpretation of quantum theory, completing an approach de Broglie had suggested in 1927. An electron is a particle accompanied by a field, described by the wave function, which gives rise to a quantum potential influencing the particle alongside the classical potential. Bohm later became critical of his own theory: the mathematical form of the quantum potential is arbitrary; for a many-body system it assumes a physical field in 3N-dimensional configuration space; and in measurement it leaves empty wave packets floating around. He responded by radically reinterpreting the quantum field as a field of information rather than a physical field, claiming thereby to solve all three problems. This proposal has been largely ignored in recent philosophy of physics. I situate it in relation to the nomological interpretation of the wave function and its dispositionalist and Humean variants, arguing that active information agrees with the nomological view about what the wave function is not while differing about what it is, and that it belongs among property rather than law interpretations. I conclude that it is a serious live option, which moreover suggests a new approach to the mind–matter relation.
The aim of this paper is to construct an ontology to account consistently for both the objective and subjective worlds. First, I will determine the fundamental properties of consciousness from a first-person perspective and derive from them a subjective definition of consciousness. Second, I will infer from their existence at a macroscopic level some expectations about the empirical world and show that these expectations can be identified with quantum properties of matter. This will lead to the construction of an ontology and to a physical counterpart of the former subjective definition of consciousness, which accounts for the existence of a continuum between conscious and unconscious states. Finally, I will go beyond the common objections to quantum mind to propose a simple yet suitable model of mind which explains why consciousness arises specifically inside the nervous systems of living creatures.
Perhaps more so than any other twentieth-century physicist, David Bohm was trying to develop an ontological interpretation for quantum theory, i.e. an interpretation which tells us what quantum theory says about the nature of reality. He is best known for presenting in 1952 an improved version of de Broglie’s ‘pilot-wave’ theory, which says that an electron is a particle always accompanied by a new type of quantum field or pilot wave which guides it. In later research Bohm realized that the pilot wave is not pushing and pulling the particle mechanically but rather contains information which guides the particle, analogously to the way radar waves guide a ship on autopilot. The postulation of such objective and active information to the quantum level is a radical metaphysical move which also opens a new way to understand how the material and mental sides of reality are related to each other. It might even make it easier to understand what phenomenal properties are and how they could play a causal role in the physical world. This paper provides an overview of not only the pilot-wave theory, but also Bohm’s other related frameworks, namely the implicate order and soma-significance. It is suggested that these views point to a new theory of the relation of consciousness and matter which we can call interactionist dual-aspect monism. This theory suggests, against illusionism, that phenomenal properties exist and, against idealism, that the world has a material aspect which exists independently of the human mind ‐ thus ‘real consciousness in a real world’.
Abstract. The author proposes a holoinformational view of consciousness based on the holonomic theory of brain function and quantum brain dynamics developed by Karl Pribram, Sir John Eccles, Hameroff, Jibu and Yasue, and on the quantum-holographic and holomovement theory of David Bohm. This conceptual framework is integrated into the non-local information property of the Quantum Field Theory of Umesawa, to the concept of negentropy, order, and organization developed by Shannon, Wiener, Szilard and Brillouin, and to the theories of self-organization and complexity of Prigogine, Atlan, Jantsch and Kauffman. Wheeler’s “it from bit” concept of a participatory universe, and the developments of the physics of information made by Zurek and others with the concepts of statistical entropy and algorithmic entropy, related to the number of bits being processed in the mind of the observer, are also considered. This new synthesis gives a self-organizing quantum non-local informational basis for a new model of consciousness in a participatory universe. In this synthesis, consciousness is conceived as a meaningful quantum non-local information interconnecting the brain and the cosmos, by a holoinformational field (a field at the same time non-local holistic (quantum) and local (Newtonian). We propose that we are this very non-local quantum-holographic cosmos that manifests itself through our consciousness, interconnecting in a participatory holistic and indivisible way the human brain to all levels of the self-organizing holographic multiverse.