Separation of Scales and the Improbability of Quantum Foundations for Consciousness

Н. А. Соловьев

Stuart Alan Kauffman

I have discussed the remote possibility that entangled quantum variables are jointly conscious, that the living state is quantum, a poised realm, and classical, that death may be “going classical” with the release of entangled quantum variables from the now dead body – which variables, reflecting a quantum entangled aspect of the living state, could just conceivably, be souls. There are ways to test a few aspects of these ideas, but not many. The central idea that quantum variables are conscious at measurement cannot now be tested. These are very remote possibilities, but not, I think, ruled out scientifically.

Wilhelmus de Wilde

I argue that Reality is an emergent phenomenon from Total Simultaneity (TS). This emergent phenomenon is to be strictly separated from its underlying structure TS. TS is a concept that can be localised behind the Planck units of space and time and is constituted as the totality of ALL possible emergent realities structured as probabilities (hidden variables). Time is a restriction of our emerged reality, so is space. As ALL time/life-lines of ALL probable (and for us improbable) realities are interconnected inside TS, our own experience of time and space is also interconnected with them through entangled partial consciousness. The what I call Point Zero is the point inside TS from where an agent’s emergent reality experience originates. Past and Future are created there through partial Consciousness. The so called “weird” quantum effects are explained this way. The reference of reference in our emerged reality is this partial consciousness: the I”. The “Splitting up” from the Many World Interpretation is becoming “Jumping towards” another Time/Life-line inside Total Simultaneity. ALL other “worlds” are already existing as probabilities inside TS. This explains the seemingly retro-causality in our emerged reality.

Surendra Sherchan

I. N. Marshall

Anton S. Arkhipov

A hypothesis is presented that non-separability of degrees of freedom is the fundamental property underlying consciousness in physical systems. The amount of consciousness in a system is determined by the extent of non-separability and the number of degrees of freedom involved. Non-interacting and feedforward systems have zero consciousness, whereas most systems of interacting particles appear to have low non-separability and consciousness. By contrast, brain circuits exhibit high complexity and weak but tightly coordinated interactions, which appear to support high non-separability and therefore high amount of consciousness. The hypothesis applies to both classical and quantum cases, and we highlight the formalism employing the Wigner function (which in the classical limit becomes the Liouville density function) as a potentially fruitful framework for characterizing non-separability and, thus, the amount of consciousness in a system. The hypothesis appears to be consistent with both the Integrated Information Theory and the Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory and may help reconcile the two. It offers a natural explanation for the physical properties underlying the amount of consciousness and points to methods of estimating the amount of non-separability as promising ways of characterizing the amount of consciousness.