This text exposes, from a general historical perspective, the emergence and recent development, within the western scientific community, of the so-called “Quantum Theories of Consciousness” (QTC). A brief explanation is carried out attending, in chronological order of first publication, to the main QTC proposals that address the so-called “hard problem of consciousness”, starting from postulates of philosophy and quantum physics, theoretical springs that maintain an open and transversal dialogue with other disciplines such as neuroscience, chemistry, biology, psychology or cognitive sciences.
This text exposes, from a general historical perspective, the emergence and recent development, within the western scientific community, of the so-called “Quantum Theories of Consciousness” (QTC). A brief explanation is carried out attending, in chronological order of first publication, to the main QTC proposals that address the so-called “hard problem of consciousness”, starting from postulates of philosophy and quantum physics, theoretical springs that maintain an open and transversal dialogue with other disciplines such as neuroscience, chemistry, biology, psychology or cognitive sciences.
This text exposes, from a general historical perspective, the emergence and recent development, within the western scientific community, of the so-called “Quantum Theories of Consciousness” (QTC). A brief explanation is carried out attending, in chronological order of first publication, to the main QTC proposals that address the so- called “hard problem of consciousness”, starting from postulates of philosophy and quantum physics, theoretical springs that maintain an open and transversal dialogue with other disciplines such as neuroscience, chemistry, biology, psychology or cognitive sciences. Keywords: Mind-matter, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, chemistry, biology, psychology, cognitive sciences, quantum physics, consciousness, neuroquantum analogy.
The present paper constitutes an effort to integrate the knowledge of two distinct scientific disciplines: psychology and quantum physics. This intention will be fuelled by the current need of clarification on what concerns quantum measurement problem, consciousness and respective relationship. For this matter, we choose to use the concept of consciousness described by Jean Paul Sartre in his work. After a brief review of the main presuppositions of quantum theory and Sartre’s ontology, we will proceed with the establishment of proper correspondences between these models eventually defining an isomorphism between its correspondent systems.
Introduction We saw in Part I that in addition to explaining consciousness there is another hard problem for the modern scientific worldview – understanding what quantum physics is telling us about reality. And if anything this one is harder. In philosophy of mind there is at least consensus enough for an orthodox position to exist (materialism), and a widespread expectation that it will be vindicated by future neuroscience. By contrast, in philosophy of physics all sides understand that quantum theory is compatible with a variety of metaphysical interpretations, and have little hope that new empirical discoveries will settle the matter. But both problems are “hard” in the sense that, despite tremendous intellectual effort over many decades, no clear progress has been made toward solving them. The basic idea of quantum consciousness theory is that bringing the two problems into contact may be the key to solving both (though I will be addressing only the mind–body problem in what follows). That this could be a novel idea attests to the fact that their philosophical discussions have evolved quite separately. While philosophers of physics have long been interested in the role of consciousness in the measurement process, they have engaged little with the mind–body problem per se; and philosophers of mind have been almost unanimous in dismissing the suggestion that consciousness has anything interesting to do with quantum physics. Social scientists might echo such skepticism, wondering how adding the problem of interpreting quantum theory to the problem of consciousness will help them . Besides piling up jargon and arcane debates, in moving to the sub-atomic level we are now even farther removed from the human world, and seemingly poised to engage in the most vulgar reductionism. Yet, naïvely one might expect the two problems to be related, for two reasons. The first is the intriguing analogies mentioned in Chapter 1 between the mental and quantum domains.
The question of whether quantum mechanical phenomena play a functional role in brain activity and the emergence of consciousness remains one of the most controversial yet intellectually stimulating debates at the intersection of physics, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. This review systematically examines the principal theoretical frameworks proposing quantum-level mechanisms in neural computation, including the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) hypothesis by Penrose and Hameroff, the quantum brain hypothesis of Stapp, quantum coherence models in microtubules, and quantum field theories of consciousness. We critically evaluate the current state of empirical evidence—including recent quantum biology findings, the challenge of decoherence in warm, biological systems, and experimental observations of quantum effects in biological systems—alongside computational models that bridge quantum formalism and neural network dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of quantum cognition models for understanding perception, decision-making, and memory. Despite significant scientific skepticism, emerging evidence from quantum biology and advanced neuroimaging technologies provides tentative support for quantum processes in neural substrates. We conclude by identifying critical gaps in current knowledge and outlining future research directions that may resolve the debate, including proposals for experimental paradigms using quantum sensing technologies applied to neural tissue. This review aims to serve as a foundational reference for researchers across disciplines approaching the quantum mind hypothesis with scientific rigor.
Is mind quantum-like? Is consciousness quantum physical? Does consciousness have a role to play in the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum universe? Or is this dichotomy between classical and quantum an illusion? How can world philosophies enrich our views on these matters and interact with the best scientific theories? These are some questions that motivated us to conceive the current book. We also felt an urgent need to discuss the central philosophical questions haunting the emerging frameworks of quantum cognition and quantum-like framework (QLF). We have observed that there are very good technical or mathematical works being done in the emerging fields of quantum cognition and QLF, but there is still a great need for exploring the underlying and open philosophical questions they demand. Quantum cognition developed as a frontier research programme in understanding various cognitive phenomena that are hard or impossible to describe based on classical cognitive science paradigm. Classical cognitive science draws philosophically and mathematically from classical physics and classical probability theory. For example, cognitive realism thinking is deeply motivated by the scientific realism of classical physics. However, as we explore, there are numerous empirical findings which demonstrate clearly that human mind and cognitive processes exhibit features that are more quantum-like. Central to these features are indeterminacy, context dependence, and complementarity of cognitive phenomena, for example, perception, information retrieval, and even qualia. Many good works in the previous decade have demonstrated the efficacy of quantum-like mathematical modelling in such cases. However, given that efficacy, we cannot simply conclude that mind is quantum. Rather there are features that go beyond what is allowed in standard quantum formalism.
This chapter provides a brief historical introduction to quantum theory, and shows that the theory opens up some radically new ways of thinking about the place of mind and consciousness in nature. Quantum theory is all about learning, on the basis of scientific experiments, to question the "obvious" truths about the nature of the physical world and to come up with more coherent alternatives. The chapter considers the famous two-slit experiment. It explores what the different interpretations of quantum theory say about situations like the two-slit experiment, and also considers what kind of theories of mind and consciousness some interpretations have inspired. The attempt to explain mind and consciousness in terms of the quantum theory involves heavy speculation. The advances in quantum biology, while not giving direct support to quantum brain theory, perhaps make a biologically grounded quantum theory of consciousness seem less inconceivable.