Conventional answer: no. Neither quantum nor classical physics explain the existence, diversity, phenomenal binding and causal efficacy of consciousness. The Hard Problem is an unfathomable mystery.
(cf. New mysterianism - Wikipedia)
Non-materialist physicalist answer: yes. Quantum mechanics (i.e. QFT or its extension) is formally complete. The superposition principle of QM never breaks down. You consist of quadrillions of "cat states" (cf. Quantum superposition - Wikipedia). Only the universal validity of the superposition principle allows your CNS to run phenomenally bound world-simulations featuring classical-looking cats and determinate pointer-readings (cf. Correspondence principle - Wikipedia). Decohered classical neurons can’t phenomenally simulate a classical world. You’d just be Jamesian “mind-dust”. But coherent quantum minds can simulate classical worlds - and they've been doing so for over 540 million years. Quantum physics explains why you’re not a micro-experiential zombie. (cf. China brain - Wikipedia)
This possibility is counterintuitive. After all, back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests that thermally-induced decoherence "destroys" (i.e. scrambles the phase angles of components of) neuronal superpositions inside your skull within femtoseconds or less (cf. http://faculty.up.edu/schlosshau...). There exists no Divine Moviemaker to sculpt coherent superpositions of distributed neuronal feature-processors into the well-behaved macroscopic world-simulation that you're undergoing right now. Intuitively, neuronal superpositions are just vanishingly short-lived psychotic "noise".
Maybe so. Yet recall Paley's Divine Watchmaker (cf. https://homepages.wmich.edu/~mcg...). Just as the workings of the evolutionary processes of natural selection are analogous to a Blind Watchmaker (cf. The Blind Watchmaker - Wikipedia), the far more powerful and unrelenting selection pressure of quantum Darwinism (cf. “Quantum Darwinism as a Darwinian process” https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pape...) in your CNS is akin to a Blind Moviemaker. A shame about the script.
What about "mangled" frames? (cf. http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/ma...)
Well, they are real too on pain of violating unitarity. Evolution is wasteful.
Note that despite unfamiliar terminology, the selection mechanism of Zurek's quantum Darwinism that explains the emergence of mind-independent classicality from quantum reality isn't the name of a speculative modification of the unitary Schrödinger dynamics (cf. Quantum Darwinism - Wikipedia). Rather, it’s just an extension of the decoherence program in post-Everett QM. Whether quantum Darwinism playing out inside our heads can alsoexplain phenomenally bound conscious mind will be known only when molecular matter-wave interferometry independently deciphers the non-classical signature.
(cf. http://iopscience.iop.org/articl...)
Noise or a perfect structural match?
(cf. https://www.physicalism.com/abst...)
I can guess; but intuitions are cheap.
At present, nothing explains subjective experience (“consciousness”). But it’s pretty easy to argue that the unknown explanation must involve basic-level, fundamental physics of some sort. Whether that physics would be “quantum physics” remains to be seen.
Here’s the really short version of the argument.
One possibility is that subjective experience is identical to certain brain states (biological or functional), the way water is identical to H2O. This idea has been widely considered by philosophers. It is universally agreed that if it is true, then the relationship of the subjective to the physical is a set of “brute facts” which permit no further analysis, especially no evolutionary analysis. We accept a small number of brute facts in physics, and every physicist is at work trying to reduce that number to a bare minimum. But one brute fact for every type of experience (each taste, each color, every sort of feeling …)? That seems very unlikely. And the brute facts about pleasure and suffering being identical to their corresponding brain states would make a creationist blush. Oh, and many philosophers believe the whole idea is simply false. (Spoiler alert: it is.)
The next possibility is that subjective experience is a strongly emergent property of certain brain states. This means that the brain states produce subjectivity the way certain arrangements of matter produce liquidity or solidity, with the key difference (the “strong” part) being that, unlike the latter cases, there is no way of deducing or explaining subjectivity, beginning from the corresponding brain states. (If you could, that would mean they were ultimately identical, just like chemistry is ultimately identical to physics. And that’s the answer we just dismissed).
Now, we would then have to ask the question, why do brain states have this unique ability to produce subjective experience via strong emergence? Well, we think we understand the basic material nature of brain states completely. They reduce (are ultimately identical to) basic-level physics! So, if subjectivity is a strongly emergent property of brain biology, then the explanation for that is passed down to basic-level physics, where there must be something we’re unaware of.
And if subjectivity is a strongly emergent property of brain functional states, then the same thing is true, except this is much more promising. Since the brain’s function is to process information, then the something we’re unaware of about basic-level physics could well be a fundamental theory of information, which a lot of physicists are currently chasing (though not with an eye to explaining subjectivity).
Finally, it’s possible that subjective experience (or the potential for it) is a fundamental property of all matter. Again, this is a basic-level, fundamental physics solution.
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No. We are starting to understand the function of the brain, and we recognise symptoms of what happens when the brain does something. On the other hand, we have no idea how it can order its activity in a coherent fashion, as opposed to some mush of signals, and we have no idea why it can say “I am.”
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First off, nobody knows what consciousness is. (Hence my ongoing amusement at attempts to "model" the human mind via digital computers: a "model" is, a priori, a coherent set of assumptions about reality; this is true whether the "model" in question is a toy airplane or an extremely complex set of macroeconomic algorithms.)
Secondly, recourse to quantum physics re: consciousness is, in my experience anyway, the efforts of those who either profit (e.g., via book sales) from pseudo-science, or flinch from the possibility that "classical" (non-quantum) physics might suggest that all of reality - including our minds and actions - are deterministic, i.e., precluding any notion of "free will."
Related is an issue which no serious physicist is generally willing to discuss: the known truth that our observation of a quantum "object" causes its presumably probabilistic state to "collapse" into either a particle or a wave is, shall we say, "problematic," especially when contemplated in the same thought with quantum entanglement. (This is probably best explored in Rosenblum & Kuttner's Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness) Irrespective, no scientific conclusions whatsoever, regarding any possible description of consciousness, can be derived from quantum physics, at least insofar as it is presently understood.
Similarly, biology deals with even larger and more complex systems and is emergent from chemistry. At the lowest level, everything is quantum physics, but to really understand what is going on, we must abstract away the low-level details and think in terms of higher level concepts - the concepts of biology. An analogy will be the forest and the trees - a biologist sees the forest, but the chemist sees the trees.
Consciousness is the next level. It is the emergent property of a biological system, namely, the human brain. However, how exactly this happens is as of now unknown. The branch of science that deals with this problem (Neuroscience) has not yet completely matured, but is in the process of making very important discoveries thanks to the growth in other fields of science as well as technology.
Consciousness has an important analogy with computers - the brain is analogous to hardware and consciousness is analogous to software. The software has no physical existence independent of the hardware, but can be studied without mentioning the "bare metal" details of the hardware. In the case of the brain, the "bare metal" details will be the behavior of neurons, which are governed by the chemical and physical processes, all of which ultimately boil down to quantum mechanics.
But quantum physicists cannot simply solve the problem of consciousness by writing down a Schrodinger equation for the brain and solving it - there are just too many atoms and interactions. Therefore, we must make abstractions and approximations. The people who work on such higher levels of abstraction are called chemists, biologists and neuroscientists.
So, it is not the job of quantum physicists to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Their job is to supply the chemists and biologists with fundamental concepts, which they will use as input for their work.
Reproduced with changes from Abhimanyu Susobhanan's answer to How would a quantum physicist explain the phenomenon of human life?
Some people argue unsuccessfully that quantum weirdness explains consciousness. When the subjects of consciousness, self awareness, the mind and free will are discussed philosophically we do run into serious paradoxes. It is tempting to bring quantum arguments into these discussions claiming that it is all because quantum states have random and non-intuitive behavior but there is no scientific evidence to support this. The reality is that consciousness is related to brain function, mostly to the thalamus region and the cortex and everything we currently know about brain activity is based on nerve synapses (ends of axons) which are classical electric pulses that have no quantum nature because at the strength of these electric pulses all quantum effects are already observed and therefore lost any quantum coherence. That doesn’t exclude the possibility that quantum effect are involved in nerve activity but at the current state of science there is no basis for this assumption.
Views · View TimelineCurrently consciousness is not understood. Not even close. It is one of the least understood subjects we humans cogitate on. Quantum mechanics is another.
Neither the old quantum mechanics nor the new quantum mechanics (QFT) explains consciousness. Well, let me qualify that. Since we don’t understand consciousness, how would we even know if QM explained it? We wouldn’t.
But from my own perspective (a minority view, I’m quite sure), quantum mechanics as we have it today, circa 2017, doesn’t even explain quantum mechanics. Doesn’t even try. Doesn’t even care to. So there’s that.
The equations allow predictions; they do not promote understanding.
True quantum mechanics lies hidden somewhere beyond the differential equations. A whole new landscape to explore.
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There is a effort made by some scientists to predict the global consciousness of people by running statistical analysis on the Random numbers generated by strategically placed machines around the world. The project is called Global Consciousness Project.
They have observed a structure in their data multiple times that co-existed with the significant global event like 9/11, Football Final match or any event that affected feeling of millions of people.
No. We don't even know what consciousness is.
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I do not think so, although I do believe understanding quantum physics may affect consciousness. The study of the “designs” of life has recently developed to spiritual associations. These developments are fundamental for the human consciousness overtime.
Quantum is considered to be the “spiritual” study of laws and attractions on Earth. The physical laws, and quantum laws affect every aspect of life, on Earth.
Basically, I believe the understanding and application of the quantum physics theory (how attractions affect us individually) changes our consciousness levels.
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You can't use QM to explain consciousness untill you understand QM. I knew I understood QM, at least in a general way, when I realized that Probability was completely mathematical as opposed to being a function of observational uncertainty, i.e. local realism. When I looked at mathematics as essentially comprised of logic bits, X/not-X, I understood how quantum matter/antimatter entanglement worked. You cannot have X without not-X. So on the level of local realism, you cannot create a matter particle without at the same time creating an antimatter particle. Looking back I realized that X/not-X are logically entangled just as particle pairs are and that the local realism of particle/antiparticle entanglement was based on the logical entanglement of X/not-X.
To understand quantum spin entanglement I had to dig a little deeper into the common origin of Logic and Probability. What I realized is that both Logic and Probability are based on Possibility. Possibility has every possible freedom, the foremost of which is that its somethingness aspect and its nothingness aspects have the freedom to in a limited way disassociate. One basic way this dissociation is observed is as the '/' in X/not-X which separation gives rise to Logic. A more extreme form of dissociation is seen as the collapse of the probability function and the manifestation of local realism. Local realism occurs because more extreme dissociation is also expansion i.e. Time and Space. Finally, one of the important possible ways (or freedoms) by which the aspects of Possibility can disassociate is by opposite spin, i.e. quantum spin entanglement.
How you and I know this to be true is because we are essentially Possibility so this is all of our shared history. We know it not because we observe it locally but apriori. On the apriori level QM and Consciousness are self explanatory.
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