There's a major philosophical debate in science about the nature of consciousness (I recommend dipping into the Closer To Truth discussions with Robert Lawrence Kuhn on YouTube). There are scientists and philosophers who will traditionally argue that consciousness is no more than an emergent property of the brain, limited to what goes on within the skull of higher-order animals. Others suggest that consciousness might well be like matter - a fundamental property dispersed across the Universe - and like matter, something that can neither be created nor destroyed, only altered. I have long held the latter view.
The notion of non-local consciousness - panpsychism - is explained by philosopher Phillip Goff in this 2020 interview in Scientific American: "In our standard view of things, consciousness exists only in the brains of highly evolved organisms, and hence consciousness exists only in a tiny part of the universe and only in very recent history. According to panpsychism, in contrast, consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it. The fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience. And the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow derived from the experience of the brain’s most basic parts."
So on to the human brain - assuming electrons have some proto-consciousness, how does it end up in the magnificent experiences that we call awareness or consciousness?
The Penrose-Hameroff theory of orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) - consciousness being caused by quantum events taking place within the structures inside the neuron called microtubules - has been around since 1996. Widely criticised by the scientific establishment, the Orch OR theory of quantum consciousness has neither been validated nor dismissed over the past quarter century. Nor indeed built on.
An article appeared today [link here] about an experiment which looks at one potential way in which quantum particles could move about in the brain. Although it was conducted in a lab rather than in a brain, it could yet lead to further developments that would show whether or not Nobel prize-winning physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff were on the right track or not.
Cristiane de Morais Smith, professor of theoretical physics at Utrecht University, and Professor Xian-Min Jin at Shanghai Jiaotong University, have published a paper describing their tests of the principles underpinning the quantum theory of consciousness. They looked at quantum transport in fractal networks (though quite what this means is beyond me). Prof. de Morais Smith writes: "Our observations from these experiments reveal that quantum fractals behave in a different way to classical ones. We found that the spread of light across a fractal is governed by different laws in the quantum case compared to the classical case. This new knowledge of quantum fractals could provide the foundations for scientists to experimentally test the theory of quantum consciousness. If quantum measurements are one day taken from the human brain, they could be compared against our results to definitely decide whether consciousness is a classical or a quantum phenomenon."
"Is consciousness everywhere?" "It is and it isn't until a conscious observer observes it there."
My bet is on consciousness being a quantum phenomenon.
"Allow for the possibility that the future is relevant to the present." - Jeff Tollaksen, professor, co-director, Institute of Quantum Studies, Chapman University.
[UPDATE 23 JULY - two days after I write this post, this article pops up on Salon.com. "Panpsychism ... offers an explanation for consciousness that doesn't try to do an end run around the known laws of the physical world, but assumes consciousness is an intrinsic part of it," the article says - although it doesn't mention the Penrose/Hameroff Orch OR theory.
This time three years ago:
Ahead of the S7 extension - Dawidy
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