Intuition, Consciousness and the Physical Universe - Lent 2023: Day 18

Here's an intuition I jotted down in my notebook five days ago, captured on paper as soon as I had it: "Intuitions pass through you like neutrinos; most pass straight through you, some you catch and let go and forget, some you catch and hold." Those words, noted on the morning of Monday 6 March.

Intriguing! Like neutrinos, eh? 

I check.

"Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles famous for passing through anything and everything, only very rarely interacting with matter. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second."

The vast majority of neutrinos are a byproduct of nuclear fusion in a star's core. There are also (rarer) neutrinos born in supernovae. But to me, the most interesting form is the relic neutrino, found in the Cosmic Neutrino Background. 

From Wikipedia: "The cosmic neutrino background (CNB) is the universe's background particle radiation composed of relic neutrinos. The CNB is a relic of the Big Bang; the CNB separated from matter when the universe was just one second old [my emphasis]. As neutrinos rarely interact with matter, these relic neutrinos still exist today." It is estimated that relic neutrinos make up about 1% of all neutrinos in the universe

So - every second. 10¹⁴ neutrinos pass through your body. Proportionately, even if only 2 x 10¹² pass through your brain (occupying 2% of the body's volume), and only 1% of all neutrinos are relic neutrinos, that still leaves us with 2 x 10¹⁰ relic neutrinos passing through the brain every second.

But it's the 'very rarely interact' part that's interesting. 

How rarely is 'very rarely'? I ask ChatGPT: "The probability that a neutrino will interact with matter is incredibly small, typically less than 1 in 10 billion." Expressed in orders of magnitude that's less than 10^-10.

OK - now we're getting somewhere! We are now in an order of magnitude where in theory, a relic neutrino could be interacting with the matter within your brain twice a second.

What is the nature of that interaction? Chat GPT again: "The interaction of a neutrino with matter is described in terms of the weak nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The weak force is responsible for the decay of subatomic particles, and it is the force that governs the interaction of neutrinos with matter. When a neutrino interacts with matter, it typically exchanges a W or Z boson - the particles that mediate the weak force." All very dry. Can you feel that relic neutrino triggering a Z boson exchange? It happens twice a second or so...

Now I step in with a controversial proposition. What if relic neutrinos have some part to play in Consciousness? What if they are the basic building block of consciousness, or carrier of consciousness, or are in some other way linked to the phenomenon that we experience as consciousness? What, if in their incredibly rare interactions with biology, they spark... intuition?

This is all flaky stuff, built on nothing but the most basic knowledge of physics and cosmology, and above all - on intuition. But it is something - a modest attempt at least to engage with the Hard Problem of Consciousness in a non-Dualist way.

Lent 2022: Day 18
Zen in the Art of Meditation

Lent 2021: Day 18
Possibilianism

Lent 2020: Day 18
Teetering on the Edge of Chaos