Consciousness Is Fundamental

Consciousness will introduce a new kind of non-linearity to the complete evolution of wave function. The new non-linearity is definite, not stochastic… This provides a physical way to distinguish between man and machine.
— Foundations of Physics Letters, 17(2), (2004) 178

Consciousness is not reducible or emergent, but a new fundamental property of matter.
— Foundations of Physics Letters, 17(2), (2004) 179

A Brief Argument

According to the quantum principles, nonorthogonal states cannot be distinguished. However, the conscious being can distinguish nonorthogonal states. This indicates that consciousness violates the quantum principles, which are basic physical principles. Thus the consciousness property should be not reducible or emergent, but a new fundamental property of matter.

The consciousness property should be not only possessed by the conscious being, but also possessed by the atoms as well as the physical measuring apparatus. The difference only lies in the conscious content. The existing experience shows that the conscious content of a human being can be very complex, while the conscious content of a physical measuring apparatus, if it exists, may be very simple. Such simple conscious content cannot help to distinguish nonorthogonal states.

[*] For a detailed and complete argument see the new book Quantum Motion and relevant papers.

A Popular Introduction

Consciousness is the most familiar phenomenon. There are two distinct processes relating to the phenomenon: one is the objective matter process such as the neural process in the brain, and the other is the concomitant subjective conscious experience. The relationship between matter process and conscious experience presents a well-known hard problem for science (cf. Chalmers 1996). It retriggers the debate about the long-standing dilemma of panpsychism versus emergentism recently (cf. Seager 1999, 2001). Panpsychism asserts that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the world that exists throughout the universe. Emergentism asserts that consciousness appears as an emerging result of the complex matter process. It is generally accepted that an essential separation of consciousness and matter will preclude any real integration of consciousness with the present scientific picture of the physical world, and panpsychism and emergentism are the two main positions that can complete the integration. Then we must decide whether and how consciousness emerges from mere matter or whether consciousness is a fundamental property of matter.

Emergentism is the most popular solution to the hard problem of consciousness. But many doubt that it can bridge the explanation gap ultimately (cf. Chalmers 1996). On the other hand, although panpsychism may provide an attracting and promising way to solve the hard problem, it also encounters some serious problems. It is widely argued that the physical world is causally closed, and the consciousness property assigned by the panpsychism must lack all causal efficacies, i.e., there is a purely physical explanation for the occurrence of every physical event and the explanation does not refer to any consciousness property (cf. McGinn 1999). But if panpsychism is true, the fundamental consciousness property should take part in the causal chains of the physical world and should present itself in our investigation of the physical world. Then whether or not do the causal efficacies of consciousness exist? And how to find them if they do exist? Read More »

Relating Ideas