With anesthetics and brain organoids, we are testing the idea that so-called quantum effects explain consciousness—and early results suggest that this long-derided idea may have been misconstrued.
The first mistake is of course to talk about Consciousness, which is a linguistic error even in academic circles. Instead of the word “consciousness” (a very popular word of the ignorant and ignorant), it is necessary to use the word awareness, which gives the topic a real bearing value.
This brings me to the question of “How does conscious experience arise?” Concrete experience has always arisen through concreteness itself, that is, by having its origin in specific quantum phenomena in our brain.
Such ideas have existed in various guises on the fringes of mainstream academic research on consciousness (misconsciousness) for decades. They have never caught on because, as their critics argue, there is no reliable experimental evidence that quantum effects occur in the brain, let alone a clear idea of how they would give rise to consciousness.
It is generally accepted that consciousness, or more generally mental activity, is somehow correlated with the behavior of the material brain. Since quantum theory is the most fundamental theory of matter currently available, it is a legitimate question whether quantum theory can help us understand consciousness.
There are three basic types of matching approaches:
(1) consciousness is a manifestation of quantum processes in the brain,
(2) quantum concepts are used to understand consciousness without reference to brain activity, and
(3) matter and consciousness are considered dual aspects of one fundamental reality.
In our next articles in this scientific section, we will discuss the main current and traditional variants of these quantum-inspired approaches. We will point out that they make different epistemological assumptions and use quantum theory in different ways. For each of the approaches discussed, both problematic and promising features will be highlighted.
…to be continued next time…