Quantum Information and Consciousness Theory

Quantum information panpsychism is a theory that I created together with

Professor Giacomo Mauro D Ariano

who is an expert in quantum field theory and quantum information that starts

with the idea that quantum fields are conscious

and have free will

So instead of having consciousness and free will

perhaps free will not even existing like most physicists believe

and consciousness like a property of brains this theory

promotes the idea and explains why we should start with consciousness and free will

at the beginning of the universe as properties that cannot be reduced to matter

and to anything else they must be primitives

of the universe Which is the wonderful title of your book Irreducible

Yes that's right

Okay so to get to that point which is a radical statement I'm

not accusing you of anything unusual by saying it's a radical statement

So what are the

assumptions that you're making that lead you to come to that

initial idea about materialism physicalism information quantum life consciousness

what are those foundational ideas from which you build to get that theory Yes

first of all it is impossible

I myself try very hard but no one has been able

to explain how consciousness

could emerge from matter which is not conscious

Consciousness is such a property that goes beyond what any kind of energy space

time we know

it transcends any of those properties therefore you cannot

get more with less in other words

So you have to

start with more and of course once there is consciousness

consciousness in order to be operational needs free will in order to act in

the world in a way that you know because it allows fields to know what they want

And if a field knows what it wants then it must act with free will

which is also a property we have

Obviously you know we are constrained by a body so we cannot do whatever we want But

fundamentally free will means that you can decide what to observe

and convert into an experience a conscious experience and also

what of your experience to convert back into symbols to communicate

shareable symbols to communicate with other fields That is the essence of the theory

Okay so what are the assumptions that you're making

You said regarding materials and physicalism that no one's had a remote

way of getting

consciousness out of non consciousness

Yes Therefore consciousness must be primitive You cannot explain

it but it can explain Once you accept that it's not in a free will you can explain

why for example quantum physics must have the properties that it has Well I mean an

argument that you've heard I'm sure is emergence

Emergence says that at different levels of the hierarchy of being there are

different principles that emerge that

were not seen at the lower levels and strong emergence said

it's impossible and weak emergence would say we just don't have the knowledge

yet but there's a radical difference A trivial example is an atomic bomb You have

whatever it is 15 1

kilograms of plutonium and you have a radioactive ball You have 15

2 and you have an atomic explosion and so because it reaches a threshold

and when that threshold occurs there's the emergence between a

small radioactive ball and an atomic bomb I mean that's the analogy people would

use to justify consciousness coming out of the physical brain Yeah yeah but you

cannot create something that can know itself by something

that doesn't even know what knowing means

You see that is

the fundamental difference Yeah emergence is fine within a kind of ontology

that has similar

properties We know that you know there are stars that explode

So you know all that stuff already exists and we can explain that but

how can you explain emergence of consciousness is something that's not conscious

If you can do that I mean if everything is a mechanism

then you have to find the mechanism that explains consciousness I mean you can

the mechanism of an explosion is can be understood you know

So but there is no mechanism that can explain something that

doesn't have a mechanism

Okay so what are

the assumptions that you're making about So basically consciousness

you know the motivation and the justification for starting with consciousness

and free will is that we can explain why quantum physics has

the crazy properties that it has I mean any kind of assumption has to have

explanatory power

Physicists have been unable to

understand why there is a collapse of the wave function What why do we go from

probabilities to actuality You know in a random non algorithmic way Why is that

possible And I mean that goes against the laws of

physics of classical physics where you can predict exactly what will happen

Determinism is the classical aspect of you know the

you know macroscopic bodies the moving space and time But in quantum

physics does not give you what happens It gives you all the

probabilities of what might happen

And that's a very different kind of theory It can tell

you what you can know about reality Look at that It tells you what you can know

knowing knowing

knowing consciousness knowing It doesn't tell you what happens

position and velocities of particles No it tells

you the probability of positions and velocities And in fact if it tells you

the probability of positions

it tells you nothing of the probability of velocities

Quantum physics

really has properties that no one has been able to explain You have to take

them as they are So why don't we take as they are properties that we know

exist because we have

them consciousness and free will Let's take those as fundamental

and see that they can explain something

that actually refers to the physical world In fact it refers to the mind

of the universe

To the mind of the universe To what can be known about the universe