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