Category Archives: What is consciousness

What is it like to be an electron?

In 1974 philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked, “What is it like to be a bat?”.[1] His question was meant to illustrate a point about consciousness, namely that a living thing is conscious only if there is something that it is like to be that living thing from the perspective of the thing itself. He said that humans cannot understand what it is like to be a bat because we can describe the bat externally, and we can imagine being a bat, but we can never describe the experience of a bat from the perspective of the bat. That is in large part what many philosophers call the “hard problem” of consciousness. In this view, consciousness is the subjective experience of “what it is like to be” something, whether a human or another living entity.[2] Consciousness requires a sense of self, something that creates a perspective on what it is like to be that particular thing. And that something—subjective experience—cannot be fully described from any external or objective perspective. Therefore, since humans cannot share the subjective experience of a bat, it is impossible to fully describe a bat’s consciousness.

Yet we have much in common with a bat. We are both carbon-based life forms that breathe air and consume organic material. We are both mammals. We both experience life and death as physical creatures seeking to survive, mate, and persist. More fundamentally, we are both composed of molecules, atoms, and smaller quantum particles or waves that emerge from quantum fields. Our momentary existence owes itself entirely to the ability of superpositioned quantum fields to generate discrete macroscopic events through a physical process known as quantum reduction. Humans, bats, and all the seemingly discrete things in the universe manifest temporarily as separate and distinct, but exist permanently as vibrations of infinitely connected and constantly interacting quantum fields. In other words, our objective physical existence is shared almost entirely with a bat. And the core of it is shared even with an electron.

Why do we define consciousness only by subjective experience?

We take pride, of course, in that sliver of identity that we consider distinctive. We relish being different, unique, or even superior to the rest of the universe. But is that veneer of difference the sole pillar of our consciousness? Should our understanding of consciousness be founded on subjective experience alone? Given the physical realities of existence and our profound connections to literally everything in the universe, is it realistic or even intellectually honest to suppose that consciousness is based solely on what separates us? Should we instead savor our temporary distinctiveness, without denying the reality that we are not truly separate, and the subjective experience we prize, our fragile sense of self, may be an illusion?

Is consciousness grounded on subjective experience an illusion?

That is precisely what many of our most prominent philosophers and scientists believe. They disagree with Nagel that consciousness is ineffable and “hard”. They offer objective, physicalist explanations for our sense of self, explanations that directly link consciousness to the physical substrate from which we emerge. They argue that consciousness and self are illusions, useful illusions perhaps, but nonetheless illusions. All that really exists is what lies beneath the illusion—the objective physical substrate of existence. Our consciousness and sense of self equate to the completely physical biological factors that create brain states, perceptions, and ideas, i.e., neurons, neuronal networks, and all the neural behavior that has evolved in living things over millions of years of natural selection.

Yet despite disagreeing with Nagel about the ability to describe consciousness objectively, physicalists almost invariably accept subjective experience as a defining characteristic of consciousness. They assume that subjective experience, as illusory or delusional as it is, is an essential element of consciousness. So, if the subjective self is an illusion, then consciousness also is an illusion. Consciousness cannot be real or objective because it arises from a subjective illusion. The obvious corollary is that objective experience is not sufficient for consciousness. Natural selection operating on the physical substrate can give rise to the illusion of consciousness but cannot give rise to actual consciousness.

Does objective consciousness exist?

The conclusion that consciousness does not exist, however, both begs the question and is inconsistent with physical explanations for the evolution of consciousness. It relies on an assumption that subjective experience defines consciousness, but if consciousness equates to the physical and biological factors that create brain states, then those physical factors and brain states are consciousness. It is not the illusion of the subjective self that comprises consciousness, but the physical factors and processes engineered by natural selection.[3] Those natural processes drive organisms to become aware of their physical existence and the biological facts that inform that existence. Millions of years of evolution give organisms the empirical experience of self-awareness and self-directedness. A biological organism, therefore, has an objective experience of something like consciousness, whether or not it experiences the illusion of subjective self.

That natural objective experience of consciousness aligns well with the ideas of many religious philosophers.[4] We humans have a long history of understanding consciousness as something other than subjective experience alone. Religious philosophers often agree with physicalists that the subjective self is an illusion. They argue that reality lies beneath the subjective experience of thoughts and desires. But beneath the illusion they see more than the absence of self and the presence of physical factors creating brain states. They also see an awareness that is deeper than the self and subjective experience. They see what some call “pure consciousness”.

Is there such a thing as pure consciousness?

Both secular and religious philosophers talk about learning to live without the reification of subjective experience. They talk about life without illusion, the acceptance of who and what we are as physical beings. Is that the deeper experience described by religious philosophers? Is it a state of calm and acceptance in which random thoughts and desires are quieted in the brain? Or is it more? Does it encompass awareness not based on the subjective self, but on direct objective experience? Is that “pure consciousness”?

Can humans experience objective consciousness?

Natural selection has given even simple organisms an objective, physical experience of self-awareness and self-directedness, even without the illusion of a subjective self. Is it possible, therefore, to know what it is like to exist without subjective experience? Is human consciousness, which we attribute solely to subjective self, also based partly on objective, physical experience? Does our complex consciousness incorporate the rudimentary consciousness common to all forms of biological existence?

Perhaps more fundamentally, if the rudimentary experience of consciousness is shared by even the simplest organism, is it a biological version of something more essential still? At its most basic level, is the objective experience of consciousness simply the experience of being a physical thing?

What is it like to be a physical thing?

We and all biological organisms are first and foremost physical things. We experience being a physical object every moment of our existence. It is what we are. It is all we ever are. If our consciousness incorporates the objective experience of consciousness shared by every organism, does it also incorporate the experience of being a physical object or mechanism? Does some part of us know what it is like to be a physical thing without subjective experience? Is it even possible for us not to know what it is like to be what we in fact are?

Is consciousness the opposite of a purely subjective experience?

There are both secular and religious philosophers who believe that matter in its most basic form consists of consciousness. That even electrons, as part of the core fabric of existence, contain a germ of consciousness. Should we view a theory such as panpsychism as an acknowledgement and affirmation that we are physical beings? That our consciousness is the consciousness of physical things?

If what it is like to be a physical thing is objective consciousness, that experience would encompass being a collection atoms, cells, and neurons, whether or not they generate an illusion of subjective experience. It would encompass what it is like to be a mechanism or a robot, with or without subjective sentience. It would include what it is like to be a stone, a molecule, or an atom. It would encompass even what it is like to be an electron.

What if Thomas Nagel and so many others are wrong about subjective experience and consciousness? Perhaps consciousness is not unique to our subjective point of view but the experience of something physically universal. Maybe the pure consciousness lying beneath our subjective selves is the simple experience of what it is like to be.

[1] Nagel (1974).

[2] Nagel’s article assumes, without discussion, that only living things have subjective experience of “what it is like to be” something. From that perspective, there is nothing that “it is like to be” an electron, because an electron is not an organism and has no subjective experience of itself as a living thing. Other than animists, pantheists, and panpsychists, most philosophers and scientists today likely would agree that an electron, or any other non-living thing, does not have consciousness.

[3] What exactly has been happening over millions of years of natural selection, if not the evolution of some objective sense of consciousness with its basis in physical biological existence?

[4] Of course, many religious conclusions are dualist and supernatural in nature. But that is not the path that interests us here. And it is not the path taken by all our most prominent religious philosophers. See, e.g., the non-dualism of Advaita Vedanta.

Emergent, not dead

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When physicists and philosophers talk about the universe, which they do a lot, they often talk about what is fundamental and what is not. What Is not fundamental is described as emergent, meaning that it emerges from what is fundamental. In the world of physics what is fundamental are the elementary particles and forces of which all other things are comprised. Everything else is emergent. That includes all combinations of fundamental things, starting with the atomic elements, the molecules, materials and substances, objects in space—planets, stars, and galaxies—and of course, all the organisms and entities that exist on objects in space, such as bacteria, plants, animals, and humans. All these things are described as systems created from components of fundamental particles and forces.

So far, so good.

The story gets more complicated when physicists and philosophers talk about causation and agency. There is a view among many that what is fundamental is more real than what is not. Emergent things are either not real or at least somewhat less real than what is fundamental. And even if admitted to be real, emergent things such as systems have less power—less causative power—than what is fundamental. Under this common view, all things and events in the universe result from the movements and interactions of fundamental particles and forces. The actions and interactions of emergent things and systems result from and are caused by fundamental particles and forces. Exclusively. Causation moves in only one direction, from what is fundamental to what is not. There is no reverse causation or feedback loop from emergent things to fundamental things.

Does downward causation break the laws of physics?

Downward causation refers to the power of things that are not fundamental, i.e., all emergent things and systems, to exercise causation or agency. Such top-down causation is often described as supernatural and a violation of physical laws. Physicist Sean Carroll talks about focusing on one atom in a finger of his hand and predicting its behavior based on “the laws of nature and some specification of the conditions in its surroundings—the other atoms, the electric and magnetic fields, the force due to gravity, and so on.” Such a prediction does not require “understanding something about the bigger person-system.”[1] It goes without saying that the action of moving his hand is not relevant to predicting the motion of the atom.

Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder calls it a “common misunderstanding” that a computer algorithm written by a programmer controls electrons by switching transistors on and off or that a particle accelerator operated by a scientist causes the collision of two protons to produce a Higgs boson. In both cases it is the deeper fundamental physical composition, i.e., the neutrons, protons, and electrons, that explain the events; it is simply useful to describe the behaviors of the systems (the computer, the accelerator, the programmer, the scientist) in practical system-level terms.

[W]e find explanations for one level’s functions by going to a deeper level, not the other way around…. [A]ccording to the best current evidence, the world is reductionist: the behavior of large composite objects derives from the behavior of their constituents….[2]

The assumption of determinism

These assertions are not entirely uncontroversial. First, there is no universal agreement that the behavior of higher-level things can always be explained by looking at lower-level things and the behavior of constituents.[3] Systems admittedly are combinations of fundamental things, but those combinations result in properties and behaviors that don’t occur at lower levels. Many of the properties relevant to the behavior of emergent systems don’t even exist at the level of fundamental particles and forces. Trying to explain all emergent system behavior by describing the behavior of fundamental particles is somewhat like trying to explain a computer game by describing the opening and closing of logic gates on integrated circuits.[4] You might learn what’s occurring in the computer hardware, but you wouldn’t be able to play the game.

There also seems to be an assumption that “explained by” is equivalent to “caused by”. If you can describe the properties and behavior of a system in terms of particles and forces, then the behavior of the system is caused by those particles and forces. The ability to describe a system in terms of fundamental particles and forces seems relatively established, i.e., when an arm moves, that movement also constitutes the movement of many billions of tiny particles under the influence of fundamental forces. That much is uncontroversial. But whether those particles and forces also can decide to move the arm does not follow quite so logically or incontrovertibly.

That last step requires another key assumption—that the behavior of systems is completely determined by the behavior of fundamental particles and forces. It requires a conclusion that “using the laws of physics to move my arm” is equivalent to “having my arm moved by the laws of physics.” In other words, it assumes complete determinism, which means the behavior of the universe can be analogized to a long chain of dominoes stretching back to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, all falling in a deterministic pattern. Your arm, my arm, and any decision to raise any arm are all dominoes in that chain.

The problem with dominoes

On the face of it, a long chain of dominoes seems a simplistic and brittle design architecture for 13.8 billion years of history. But putting aside the fragility of the design, there is a more fundamental problem with a picture of the universe based on a chain of dominoes—our deepest theory of physical reality says that what is fundamental is not wholly deterministic. Quantum evolution is not deterministic but probabilistic. It integrates uncertainty, probability and indeterminacy into what is fundamental. Determinism relies on an unbroken chain of events and causes. Quantum mechanics breaks the causative chain at a very deep level—the level of fundamental particles and forces.

The problem with indeterminacy

The story does not end there, however. Because quantum indeterminacy does not run rampant through the macroscopic world. Nor does it not cause quantum mechanics to produce nonsensical, random, or chaotic results. No, in fact, despite breaking the causative chain of determinism, quantum mechanics produces extremely accurate predictions and is one of the most successful tools ever created by physics; it is the foundation of much of our advanced technology. Microscopic quantum indeterminacy simply does not result in ubiquitous macroscopic indeterminacy.

The reason is that the seemingly random indeterminacy of quantum state reduction, i.e., what we might call quantum jumps, occurs within the probability distribution of the quantum wave function. As a result many, many microscopic quantum jumps average out to produce aggregate results predicted by the wave function. The laws of probability cause those many, many trillions of tiny quantum interactions to produce a macroscopic world that looks like the world predicted by the wave function and by classical physics. The macrocosm does not look like the quantum world; it looks like Newton’s classical world.

So have we come full circle? Does quantum indeterminacy break the causative chain of determinism and then fail to affect the macroscopic world at all? Does it average out so completely that it becomes irrelevant to emergent systems?

Probabilities are not dominoes

We don’t know the full answer—yet. But it seems vanishingly unlikely that something as fundamental as quantum indeterminacy plays no role in the macroscopic world.

It is true that portions of the macroscopic world seem to act in a largely understandable way consistent with a more determinist view of physical behavior. And yet we know that if we drill down deep enough into the behavior of macroscopic systems, we will find beneath the surface both practical and theoretical uncertainty limiting what we can measure and know about quantum behavior.

We also know that there is a difference between predicting the probability of something happening and predicting what actually happens. There is a tension between those things, a dynamic that makes a difference, even in the emergent world. Probabilities are predicted distributions over many occurrences. In any one occurrence, the particular result is not predictable. So even if the broad-scale average behavior of emergent systems were predictable, the behavior of each system in each event is not. Nature presents us with an average, not an absolute, picture of the macroscopic world; classical physics works as an approximation of quantum physics only because of averages and scale.

Unpredictable variation, in fact, is a requirement for application of the laws of probability. Probability results in a meaningful representation of behavior only if there exists a large number of different events whose outcomes average into a distribution. That requires the occurrence of events which are not individually predictable. In other words, for the aggregate behavior of systems to converge on a meaningful probability, individual systems must have the ability to do something improbable. That must be true for any system whose actions are not predictable with 100% probability. Anything short of 100% requires that the system must on occasion do something less than 100% probable—something improbable or unlikely or even random.

That, of course, is exactly what many emergent systems do. From tumbling bacteria[5] to complex weather patterns to human beings, complex emergent systems on any given day do not conform to the average. Instead, they engage in deeply unpredictable behavior which fits a model of the universe based on probabilistic evolution, at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels.

Emergent systems learn to do random things

Natural selection may teach biological systems to do exactly that. Neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell theorizes that complex biological systems take advantage of the chance introduced by quantum indeterminacy to exert causal influence.

[T]he really crucial point is that the introduction of chance undercuts necessity’s monopoly on causation. The low-level physical details and forces ae not causally comprehensive; they are not sufficient to determine how a system will evolve from state to state. This opens the door for higher-level features to have some causal influence in determining which way the physical system will evolve. This influence is exerted by establishing contextual constraints: in other words, the way the system is organized can also do some causal work. In the brain, that organization embodies knowledge, beliefs, goals, and motivations—our reasons for doing things. This means some things are driven neither by necessity nor by chance; instead, they are up to us.[6]

Emergent systems evolve a design architecture that leverages indeterminacy without breaking the laws of physics.

The universe is not deterministic, and as a consequence, the low-level laws of physics do not exhaustively encompass all types of causation. The laws themselves are not violated, of course—there’s nothing in the way living systems work that contravenes them nor any reason to think they need to be modified when atoms or molecules find themselves in a living organism. It’s just that they are not sufficient either to determine or explain the behavior of the system.[7]

In particular, he describes how organisms use indeterminacy, embodied in “an inherent unreliability and randomness in neural activity,”[8] to exercise causative power in an extraordinary way: “[O]rganisms can sometimes choose to do something random.”[9]

Self-governing systems constrained by probability

Is it possible that the universe can construct autonomous, self-governing, decision-making systems? Can fundamental particles and forces create causation engines that are constrained by the laws of physics and probability but not fully determined by the particles and forces that build them?

Philosopher of physics Jennan Ismael argues that determinism does not rule out the existence of autonomous systems “with robust capabilities for self-governance.”[10] Self-governing systems can have the “felt ability to act spontaneously in the world, to do what [they] choose in the here and now, by whim or fancy, free of any felt constraints.”[11] These emergent systems cannot violate the laws of physics, but they can use them to their own advantage. They can choose without any other local force or subsystem compelling them to do so; they even can engage in capricious or random behavior in defiance of any attempt to predict their actions.

The catch is that this relatively unconstrained freedom exists only for subsystems of the universe where local laws and states are subject to exogenous interventions and no other subsystem can exercise complete control. The big picture is still governed by the global laws of the universe, where there can be no exogenous interventions (because the universe includes everything). Determinism still rules, operating with global laws at the global level. But at the local level, there is freedom for self-governing systems to influence each other and exercise autonomy.

Ismael rejects the notion that quantum indeterminacy changes this picture. And yet her compatibilist description of reality, and her distinction between local freedom and global determinism, looks and feels almost like the universe described by Mitchell—a universe in which the door is open for systems to evolve causative power. Ismael describes the development of the self with autonomous and self-governing capabilities in a way that is very like how Mitchell describes the evolution of free agency through natural selection.[12] In the universe described by both Ismael and Mitchell, fundamental particles and forces enable the existence of emergent systems that exercise agency even to the point of choosing random behavior.

What if the picture Ismael offers is almost entirely correct, except that quantum indeterminacy and probability govern at the global level? Such a world would look and feel like the world she describes, but it would not assume a global principle of absolute determinism. It would be governed by probability at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. Instead of circumscribed local freedom, self-governing systems would have the relative free agency described by Mitchell, allowing and encouraging them to exercise causative power to do things for reasons and even to do unexpected things.

What if that is who we are?

It is a truism that ideas can be powerful. Yet it is difficult to describe an idea in the language of fundamental particles and forces. The Pythagorean Theorem has influenced the history of mathematics, but what would the theorem look like represented only by fundamental particles and forces? Perhaps the brain of Pythagoras could be represented as a system constructed from fundamental things, but how exactly would particles and forces represent the mathematical concepts employed by Pythagoras—concepts which undoubtedly have exercised causal influence on other mathematicians, engineers, and scientists? The same question can be asked about the concepts of quantum mechanics. Fermions and bosons may behave quantum mechanically, but could they conceptualize quantum mechanics?

Unless we conclude that concepts have no causative influence—even the concepts of quantum mechanics—emergent systems must be able to exercise some causal power, including through the creation of ideas and concepts.

The inference seems inescapable that the universe and the fundamental particles and forces that comprise it can construct emergent systems with causal power—systems that can’t move the atoms of a finger by breaking the laws of physics, but can choose to move a hand.

Emergent, not dead.

[1] Carroll (2016), p. 109.

[2] Hossenfelder (2022), pp. 88-89. She does acknowledge that there are unanswered questions about the connections between the layers. “Why is it that the details from short distances do not matter over long distances? Why doesn’t the behavior of protons and neutrons inside atoms matter for the orbits of planets? How come what quarks and gluons do inside protons doesn’t affect the efficiency of drugs? Physicists have a name for this disconnect—the decoupling of scales—but no explanation. Maybe there isn’t one. The world has to be some way and not another, and so we will always be left with unanswered why questions. Or maybe this particular why question tells us we’re missing an overarching principle that connects the different layers.” Ibid., p. 89 (emphasis in original).

[3] See e.g., Anderson (1972), Ellis (2020).

[4] Analogy suggested by a passage in Ismael (2016), p. 217.

[5] Biologist Martin Heisenberg describes the ability of certain bacteria to initiate random tumbles in a search for food and a favorable environment. Heisenberg (2009).

[6] Mitchell (2023), pp. 163-164 (emphasis in original).

[7] Mitchell (2023), pp. 168-169.

[8] Mitchell (2023), p. 175 (emphasis in original).

[9] Mitchell (2023), p. 175.

[10] Ismael (2016), p. xi.

[11] Ismael (2016), p. 228.

[12] And also similar to the picture developed by Daniel Dennett. Mitchell (2023), p. 151. Dennett (2017).

Electrons R Us

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“Einstein could not bring himself to believe that ‘God plays dice with the world,’ but perhaps we could reconcile him to the idea that ‘God lets the world run free’.” – John Conway & Simon Kochen, “The Free Will Theorem”[1]

Are fundamental particles the source of free will in the universe? More specifically, does the unpredictable quantum behavior of electrons and other micro particles enable macro-level free choice?

Philosophers have puzzled over questions like these since Democritus and Epicurus.[2] The free will theorem of mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen addresses the quantum version of the question, famously asserting that if humans have free will, then electrons also have free will.[3] The theorem proves mathematically that the universe cannot be deterministic because the quantum behavior of particles is not determined by the past history of the particles or the past history of the entire universe. Quantum behavior is non-deterministic, therefore “[n]ature itself is non-deterministic.”[4]

Why do particles behave in unexplained ways?

Physicists have long observed that particles behave in a curious and unpredictable way during quantum evolution. In the initial phase of evolution, particles and their wave functions evolve over time according to the Schrödinger equation, with predictions of particle behavior changing in an expected and deterministic way. In this phase the future direction and behavior of a particle and its wave function is determined by its prior direction and behavior. In a later phase of quantum evolution, however, when the predicted behavior of a particle is tested with a measurement, something different happens. Instead of behaving in a predicted and determined way, the wave function seems to collapse, and the particle jumps to a specific measured state which cannot be predicted with specificity.[5] Physicists cannot say why or how the specific result occurs in that instance. It is in the range of possible results predicted by the Schrödinger equation, but the mechanism by which the particular result is chosen remains unclear.

Theorists have attempted to explain this behavior by suggesting the existence of unknown or hidden factors which determine the result. The theories assume that the relevant variable simply has not been discovered yet, but its discovery will explain the particular path taken by the particle and its wave function to reach the particular result in each instance. These are called hidden-variable theories.

Electrons make “free” choices

Conway and Kochen analyzed mathematically whether it is possible for hidden variables to determine the outcome of quantum reduction. Relying on non-controversial facts of quantum mechanics, they showed that if an experimenter is free to choose the experiment conducted on a particle, then it can be proven mathematically that the particle is “free” to choose the particular measurement result.[6] In other words, if the experimenter’s choice of how to conduct the experiment is not predetermined by an unknown factor, then it is impossible for the particle’s choice to be predetermined by an unknown factor.[7] The particle is as “free” as the experimenter, and the measurement result chosen by the particle can never be predicted by any preexisting event, variable, or information in the prior history of the universe.

Does the unpredictability of fundamental particles help explain human free will?

The established view among many physicists and philosophers of science is “no”. Fundamental physics is said to offer only two choices—strict determinism or pure randomness—neither of which leaves any room for human judgment or free will.[8]

In contrast, Conway and Kochen argue that the choices made by electrons are not purely “random” or “stochastic” but are more accurately described as “free” or “semi-free”. They believe that a form of “free” choice built into the quantum foundation of the universe may offer a basis for human “free” choice and will.[9]

Free or random

Quantum reduction does have some features not fully consistent with pure randomness. The seemingly “random” results of measurement are not arbitrary but fall within the range of possible results predicted by the Schrödinger equation. Over repeated measurements, the results also average out and approximate the results predicted by both the Schrödinger equation and deterministic principles of classical physics. Perhaps most significantly, particles in a state of superposition produce correlated measurement results. When one entangled particle is measured, with an unpredictable result, a measurement performed on a second twinned particle, entangled with the first, is correlated to the result of the first measurement and therefore more predictable. The twinned, entangled particles do not behave in a completely random way.[10]

Some believe that the alternative to determinism is randomness, and go on to say that “allowing randomness into the world does not really help in understanding free will.” However, this objection does not apply to the free responses of the particles that we have described. It may well be true that classically stochastic processes such as tossing a (true) coin do not help in explaining free will, but … randomness also does not explain the quantum mechanical effects described in our theorem. It is precisely the ‘semi-free’ nature of twinned particles, and more generally of entanglement, that shows that something very different from classical stochasticism is at play here.[11]

Conway and Kochen wrote as mathematicians, not neuroscientists, so offered no empirical evidence or theories to explain how the quantum behavior of particles might influence macroscopic entities such as ourselves.[12] But they had a strong belief that it was possible.[13]

Can random occurrences in the microcosm enable non-random evolution in the macroscopic world?

Even if quantum behavior were random, is there reason to believe that random action at the quantum level gives rise to non-random evolution, or something like choice, at the macroscopic level?

We know that random variation in nature can result in non-random evolution. An obvious example is quantum reduction itself, which is governed by the laws of probability. Those laws cause seemingly random results to average out and produce the appearance and reality of non-random macroscopic evolution. Natural selection is also an obvious example; it is based on the principle that random changes and genetic variations drive non-random evolution of species over time.

A less obvious example is the role that randomness and indeterminacy may play in the evolution of reason-based decision-making and free agency. In his book Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will, neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell challenges the position that “indeterminacy or randomness doesn’t get you free will.”[14] He argues instead for a direct connection between indeterminacy and the development through natural selection of reasoned judgment and meaning.

The idea is not that some events are predetermined and others are random, with neither providing agential control. It’s that a pervasive degree of indefiniteness loosens the bonds of fate and creates some room for agents to decide which way things go. The low-level details of physical systems plus the equations governing the evolution of quantum fields do not completely determine the evolution of the whole system. They are not causally comprehensive: other factors—such as constraints imposed by the higher-order organization of the system—can play a causal role in settling how things go.

In living organisms, the higher-order organization reflects the cumulative effects of natural selection, imparting true functionality relative to the purpose of persisting…. The essential purposiveness of living things leads to a situation where meaning drives the mechanisms. Acting for a reason is what living systems are physically set up to do.[15]

Uncertainty leads to interpretation, prediction, and the creation of meaning

Mitchell maintains that “indeterminacy at the lowest levels can indeed introduce indeterminacy at higher levels.”[16] If that is true, and indeterminacy is ubiquitous at both microscopic and macroscopic levels, the process of resolving that indeterminacy becomes a fundamental feature of physical existence.

For living systems, resolving indeterminacy means confronting uncertainty. Organisms, as a matter of biological necessity, must deal with a level of unreliability and randomness in the environment. It is built in. There is no escape from it.

With incomplete knowledge about expected occurrences in the environment, organisms learn to interpret events and predict what will happen in order to adapt behavior to threats or opportunities. Organisms that do this well tend to persist better than organisms that predict less well.

For organisms with neural systems such as ours, interpretation of events further leads to the imposition of meaning on the world in order to act and persist within it. The meaning given to events becomes important to survival, and acting in ways that are consistent with that meaning becomes crucial.[17] Creating meaning and acting for reasons helps us survive in an environment of uncertainty and indeterminacy. Natural selection therefore results in organic systems that specialize in interpretation and meaning and choice.

Indeterminacy means organisms can choose to behave randomly

Living systems also learn to use randomness to their benefit. Mitchell describes how the neural structures of our brains have evolved to reflect and take advantage of the uncertainty around us.

There is an inherent unreliability and randomness in neural activity that is a feature in the system, not a bug. The noisiness of neural components is a crucial factor in enabling an organism to flexibly adapt to its changing environment—both on the fly and over time.[18]

The system succeeds, not just despite uncertainty and randomness, but also because of it.

[O]rganisms have developed numerous mechanisms to directly harness the underlying randomness in neural activity. It can be drawn on to resolve an impasse in decision making, to increase exploratory behavior, or to allow novel ideas to be considered when planning the next action. These phenomena illustrate the reality of noisy processes in the nervous system and highlight a surprising but very important fact: organisms can sometimes choose to do something random.[19]

The ability to harness randomness enables the creativity that characterizes brains like ours and enhances our ability to survive and grow and persist. Mitchell cites the two-stage model of free will proposed by William James as a model for how organisms use randomness and indeterminacy to broaden the options available for decision-making.[20] Ideas spring to mind in a seemingly, or actually, random way, but then the organism applies judgment and decision-making to choose the option that suits the requirements of the system in that moment.

In humans, we recognize this capacity as creativity—in this case, creative problem solving. When we are frustrated in achieving our current goals or when none of the conceived options presents an adequate solution to the current problem, we can broaden our search beyond the obvious to consider new ideas. These do not spring from nowhere but often arise as cognitive permutations: by combining knowledge in new ways, by drawing abstract analogies with previously encountered problems in different domains, or by recognizing and questioning current assumptions that may be limiting the options that occur to us. In this way, humans become truly creative agents, using the freedom conferred by the underlying neural indeterminacy to generate genuinely original thoughts and ideas, which we then scrutinize to find the ones that actually solve the problem. Creative thoughts can thus be seen as acts of free will, facilitated by chance but filtered by choice.[21]

Similar to how new biological variations appear randomly in nature, but then are selected or eliminated through natural selection, humans rely on inherent randomness for creative inspiration, while implementing the constraints and systems of meaning that determine how we persist and why.

This model thus powerfully breaks the bonds of determinism, incorporating true randomness into our cognitive processes while protecting the causal role of the agent itself in deciding what to do.[22]

Quantum evolution and natural selection have given us the ability to resolve the indeterminacy at the heart of the universe by confronting uncertainty and harnessing it to the service of creativity, decision-making, and meaning. That is our superpower.[23]

We choose like electrons

So if Mitchell is correct that quantum indeterminacy permeates the universe and enables the evolution of choice and free agency, are Conway and Kochen also correct? Are we like electrons in a truly fundamental way?

Electrons make something like free choices through the process of quantum reduction. In that process the universe around the electron undergoes a deep transformation. Before the process the electron exists in an unrecognizable quantum world of infinite superpositioned possibilities; after the process the electron becomes part of a recognizable reality of finite events and things. The process transforms possibilities into mathematical probabilities which resolve into one unique occurrence in spacetime. The electron therefore has a superpower, too—it can resolve probabilities into unique outcomes.

Our superpower is very much like that. We are made of fundamental particles like electrons and we are creatures like electrons. The universe we inhabit is constructed through the process of quantum reduction. Second by second, the quantum world of possibilities transforms itself into the concrete world of spacetime. Our world is fundamentally about uncertain possibilities and probabilities resolving into the certainty of actual events.

That ubiquitous uncertainty is reflected in the structure and operation of our brains. By making decisions amidst uncertainty, we participate in the universal process of transforming possibilities into unique, concrete events. Natural selection has taught us to use the randomness that is foundational to that process; we use it for creative inspiration and to generate options for decision-making. We sometimes make random choices—intentionally.

The ability to make random choices—just as an electron does—may be crucial to the ability to make non-random, reasoned choices. John Conway perhaps had this in mind when he said that the free will theorem also could be called the “free whim theorem”.[24] Without the freedom to make random choices, making reasoned choices through judgment and logic may amount to nothing but determinism. True free will necessitates freedom to choose, and the “free whim” of the electron may be exactly what gives us that freedom.

Electrons R us.

[1] Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 27.

[2] Democritus argued that all action in the universe is determined by the movements of atoms. Epicurus, one of his followers, theorized that atoms swerve periodically in a way that breaks the chain of deterministic causation and preserves a conceptual basis for human freedom of action.

[3] In a follow-up article Kochen broadened the proof to demonstrate that the free behavior of particles is not dependent on the free behavior of humans. Kochen (2022).

[4] Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.

[5] This unexplained behavior is called the “collapse of the wave function”, also quantum state vector reduction, quantum state reduction, or simply quantum reduction.

[6] “[O]ur assertion that ‘the particles make a free decision’ is merely a shorthand form of the more precise statement that ‘the Universe makes this free decision in the neighborhood of the particles’.” Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 15.

[7] Conway and Kochen did not give credence to the proposition that experimenters are not free to choose their own experiments. “It is hard to take science seriously in a universe that in fact controls all the choices experimenters think they make. Nature could be in an insidious conspiracy to ‘confirm’ laws by denying us the freedom to make the tests that would refute them. Physical induction, the primary tool of science, disappears if we are denied access to random samples. It is also hard to take seriously the arguments of those who according to their own beliefs are deterministic automata!” Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 24.

[8] See e.g., Hossenfelder (2022).

[9] “Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom [of particles] is the ultimate explanation of our own.” Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.

[10] “Although we find ourselves unable to give an operational definition of either ‘free’ or ‘random,’ we have managed to distinguish between them in our context, because free behavior can be twinned, while random behavior cannot (a remark that might also interest some philosophers of free will).” Conway and Kochen (2006), p. 25.

[11] Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.

[12] “In the present state of knowledge, it is certainly beyond our capabilities to understand the connection between the free decisions of particles and humans, but the free will of neither of these is accounted for by mere randomness.” Conway and Kochen (2009), p. 230.

[13] “The world [the free will theorem] presents us with is a fascinating one, in which fundamental particles are continually making their own decisions. No theory can predict exactly what these particles will do in the future for the very good reason that they may not yet have decided what this will be! Most of their decisions, of course, will not greatly affect things — we can describe them as mere ineffectual flutterings, which on a large scale almost cancel each other out, and so can be ignored. The authors strongly believe, however, that there is a way our brains prevent some of this cancellation, so allowing us to integrate what remains and producing our own free will.” Conway and Kochen (2006), pp. 26-27.

[14] Mitchell (2023), p. 280.

[15] Mitchell (2023), pp. 280-281.

[16] Mitchell (2023), p. 159.

[17] “[T]he higher-order features that guide behavior revolve around purpose, function, and meaning. The patterns of neural activity in the brain have meaning that derives from past experience, is grounded by the interactions of the organism with its environment, and reflects the past causal influences of learning and natural selection. The physical structure of the nervous system captures those causal influences and embodies them as criteria to inform future action. What emerges is a structure that actively filters and selects patterns of neural activity based on higher-order functionalities and constraints. The conclusion—the correct way to think of the brain (or, perhaps better, the whole organism) is as a cognitive system, with an architecture that functionally operates on representations of things like beliefs, desires, goals, and intentions.” Mitchell (2023), pp. 194-195.

[18] Mitchell (2023), p. 175 (emphasis in original).

[19] Mitchell (2023), p. 175 (emphasis in original).

[20] Mitchell (2023), pp. 187-192, citing Doyle (2010).

[21] Mitchell (2023), p. 191 (emphasis in original).

[22] Mitchell (2023), p. 188.

[23] “This capacity to generate and then select among truly novel actions is clearly highly adaptive in a world that refuses to remain 100 percent predictable.” Mitchell (2023), p. 191.

[24] As reported by Jasvir Nagra in notes on a talk given by Conway in 2004. “He said he did not really care what people chose to call it. Some people choose to call it ‘free will’ only when there is some judgment involved. He said he felt that ‘free will’ was freer if it was unhampered by judgment—that it was almost a whim. ‘If you don’t like the term Free Will, call it Free Whim—this is the Free Whim Theorem.’” Nagra (2020).

What about the “delay”?

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Who are we really? Are we active agents making decisions and choices? Or are we passive observers of our actions with decisions made for us by autonomic or deterministic processes that allow us no real capacity for conscious decision?

Some contend that we are exactly those passive observers. Free will skeptics argue that forces far outside our control determine our actions and identities. The physical traits and capabilities that define us as humans do not originate with us as individuals, but with our ancestors long before we were born. They acquired those traits through natural selection in a process that played out over millennia, determining how our brains work and how we make decisions. The language that shapes how we think was invented 200,000 years ago and taught to us by prior generations. We are born into families, cultures, and civilizations—all of which define us before we take our first breath. Geography, climate, and environment give us certain opportunities, but deny us others. All these forces and events are themselves constrained by the movements of molecular and atomic and subatomic particles and fields that specify the range of possibilities available to every entity in the universe. In truth, there is much to support the view that we have little or no control over our actions, that free will and self-control are useful illusions.

The famous Libet “delay”

The proof often cited to support this view is the data generated by neuroscientists such as Benjamin Libet.[1] Libet conducted a series of famous experiments in which he took EEG readings of subjects asked to make random hand movements and record the time of their conscious decision to make each movement. The EEG readings showed a build-up of brain activity beginning before the subject was aware of the conscious decision to move. On average the readings showed electrical activity as much as half a second before the conscious decision, a build-up described as the “Readiness Potential”. Libet and others pointed to the onset of the Readiness Potential as the moment when the brain makes the decision to act, in this case by flicking a hand.

The experiments have been interpreted as showing a measurable delay between the beginning of the chosen action (assumed to be the onset of the Readiness Potential) and the conscious decision to take the action. In other words, the action seems initiated by a process other than the conscious decision itself. Apparently, our actions are determined by a physical process other than conscious decision-making. Conscious awareness seems to record the process after the fact, not initiate the process.

Free will skeptics cite these experiments as evidence that we do not have the agency we imagine we do. Our conscious decisions do not cause actions. We are instead passive observers of decisions driven by processes over which we have no control.[2]

Does the “delay” disprove free will? No.

The Libet findings and their progeny have been much discussed and debated over the decades since. The “delay” has become almost an accepted phenomenon in scientific and popular circles.

That broadly accepted view, however, is apparently wrong. The findings have been brought into doubt, even debunked,[3] by more recent neuroscientific research. They appear now to be artifacts of Libet’s analytical model rather than objective evidence of decision-making processes in the brain.[4] Contrary to the popular view, the “delay” data does not negate free will nor prove that conscious decision-making occurs after the fact.[5] New research interprets the data quite differently and offers a more robust explanation of the processes that govern decision-making in the brain.

The Libet experiments are not about meaningful decisions

Libet acknowledged that his findings do not apply to actions involving conscious deliberation,[6] the most common type of decision-making associated with free will or conscious awareness. His experiments focus on spontaneous decisions that are consequence-free for all practical purposes. Subjects are asked to flick a hand at a random time chosen by them on a whim without prior planning and without meaning attached to the movement. The experiments examine what occurs in the brain just prior to a movement made in the spur of the moment without deliberation.

Humans and other organisms make many kinds of decisions. There are decisions with grave consequences. There are decisions with almost no consequences, such as random choices about immaterial things. And there are decisions with many degrees of consequence in between. The choice to make a random, consequence-free hand movement is close to one extreme, almost an autonomic action relying on reflexive muscle movement more than thought or planning. The brain process for making such hand movements may be very different from the process for making decisions with consequences, which may require consideration over a period of time. For example, a decision to migrate from one region to another in search of food. Or a decision to take revenge on a murderous uncle, so elaborately over-thought that an entire dramatic production may be built around one lonely prince’s lengthy process of decision-making.[7]

Consequently, even if the “delay” were objective evidence of unconscious decision-making, it would be impossible to extrapolate from the data to a general model of decision-making for humans or other organisms.

The findings rely on faulty assumptions about how and when the brain decides to act

The brain is a living soup of electrical and chemical activity, with neurons firing constantly as they receive and respond to bits of information feeding into many parallel decision processes. The continual firing of neurons causes our brains to pulsate with electrical waves, which may help produce the state of watchfulness and preparation for action that the brain is designed to achieve.[8] Organisms must be ready to respond immediately to a threat or opportunity in the environment. Recurrent electrical waves with repeated peaks and troughs allow the organism to rely on the natural build-up of energy as a rapidly recurring launching point for action, helping the organism move faster in response to stimulus.[9]

Not every stimulus requires an immediate response, however, nor does every electrical wave result in action. Most electrical activity in the brain does not trigger awareness or response at all. The waves dissipate because they do not accumulate enough information or intensity to cross a threshold for action.[10] It is the waves that reach a certain point, perhaps in conjunction with waves or firings from multiple sources in the brain, that surpass a minimum threshold of attention and result in action. The brain decides to act, and the action starts to occur, when the threshold is crossed. Prior to that point, the wave is simply one of many recurring bursts of electrical activity that happen constantly without resulting in action.

The ”delay” is an artifact of the design of the experiment

Libet’s experiments by design focus only on electrical waves that precede spontaneous action. They measure the wave from onset to action, including the point prior to action when the subject becomes aware of an intent to act. The experimenters assume that the entire wave from trough to peak involves preparation for the spontaneous action and that the onset of the wave is when the brain decides to act. They overlook the possibility that what is identified as the Readiness Potential is not preparation for a specific action, but a general state of readiness which may or may not result in action. The action occurs in the experiments because they look only at waves that precede a spontaneous decision to act.

In fact, waves similar to the Readiness Potential can precede even actions that are not spontaneous, but prompted by the experimenter.[11] When subjects in Libet-style experiments are interrupted with a random click that cues them to initiate a hand movement immediately, faster responses tend to occur in conjunction with electrical waves similar to a Readiness Potential, even when the electrical wave began before the click cued the subject to act.[12] In other words, the movement by the subject, which could not have begun prior to the click, seemingly takes advantage of a pre-existing wave, as though hitching a ride to respond faster to the cue.

The same piggybacking may occur in the Libet experiments. A random hand movement may be just the sort of action to rely naturally on a recurring build-up of electrical activity in the brain. Asked to perform a voluntary movement with no particular reason to choose one time or another, the subject may rely on ongoing fluctuations in brain waves as a cue, in effect allowing the electrical waves to guide the choice of when to make the movement.[13] The result is that the movement happens near a natural peak of brain activity. It then appears to the experimenter as though the decision to move occurred at the trough of the wave rather than when the subject decided to act.

What ultimately causes action is whatever results in the wave increasing in intensity until it passes the threshold for action. That does not happen at the onset of the wave. It is more likely that the threshold is crossed when the conscious decision to take an action is made.[14] That may be exactly what pushes the wave over the threshold and results in action.[15] In other words, there may be no “delay” at all, because the time when the subject becomes aware of the intention to move may correspond with the time when the threshold for action is crossed.[16]

The Libet experiments make the classic mistake of building unchallenged assumptions into the structure of the analysis. The observed “delay” is likely a result of the assumptions underlying the experiment and an artifact of the data analysis, not something that occurs in the brain itself.

The experiments are premised on a dualist model of decision-making and consciousness

The concept of the “delay” is also founded on historical assumptions about the separation of “mind” and “body” that do not reflect biological processes of decision-making in the brain.

The experimenters assume a single point in time when decisions occur in the brain. They interpret the data as showing that the single point is not when we thought it was—at the time the subject becomes aware of an intention to act. Instead, they argue that the decision point is earlier—at the onset of the electrical wave which they identify as the Readiness Potential. The “delay” is then measured as the difference between the two points—the time between the unconscious decision and the later conscious awareness of the decision.

The assumption of a single decision point echoes the Cartesian notion of a central control room where “mind” resides and where decisions are made that control the “body”.[17] We imagine ourselves as having a center of consciousness in our brains where all decision-making occurs. The control room takes in data gathered by the senses, interprets the data, and makes decisions about how to respond. Libet-style experimenters accept this underlying notion that decisions occur instantaneously in the brain. They simply dispute that conscious awareness is where the decision occurs. Instead, they move the decision forward and calculate the “delay” between that presumed decision point and the point of conscious awareness.

Free will skeptics go further and argue that because awareness is “after the fact”, consciousness does not control decisions and free will is an illusion. They assume that a conscious and free human decision can be made only at an instantaneous time and place in something like a center of conscious awareness, the imaginary central control room.[18] If the decision or any part of the decision is made elsewhere, or made unconsciously or as an autonomic response of the body and brain, then the decision is not an act of free will. It is not controlled by “us” because “we” sit only in the central control room.

The straw man premise underlying the “delay”—and the free will arguments relying on it—is the magical central control room of mind-body dualism.[19] In fact, we know that humans and other organisms do not make decisions in that way.[20]

Decisions are processes

Decisions are iterative processes.[21] They do not happen instantaneously in one single place inside the brain. Some decision processes are fast, resulting in action within milliseconds. Some decision processes are slow, extending over a great many cycles of electrical activity.

Sensory information comes into different areas of the brain that process sight, sound, smell, touch, etc. Neurons fire in multiple areas. More information comes in. More neurons fire and signal other parts of the brain. Waves of electrical and chemical activity build and die out. Sometimes waves cross thresholds for action. More neurons fire.

All of this activity takes time. Time for information to flow around the brain. Time for information to be processed. Time for neurons to fire and communicate with other neurons. Time for thresholds of decision to be crossed and time for signals to travel to cells to trigger movement.[22]

Every one of these decision processes involves some autonomic or unconscious activity. Some processes are entirely unconscious. Some are partially autonomic or rely on a combination of autonomic and conscious processes. Some are deliberative and highly conscious. But even very deliberative decisions rely on biological and sensory processes that happen beneath the surface of our awareness.[23]

“We” are the entire process

Our cells and neurons, our tissues, our organs are what we are, but we have no ordinary conscious control over what they do.[24] The role of conscious awareness is not to manage autonomic or unconscious processes in the body, but to glean meaning from incoming information, to deliberate, to interpret external or internal events in ways that require conscious consideration.[25] When pre-programmed unconscious decision-making is insufficient to address a threat or an opportunity, that is when information comes to conscious awareness.

Lack of total control does not equate to zero freedom

Free will skeptics therefore are correct that conscious awareness does not drive all aspects of our decision processes. They are also correct that much of what we are as humans has been influenced or determined by forces and events far outside our individual control. We have neither total awareness nor total control.

But it does not follow logically that all our actions are autonomic and outside conscious control. We do not have zero control.[26]

We are imperfect and constrained decision-makers, but we choose nonetheless

Like other organisms, we exist in a state of uncertainty. Our knowledge of the external environment is filtered by sensory processes that have evolved through natural selection, but are imperfect. Conscious awareness of our own internal processes is limited. The “self” that we rely on for day-to-day survival is sometimes nebulous and even more uncertain than the external world. In fact, if Sam Harris and many spiritual mystics are correct, the entire concept of “self” is something of an illusion.[27]

We are not built for complete awareness of ourselves or our environment; we are built for uncertainty. Our senses and our conscious awareness have been tuned at a rudimentary level to distinguish between “us” and “not us”.[28] We use that limited knowledge of “self” to make decisions that have guided the development of our species over millennia. We take in sensory data, process it, and respond to the best of our capacities as organisms evolved to decide and act.

Both internally and externally our knowledge, our capacity, and our behavior are constrained. Yet those constraints make us who we are. They make us human instead of not human. They guide our behavior. As neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell has put it, “Selfhood … entails constraint. It is only constraint. The freedom to be you involves constraining the elements that make you up from becoming not you.”[29]

Despite every constraint and every uncertainty, we are designed by natural selection to be decision-making machines. That is who we really are.

[1] Libet (1983).

[2] Harris (2012), pp. 8-9.

[3] Gholipour (2019).

[4] “The RP [Readiness Potential] is generated by sampling only epochs that culminate in movement. In Libet-like tasks we never observe what happens when movement is not triggered. This raises the possibility that the RP is due to biased sampling, an artifact of the analysis process.” Schurger (2021), p. 562. “[T]he readiness potential is not in fact a signal of the intention to move that occurs long before subjective awareness but rather is an artifact of the way the data are analyzed.” Mitchell (2023), p. 185.

[5] Neuroscientist Kevin J. Mitchell describes the Libet experiments as “one of the most widely misinterpreted set of findings in human neuroscience….” “[T]he implications of these findings have since been widely extrapolated, way beyond the bounds of the actual experiment, to suggest that we never really make decisions at all, that our brains just do the deciding for us, and that we later make up stories to ourselves to rationalize our actions in some kind of post-hoc narrative. Indeed, these experiments are often cited as conclusive evidence that neuroscience has shown free will to be an illusion. This is, to put it mildly, a drastic overinterpretation.” Mitchell (2023), pp. 181, 183.

[6] “In those voluntary actions that are not ‘spontaneous’ and quickly performed, that is, in those in which conscious deliberation (of whether to act or of what alternative choice of action to take) precedes the act, the possibilities for conscious initiation and control would not be excluded by the present evidence.” Libet (1983), p. 641.

[7] Imagine the unconscious “readiness potential” that might appear in EEG readings of Hamlet’s brain over the course of his many days of doubt and indecision.

[8] See Mitchell (2023), Dennett (2003), and Dennett (1991) for general descriptions of brain behavior evolved through natural selection.

[9] Imagine a tiger crouching in the jungle, body and brain alert, muscles contracted and ready to respond to any sign of opportunity or threat, before it finally accumulates enough sensory information to cause it to spring, or alternatively, to relax its guard and move away.

[10] “[]he signal clearly fluctuates noisily up and down all the time. Sometimes it goes back down again, and the person does not move; other times it happens to reach a threshold, and then a movement is initiated.” Mitchell (2023), p. 184.

[11] “Indeed, simulations show that when the model is interrupted at random times and forced to produce a speeded response …, the fastest responses are preceded by a slow amplitude deflection (in the direction of the threshold) that long precedes the interruption itself, whereas the slower responses are not. Hence, even sensory-cued responses can be preceded by a readiness potential.” Schurger (2012), p. 2.

[12] “Presumably the increased (negative) electrical potential preceding faster responses cannot reflect preparatory neural activity, because the clicks [cues] were unpredictable.” Schurger (2012), p. 4.

[13] Mitchell (2023), p. 184.

[14] To return to the tiger analogy, the leap does not begin from the moment when the tiger’s muscles tense for action. Muscle contraction may occur over and over again before the leap. The leap occurs when the tiger has enough information to determine the time is ripe for the attack. That is when the tiger decides to move.

[15] “Indeed, if the decision to move is marked by the time of threshold crossing, then awareness of conscious intention to move coincides with the decision point, as common sense would suggest.” Schurger (2021), p. 566 (emphasis in original).

[16] “We propose that the neural decision to move coincides in time with average subjective estimates of the time of awareness of intention to move… and that the brain produces a reasonably accurate estimate of the time of its movement-causing decision events.” Schurger (2012), p. 7.

[17] See Dennett (2003), pp. 227-242.

[18] Dennett (2003), p. 242. “[T]here no such place in the brain. As I never tire of pointing out, all the work done by the imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theater has to be broken up and distributed in space and time in the brain.” Dennett (2003), p. 237-238 (emphasis in original). (The “imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theatre” is, of course, the magical central control room.)

[19] Dennett, after reading the 2019 article in the The Atlantic titled “A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked”, tweeted “The Libet results on free will and their many descendants are crumbling now, and there is more to come. A nice case of science exposing hidden dualist assumptions in neuroscience.” Tweet dated September 12, 2019, https://x.com/danieldennett/status/1172159910286680064.

[20] “In reality, mind and brain cannot be separated like this. A more accurate conception of the mind is as an interlocking system of cognitive activities that are necessarily mediated by the functions of the brain. In humans, some of these cognitive activities are associated with conscious mental experience, but they don’t all have to be to be effective.” Mitchell (2023), pp. 208-209.

[21] See Dennett (1991), pp. 134-135, for a description of what he calls a “multiple drafts” model of brain processing.

[22] “The brain processes stimuli over time, and the amount of time depends on which information is being extracted for which purposes.” Dennett (2003), p. 238.

[23] “We don’t experience the firing of our neurons or the flux of ions or the release and detection of neurotransmitters. What we do experience is what patterns of neural activity mean, at the level that is most relevant and useful and actionable for the organism as a whole.” Mitchell (2023), p. 209 (emphasis in original).

[24] And as Daniel Dennett reminded us, they are not even aware of our existence. “Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.” Dennett (2003), p. 2.

[25] “We do not need or want complete information for optimal oversight: what we want is the right information, at the right level. The key to control is precisely the selectivity of conscious awareness. We are configured so that most of our cognitive processes operate subconsciously, with only certain types of information bubbling up to consciousness on a need-to-know basis.” Mitchell (2023), p. 262.

[26] “Even if we can sometimes be primed by external factors, this does not mean that we never make our own conscious decisions for our own reasons.” Mitchell (2023), p. 251.

[27] Harris (2014).

[28] Mitchell (2023), p. 75.

[29] Mitchell (2023), pp. 247, 279 (emphasis in original).

Process is all!

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“Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.” William Shakespeare, King Lear (Act 5, Scene 2)

“Life is not a substance, like water or rock; it’s a process, like fire or a wave crashing on the shore. It’s a process that begins, lasts for a while, and ultimately ends.” Carroll (2016), p. 2.

Existence is process

A foundational premise of this blog is that we humans have learned an important thing or two about our universe. One of those important things is that the universe is about process, not substance.

We often think of physical reality as founded on fundamental particles and laws that govern the motion of those particles. Process, on the other hand, is something intangible that occurs in time. It begins and then ends, which is different from concrete stuff like water or rock. But we have learned that beneath the surface of that supposed tangible reality of substance, is a deeper reality in which all existence is intangible, consisting of process, not substance.

The underlying truth is that we live in a universe of events and interactions, more than a universe of irreducible things and particles.[1] Water and rock, not to mention mountains and planets, are more accurately described as slow processes rather than permanent substances. All substances and particles exist in a state of constant change. They represent knots of energy in fields of process and interaction. Everything we know is process. It is what the universe is.

So yes, life is not a substance. Nor is anything else in the universe. Process, not substance, is the constituent element of the universe. It is the core of reality.

The most fundamental “thing” in the universe is process

Beneath all the processes familiar to us is one process that is the foundation of all others—the quantum wave function. To the best of our knowledge, the quantum wave function is the most fundamental “thing” in the universe. And that fundamental thing is a process, not a thing at all.[2]

It is the process that defines the quantum universe, a world of infinite possibilities existing simultaneously across the plane of quantum reality, a world where all things are possible because all outcomes and experiences exist in superposition with each other.

That one process also creates the great illusion in which we live. The wave function both generates a world of all possibilities and provides a mechanism for transforming those possibilities into the unique events that we experience in the macrocosmic world.

Process drives the engine of time

Quantum state reduction—the process of reducing all those possibilities into actual results—produces the stream of outcomes that we know as history. Somehow the wave function transforms a set of complex-number-weighted alternatives into real-number probabilities, enabling those probabilities to play out in the macrocosm and resolve into a stream of unique outcomes. It makes each successive moment uniquely different from the last. It is how the universe rolls the dice, creating time and history as each roll brings one unique moment after another.

Process may be the origin of consciousness

This process of resolving probabilities into outcomes underlies the entire macrocosmic universe. It is also the most fundamental characteristic of consciousness. Whether we call it “free will” or simply engineered decision-making, humans and other conscious entities have the apparent ability to make choices among a range of possibilities. The choices are not unconstrained; they are limited by the physical probabilities attached to each possible outcome, the decision-making capabilities of each entity, and the laws of physics. The probabilities are defined by the wave function for the moment and context in which the choice is made. Each choice then helps define the probabilities inherent in the wave function of the next moment, which results in another choice. The process of consciousness is a living dramatization of quantum state reduction.

We don’t know yet how the physics of quantum state reduction enables consciousness. There may be quantum interaction in the brains or nervous systems of conscious entities.[3] Biological processes may be constrained by deterministic necessity to advance the universe from one nanosecond to the next with quantum state reduction. The whole macrocosm, including consciousness, may be the result of a constant process of subatomic state reduction that materializes the stage on which history plays out.

Quantum state reduction and its connection to consciousness are not fully explained by today’s physics. When the physics is known, however, it may be that the process of quantum state reduction is the origin of the process of consciousness in the universe.

All conscious entities are connected to that fundamental process

Human consciousness, like human life, is not permanent in the form in which we experience it. Our individual consciousness is time-based and time-limited; as far as we know, we experience unique consciousness only while the components of consciousness that comprise our existence are part of a living person. We are process, not substance.

As process, however, we are intimately connected to the process at the core of history and time, the process that creates the macrocosmic illusion in which we live. We are participants in that process. We help define the universe through the process of resolving probabilities into unique outcomes. It is what we do and what we are.

Is that one process also the root of connected consciousness?

If conscious entities inherit consciousness from the primary process of quantum state reduction, does that physical process also connect forms of consciousness? Is the physical foundation for connected consciousness located in quantum interaction that both germinates the process of consciousness and connects all conscious entities across the universe? Is quantum state reduction the raw material of connected consciousness?

[1] See e.g., Rovelli (2017), pp. 97-99, “The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.”

[2] See Professor Carroll again. “Not only does the deepest layer of reality not consist of things like ‘oceans’ and ‘mountains’; it doesn’t even consist of things like ‘electrons’ and ‘photons’. It’s just the quantum wave function. Everything else is a convenient way of talking.” Carroll (2016), p. 171

[3] Roger Penrose argues that human understanding includes a fundamental non-computable component. In his view, the source of that non-computability is likely to be found in quantum state reduction, which he believes must occur in the subatomic workings of the human brain. Penrose (1994), pp. 348-388. For a full review of the fascinating Orch OR theory of quantum consciousness developed by Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, see Hameroff and Penrose (2014).

Consciousness and the quantum wave function

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There is a longstanding interpretation of quantum physics in which a measurement conducted by an observer has the mysterious ability to “collapse” a probability wave function into a single measurement result. Whether this is a correct interpretation of quantum physics or whether the consciousness of the observer plays a role here is not a matter of agreement among physicists and philosophers. However, what does seem clear is that some form of interaction between the subatomic quantum world and the macroscopic classical world results in the probability distribution of a quantum wave function resolving into one unique, observable result. What is also clear is that a conscious observer, e.g., a scientist running an experiment in a lab, has the ability to produce an interaction that will resolve a quantum wave function into a unique measurement outcome.

Can a conscious observer collapse the wave function? Yes.

The result has been observed empirically, and it can be reproduced in a lab. Wave function collapse (also called state-vector reduction or quantum state reduction) is an established behavior of the quantum wave function when interacting with the macroscopic world through a conscious observer.

Is human consciousness required to collapse the wave function? Probably not.

The macroscopic universe and quantum state reduction have been around for 13.8 billion years; our earliest human ancestors arrived a mere 7 million years ago. Given these timeframes, it is unlikely that a human observer is required to collapse the wave function.

Quantum state reduction resolves quantum probabilities into unique outcomes. It transforms an array of co-existing possibilities with different probability amplitudes into a unique outcome, a distinct moment in time. The universe has managed this process without us for billions of years.

The macroscopic universe is manifestly not a place of co-existing possibilities in superposition. It is a place of actualities and events comprising macrocosmic history—the universe exploded; galaxies were born; stars and star systems evolved; we and perhaps others like us came into existence. All of these events occurred in a particular way because of a constant process of wave function collapse and transformation.

What does that tell us? It tells us that, in addition to physicists in a lab, there are other things or processes in the universe with the capacity to perform the magic.

The wave function has been performing the magic for billions of years

It is an empirical reality that some form of interaction between the macroscopic classical world and the microscopic quantum world results in quantum state reduction. This process has been going on since at least the Big Bang, and we have hypothesized that it serves as the underlying engine of time. Somehow the transformation from microcosmic quantum superposition into macrocosmic unique reality takes place.

We don’t have a full understanding of how this process happens. We don’t know if macroscopic interaction truly “collapses” the wave function or if what we describe as “collapse” is the result of some other process in the universe, such as the splitting of reality into “many worlds” in which all possibilities play out. We know only that there exists a process in the universe whereby interaction between the macrocosmic and quantum worlds causes probabilities to become outcomes, producing a stream of moments that we know as time and history. This process is at the core of macrocosmic existence. It is what the universe does.

The ability of the universe to perform this process without the interference of humans is not a matter of reasonable scientific doubt. The open question is not whether human consciousness is required for quantum state reduction. Clearly it is not. The real question is whether this universal process is required for consciousness.

Is quantum state reduction required for consciousness?

In the broad sense, the answer to this question must be yes. The macrocosmic universe as we know it would not exist without quantum state reduction, so we humans and human consciousness also would not exist.

However, does consciousness require quantum state reduction in a more functional sense as well? Does the process of consciousness require quantum interaction either at the neuron or subatomic level inside our brains? Could there be a continuing process of quantum state reduction occurring in the brain that enables the distinctive, noncomputable qualities of consciousness?[1]

Is the wave function the origin of consciousness?

The jury is still out on whether quantum interaction plays a role in the physical functioning of the human brain. But perhaps the answer is simpler than that. Could there be a more ontological connection between the universal process of quantum state reduction and the process of consciousness? Does the ability of a conscious observer to perform quantum state reduction in a lab suggest a taxonomical connection?

The process of resolving probabilities into outcomes is perhaps the most fundamental process in the universe. Is it also the most essential attribute of consciousness? At a physical level, is human consciousness a species or instantiation of the universal process of resolving probabilities into outcomes?[2]

Is process consciousness?

Quantum state reduction occurs every nanosecond in the macrocosmic universe. We exist because of it. We are also part of it. Our human consciousness is one of many processes in the universe that resolve probabilities into outcomes. We are built as decision-making entities to survive through the choices we make and the actions we take. Does the process of making choices perform the equivalent of quantum state reduction? Do our choices resolve probabilities into outcomes that then shape more probabilities and more outcomes? Is the process of consciousness part of a more universal process of becoming that has its roots in the microscopic quantum world?

If that is so, can consciousness be generalized to comprise any process that constitutes a resolution of the wave function into an outcome? Is that the abstract, most generalized definition of consciousness?

Is the process of quantum state reduction itself the functional and ontological equivalent of consciousness?

[1] Physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose and neuroscientist Stuart Hameroff have developed an ingenious theory called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (or Orch OR), which builds on Penrose’s theories around the objective nature of quantum state reduction to construct a model of brain behavior and the development of consciousness based on quantum interactions. For a review of the current status of the theory and related empirical research, see Hameroff and Penrose (2014). For a detailed discussion of possible quantum interaction in the brain and non-algorithmic, noncomputable ingredients in thought and consciousness, see Penrose (1989), pp. 516-581, and Penrose (1994).

[2] Penrose and Hameroff argue that the objective process of quantum state reduction (Objective Reduction or OR) results in moments of proto-consciousness in the universe. These events are hypothesized to have “rudimentary subjective experience, which is undifferentiated and lacking in cognition”, but which serve as raw materials that can be orchestrated through evolution of more complex brain interactions to create full-blown consciousness. Hameroff and Penrose (2014), p. 72.

“I don’t want to die”

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If we are as we seem to be—organic mechanisms with consciousness—how did we come to be? Why did the universe generate life forms such as us? Was it an accident? Is consciousness an accident?

There are two central questions here. First, how did life come to be? Was it an accident of chemistry or were there forces in the mechanism of the universe that caused it to generate life? Second, once life came to be, how did consciousness also come to be? Why did we with our many questions come to exist? Why is the universe not populated by organisms with simpler brains and far fewer questions?

For the time being, I will leave the first and most difficult question to others.[1] It may be that the creation of life as we understand it was an accident of chemistry. For now I will say only that when the Big Bang created the diversity of matter and energy that came to form the macrocosmic universe, it perhaps was not surprising that such diversity included the raw materials of evolution, awareness, consciousness, and self-examination of the universe itself.

The second question is marginally easier to address than the first. It comes down to how and why natural selection generates beings with consciousness as we know it. Is consciousness an accidental artifact of evolution or is there a mechanism or principle that biases natural selection toward the evolution of consciousness?[2]

Does natural selection select for consciousness?

It may be true that consciousness, once it exists, is a trait that increases reproductive success. A gradual and incremental evolution of consciousness may be a natural result of the increasing survivability of species that develop efficacious systems for maintaining awareness of the outside world and the potential threats and opportunities that can be found there. That by itself may be sufficient to explain the existence of consciousness as a survival mechanism. But is it enough to explain conscious intellectual life as we know it? Or does some other characteristic or refinement of consciousness result in life forms that ask philosophical questions?

Does natural selection require organisms that want to live?

A rock does not care about its survival. It does not have “wants”. So we ordinarily do not think of a rock as having consciousness or a desire to ask philosophical questions. Nor do we think of a rock as being subject to natural selection.[3]

At a certain point in the development of the universe, however, organisms appear that are subject to natural selection. They live and die and pass on hereditary characteristics to successors. It may seem obvious, but simultaneously or at some subsequent point, organisms appear that not only live and die and exist, but also have a desire to exist—to eat, to mate, to create a future. They want to survive and not to die. That “want” is almost certainly a trait that evolution selects for success.

Admittedly, it may play only an indirect or minor role in evolutionary success. The simple desire not to die surely must be present in all surviving species with any sense of awareness, so it is likely neither a differentiator among species or organisms, nor a statistical predictor of reproductive success. However, it is perhaps a precondition to the success of species like ours. Does that precondition help explain not only rudimentary consciousness but also the development of intellectual life as we know it?

“I don’t want to die”

To have the desire to live and not to die, an organism needs a definite boundary between itself and the external world, including other organisms. It must have at least some nebulous sense of self or “I”—the thing that does not wish to die. It also needs some awareness of “death” as loss of that thing. The desire to live and not to die therefore bears within it some fundamental questions about existence:

What is I? What is self?
What is death?
What does it mean for “me” to “die”?
Is it possible for me not to die?

These basic questions are germinated within the most basic desire of any living organism—the desire not to die—and they are the recognizable seeds of philosophy and intellectual life.

As other traits evolve to make an organism more successful, the seeds of expanded consciousness grow and develop along with the intellectual capacities of the organism. They accompany the evolution of bigger brains that enable the manipulation of tools and the environment. They are there when language is created, hovering in the back of the conscious mind, ready for expression in the culture that language enables.

Organisms use their big brains to survive and build better, and the process of survival itself encourages the introspection that drives intellectual development. The one simple desire—wanting not to die—puts life on a path toward expanded consciousness. Even if the will to live is not a differentiator among species, it is a necessary ingredient for natural selection, and it may open a door that cannot then be closed, leading inevitably to full consciousness, self-awareness, and intellectual self-examination. The will to live may or may not make us stronger, but it does make us more philosophical.

Consciousness may be no accident at all

All in all, there may be a clear path from that first moment of wanting to full sentience and human consciousness. Natural selection may be a biological and philosophical exercise, a way for the universe to evolve its own understanding of itself.[4] If that is true, then the gradual evolution of consciousness is a natural and expected result. It is not an accident. It is grafted onto the roots of the origin of species.[5]

[1] Thomas Nagel in Mind and Cosmos frames both questions and offers a far-ranging discussion of the pros and cons of philosophical theories that purport to answer them. Nagel (2012).

[2] Or is this one of an infinite number of universes with all possibilities realized in at least one? Hmm…. I am with Thomas Nagel on this possibility. “Well, there is the hypothesis that this universe is not unique, but that all possible universes exist, and we find ourselves, not surprisingly, in one that contains life. But that is a cop-out, which dispenses with the attempt to explain anything.” Nagel (2012), p. 95, footnote 9.

[3] Although it may be worth considering whether there could be some inorganic equivalent of natural selection that guides the evolution of substances and particles and processes in a way that is comparable to how natural selection guides the evolution of living things?

[4] “Each of our lives is part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.” Nagel (2012), p. 85. “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Carl Sagan.

[5] For the perspective of a neuroscientist on the biological origins of consciousness, see Seth (2021), p. 281. “The totality of our perceptions and cognitions—the whole panorama of human experience and mental life—is sculpted by a deep-seated biological drive to stay alive. We perceive the world around us, and ourselves within it, with, through and because of our living bodies.” (Italics in original.)

Does the universe have consciousness?

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On one level this question has a very simple answer. The universe has consciousness because it has us. We are conscious beings, and we and other conscious beings exist in the universe. Therefore the universe has consciousness within it. On that purely logical level, it is not possible that the universe can be without consciousness.

On another level, the question is not whether the universe has consciousness, but whether it has individual consciousness. Does the universe have individual consciousness as an entity separate from the conscious entities within it? That question has no simple answer.

It is conceivable that the universe has no separate, individual consciousness, that consciousness exists in the universe solely as a concatenation of conscious experiences within the universe. There may be no universal consciousness separate and apart from the experience of conscious beings.

Is connected consciousness sufficient for universal consciousness?

We have already concluded that all consciousness is connected. The physical properties of matter and energy do not allow a single consciousness to be cut off from other matter and energy or from other consciousness in the universe. We live, breathe, and interact in a lake of matter and energy that forms the foundation of all consciousness. The connections between us cannot be assumed away.

With all consciousness connected, is it possible that the web of connected consciousness does not exist separately from the consciousness of the individual entities within it? And if the connected thing exists separately, must it have a separate consciousness of itself?

To think of it another way, is the sense of connectedness felt by individual consciousness a form of collective consciousness? Could such a thing as Jung’s “collective unconscious” be an abstraction of the connected physical consciousness experienced by all conscious beings?

Does consciousness require experience of separation?

Consciousness gives us a sense of self. It makes us feel distinct from the world around us and from other beings. We conceive of connected consciousness because we feel disconnected. Can consciousness exist without that sense of separateness? Without awareness of separation from other forms of existence?[1]

If the universe is all, could it have a sense of self or the capacity to feel distinct from anything around it? Without that, could it experience consciousness at all?

Does consciousness require the possibility of death?

The most profound separation experienced by humans is death. Does consciousness require a beginning and an end?[2] Does the sense of self intrinsic to individual consciousness depend on the separation created by potential loss of consciousness and awareness of death? Can separate consciousness exist without the possibility of the loss of separate consciousness?

What we know

As a general rule, we experience consciousness only through ourselves. Outside the context of mystic experience, we are seldom aware of experiencing universal consciousness. Consequently, we do not know for certain whether universal consciousness exists or, if so, in what form it exists.

We do know that the universe has consciousness within it and that the universe experiences consciousness through us. As far as we know for certain, we may be the only way the universe experiences consciousness.

We also know that the universe experiences death only through the death of entities within the universe. We are not aware of any means by which the universe itself experiences death other than through us.[3] It may be then that the universe itself cannot experience full consciousness because it cannot experience death or separation. In fact, we ourselves may be the consciousness of the universe.

The one and the many

If that is so, the list of things that the universe experiences only through us may be long indeed. Could such a universe have no sense of distinct consciousness at all?

Or could the universe have the unique capacity to experience the less integrated consciousness of its separate components? Could it experience our consciousness and that of other conscious entities within it? Could the universe be conscious because (1) we are conscious and (2) we share our experience of separation and death with the unseparated and undying universal consciousness?

Perhaps again the mystics are correct that we experience oneness and eternity by connecting with universal consciousness. Perhaps also the universe experiences separation and death—and creates its own consciousness—by connecting with the consciousness of the many.

[1] Advocates of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) have a clear opinion on this question, postulating that “any conscious experience is definite, with borders.” “Thus the Anima Mundi or world soul is ruled out….” Koch (2019), pp. 163, 165.

[2] In the language of IIT theorists, if a conscious experience must be definite, does that include a definite period of time? Does consciousness require borders in time as well as space?

[3] Scientific cosmologists and physicists talk of the potential for “heat death” at the end of time and may establish at some point that the universe can or will die. But the concept may be beyond the ken of humans. Despite theorizing among physicists about “many worlds”, parallel universes, and the state of reality before the Big Bang, we humans commonly conceive of the universe as consisting of the all — all that is and ever was and ever shall be. How can such a thing cease to be?

Consciousness has characteristics like those of matter and energy

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The conservation of mass and energy is a fundamental law of the understood universe. Physical reactions in the universe neither destroy nor create mass and energy. A reaction may transform one or the other, but mass and energy do not disappear like magic. Even when energy and mass are transformed into each other, the combined quantity of energy and mass is preserved through that transformation. In fact, energy and mass are different forms of the same thing and can be viewed as equivalents.

Similarly, all energy and mass are connected in space. Space is not an empty void; it is inhabited by energy fields and gravitational forces[1] created by the mass and energy of objects in space. Those fields and forces interact and connect all matter and energy in a web of spacetime. At an even deeper quantum level, the universe lacks fundamental separability.[2] Objects consist of processes and interactions, not discrete particles, and when these “objects” interact, they become entangled in a way that creates a fabric of connectedness extending across the entire universe. Universal connection is not a mystical dream, but a core feature of physical reality.

Just as mass and energy cannot be destroyed, the effects of matter and energy on the universe cannot be removed or destroyed. The effects that matter and energy have on the universe, no matter how small, cannot be reversed and in that sense are permanent.[3] They are part of the experience of the universe as it exists in space and time.[4]

Like matter and energy, consciousness is connected to and affects other entities in space

If we accept the hypothesis that consciousness is not supernatural, but real and embedded in the substances and processes that make up the matter and energy of the universe, then consciousness itself both exists in space and is connected to the universe through the matter and energy that exist in space. The components of our consciousness are part of the components of the material universe, and our consciousness affects other entities in space through the connections between all matter and energy.

We live and breathe in space the way that fish live and breathe in water. Waves created by the constant breathing and movement of fish travel through the water and affect other things that exist in the ocean. Humans live and breathe in the earth’s atmosphere in almost exactly that way. Our inhalations and exhalations, our movements, our decisions—create waves that affect the atmosphere around us, including conscious beings and other things that exist in the atmosphere. Those waves and their effects exist and reverberate in the universe as do the waves and effects of all matter and energy.

The effects of consciousness are permanent

A natural corollary is that the effects of our consciousness on the universe cannot be removed or destroyed, just as the effects of matter and energy in general cannot be removed or destroyed. The effects of consciousness on the universe, no matter how small, cannot be reversed. They become part of the experience of the universe—literally part of the information that describes the complete state of the universe in that moment. In that specific sense, therefore, consciousness itself is permanent and eternal.[5]

The substance of consciousness cannot be destroyed

So if consciousness is real and part of the substance of the material universe—embedded in the substances and processes that make up the matter and energy of the universe—and if consciousness is permanent and eternal through its permanent effects and impact, then can we conclude that consciousness also cannot be destroyed? Is there a law of conservation of consciousness that is a logical corollary to the laws of conservation of mass and energy and conservation of information?[6]

[1] Otherwise described as curvatures in spacetime.

[2] “That our actual world does not have separability is now generally accepted, though admitted to be a mystery. In principle, any objects that have ever interacted are forever entangled, and therefore what happens to one influences the other. Experiments have now demonstrated such influences extending over more than one hundred kilometers. Quantum theory has this connectedness extending over the entire universe.” Rosenblum and Kuttner (2006), p. 188.

[3] Even if many laws of physics are time symmetric and theoretically could apply either forward or backward in time, events themselves are not reversible for any practical purposes. Moreover, time symmetry implies that the past is knowable and the future predictable from the current state of the universe. In other words, in neither direction can the effects of matter and energy be lost or destroyed.

[4] Physicists talk about the conservation of information. “Conservation of information implies that each moment contains precisely the right amount of information to determine every other moment….[W]hat we might call the ‘microscopic’ information: the complete specification of the state of the system, everything you could possibly know about it. When speaking of information being conserved, we mean literally all of it.” Carroll (2016), p. 34.

[5] To put it more simply, the universe has a “permanent record”, and we are part of it whether we like it or not.

[6] See Feldman (2019). Compare Carroll (2016), p. 2, “Life is not a substance, like water or rock. It’s a process, like fire or a wave crashing on the shore. It’s a process that begins, lasts for a while, and ultimately ends.” Professor Carroll likely would agree, however, that water and rock, like all substances, are also processes, just slower processes than the process of life as we know it.

Is consciousness the exception to materialism?

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Consciousness is the essence of the “ghost in the machine.” It is that part of us with the greatest claim to being the soul itself, thought by many to leave our bodies and enter the afterlife when we die.

It also is hard for physical scientists to study and explain. Historically, it has been a mystery, assigned by many scientists to the arena of the supernatural. Often it has been dismissed as a non-material force that may animate material bodies but may not be explained by the laws of physics or nature. Only recently have scientists ventured to explain human consciousness as grounded in the evolution of brain capacity and language.[1]

If despite these efforts we are not persuaded that scientists can fully explain consciousness, must we accept that only a supernatural force can explain it? Are we back to needing the ghost in the machine to show how consciousness can both exist and not be susceptible to complete explanation by the physical sciences? Alternatively, if consciousness cannot be explained by the material world, does it exist at all in the way we perceive it? Can we assume that our experience of consciousness is not real because it is only a temporary illusion?

The simpler explanation Is still “no”

As with other intangible things, consciousness is an intangible experience that occurs in the tangible world. Consciousness can be experienced, so it is real in the same way that other intangible things are real. From a simple human perspective, there is nothing more natural than consciousness. It is what we perceive as ourselves and is no less real if physical scientists do not explain it to our complete satisfaction.

The difficulties that physical scientists encounter when trying to measure and assess consciousness do not justify an assumption that consciousness is supernatural or does not exist. That leap of logic simply is not necessary. Why not take the simpler path of assuming that consciousness is a completely natural attribute of the natural universe itself?

We know that consciousness exists in the universe. We know that it exists in different forms across different conscious entities in the known universe. We know that we do not yet understand the characteristics and behavior of all the particles, forces, and quantum relationships that make up the fabric of the material world. It is only logical to assume that consciousness must exist somewhere in the elements that make up the world, since it could not be part of the whole if it were not part of the elements of the whole.[2]

Consciousness is a core component of the physical world

Just as we have learned that energy and matter are fundamentally linked states of physical existence, we may one day learn that consciousness is intrinsic to elements that comprise the material world. Contemporary scientists and philosophers are already exploring natural explanations for consciousness. Theories of natural selection may explain how consciousness evolved to become a fundamental characteristic of the human species. More broadly, Integrated Information Theory suggests that consciousness is not limited to humans, but is a natural characteristic of physical systems of integrated information. Even more broadly, panpsychist philosophers assert that consciousness is an intrinsic building block of all existence in the universe. Others theorize that consciousness or its equivalent plays a fundamental role in the laws of quantum mechanics through the “observer” effect, or that the causal element of consciousness, i.e., free will, can influence probability distributions and their measured outcomes in some physical systems in the universe. Wherever or however we come to understand consciousness and other intangible experience—somewhere in the fabric of the universe are the elements of all that exists in the universe.

So fundamentally, as with other intangible things, the simplest and best explanation is that consciousness is part of the physical world. The material world is what is—precisely because it includes the elements of consciousness and other intangible things.

[1] See especially Dennett (1991).

[2] Is consciousness an element of the universe like matter and energy? Is it a natural process?