Among philosophers and scientists there is a persistent dispute about the nature of consciousness that seems to recur more often than almost any other.

Is consciousness an emergent by-product of brain states, an epiphenomenon of matter, or is consciousness a fundamental element of existence?

Most contemporary scientists and analytic philosophers support the first position. They point to the impressive discoveries of neuroscience and the long, slow evolution through natural selection of what we know as consciousness. Nonmaterialist philosophers tend to respond that such explanations are overly reductionist and do not account for the everyday subjective experience of consciousness or its deep metaphysical significance.

Their entrenched positions seem to allow for little common ground. Nevertheless, is it possible that this long-running dispute has an almost obvious resolution? Could both sides be correct in some important sense? Could consciousness be both fundamental and emergent?

Philosophers and scientists such as Dennett[1], Ismael[2], and Seth[3] offer convincing descriptions of how natural selection results in the emergence of brain functions from the raw materials of molecules and cells. They present logical arguments for why consciousness does not exist at a fundamental level of particles and forces but emerges at a higher level among biological entities. The conscious organisms whose evolution they describe look and feel like the self-aware entities that we recognize as human beings. Yet their consciousness arises solely in emergent systems constructed from the interactions of more fundamental particles and forces.

Does that mean that those fundamental particles and forces must hold the seeds of consciousness?

Mitchell[4] constructs a theory of emergent consciousness on a foundation that rests squarely on fundamental physical interactions. He argues that free agency in living organisms arises from the inherent indeterminacy of quantum evolution. Randomness built into the probabilistic physics of the wave function breaks the chain of deterministic causation, enabling emergent systems to exercise causal influence.

Penrose theorizes that noncomputable elements of consciousness arise from the same fundamental processes. He argues that the quantum reduction phase of quantum evolution, in which quantum probabilities resolve into unique outcomes, results in moments of “proto-consciousness” that can be orchestrated into complex consciousness like our own.[5]

Both Mitchell and Penrose recognize that human-like consciousness depends on evolution of brain processes over billions of years, but both also ground the emergence of consciousness in the most fundamental process in the universe—the time evolution of the quantum wave function.

The quantum reduction element of time evolution results in uniqueness and separability, prerequisites for the emergence of distinct systems with separate “selves” capable of self-awareness or self-reflection. Could that fundamental process of resolving quantum probabilities into unique outcomes be the spark of consciousness and free agency? Does the “magic” of consciousness depend on the seeming “magic” of quantum evolution?

If so, consciousness is both emergent and fundamental. Not in some mystical sense, but in an entirely physical sense. Consciousness emerges from the interaction of particles and forces as physicalists describe precisely because those interactions are the origin of consciousness. At its most basic level, the mechanistic requirement for the universe to choose—intrinsic to the resolution of quantum probabilities into unique outcomes—may be the building block, both physically and philosophically, for consciousness and free agency.

So yes, this perennial dispute among philosophers and scientists may have a resolution, one that requires neither supernatural assumptions nor rejection of the fundamental role of consciousness in the universe. Consciousness may be both completely physical and also a fundamental element of existence.

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[1] Dennett (1991).

[2] Ismael (2016).

[3] Seth (2021).

[4] Mitchell (2023).

[5] Penrose (1994).