Heres a video I had found recently regarding physics and consciousness. Pretty interesting and some cool visual parts of the film Alot of it i've heard before but always interesting to say the least.

Enjoy

Physics and Consciousness

I have a really hard time understanding these theories. Do they argue that there is a consciousness field that can directly interact with the fields that define matter? What is the consciousness field? What properties would the particle have? How do we observe this particle? This particle must be observable because it is supposed to interact directly with ordinary atomic matter right? A good university physics lab will have some very sensitive accelerometers. I should be able to create a signal with intention correct? Would this be an acceptable experiment?

i.e. if I cannot deflect an accelerometer with intention then this theory is bunk. Seems simple enough. If I can deflect the accelerometer then I can beam my intention through various materials to ascertain some of the properties of the consciousness particle.

I suspect that these theories are bunk designed to fill bank accounts but I'm willing to keep an open mind until my questions are answered.

Yes these consciousness and quantum physics ideas are a bit misleading IMO.

Of course consciousness is connected to quantum physics but EVERYTHING we know is. Just because particles do funky things doesn't mean that all the things we can't explain like people seeing ghosts or whatever are caused by quantum spookyness.

I just think of human consciousness as a biological computer. I don't see why there needs to be anything more then that.

Consciousness seems to influence the Q mechanical field. It causes the collapse of the wave function if you will however at the same time the brain is made up of matter and thus depends on QM functions of particles. As you said Since the brain is made of matter, and matter is made of particles which obey quantum mechanical laws they are connected. However much of what QM says is that the very view of the external world is an illusion, it only exists as we think it does (as a 3-D cartesian coordinate system of space and time) when we are observing it...otherwise it is information, fields of information or matrixes.

I think of reality as a computer screen. Say you pull up a website on your screen. It looks a certain way while you are interacting with it, but as soon as you click a link the website goes away. How does it exist when it is not on the screen. It exists but as information.. it is not the 2-d state that you saw when you it was on the screen. So the screen is like the observer. We can interact and change the state of this information when we interact with it (when it is on the screen) the system stores this information.. but it is not a true external cartesian coordinate system of space and time... it is just information.

There are many differences b/w the way the brain functions and a computer. They are very different. Consciousness is a unique attribute of the brain. The state of consciousness is dependent on the state of the brain and consciousness is further able to influence the state of the brain. It is very possible QM process are involved in these activities. Some people misunderstand the relationship and say you can not explain one mystery with another however there is much more to the relationship than that... Electrons are moved around the brain and may under go tunneling this may be involved in distant communications and synchronization. Most scientists even misunderstand QM. It is difficult to grasp conceptually.. although there are several great books on the subject I recommend reading several of them for diff views (Quantum Enigma, The dancing Wu Li masters, The Tao of Physics... ). Stay away from the math however as the math is even harder as there is no way to picture it or explain it it is the way it is...

Is the moon there when no one is looking at it?

Why I ask is ok there was a planet earth long before we were around long before life (most likely) started to evolve. The first life is arguably not conscious. But there is still a world a universe. Just because some life forms don't have the eyes to see a rock doesn't mean its not there. It may not exist as a rock exists for us but matter is still there in that space. Or at least it seems it is.

Just because we can't pinpoint the location of particles for me doesn't imply that all reality is an illusion. Yes we only see a limited view of total reality but there is still "stuff" there.

How could conscious have even begun to start to evolve without a seemingly infinite number of wave function collapses that have been happening throughout the history of our universe?

That's an interesting idea and seems compelling even without QM but isn't this just a philosophical language trick? I mean things like X,Y and Z are defined by humans. These do not exist as such in the absence of humans. However, asteroids moved through these coordinates and impacted the moon long before any consciousness observed it. They left craters.

The language trick is that 'craters' and 'mass' are both defined by human in consciousness only. They are constructs that exist only in the human mind. In reality it is just as you say, interactions between information in the field(s) changed that information from the perspective of a fixed trajectory through time. This kinda breaks down because both 'information' and 'fields' require consciousness too.

So the true ontologny of the cosmos cannot be known. The best we can do is make our consciousness based model of the cosmos have the most predictive value. If we achieve this 100% there will be just as much information in consciousness as in the rest of the cosmos but it will not be the same information. It will always be a representation.

If I am missing something please educate me (I love learning about stuff like this) but I don't think you should credit QM with this idea. It seems more fair to credit Kant and friends in the 18th century. This notion was vital for the birth of modern science. QM is only another observation based predictive model that gives the illusion even more predictive power.



Yeah that's the hell of it eh. The math is best (only?) way to understand it but the people who truly understand the math will almost always say that it is virtually untranslatable into the language of common experience. So the educated layperson has to settle for his own interpretation of a crappy translation.

Do we really need new physics to understand the mechanisms of consciousness? Maybe action potentials and neurotransmitter signaling are sufficient. It's just cells pumping ions and chemically signaling each other in a fabulously intricate and complex set of interlocked but modular systems.

Right now people have to chisel away at tiny circuits that control stuff like specific facets of sensory perception and esoteric decision making tests. Understanding how many such modular components there are and how they work together and change each other will allow the creation of a non-biological machine consciousness. If we simulated all the atoms in a human being on a fantastically powerful computer our simulation would have consciousness, but only when the program was running.

This whole movie is really cool.

Because the entire universe is conscious, and though evolution collapsed into different individuated forms of consciousness?