Quantum ontology and mind-matter synthesis

Abstract

The Solvay conference of 1927 marked the birth of quantum theory. This theory constitutes a radical break with prior tradition in physics, because it avers, if taken seriously, that nature is built not out of matter but out of knowings. However, the founders of the theory stipulated, cautiously, that the theory was not to be taken seriously, in this sense, as a description of nature herself, but was to be construed as merely a way of computing expectations about future knowings on the basis of information provided by past knowings. There have been many efforts over the intervening seventy years to rid physics of this contamination of matter by mind. But I use the reports at this Symposium to support the claim that these decontamination efforts have failed, and that, because of recent developments pertaining to causality, the time has come to take quantum theory seriously: to take it as the basis for a conception of the universe built on knowings, and other things of the same kind. Quantum theory ensures that this conception will yield all the empirical regularities that had formerly been thought to arise from the properties of matter, together with all of those more recently discovered regularities that cannot be understood in that mechanical way. Thus I propose to break away from the cautious stance of the founders of quantum theory, and build a theory of reality by taking seriously what the incredible accuracy of the predictions of the formalism seems to proclaim, namely that nature is best understood as being built around knowings that enjoy the mathematical properties ascribed to them by quantum theory. I explain why this idea had formerly been incorrectly regarded as untenable, due to a failure to distinguish signals from influences: relativistic quantum field theory ensures both that signals cannot travel faster than light, but that influences, broadly conceived, cannot be imagined to enjoy that property. Failure to recognize this fact had made a realistic interpretation of quantum theory seem impossible. I then explain how our conscious knowings can play a causally efficacious and binding role in brain dynamics without violating the statistical rules of quantum theory, and describe how these features provide a foundation for understanding how consciousness could have evolved by natural selection from primitive beginnings.

This work was supported by the Director, Office of Energy Research, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC03-76SF00098.