Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of internal and external existence. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate by philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination, and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness, either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked.
Sir Roger Penrose is a British mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and an honorary fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and University College London.
The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics is a 1989 book by the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose.
In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism is the view that the mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe". It is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed in some form to philosophers including Thales, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell. In the 19th century, panpsychism was the default philosophy of mind in Western thought, but it saw a decline in the mid-20th century with the rise of logical positivism. Recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness, and developments in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and quantum mechanics have revived interest in panpsychism in the 21st century.
Orchestrated objective reduction is a highly controversial theory postulating that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons. The mechanism is held to be a quantum process called objective reduction that is orchestrated by cellular structures called microtubules. It is proposed that the theory may answer the hard problem of consciousness and provide a mechanism for free will. The hypothesis was first put forward in the early 1990s by Nobel laureate for physics Roger Penrose, and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff. The hypothesis combines approaches from molecular biology, neuroscience, pharmacology, philosophy, quantum information theory, and quantum gravity.
Electromagnetic theories of consciousness propose that consciousness can be understood as an electromagnetic phenomenon.
Christof Koch is a German-American neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness. He was the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He remains at the Institute as a Meritorious Investigator. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation in Santa Monica, that funds research meant to alleviate suffering, anxiety and other forms of distress in all people.
Henry Pierce Stapp is an American mathematical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics, particularly the development of axiomatic S-matrix theory, the proofs of strong nonlocality properties, and the place of free will in the "orthodox" quantum mechanics of John von Neumann.
In philosophy of mind, the computational theory of mind (CTM), also known as computationalism, is a family of views that hold that the human mind is an information processing system and that cognition and consciousness together are a form of computation. It is closely related to functionalism, a broader theory that defines mental states by what they do rather than what they're made of.
The Penrose interpretation is a speculation by Roger Penrose about the relationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Penrose proposes that a quantum state remains in superposition until the difference of space-time curvature attains a significant level.
Quantum mysticism, sometimes referred pejoratively to as quantum quackery or quantum woo, is a set of metaphysical beliefs and associated practices that seek to relate spirituality or mystical worldviews to the ideas of quantum mechanics and its interpretations. Quantum mysticism is considered pseudoscience and quackery by quantum mechanics experts.
Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness is a 1994 book by mathematical physicist Roger Penrose that serves as a followup to his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics.
The quantum mind or quantum consciousness is a group of hypotheses proposing that local physical laws and interactions from classical mechanics or connections between neurons alone cannot explain consciousness, positing instead that quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as entanglement and superposition that cause nonlocalized quantum effects, interacting in smaller features of the brain than cells, may play an important part in the brain's function and could explain critical aspects of consciousness. These scientific hypotheses are as yet unvalidated, and they can overlap with quantum mysticism.
Integrated information theory (IIT) proposes a mathematical model for the consciousness of a system. It comprises a framework ultimately intended to explain why some physical systems are conscious, and to be capable of providing a concrete inference about whether any physical system is conscious, to what degree, and what particular experience it has; why they feel the particular way they do in particular states, and what it would take for other physical systems to be conscious.
Jack Tuszyński is a Polish professor of oncology and physicist.
The Penrose–Lucas argument is a logical argument partially based on a theory developed by mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel. In 1931, he proved that every effectively generated theory capable of proving basic arithmetic either fails to be consistent or fails to be complete. Due to human ability to see the truth of formal system's Gödel sentences, it is argued that the human mind cannot be computed on a Turing Machine that works on Peano arithmetic because the latter can't see the truth value of its Gödel sentence, while human minds can. Mathematician Roger Penrose modified the argument in his first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind (1989), where he used it to provide the basis of his theory of consciousness: orchestrated objective reduction.
Quantum Night is a 2016 science-fiction thriller novel written by Canadian novelist Robert J. Sawyer. Set in 2020, the book touches on themes of quantum physics, psychology, current politics and ethics.
Models of consciousness are used to illustrate and aid in understanding and explaining distinctive aspects of consciousness. Sometimes the models are labeled theories of consciousness. Anil Seth defines such models as those that relate brain phenomena such as fast irregular electrical activity and widespread brain activation to properties of consciousness such as qualia. Seth allows for different types of models including mathematical, logical, verbal and conceptual models.
Quantum social science is an emerging field of interdisciplinary research which draws parallels between quantum physics and the social sciences. Although there is no settled consensus on a single approach, a unifying theme is that, while the social sciences have long modelled themselves on mechanistic science, they can learn much from quantum ideas such as complementarity and entanglement. Some authors are motivated by quantum mind theories that the brain, and therefore human interactions, are literally based on quantum processes, while others are more interested in taking advantage of the quantum toolkit to simulate social behaviours which elude classical treatment. Quantum ideas have been particularly influential in psychology but are starting to affect other areas such as international relations and diplomacy in what one 2018 paper called a "quantum turn in the social sciences".
Theories of holographic consciousness postulate that consciousness has structural and functional similarities to a hologram, in that the information needed to model the whole is contained within each constituent component.
