Causal potency of consciousness
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- Category: News
- Published on Monday, 26 June 2023 00:00
- Written by Danko Georgiev
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The evolution of the human mind through natural selection mandates that our conscious experiences are causally potent in order to leave a tangible impact on the physical world. Any attempt to construct a functional theory of the conscious mind within the framework of classical physics, however, inevitably leads to causally impotent conscious experiences in direct contradiction to evolution theory. The origin of the latter impasse lies in the mathematical properties of ordinary differential equations used in combination with the alleged functional production of the mind by the brain. Fortunately, quantum stochastic differential equations allow for the construction of a mind–brain theory that supports causally potent conscious experiences.
In our new article published in International Journal of Modern Physics B, we derive several rigorous theorems demonstrating that a mind–brain theory consistent with causally potent conscious experiences is furnished by modern quantum physics, in which the unobservable conscious mind is reductively identified with the quantum state of the brain and the observable brain is constructed by the physical measurement of quantum brain observables. The resulting quantum stochastic dynamics obtained from sequential quantum measurements of the brain is governed by stochastic differential equations, which permit genuine free will exercised through sequential conscious choices of future courses of action. Thus, quantum reductionism provides a solid theoretical foundation for the causal potency of consciousness, free will and cultural transmission in the animal kingdom.
