David Simpson 1 January 2023

Because things happen, there is consciousness. If nothing is happening, there is nothing to be conscious of, ergo no consciousness. The universe is watching itself happen and, presumably, liking what it sees, because things just keep on happening.

Brian Flanagan 1 31 December 2022

Einstein said that, When the solution is simple, God is answering.

My chief complaint about much of the discussion in the quantum consciousness camp has to do with a wholesale treatment of consciousness. One gets the impression that the writers mean to provide an explanation of the whole kit and caboodle at one go.

But consciousness is evidently not a monolithic thing. We may be conscious of our thoughts, our dreams, our ideas, our perceptions, and so on.

Early on, I chose to focus instead on our simple sensation of color. This turned out to be a winning strategy, leading us by the hand into the heart of contemporary physics and mathematics.

The key was the perfect simplicity of color. I wrote earlier that Schrödinger was, in his time, the foremost authority on color science. Before him there was Maxwell, who unified light, electricity and magnetism in his eponymous equations. Here’s what he had to say:

When a beam of light falls on the human eye, certain sensations are produced, from which the possessor of that organ judges of the color and luminance of the light. Now, though everyone experiences these sensations and though they are the foundation of all the phenomena of sight, yet, *on account of their absolute simplicity, they are incapable of analysis,* and can never become in themselves objects of thought. If we attempt to discover them, we must do so by artificial means and our reasonings on them must be guided by some theory. (My emphasis.)

In their mammoth work on the foundations of mathematics, Russell and Whitehead made the point with remarkable clarity: Thus "this is red," "this is earlier than that," are atomic propositions.

Now, a number of otherwise learned heads have stumbled over this problem. To the extent of denying the existence of color, or arguing that color is an illusion. They seem to have thought they were being scientific. Well, this is perverse. Here’s Einstein again to back me up:

We are accustomed to regarding as real those sense perceptions which are common to different individuals, and which therefore are, in a measure, impersonal. The natural sciences, and in particular, the most fundamental of them, physics, deal with such sense perception.

And then, if colors are an illusion, how is it that we’re able to engineer colorful display screens for our TVs and computers? No, this will not do. What to do, though?

My answer consists in taking nature at her word. If colors are so simple, we might reasonably call them elemental. And every theory must begin with undefined elements, in order to avoid an infinite regression of definition, as Aristotle knew.

As with color, so with sound, touch, feelings of hot and cold. Where in the body of physical theory do we plug in these additional elements of reality?

Well, of course, here I have in mind the seminal work of Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky, everywhere known as EPR:

Whatever the meaning assigned to the term complete, the following requirement for a complete theory seems to be a necessary one: every element of the physical reality must have a counterpart in the physical theory.

To be perfectly plain, then, what I’m suggesting is that color, sound, and so forth just are the missing elements of reality. It’s hard to exaggerate what an unspeakable heresy this is — or was; in a recent book, Wilczek has come close to this conclusion, pointing out the “eerie” parallels between spectral color and the colors of quantum chromodynamics, or QCD. In one lecture, he stopped short of committing himself, saying, in effect, that to go further leads one into the “twilight zone,” which happens to be in my area code.

I conclude for now with Weyl:

"It seems useful to me to develop a little more precisely the "geometry" valid in the two-dimensional manifold of perceived colors. For one can do mathematics also in the domain of these colors. The fundamental operation which can be performed upon them is mixing: one lets colored lights combine with one another in space."

Stuart Hameroff 17 May 2022

To Christian Smith
You are rude and ill-informed.

As far as experimental evidence, see: Lewton T (2022) A quantum of consciousness New Scientist 254(3383):8 It describes anesthetics inhibiting quantum optical effects in microtubules. This evidence for quantum effects in microtubules mediating consciousness is not yet conclusive, but far more robust than support for any other theory of consciousness.

If anything I’ve said has been debunked, please point to it. But first read Section 5.6 in Hameroff S, Penrose R (2014) Consciousness in the universe – A review of the Orch OR theory Physics of Life Reviews 11(1):39-78
in which we respond to criticisms. And see
Hameroff S, Penrose R (2014) Reply to criticism of the ‘Orch OR qubit’ – ‘Orchestrated objective reduction’ is scientifically justified Physics of Life Reviews 11(1):104-112 in which we respond to one particularly nasty and incorrect attack piece. So please don't regurgitate criticisms without acknowledging our previous responses.

To Tam X
The concept of alternate spacetime curvatures
was introduced by Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose based on Einstein’s general relativity.
Have you no insight? Are you a robot?

Stuart Hameroff

Christopher McDonough 10 May 2022

Reminds me of Hegel. I love this stuff because I feel uncontrollably compelled to reject determinism.

Christian Smith 8 May 2022

Hi, Stuart baby? Your nonsense has been debunked for a decade now. Kindly stop spewing it until you have some actual experimental evidence. Because at this point, you're just grifting.

-an actual neuroscientist who learned more about microtubule dynamics in my undergrad neuro class than you apparently have in your entire professional career

Terry Rosen 8 May 2022

Consciousness, in order to have an agreed origin, of any kind, must first be defined.
At that point, discussions outside of that definition can be discarded as irrelevant.
Julian Jaynes defined human consciousness eloquently, and scientifically in the 1980s.
No one has ever proven any portion of his treatise incorrect.
The idea is so simple that any lay person can easily grasp it.
Why neuroscientists don't believe it falls into two main issues. One, they're not familiar with it at all, two, their own identity prevents them from considering the truth of it.
Consciousness, in humans was solved 40 years ago. No quantum mechanics was required.
Further, mammalian biochemistry has NO function of any kind, ever proven to affect particles or physics smaller than the electron. No quantum physical connection, of any kind, is known to connect to us in any way.

Liam B 1 6 May 2022

Kenneth Dey, the idea that the wave function has already collapsed and has an external value waiting to be observed is called "realism", based on the idea there is a set reality out there waiting for us to observe it. The experimental that disproves this is Bell Inequalities experiments.

Roughly what happens is a machine offers you to choose 2 out of 3 possible boxes to look in, each box has a ball that can be 1 of 2 different colors. But the two boxes you choose have different colors 3/4 of the time, regardless of how you choose, when they should be the same 1/3rd of the time or more if they had values before you looked, you can just work out the math and see this is fishy. It disproves the balls having color before you look, so the act of choosing where to look clearly shapes the outcome.

Brad Davis 6 May 2022

When the body dies, so does the physical memory.

Everyone who goes on to Life forgets the bad stuff that happened to them.

The only remember the good stuff, but mostly they look forward to the next age of man.

When a person steps out of their body, they meet angels. At that moment, they are approx 30 years old.

That is why people have said, They don't feel any younger, even if they're old.

Are they asleep at that point? No, they are more alive than they ever were before. It's the physical nature of a person that wears out.

This has been verified by testimony hundreds of times by people who have come close to death and have come back to tell about it.

The only people who remember everything are the people who are going to go to hell. That is a bad place to go. There is no redemption, because there is no forgiveness.

I don't know about consciousness & the collapse of a waveform, but I do know those who believe in Jesus Christ go on to eternal life.

Kenneth Dey 6 May 2022

I'm not a scientist, nor do I claim to be. I'm just a random guy who loves science, and my knowledge is very rudimentary. So I am asking this question from a point of ignorance to learn. But what I don't understand about this hypothesis is this: If the wave function collapses before it is observed so that an observer can then observe it, what is stopping the wave function from having collapsed from the very beginning, long before it is observed, thereby negating the wave function altogether? Does the wave function sense that an observer is in a position to observe, so it collapses so that the observer can then observe it? And if that is the case then why couldn't the wave function always have been collapsed from the beginning waiting on an observer to observe it, which could be a billion years in the future? If a wave function collapses before it is observed, how do we know that it wasn't 'always collapsed'?

Jouko Alanko 6 May 2022

Memory is saved to MT in protofilament between two dimer at hinges. Tryptophane have nonbonding electrons in indole group. When dynein bend hinge and spinwave occurs in same time, born unbounded singlet. Memory looks this :::;::;;;::;;::;. When same wavefunction meet memory it collapses. In MT K+ consentration is high. When MT resonates K+ consentrarion falls down and CaMKii reaction happens

Sael Abellana 6 May 2022

Exactly. The moment consciousness is conscious of its existence, the wave function which holds the key to the real reality, will disposition into psuedu reality as we see today.

Thaddeus Thompson 5 May 2022

Open your minds guys. We are puppets for consciousness.

Jeremy Wiggin 5 May 2022

The wave function part, yes, maybe. The light part, no. You are making basic logical errors, at least in this text of what you mean.
Also why is there no mention of Bohm in this? You wouldn't even think wave function without him.
Ehhh? Sus.

Jeremy Wiggin 5 May 2022

No. Is the answer to this question. I'm sorry you wasted time working on this, because it's non-sense. Yes I understand it, no it's not right.