Kauffman-Radin quantum consciousness hypothesis

[Claudio Chianese]

Hello folks, long time lurking, never posted. I think it would be interesting to take a look to this recent paper by S. Kauffman and D. Radin: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.01538

I think it's interesting because Kauffman, who's a leading theoretical biologist, is taking an enormous academic risk by signing a paper alongside a parapsychologist and by using PSI as evidence. It's even more ballsy than Penrose pairing with Hameroff, who himself has some radical ideas. I foresee two scenarios:

1) as more respected scientists take ideas like quantum effects in the brain seriously, materialists will be forced to stop using damnation-by-association by invoking Deepak Chopra and somehow make sense of the the stuff.

2) Kauffman will go the way of Josephson and have his reputation ruined.

[Santeri Satama]

It's not exactly new thing. There's been Pauli-Jung collaboration, Bohm-Krishnamurti dialogue, etc. Perhaps also Bose (as in Bose-Einstein condensate etc.) should be added to that category, as he studied also plant consciousness etc.

I like the idea of QM without LEM very much. Applying intuitionist logic to physics is both obvious way to proceed and long overdue.

[Santeri Satama]

Our proposal does not answer Chalmer’s hard problem of qualia. But we do suggest that a “burst of consciousness”happens upon a quantum actualization. In this we parallel Hameroff and Penrose’s proposal [36], but we note that their position links an event of consciousness with collapse of a superposition of multiple potential spacetimes into one actual spacetime. They may be correct, but there is no obvious reason to link their version of quantum gravity with an event of consciousness. We would also note that consciousness plays no role in Hameroff and Penrose’s spacetime collapse, so in their model consciousness is not an active agent; it is epiphenomenal. By contrast, our Page 17of 24 proposal that reality consists in Possibles and Actuals linked by measurement invites a natural place for Mind: it is the means by which quantum potentials are actualized. The empirical results of psychokinetic experiments support this suggestion.

Yup. Qualia are irreducible to quantification, and as qualia are this Phenomenal Actual, the Classical Actual is purely theory dependent notion that brings some theoretical clarity to current situation of physicalism, but no more. The paper is welcome clarification and door opener that offers support for future work in the frame of idealism/animism.