Consciousness from a classical physical-science perspective based on a new paradigm

Abstract

Quantum physics has a long history of interest in consciousness, stemming from the conviction, seeded by famous names, that consciousness is "fundamental to nature" and is, thus, somehow contributory also to quantum events. One of the more recent ideas (by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose) is that the brain is a quantum computer and that a particular component of neurons acts as a quantum object responsible for the emergence of consciousness. In the 2017 New Scientist monograph Your Conscious Mind the present scientific vision is summarised as "We still don't know whether it [consciousness] is real or an illusion". And it is speculated "that physicists will [one day perhaps] identify consciousness as a distinct kind of matter". This odd suggestion calls for physicists to bring systematic classical thinking back to the subject of consciousness. In the past, such thinking, based on the well-tested Ansatz approach, has failed miserably for consciousness, because of a self-reassuring mainstream orthodox paradigm about the function of consciousness, viz. that consciousness, assisted by the "unconscious" state, is in charge of Man's reasoning and behaviour. The new approach pursued here is the opposite thereof, viz. it is based on the new unorthodox paradigm that the nonconscious (not unconscious) state of mind is in charge of human reasoning and behaviour, and that what a person's mind becomes conscious of has previously been entirely worked out and put into action in the nonconscious state. On this basis, the author has derived a purely classical self-compatible description of the nature and function of consciousness. The key proposition is that general consciousness derives from self-consciousness, which in turn is posited to be a mental sensation of organism-wide wake state feedback from local cellular metabolism. The details have been written up here in a first short form. In a postscript it is also shown how the age-old problem of 'free will' is solved in terms of the new vision of consciousness.