Machines Like Us

A paper by Efstratios Manousakis

The possible relation of consciousness to quantum theory has been considered by several authors where it is argued that the former may arise from the latter. More recently, a theory has been postulated from which quantum mechanics, as we currently know it, can be derived as part of a more encompassing theory of consciousness. In von Neumann’s picture, if the part of the brain which is associated with consciousness is accepted to be a quantum mechanical system connected to consciousness according to the description of the quantum theory of measurement and consciouss observation, then each consciously experienced event should be associated with the actualization, by means of a quantum “collapse” of a quasi-stable macroscopic subprocess in the brain associated with a particular NCC (neural correlate of consciousness) brain state. Between observations the wave-function evolves deterministically according to an evolution operator (constructed appropriately for the particular problem) acting on an assumed initial state, and the wavefunction as a function of time has a typical oscillatory form, such as the evolution of simple harmonic oscillator states. In order to apply this idea, we have assumed that we are dealing with a limited quantum system imbedded in a classical brain that is providing the classically describable force field in which the quantum subsystem associated with consciousness operates.

Read entire paper here (PDF).