Notes on the Quantum Mechanic approach to understanding Consciousness
by Ulysses Castillo, PhD.
(C) 2007 Spirit and Science

Contemporary Physics offers a description of reality which is very different from what we are used to experience in our everyday life. In our everyday life we experience what in Physics is called macroscopic level physical laws, but at the microscopic (subatomic) level the physical reality is very different, even weird.

Examples of this strangeness are the dual behavior (wave-particle) that exists in all physical matter. The relation of indetermination (uncertainty) between energy and time which in some cases seems to break the law of conservation of energy and the normal causality, making cause and effect switch their roles as it is demonstrated in the Delayed Choice Experiments. Quantum Entanglement and non-local effects which allows for the seemingly instantaneous exchange of state information between particles separated at great distances practically infinite. The possibility of interaction of particles with the vacuum as if physical emptiness actually had some energy (zero level energy). The description of vacuum as filled of anti-particles and the perfectly reversible particle interactions --where particles traveling towards the future are identical to anti-particles traveling towards the past--, and the list goes on and on.

These strange effects are real and have been verified in many experiments. Some of them can be considered classical experiments, like Black Body Radiation, Photoelectric Effect, Atomic Spectroscopy and Electron Diffraction. Others are specific quantum effects, like the Tunnel Effect with its application in Quantum Computing, the Casimir Effect (commonly called a force from nothing), and the quantum Zeno effect (where an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay). And even in some contemporary experiments, like the non-locality experiments of Alain Aspect, based on John Bell's Theorem.

That is why we need Quantum Mechanics, to try and make some sense of this strange physical reality, at least mathematically.

Hidden Dimensions

Quantum Mechanics is the foundation of Quantum Field Theory (QFT). QFT is a theoretical framework used to describe physical fields (forces of nature) and its interactions, including the emission and absorption of subatomic particles. QFT along with the Standard Model of particle physics, offered the best description of fields and elementary particles we had in physics until the formulation of String Theory. String Theory is a model of fundamental physics, related to QFT, which describes all fundamental particles as one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles).

One intriguing feature of String Theory is that it predicts a possible higher number of dimensions in the universe. Classical theories of fields, like Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism or Einstein's theory of relativity, do not make this kind of prediction; these theories require physicists to insert the number of dimensions "by hand". Unlike general relativity, String Theory allows one to compute the number of space-time dimensions from first principles. When the calculation is done, the universe's dimensionality is not four as one may expect (three axes of space and one of time). Superstring and M-theories, which are special cases of String Theory, turn out to involve 10 or 11 dimensions.

The reality of higher dimensions, and its interactions with our 3D world, opens the door to the possibility of many phenomena today considered metaphysical. However, understanding the implications of this reality may be a challenging task. To help overcome our own limitations of perception regarding the possible multi-dimensional nature of the universe, we recommend Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott, a novella published in 1884, which is considered very useful reading for people studying topics such as the concept of other dimensions.
 

Conciousness

Quantum Mechanics describes the physical reality, at the most fundamental level known so far, using a probabilistic or statistic approach; where uncertainty is always present by principle (The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), meaning that we can only know the probability of certain events or the probability of a physical variable to have a certain value. In Quantum Mechanics probabilities are mathematically represented by the Wave Function. During the measurement process the Wave Function is said to be Objective Reduced (or Collapsed) such that of all previously possible (or probable) values, only one (o a subset) become actual values.

The reason why this process is important is because for a physical measurement to occur there has to be an observer, and the ultimate observer of the physical reality is precisely what we call Conciousness. Quantum Mechanics and Conciousness go hand in hand. One cannot discuss one without referring to the other. That is why a Quantum Theory of Consciousness seems a very plausible approach. 

For a philosophical background and a historical overview on this theory, we recommend the article Quantum Approaches to Conciousness from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/

The objective of this note is to serve as an introduction to the ideas around the Quantum Theory of Conciousness, and to present some scientists that are currently working in the theory or in the implications regarding psychic phenomena and the paranormal.

Professor Brian Josephson.