The hypothesis that our consciousness can be considered as a quantum process arose in the early 1990s on the wave of a new scientific revolution, pushing society towards another rethinking of the world. The hypothesis was accepted with hostility, and to this day it is considered marginal. However, every year it finds more and more supporters.
QUANTUM PROCESS
In 1900, the German physicist Max Planck, who dealt with the radiation of an absolutely black body, introduced the concept of quanta - indivisible portions of energy that material objects exchange with each other when heated or cooled. Planck's model contradicted the prevailing physical theories at that time, so he did not dare to present it to his colleagues for a long time, and when he presented it, his ideas were perceived as a kind of "mind game" that helps to simplify calculations.
But practicing physicists soon discovered that Planck's model not only boils down to elegant calculations, but also agrees with experiments. In 1905, Albert Einstein published three articles, in one of which he hypothesized that light is emitted and absorbed by energy quanta, thereby supporting Planck. Over the next two decades, the quantum model gained more and more supporters among leading scientists, turning from a marginal to one of the fundamental.
A split in the scientific world occurred in 1925, when attempts to describe quantum processes as a new mechanics led to an "insane" result - it turned out that the laws of classical mechanics do not work at the quantum level, but effects are observed that contradict the materialistic view of the world. Ten years later, Erwin Schrödinger showed that any quantum system is in a state of uncertainty ("superposition"), and it can be brought to one of the stable states by direct observation of the system. It turned out that an objective picture of the world does not exist, because the state of the Universe at the basic level depends on … the subjectivity of the observer.
Not all physicists agreed to admit the correctness of the conclusions of the creators of quantum mechanics, because in that case they would have to sacrifice their own beliefs.
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GEDELEVSKY ARGUMENT
Over time, science has come to terms with the paradoxical quantum effects. And, moreover, I learned how to use them in practice - for example, in technologies of a new generation: in a quantum computer and quantum communication. The fundamentals of quantum computing, operating with uncertainty until a result is obtained, led physicists to believe that something similar happens not only at the level of dead matter, but also in complex biological systems.
In 1989, the book of Oxford professor Roger Penrose "The New Mind of the King" was published, in which he presented to the public his views on "quantum consciousness". The scientist considered three points of view on the nature of consciousness. The first (materialistic) - consciousness arose in the course of ordinary processes obeying the classical laws of physics, and is a way of biological adaptation of a highly developed brain and nervous system. The second (idealistic) - consciousness is a special form of the existence of matter, which is still outside our understanding and is studied by the methods of spiritualism. The third (quantum) - consciousness arises as a result of a series of physical events that have occurred since the emergence of the Universe, therefore it can be considered one of the fundamental properties of our world. Penrose wrote that we cannot sayat what point do the functions of consciousness appear, primarily associated with the form of information processing (cognitiveness), but he argued that it is possible to understand the nature of our mind and explain the existence of the soul only taking into account quantum effects.
To substantiate his claim, Penrose resorted to the so-called "Gödel argument." Here we need to recall the incompleteness theorem proved by the Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel in 1930. He showed that if there is a certain consistent formal system, then it necessarily contains an irreducible and irrefutable statement. With regard to mathematics, the theorem can be reformulated as follows: in any arithmetic system there is an irreducible formula - for example, the basis of many proofs of various theorems is the formula for the equality of a number to itself, it is not derived from anywhere and cannot be refuted, always remaining an axiom.
The incompleteness theorem was once accepted as a formal proof of the limitations of our mind, but Roger Penrose suggested looking at it from a different angle. As we know, computers operate with calculations based on mathematical logic, so the limits of their capabilities are limited by Gödel's theorem. But human thinking often goes beyond formal logic. Moreover, we are able to change any logical system so that the entire axiomatic apparatus changes. Consequently, our brains are built on principles that are far removed from those used in computers, and which are probably related to quantum effects.
BRAIN CUBES
Penrose is a respected physicist, but, alas, is poorly versed in biology. Therefore, he could not say for sure which mechanisms in the human brain are responsible for "quantum" thinking.
He was helped by the American neuroscientist Stuart Hameroff, who has been studying the nature of consciousness since 1975. In 1987, he published the book "The Absolute Computer", in which he pointed to the mysterious fibrous structures - the microtubules of the cytoskeleton of neurons in the brain. They are composed of the protein tubulin. Under certain conditions, the electrons within the microtubules enter into an "entangled" state, forming quantum qubits (quantum bits of information), which are the physical basis of our mind, capable of going beyond formal logic.
In 1994, Hameroff and Penrose joined forces to create a “neurocomputer model of consciousness,” which later evolved into the theory of quantum neurocomputering (Hameroff-Penrose theory), which continues to this day. Of course, she met with sharp criticism. First of all, opponents pointed to the “fragility” of the qubit. A collision with only one photon is enough to destroy the quantum properties of the system. In addition, modern quantum computers are very sensitive to noise and are capable of operating at temperatures slightly above absolute zero. Therefore, the proposed model looks unrealistic given the fact that we are talking about a warm and moist brain. The neuroscientist Patricia Churchland of the University of California, University of California, sarcastically stated that as well as explaining the nature of consciousness, one can think of "fairy dust in synapses."
Nevertheless, some of the phenomena observed by biologists can only be explained in terms of quantum mechanics. For example, back in 1986, physicist Matthew Fisher conducted a series of sensational experiments on the effect of lithium isotopes on the behavior of rats, during which he proved that quantum "entanglement" really affects cognitive abilities. Many years later, in 2015, he voiced the hypothesis that phosphate molecules in the brain could serve as a kind of "storehouse" for stable qubits.
NO DEATH?
Despite the criticism, supporters of the theory of quantum consciousness went even further in reasoning. During one of his lectures, Stuart Hameroff stated that his model allows you to answer the troubling question of everyone about what happens to the soul after death. According to him, our consciousness is a self-learning program that develops due to processed information, and the entire array of this information is the soul. The main thing is that this information does not disappear, remaining part of the global computing process taking place at the quantum level. Probably, after death we will lose our individuality, but we will become something more.
Of course, accusations of idealism, anti-science and the creation of a quasi-religion immediately fell on Hameroff. However, we can recall that in the last century the theory of relativity, the theory of the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics itself were called idealistic. Maybe it's worth the wait?..
Anton Pervushin