Related papers: Consciousness and the Physical World

Physics is so successful today in understanding the nature of matter. What can it say about mind ? Is it possible to have a unified theory of matter and mind within the framework of modern science ? Is Consciousness an accident or is it a…

Invited talk delivered at the International Conference on General Relativity and Cosmology (ICGC), Ahmedabad, India; 13 - 18 December 1991. To appear in its proceedings.

This article was written in response to a request from an editor of American Vedantist. It is shown that the idea that consciousness is essential to understanding quantum mechanics arises from logical fallacies. This may be welcome news to…

The quest to understand consciousness, once the purview of philosophers and theologians, is now actively pursued by scientists of many stripes. We examine consciousness from the perspective of theoretical computer science (TCS), a branch of…

Fundamental approaches bypass the problem of getting consciousness from non-conscious components by positing that consciousness is a universal primitive. For example, the double aspect theory of information holds that information has a…

The hard problem of consciousness is the question how subjective experience arises from brain matter. I suggest exploring the possibility that quantum physics could be part of the answer. The simultaneous unity and complexity of subjective…

The pursuit of artificial consciousness requires conceptual clarity to navigate its theoretical and empirical challenges. This paper introduces a composite, multilevel, and multidimensional model of consciousness as a heuristic framework to…

We start by summarising very briefly the various prior attempts (during the last one and half a decade), some of which were made as independent research centres and others as visiting centres with extensive visiting programs for luminaries…

We present a logical proof that computing machines, and by extension physical systems, can never be certain if they possess conscious awareness. This implies that human consciousness is associated with a violation of energy conservation. We…

In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the concept of "physical" embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of…

In recent years, promising mathematical models have been suggested which aim to describe conscious experience and its relation to the physical domain. Whereas the axioms and metaphysical ideas of these theories have been carefully…

This book deals with some ontological implications of standard non-relativistic quantum mechanics, and the use of the notion of `consciousness' to solve the measurement problem.

Talk presented at the conference ``Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Foundations of Quantum Field Theory,'' at Boston University, March 1996. It will be published in the proceedings of this conference.

Consciousness is notoriously hard to define with objective terms. An objective definition of consciousness is critically needed so that we might accurately understand how consciousness and resultant choice behaviour may arise in biological…

The twentieth century saw two fundamental revolutions in physics -- relativity and quantum. Daily use of these theories can numb the sense of wonder at their immense empirical success. Does their instrumental effectiveness stand on the rock…

I examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, "perceptronium", with distinctive information processing abilities. I explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other…

Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented…

This is a talk presented at the conference ``Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Foundations of Quantum Field Theory,'' at Boston University, March 1996. It will be published in the proceedings of this conference.

Beings, animate or inanimate, are dynamical systems which continuously interact with the (external and /or internal) environment through the physical or physiologic interfaces of their Kantian (representational) realities. And the nature of…

Conceptual problems in quantum mechanics result from the specific quantum concept of reality and require, for their solution, including the observer's consciousness into quantum theory of measurements. Most naturally this is achieved in the…