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Consciousness and intelligence are properties commonly understood as dependent by folk psychology and society in general. The term artificial intelligence and the kind of problems that it managed to solve in the recent years has been shown…
This paper is a response to some recent discussions of many-minds interpretations in the philosophical literature. After an introduction to the many-minds idea, the complexity of quantum states for macroscopic objects is stressed. Then it…
The possible existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) draws attention to fundamental questions about what is physically possible and what is not. An example is the "no cloning theorem" in quantum mechanics, which states that no physical…
A phenomenological approach using the states of spin-like observables is developed to understand the nature of consciousness and the totality of experience. The three states of consciousness are taken to form the triplet of eigenstates of a…
The doomsday argument is a probabilistic argument that claims to predict the total lifetime of the human race. By examining the case of an individual lifetime, I conclude that the argument is fundamentally related to consciousness. I derive…
We address the relation between two apparently distinct problems: The quest for a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness and the search for time and space as emergent structures in the quantum mechanical world. We also advance…
It is proposed that both human creativity and human consciousness are (unintended) consequences of the human brain's extraordinary energy efficiency. The topics of creativity and consciousness are treated separately, though have a common…
Scientific theories of consciousness should be falsifiable and non-trivial. Recent research has given us formal tools to analyze these requirements of falsifiability and non-triviality for theories of consciousness. Surprisingly, many…
This article presents an operationalized solution to the mind-body problem which relies on rigorously defined theoretical reasoning rather than philosophical argument. We identify a specific operation which is a necessary property of all…
We approach the question "What is Consciousness?" in a new way, not as Descartes' "systematic doubt", but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one's way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might…
In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply…
Determining whether another system, biological or artificial, possesses phenomenal consciousness has long been a central challenge in consciousness studies. This attribution problem has become especially pressing with the rise of large…
Objectively verifying the generative mechanism of consciousness is extremely difficult because of its subjective nature. As long as theories of consciousness focus solely on its generative mechanism, developing a theory remains challenging.…
The underlying physiological mechanisms of generating conscious states are still unknown. To make progress on the problem of consciousness, we will need to experimentally design a system that evolves in a similar way our brains do. Recent…
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…
As we know, "Who can be said to be a conscious being?" is one of the hard problems in present science, and no method has been found to strictly differentiate the conscious being from the being without consciousness or usual matter. In this…
Neural theories of consciousness face three difficulties: (1) The selection problem: how are those neurons which cause consciousness selected, from all the other neurons which do not? (2) the precision problem: how do neurons hold a…
As time advances in our perceived real world, existing information is preserved and new information is added to history. All the information that may ever be encoded in history must be about some fundamental, unique, atemporal and…
We all are fascinated by the phenomena of intelligent behavior, as generated both by our own brains and by the brains of other animals. As physicists we would like to understand if there are some general principles that govern the structure…
Human brains are arguably the most complex entities known. Composed of billions of neurons, connected via a highly detailed structure where the underlying method by which functionality occurs is still debated. Here we consider one theory…