English

Time and Consciousness in a Quantum World

History and Philosophy of Physics 2017-09-29 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

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 a toy-model proposal of emergence of time from a timeless unus mundus quantum-like space by using Aharonov's two state formalism of quantum mechanics. We further speculate on these issues within a quantum cognitive perspective with particular interest in two recent papers on this emerging field of science. One (Aerts et al) entails (as we argue) a panpsychist top-down approach to the problem of consciousness. The second paper (Blutner et al) proposes a quantum cognitive model for Jung's psychological type structure. We discuss these concepts and their relation with our main thesis, that time is a measure of individuality. One of our central motivations is to provide arguments that allows the mainstream physicist to take seriously a panpsychist worldview, a position that has been openly forwarded by many modern philosophers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.08093,
  title  = {Time and Consciousness in a Quantum World},
  author = {Augusto Cesar Lobo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.08093},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:52:46.256Z