QR6.3.16 Where is the Observer?

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The question where does observation occur? seems simple but it isn’t. Dualism locates it outside physical reality but can’t explain how that is possible. Dual aspect monism locates a pain at the point where it occurs (Velmans, 2021), but phantom limb pains have no such point. Physical realism locates it in the brain but can’t say what nerves observe, because if physical events are an unbroken causal chain, making any event an observation breaks the chain. Nerves busy with physical acts can’t also observe them, so physical events can’t observe other physical events. That a physical thing can’t observe as we do is even a mathematical theorem (Reason, 2018), so:

“The materialistic theory is a logical blunder, because it is based on a confusion between the object and subject. It asserts that matter is objective, but at the same time tries to show that it is also the cause of the subject, which it can never be. ‘A’ can never become ‘non-A’.” (Abhedananda, 1905) p22

If observation is a server-client effect, a server can’t exist on its client network lest an event there gives an infinite loop. A server entity observing client events must exist outside its client space, which is our space. By the nature of observation, observer and observed are A and non-A, so a subject can never be an object.

It follows that the subject observing is outside physical space, just as we observe a snow scene in a glass globe from the outside it. One can tap a point to see a scene but can no more enter the globe than we can enter a screen. The observed location isn’t the observer location, just as players see a dungeon while sitting in a chair. We see a world of physical events following each other in a lawful way, never doubting that we exist in it, but the logic of quantum realism is that it couldn’t possibly be so.

We create virtual worlds for observers that exist, but our universe evolved both observer and observed from the quantum scale. The game Civilization lets a village grow to rule the world but the player leaves as still a citizen. In contrast, in our universe, both observer and observed increase by evolution. Quantum reality made not only a manifest world, but also the beings that observe it.

Virtual games exist for their players not themselves so the goal of Civilization isn’t to rule a virtual earth nor is the aim of Warcraft to conquer orcs. The aim is the player experience not the game result, just as we don’t care if a virtual plane crashes in a simulator as long as the pilot learns. A virtual universe that exists for itself alone is utterly pointless unless the observer benefits. If our universe is a virtual reality that increases the ability to observe, which is consciousness, then it has an observer benefit.

If our universe exists to benefit beings not things, we are at best an experiment of consciousness and at worst, too smart for our own good, and about to become extinct. It only took six million years for a chimp-like creature to become human so if we fail, something else will come along in what, for the universe, isn’t even a heartbeat. Long before the first human, cells were evolving, and long before the first cell, matter was evolving, so we probably aren’t the only experiment in progress.

    The next chapter considers whether some among us long ago realized by intuition what is here deduced by science – that physical reality isn’t what it seems, that it depends on something outside itself, and that what is manifest exists for the benefit what is not.

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QR6.3.15 What observes?

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Observation occurs when a quantum wave collapses in a physical event that restarts it again. Quantum theory needs observation to trigger physical events, so the first to observe our universe was its first creation – light. Observation occurred before matter or information existed, so they couldn’t cause it. If quantum theory is true, then observation is fundamental to our universe.

A photon of light also chooses where it hits a screen from its wave distribution. Physics calls it random, as if it had no value, but if this choice also underlies our attention, it is worth having. If we choose, why can’t a photon? Rather than explain when choice began, it is simpler to say that photons choose on an infinitesimal scale, so choice is also fundamental to our universe.

Light is a stream of photon quanta, but what makes a quantum unit? Physical waves that spread and dissolve back into the sea aren’t units but photon waves are because they spread and restart. A photon wave that can spread over a galaxy then restart at a point is an entity.

What then is a photon? Quantum waves that collapse and disappear before a physical event can’t decide where the wave restarts, so something else must do that. And if the speed of light doesn’t fade, something else must generate its waves. Let us call that something else being, where an entity’s being is how it exists. If a photon’s being generates its quantum waves and chooses where they restart, it can also observe physical events, as they can’t observe each other. If a photon’s being chooses and observes, then being is what observes and chooses, a definition that also works for human beings.

A photon is immortal because, like the phoenix, it rises again from the ashes of its collapse, but if what observes in us ends when the brain dies, we aren’t. Yet if the photon is an infinitesimal being, all later beings could derive from this primal ground by entanglement.

In this view, our universe began when a quantum entity passed its activity to others to make a single photon in a unit of space. The “big bang” that followed was a blast of light that continued until expanding space stopped it. Quantum realism proposes that this “rip” was a server-client relation, a computing term for one source activating another. For example, when a laptop prints a document, it is a server that makes its client printer print pages. It is also a server to its client screen. If a photon is a server manifesting waves on a client network, the wave can be restarted, just as a laptop reboot can restart a screen that hangs. This division separated quantum reality into:

1. Server entities, that generate quantum waves and restart them, and a

2. Client network, where quantum waves lawfully interact in physical events.

This isn’t dualism, that two realities exist, because one reality divided into server and client. We call it being and manifestation, where being is what exists and manifestation is what is observed. Quantum reality divided into manifestation and being, where this division operates as follows:

1. Server entities generate quantum waves that spread on the client network.

2. Quantum waves interact to overload a client node in a physical event.

3. The physical event restarts the quantum entities involved at the same point.

4. Restarting at the same point entangles them to share information in an observation.

5. What is observed is generated, so it is virtual.

    For example, when electrons meet, their quantum waves overlap until an overload restarts and entangles them as an entity that spreads waves again until another physical event disentangles them. Being the same entity lets them observe each other at that moment, so observation has a quantum origin. Countless quantum events cause each physical event, so it is just a snapshot of reality, like a camera that takes a photo every million years or so.

Figure 6.41 A quantum universe observes itself as a virtual reality
Figure 6.41 A quantum universe observes itself as a virtual reality

Figure 6.41 expands Wheeler’s universal eye to include the observer. It divides quantum reality into server and client, which for us is being and manifestation. The realm of manifestation is the client network that we call physical space. The realm of being is what generates and restarts quantum waves, and where observation and choice occur.

Initially, tiny physical events gave tiny observations but over time the universe (U in the figure) observed more by finding entanglements that survived. Most entanglements collapse quickly but some survived as electrons, quarks, atoms, molecules, and macro-molecules like RNA. Each step in the evolution of matter increased the beings that observed.

When the vibrations of tubulins kept entanglements going longer, millions of molecules were able to form a cell that can observe and choose as one. Simple cells led to complex cells, then plants, until animal brains managed to cascade synchronies, to increase observation still further. The result was sentient beings like us, that can think about the world and experience it as beings.

    Evolution expanded the left of the U in Figure 6.41. Part of a universe of light became matter, some matter became life, and some life became sentient. Most of the universe isn’t sentient, but the trend to observe more is clear. It drives matter to become life and life to become sentient. And now, billions of years later, we can see the scale of what is going on (Figure 6.42). We are beings that observe other being’s manifestations by means of our own, but where is the observer that does that?

Figure 6.42 Our View of the Universe, where each dot is a galaxy

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Translations

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If you have translated Chapter 1 or others into your language, let me know at bwhitworth@acm.org.
I can post a copy here so others in your country can read it. All translations are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International License copyright used by this site.

Spanish

   Chapters 1-5 (2019 Version) by Ramón Pérez Montero

Portugese

      Chapter 1 by Jullyano Lino

Chinese

QR6.4 Discussion Questions

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The following questions are addressed in this chapter. They are better discussed in a group to allow a variety of opinions to emerge. The relevant section link is given after each question:
1. What part of you experiences your life? (6.1.1)
2. What would you say to someone who denies that we consciously observe the physical world? (6.1.2)
3. To which Chalmers consciousness category does quantum realism belong? (6.1.3)
4. Is physical realism a realistic theory of what physical particles actually do? (6.1.4)
5. If quantum reality constantly creates the physical world as a virtual reality, what does the physical world cause? (6.1.5)
6. Why can’t text programs process picture files or vice-versa? (6.1.6)
7. What problem faces theories that say something is caused by the mind? (6.1.7)
8. Why isn’t quantum realism the same as panpsychism, that all matter is conscious? (6.1.8)
9. How does growing an information processor differ from building one? (6.2.1)
10. What does split-brain research suggest about what controls the brain? (6.2.2)
11. What does the spinning ballerina illusion tell us about visual processing? (6.2.3)
12. Did evolution build three brains one after the other, each making the last obsolete? (6.2.4)
13. Why is the evolutionary “old” cerebellum still state-of-the-art? (6.2.5)
14. What are emotions and why were they important in brain evolution? (6.2.6)
15. Why was the intellect the last part of the brain to evolve and is the last to mature? (6.2.7)
16. Why does the brain have three centers of feedback control not just one? (6.2.8)
17. What is the effect of cutting the nerves that connect the hemispheres? (6.2.9)
18. How do photosynthetic bacteria harvest every photon of light they receive? (6.3.1)
19. What causes the molecules in a cell to vibrate in synchrony? (6.3.2)
20. How do nerve dendrites check they are receiving error-free data? (6.3.3)
21. What causes brain waves? (6.3.4)
22. What neurological process is consciousness now believed to derive from? (6.3.5)
23. If consciousness arises in the electromagnetic field, what does that explain about it? (6.3.6)
24. How do entangled entities share information? (6.3.7)
25. Why does consciousness take time to arise? (6.3.8)
26. When different images are presented to each eye, why do we see only one image? (6.3.9)
27. Why is what you see always a choice? (6.3.10)
28. What would happen if silicon chips replaced all the nerves in the brain? (6.3.11)
29. If the brain’s electromagnetic field generates consciousness, where is it located? (6.3.12)
30. If the body has about 30 trillion cells, can we know what they are conscious of? (6.3.13)
31. What is more fundamental, mind or matter? (select mind, matter, both or neither) (6.3.14)
32. Is dividing reality into being and manifestation the same as mind-matter dualism? (6.3.15)
33. Why does quantum realism conclude that the observer is outside physical space? (6.3.16)

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QR6.5 References

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QR6.3.14 What Exists?

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Theories about what exists can be derived from three simple questions:

1. Does anything exist out there? 

Yes. Realism: Something that exists out there apart from our observation of it, so we see a common reality because there is one.

No. Solipsism: The world out there is created entirely by our mind, so each person constructs their own version of it, just as in a dream.

2. Does matter exist by itself alone?

Yes. Physicalism: Matter is an objective substance that exists whether we observe it or not.

No. Idealism: Matter is the thought of a non-physical mind, like a shadow of reality.

3. Does the observer exist apart from matter?

Yes. Dualism: Mind is a non-physical substance that exists in a mental realm just as matter exists in the physical realm.

No. Physical realism: All reality is just matter interacting with matter, so the observer must be either a physical result, a physical combination, a physical property, or just an illusion.

Each theory struggles with different facts. Solipsism struggles to explain why we all dream the same lawful reality, which leaves realism, that there is a common reality out there. Physicalism has a vanishing matter problem, as when examined closely, matter becomes virtual particles or quantum waves that aren’t physical at all. An embarrassing fact of physics is that 96% of the universe is dark matter and energy with no known material cause. Idealism has a manifestation problem, as what does a non-physical mind do that matter doesn’t do already? Dualism has the problem that different realms of existence have no basis upon which to interact.

Current science embraces physical realism, that only matter exists, but if it were so, detecting an object without physical interaction would be impossible, yet it happens (3.8.4). Nor can this theory explain observation, as no physical mechanism exists that lets dead matter observe:

“It is well recognized in the West that physicalism … has no adequate account (and many would say no account at all) of how consciousness could arise from the activities of non-conscious physical matter.” (Velmans, 2021) p25

As Russell concluded after many years:

“… we cannot say that ‘matter is the cause of our sensations’ ” (Russell, 1927) p290.

He therefore suggested neutral monism, that matter and mind arise from something else, but neither he nor James (James, 1904) could specify what it was. Figure 6.40 shows the main reality theories at the beginning of last century. What exists (solid lines) was thought to be a substance that was either matter, or mind, or both, or neither.

Figure 6.40 Theories of Reality

A century later, theories are more complex but not a lot has changed. Physical realism now uses panpsychism, that matter observes, to make consciousness fully physical (Strawson, 2008). Dualism has become property dualism, that some matter can be conscious (Chalmers, 1996) p165. Idealism now includes cosmopsychism, that a great mind dissociated into human beings (Kastrup, 2019). Dual-aspect monism merges idealism and physicalism by making mental and physical inseparable aspects of an unknowable primal reality (Vimal, 2018). Mind and matter are then complementary just as electricity and magnetism are in physics (Velmans, 2021) p192, but aspects whose union is impossible can’t be complementary. Arguing that because an electron can be a wave and a particle, we can be a mind and a brain, is using one miracle to justify another.

   Dual substances, dual properties and dual aspects explain how atoms can be conscious but not how we are. Mass and charge add when matter aggregates but if consciousness did that, the moon would be more conscious than us. Dual-aspect monism concludes that “’I’ and ‘Self” and ‘me’ are all plural terms (like the crew of the USS Enterprise.” (Benovsky, 2016) p348, but this contradicts the first fact, that at each moment we experience one observer not many.

More complexity didn’t solve the core problems: that dual realities can’t co-exist, that dead matter can’t observe and that atoms can’t combine consciousness. The naïve belief that only matter exists is false, by the previous chapters. The dualism that observer and observed are both substances is also false.  And no-one believes in solipsism, that only they exist, either. This leaves neutral monism, that the observer and the observed don’t exist by themselves, but are both caused by some other reality.

Quantum realism proposes that quantum reality exists, as quantum theory describes it. Hence, it is all around us but physical events just represent it, so realism is true. Hence, quantum laws everywhere create universal physical laws, so lawfulness is true. Hence, there are no particles, only quantum waves that look like particles when observed, so matter disappears when examined. And if quantum reality causes all physical events, it made the galaxies and so doesn’t have a manifestation problem.

Future generations may mock physical realism as a naïve belief in what doesn’t exist, just as we now mock fairies (Kastrup, 2020), because that a matter universe made itself from nothing is magical thinking. That quantum reality causes mind and matter isn’t dualism because there is only one source. That atoms are conscious doesn’t explain how we are, but if they entangle to increase the observer, our consciousness can evolve from what came before.

Some say that what can’t be seen can’t exist but that isn’t true, as unseen programs create the images that gamers see. If a gamer in a dungeon clicks on a door to reveal a monster image, was the monster lurking there beforehand? Obviously not, as that a dungeon of monsters exists in our laptop when we aren’t using it is absurd. A generated experience isn’t a permanent thing, so only what creates the monster image needs to constantly exist on the laptop.

If the physical world is a virtual reality, the same logic applies. We see tables and chairs not the quantum waves that generate them, and thinking they always exist is like thinking your laptop contains a dungeon of monsters. We see events not things, but if matter can’t observe, what exactly is observing?

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QR6.3.13 The Evolution of Consciousness

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  The three great mysteries of science are how the universe, life and consciousness began. If a quantum event began the universe, a quantum effect began cells, and the ability to observe is a quantum property, then quantum reality could explain all three:

1. The universe began when quantum reality split into server and client (2.4.2).

2. Life began when tubulins entangled cell molecules to allow unified choices (6.3.7).

3. Consciousness always existed, so it evolved from the quantum scale (6.1.8).

There is little doubt that we and everything around us evolved from a first event billions of years ago, so the universe, life, and our consciousness are connected. The common thread is that evolution increased observation because it favors survival. If the first light became matter, matter became life, and life became us, our bodies link back to the first event. No plan was needed because, by the quantum law of all action, anything possible will eventually happen (3.6.3). Light became matter and matter became life because it is possible not because the universe is finely tuned (4.8.2). It took a long time to increase observation.

     In nature, big things come from small, so our bodies grew from a cell smaller than a full stop, and bacteria we can’t see evolved into us. It follows that consciousness grew in the same way. Evolution and growth are step-wise sequences, so humans aren’t a realm apart from animals, and life isn’t a realm apart from matter. By Conway’s Free Will theorem (Conway & Koch, 2006), consciousness is all or none, so it couldn’t not exist then exist. It didn’t suddenly begin at a past moment, so even trilobites in the primeval seas observed (Figure 6.38). The ability to observe can then be traced back to the first event as follows:

Figure 6.38 Even Trilobites observed

Planck time is the shortest possible time in physics. An observation at this scale would occur more times a second than there have been seconds in the life of the universe. Planck time can represent photon scale observations.

A yoctosecond (ys) is a trillion-trillionth of a second. A top quark’s lifetime is estimated at half a ys, bosons have lifetimes in ys, and quark plasma light pulses are a few ys, so this timescale may represent basic matter observations.

A zeptosecond (zs) is a billion-trillionth of a second and the shortest time measured so far. Physicists estimate a few hundred zs for the two atoms of a hydrogen molecule to photoionize (Grundmann et al., 2020), so this timescale may represent atomic observations.

An attosecond (as) is a million-trillionth of a second. Ultrafast x-ray sources with as time resolution reveal bromine molecule vibronic structures (Kobayashi et al., 2020), so this timescale may represent molecular observations.

A femtosecond (fs) is a thousand-trillionth of a second or 0.000000000000001second. It is to a second as a second is to about 32 million years. High-energy fs scale X-rays that probe complex protein molecules in light harvesting bacteria respond to light in the order of one fs (Rathbone et al., 2018) p1433, so this timescale may represent macromolecule observations.

A picosecond (ps) is a trillionth of a second or a million-millionth of a second. Estimates of coherence times for cells range from 100fs to 1 ps (Rathbone et al., 2018) p1447, so this timescale may represent simple cell observations.

A nanosecond (ns) is a billionth of a second. A billion is a big number as it takes 95 years to count to a billion. Nanosecond pulsed electric fields elicit various responses in human and other cells (Koga et al., 2019), so this timescale may represent complex cell observations.

A microsecond (μs) is a millionth of a second. Bacteria existed three billion years ago but the leap to multi-cell life was only 800 million years ago, when cell walls used ion channels that act in microseconds (Minor, 2010) p201, faster than any nerve, to let simple animals with no nerves move towards the algae they feed on (Smith et al., 2019). Microsecond pulsed electric fields of ten μs can double the growth of mushrooms exposed to them (Edwards, 2010), so this timescale may represent multicell observations.

A millisecond (ms) is a thousandth of a second. In larger animals, electro-chemical nerves replaced chemical signals. Jellyfish nerves are all over their body but oysters have a neuro-endocrine center (Liu et al., 2016). Worms and slugs have ten-thousand nerves in a chord, and crabs and insects have a hundred-thousand nerve chord. A honeybee with nearly a million nerves can fly, navigate, and communicate where pollen is. These brains are fast, as an insect startle response can be less than 5ms (Sourakov, 2011) and a praying mantis can evade a bat attack in 8ms (Triblehorn & Yager, 2005), so this timescale may represent instinctive brain observations.

A centisecond (cs) is a hundredth of a second. Frogs and reptiles have brains with tens of millions of nerves that pass data from one nerve to the next. It takes at least a cs for a signal to travel a meter of nerve, so a cerebellum-based brain can respond in hundredths of a second. Tadpole startle responses occur within 1-2cs (Yamashita et al., 2000) and our blink responses take 3-4 cs, so this timescale may represent one-center brain observations.

A decisecond (ds) is a tenth of a second. Bird and small mammal brains are about ten times larger than same-size frogs or reptiles due to midbrain and neocortex increases. Two-center brains require thalamic coherence that takes two-tenths of a second to occur, so a rats reaction time is about 2-3ds (Blokland, 1998). In 100m races, responses under a tenth of a second are considered a false start because elite sprinters take 1.2-1.6 tenths of a second to begin to move (Tønnessen et al., 2013), so this timescale may represent two-center brain observations.

The speed of thought seems to be about a second. Lower brain areas respond faster but brain-wide consciousness takes about half-a-second, so human thought will take longer. We blink in hundredths of a second and change highway lanes in tenths of a second, but it takes about a second to mentally rotate an 80° shape (Harris et al., 2000), or a 3D shape (Shepard & Metzler, 1988), or do mental arithmetic (Han et al., 2016), so this timescale may represent three-center brain observations.

   Table 6.1 shows how consciousness, the ability to observe, evolved from photons to us, so the consciousness of a fly differs from ours in scale not in kind. Simpler entities observe faster so it’s hard to swat a fly that sees 250 frames a second to our 60 because, we move in slow motion compared to it. The same applies to distance, as I see a chair that it doesn’t because it sees less. Other animals have better senses but none can observe the galaxy as we do. Working back through evolution, consciousness was always there, just on a lesser scale.

Figure 6.39 S. Roeselii responses

For evolution to increase consciousness it must increase survival. Eyes and wings help survival but what does consciousness do? The benefit proposed is unity. That a house divided against itself cannot stand applies as much to cells and brains as it does to societies. The brain’s binding problem was how to get trillions of nerves to act as one and a cell’s trillions of molecules have the same problem. Every composite entity has this problem – how to get its parts to work together not against each other. The benefit of unity is universal, and quantum entanglement allows it.

Unification by entanglement began with matter,as an electron is entangled photons that survive as an entity (4.3.1), atomic nuclei survive as entangled quark strings (4.6.1), and molecules survive because entanglement lets them form physically incompatible structures (3.8.1). Matter evolved by entanglement, by letting new combinations unify to be stable, and thus survive.

   Unity benefits cells too, as photosynthesis works better if receptor molecules work as one, as they did when tubulin structures synchronized and entangled them. How quantum entanglement works is unclear but the benefit of unity is clear. It makes cells more than a bunch of molecules, just as it made us more than a bunch of nerve cells. For example, S. Roeselii is a trumpet-shaped single cell animal that attaches to sea rocks to feed on passing rotifers. When stimulated by an irritant, it tries various options, in order, before finally deciding to relocate elsewhere (Dexter et al., 2019) (Figure 6.39):

“They do the simple things first, but if you keep stimulating, they ‘decide’ to try something else. S. roeselii has no brain, but there seems to be some mechanism that, in effect, lets it ‘change its mind’ once it feels like the irritation has gone on too long.“

How can a cell with no brain do that? The answer proposed is that cell unity allowed cell choices that help survival. Quantum entanglement helped every step of evolution by letting complex entities make unified choices. The increase in consciousness shown in Table 6.1 is thus no accident, because the unity that consciousness provides benefits survival.

Each of us is a walking, talking, thinking complex of 30 trillion cells that grew from one cell by a path that evolution discovered. We see ourselves as uniquely conscious, but evolution doesn’t do unique. We are only conscious because countless life forms before us found ways to become more so. The vast tree that bore us stretches as far as we can see and more, but how does it exist?

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Table 6.1 The Evolution of Consciousness

Observer

Time Scale

Examples

Light

Planck time

̴10−44 seconds

Photon

Basic matter

Yoctosecond

10−24 seconds

Electrons, quarks, neutrinos

Atoms

Zeptosecond

10−21 seconds

Periodic table atoms.

Molecules

Attosecond

10−18 seconds

Oxygen, carbon dioxide …

Macromolecules

Femtosecond

10−15 seconds

DNA, RNA, mtDNA

Simple cells

Picosecond

10−12 seconds

Bacteria and organelles

Complex single cells

Nanosecond

10−9 seconds

Paramecium, amoeba

Multicell life

Microsecond

10−6 seconds

Placozoa, algae, fungi

Instinctive brains

Millisecond

10−3 seconds

Fish, insects, crabs

One-center brains

Centisecond

10−2 seconds

Reptiles, amphibia

Two-center brains

Decisecond

10−1 seconds

Mammals, birds

Three-center brains

Seconds

Seconds

Humans

QR6.3.12 The Nature of Consciousness

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The cascade theory of human consciousness answers common questions about it as follows:

1. What is consciousness? Let consciousness be the ability to observe a physical event. In our case, distant brain areas analyze different senses yet give one multi-sense observation. If nerves work as computers do, how can a brain with no central control form one observation? Millions of years ago, nature found a way, to entangle nerves by synchrony into one observer, because forming one observer is as important as analyzing the senses. Even in the womb, some nerves process data while others generate brain waves. When a baby looks at you intently, it may be forming the observer as well as the observed. Human consciousness is the brain’s ability to entangle nerves into an I to observe the world that sense nerves register.

2. What causes consciousness? The primal cause is that quantum entities can observe physical events, but human observation requires a bigger observer. It requires a cascade of brain synchronies for our consciousness to emerge from the electromagnetic field.

3. Is consciousness physical? Every physical event is an observation result so what observes it can’t also be physical, as that would be circular. If consciousness was physical, we could put it in a bottle, but what creates the bottle can’t be contained in it. If a non-physical electromagnetic field underlies consciousness, then the observer isn’t physical either.

4. Is consciousness continuous? A physical observation is an event not a thing, so observations are intermittent not continuous, but the being that experiences can constantly exist.

5. What does consciousness do? Consciousness enables a single being that can observe and choose, whether at the cell or human scale. Acquiring consciousness allows a complex brain to act as an entity. We take ourselves for granted, but imagine an online game whose players asked “What does the player do?” Some might say the player observes and chooses but those who see only the game see no “players” in it, so conclude they don’t exist. They say: “If players exist, point to them in the game!” This can’t be done, yet the game only exists for its players. In essence, consciousness provides the players in the game of physical reality. 

6. Why is consciousness singular? Brain areas act in parallel but can only form one synchrony at a time, to give one global experience at a time. Consciousness is singular because the brain-wide resonance that creates it is singular.

7. Why does the conscious experience never fail? Brain states that give new smells or feelings are experienced with no more effort than familiar ones. How does consciousness know what experience to generate each time, without fail? If the cascade of consciousness builds up from individual nerve observations, the experience is built from scratch each time. Consciousness never fails because every experience is generated from the ground up.

8. Can consciousness change? Consciousness based on neural synchrony can grow or shrink as nerves join or leave the ensemble, so “I” take a while to fully emerge after sleeping. If consciousness increases as nerves synchronize better, one can be more or less conscious over a day or lifetime. Consciousness can also reduce by dissociation, when the unitary self falls apart, as seen in multiple personality cases. 

9. Can consciousness observe itself? An observation is an observer-observed interaction where the observer isn’t the observed, so to observe itself an entity has to divide into observing and observed parts. Brains do this when the intellect observes the emotions, as interpreter theory proposes, but consciousness as an entanglement can’t split into parts. Yet somehow, our ability to observe includes knowing that we observe. The Gnostic saying “Know Thyself” is explored further in Chapter 7.

If consciousness sets us apart in the animal kingdom, how then did it evolve??

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QR6.3.11 The Silicon Chip Speculation

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A classic brain information theory argument is the silicon chip speculation, that replacing every neuron in the brain with an equivalent silicon chip wouldn’t alter consciousness:

“… imagine that one of your neurons is replaced by a silicon chip prosthesis that has the exact same input/output profile as the neuron it replaces. At the core of this thought experiment is the presumption that such a replacement would be unnoticeable to you or to anyone observing your behavior. Presumably, you would continue to experience pain even though the physical realization of those mental events includes a silicon chip where an organic neuron used to be. Now imagine that, one by one, the rest of your neurons are swapped for silicon prostheses. Presumably there would be no change in your mental life even though your brain, which was once made of lipid and protein neurons, is now entirely composed of silicon neuronoids.” (Mandik, 2004).

No evidence supports this speculation except the belief that brains are biological computers. That the brain equates to a set of wired chips isn’t supported by neuroscience, as transistors are insulated from electromagnetic fields while neurons broadcast them, as brainwaves show.

Replacing a neuron with a chip might duplicate its wiring but not its broadcast field, so just as replacing a cellphone antenna with a computer would diminish a network, replacing neurons with chips would reduce the brainwaves that correlate with consciousness. If consciousness derives from nerve entanglements, the end result of the silicon experiment would be a brain with no more consciousness than a computer. The silicon chip speculation is science fiction posing as science fact, like the singularity prediction, that computers will soon become conscious (Kurzweil, 1999), as neither have any basis in evidence.

A related claim is that if we could copy matter atom-for-atom, copying the brain would copy its consciousness. If the physical world is all there is, physically identical brains are the same in everything, but if one “me” tends the garden while another cooks a meal, how can one I experience two events? If my copy went to work while “I” lay in the sun, I have no knowledge of a day at work, so my “copy” didn’t replace me at all. It follows that physically copying a brain creates another self, not a new myself. Identical twins are, initially at least, largely identical, but they are different beings with different choices and lives.  

Given a physical copy, Chalmers argues that the original is conscious but the copy is a zombie, while for Dennett, both are zombies imagining they are conscious. In quantum realism, two identical brains would generate two conscious beings that independently choose. Splitting one brain into two hemispheres gives two I’s that can come into conflict so why wouldn’t a perfect copy be the same? This clearly isn’t beneficial so if I made a perfect copy of myself that was also conscious, who is to say it wouldn’t decide to kill me? The brain evolved to unify consciousness, not to divide it, for a reason.

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QR6.3.10 Consciousness Cascades

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Brain synchronies develop in a sequence, from tiny nerve clusters to brain-wide synchronies. Microcolumns must synchronize first, to get the strength to merge into cortical columns, that then synchronize into macrocolumns. The constant pings of interneurons and the thalamic beat then help distant nerve areas to lock in phase in a global synchrony that allows consciousness.

We tune violins by varying notes slightly to achieve resonance, so a brain is like an orchestra tuning different instruments to the same frequency, except that nerves tune to obtain the same phase. This entangles them into a quantum entity that can collapse at a point in their field in an observation.

If a local synchrony that gives a small observation is maintained by constant pings, it can merge with others into a bigger observation, by the same process. This takes time to achieve, so nerves constantly ping to allow observations that can synchronize further. The cascade culminates when distant brain areas of language, meaning, and memory merge into a global synchrony that integrates the decentralized brain in a single observation that is what I attend to.

To recap, a photon wave collapsing at a screen point essentially chooses to observe there. When many nerves synchronize, their entangled field collapses to observe represents some neural combination. The microcolumn result is a flicker of an observation, but if it repeats, instead of collapsing alone it entangles with others that are doing the same. Constant neural volleys sustain lower synchronies until they cohere into bigger ones, and the process repeats until it gives a global observation. The global ignition that correlates with consciousness is a series of observer choices that end in what we experience.

This cascade allows negotiation between higher and lower units. A result that doesn’t work at a high level can be repeated until it does, so an ambiguous figure seen one way can be redone differently. Computers struggle with low-level ambiguity but a brain based on choices at every level can ask for a rerun with different choices. Top-down links also let the global observer prime lower neural units to act alone, allowing instinctive response times as low as a tenth of a second.

Nerves that entangle by synchrony observe together so they are observer gates not transistor gates. Each observation is a choice, and lower choices precede higher ones, up to a global observer who also chooses what to observe. The choice of what we attend to isn’t defined by sense input nor is it entirely free, as the options available at the top level depend on choices made lower down. This isn’t a machine where each cog drives the next but a choice hierarchy, where lower choices define higher ones. The cause of human behavior, in brain terms, is choices all the way down, so the social norm of people being responsible for their own actions has a neural basis.

Consciousness is like a spotlight that begins as millions of barely discernible point flickers that blink at different times. Eventually they become area flashes that wink separately until they also synchronize into a coherent beam directed at a target, which is our attention. It takes about half-a-second for the spotlight to power up, as each synchrony leads to the next.

This explains how we see one visual field when each hemisphere only sees half of it. Each hemisphere doesn’t send data to the other hemisphere to unify the visual field. This is impossible by encapsulation and inefficient. Instead, callosal nerves synchronize the hemispheres into one observer that sees what both do.

  This explains why beta-gamma waves stop under anesthesia and consciousness doesn’t return until they do (John et al., 2001). The anesthetic makes us unconscious by interfering with brain synchrony. Only when and brain waves return, and the uncoupled hemispheres recouple, does conscious vision also return. What observes the full visual field isn’t either hemisphere but their quantum entanglement.

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