Chalmer’s last option is neutral monism, that something more primal than matter or mind causes both, but as he notes:

“No-one has yet developed any sort of detailed theory in this class, and it is not yet clear whether such a theory can be developed.” (Chalmers, 2003).

Bertrand Russell suggested this option in 1921:

“The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor.” (Russell, 2005).

He didn’t specify that common ancestor but quantum reality fits the bill, as what causes matter could also observe it (4.5.8). That quantum events generate physical events as quantum mechanics describes is then a neutral monism based on Russell’s proposal.

Figure 6.3 summarizes this option to be that when we observe an object, quantum reality is observing itself. There is a series of quantum events (Q1, Q2, Q3…) that occasionally produce physical events (P1, P2…), that let the parties observe each other. Physical events then emerge from quantum interactions to produce an observed virtual reality. That the world we see emerges from unseeable quantum events implies the following:

a. The quantum sequence (Q1, Q2, Q3…) has no gaps to allow physical causes, just as physicalism had no gaps to allow mental causes (Figure 6.1).

b. The physical events produced (P1, P2…) are effects not causes, so like the whistle of a train, they occur but don’t affect the quantum engine, or each other.

c. Physical events follow physical laws because they derive from quantum laws, but like the frames of a movie, their sequence depends on what generates them not their interaction.

d. Every physical event is an observation because when quantum waves spread, superpose, and restart at a point, they entangle to know each other’s state.

In this model, the events of physical history occurred and were observed long before humans evolved. It makes every physical event an observation, so when we observe a photon, it also observes us, but it does so on a quantum scale where quantum events occur more often per second than there have been seconds in our universe.

We consider ourselves conscious and then divide the world into beings like us and unconscious matter, but where is the boundary? If humans are conscious, are dogs, insects, or plants? If I am conscious, is a baby, a fetus, or the single cell I grew from? Dividing reality like this gives an explanatory gap, between our body of matter and our experience of it (Levine, 1983). The simpler conclusion is that every physical event is a conscious observation to some degree (Penrose, 1994), so:

“… the elements of proto-consciousness would be intimately tied in with the most primitive Planck level ingredients of space-time geometry, these presumed ‘ingredients’ being taken to be at the absurdly tiny level of 10^-35m and 10^-43s, a distance and time some 20 orders of magnitude smaller than those of normal particle-physics scales and their most rapid processes.” (Penrose & Hameroff, 2017), p21. 

Quantum-scale observations could then be the proto-consciousness that preceded us. To observe so little so briefly seems hardly worth it but smallism, that facts about big things come from facts about small things (Coleman, 2006), can apply to consciousness too. If everything in our universe  began small, the conscious observer experience could have too, to let macro-consciousness evolve from micro-consciousness (Chalmers, 1996) p305. Instead of matter experiencing nothing, it then experiences atomic events, and our experiences are the same ability on a bigger scale. 

If everything is conscious to some degree, there is no explanatory gap between matter and conscious beings, but how did proto-consciousness produce our consciousness? The explanatory gap between matter and consciousness is then replaced by an evolutionary gap between what atoms experience and what we do. What bridged the gap is our brain, so how did brains evolve?

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If information can’t cause consciousness, is it a social effect? Millions of ants form colonies that are described as a superorganisms, so perhaps neurons are the same, because physically: 

“… ant colonies are no different from brains in many respects.” (Hofstadter & Dennett, 1981), p181.

In this theory, the brain is a colony of nerves that communicate electrically instead of chemically, as the chemical trails that ants lay down are like the paths of neurons, so it could have language as we do. Dumb neurons would then create consciousness as dumb ants create a colony, which remains as neurons come and go just as the colony remains as ants come and go. This proposal updates Crick’s pack of neurons idea to be that we are nothing but a colony of nerves.

The problem is that no evidence suggests that ant colonies are conscious. If an ant colony is a being that communicates, why haven’t we learned its language by now, as we did that of bees? It doesn’t help to suggest that perhaps countries like Russia or America are also beings:

“… let us think a bit right now about whether it makes sense to think of ‘being’ a country. Does a country have thoughts or beliefs?” (Hofstadter & Dennett, 1981), p192.

Thinking about social entities, like families, tribes, and countries, however suggests that they are accepted constructs not beings (Whitworth & Sylla, 2012). For example, a bicycle is seen as an entity, but it doesn’t experience itself as such, so it isn’t a being like us. Likewise, we see countries as entities and act accordingly, but that doesn’t make them beings with thoughts and beliefs. We give storms names like Katrina but they aren’t beings, and neither are countries or ant colonies.

Finally, after showcasing various Gestalt paradoxes and speculating without evidence that ant colonies are conscious, it is conclused that our mind is just a construct of itself:

“Mind is a pattern perceived by a mind.” (Hofstadter & Dennett, 1981), p200.

In this excellent example of circularity, the mind perceives a pattern that then explains the mind that perceived it, but didn’t that mind already exist before the pattern was observed? To explain a cause by its effects is an infinite loop that never stops, so that mind creates mind fails because it produces an infinite regress. Likewise, social constructs that derive from a mind can’t be used to explain it.

In general, our ability to experience physical events can’t be explained by them, or by anything that derives from them, so what could cause it?

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If matter can’t explain consciousness, it is unclear why its information derivative should do better, but integrated information theory argues that “consciousness is integrated information” (Tononi, 2008), generalizing an earlier theory that brain senses like vision, hearing, and smell store data in a global workspace (Baars, 1988).

Nerves from the eye go to the back of the brain, from the ears to its sides, and smell to its center, so how do sizzling sausages whose smell, sight, and sound are analyzed in distant brain areas appear as one object? The global workspace answer is that sense data is analyzed then put into a common area that higher functions like memory and language can act upon because:

“… the information has entered into a specific storage area that makes it available to the rest of the brain.” (Dehaene, 2014), p163.

Integrated information theory equates this unification to consciousness, but clinical studies deny that a specific brain data-center causes consciousness (Block, 1995), as does information theory. To exchange information, sender and receiver must agree on what physical signals mean. If they don’t, the result is gibberish, like a foreign language, so the auditory area of the brain can no more read visual data than I can read Chinese. Unless a global workspace had a sight, sound, and smell translator that the brain doesn’t seem to have, brain functions couldn’t use it.

The same logic applies to apps on a computer. For example, Windows Notepad reads text data and Paint reads picture data, but loading text into Paint, or a picture into Notepad, gives nonsense, so even if both put their data into a common area, neither could read what the other posted. Programs like Word that read text and pictures need a lot of code to do that, so they become very big, and still can’t read zip files for example. In general, for one application to read all data denies the benefits of specialization, and brain functions are specialized not centralized. One can’t plug the optic nerve into the auditory cortex and expect information to flow like water. 

Nonetheless, workspace theory goes on to suggest that neural systems chat like little people:

“… neural systems do not merely report to their superiors; they also chat among themselves.” (Dehaene, 2014), p176.

The brain then uses neuron sociology (Nunez, 2016) p18 as the Internet uses crowd control:

“… it is helpful to think metaphorically of a theater of mind. In the conscious spotlight on stage – the global workspace – an actor speaks, and his words and gestures are distributed to many unconscious audience members, sitting in the darkened hall. Different listeners understand the performance in different ways. But as the audience claps or boos in response, the actor can change his words, or walk off to yield to the next performer.” (Baars & Laureys, 2004), p672.

The analogy is seductive but that neural areas chat like little people over nerve phone lines, or clap and boo each other as we do online, contradicts information theory. Electrical signals going down a wire don’t exchange information unless designed to do so. For example, the Internet needs data, network, transport, and application protocols to work, namely ethernet, internet protocol (IP),  transmission control program (TCP), and hypertext transfer (http) respectively. The Internet’s TCP/IP/Http protocols took decades to develop from the original Arpanet, and it was done by a central group the brain doesn’t have. And if the Internet integrates data, shouldn’t it also be conscious? Information integration theorists expect it be so soon (Koch, 2014), despite no evidence.

Theories of brain consciousness must respect information science, but information integration theory doesn’t, and what doesn’t work for computer networks won’t work for brains either. The cartoonish concept that neural areas chat like little people, by a common language the brain doesn’t have, merging claps or boos they can’t make, on a central stage that doesn’t exist, is a fantasy. If integrated information caused consciousness, the Internet would have had it long ago, but it hasn’t.

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In 1637, Descartes concluded that mind is real because a thinker can doubt what he sees but not that he sees, so our sensory experiences could be a dream but the experience of them is real. The physicalism of science (Figure 6.1) then required a mind reality to consciously experience it (Figure 6.2). In this Dualism-A, mind and matter exist in different realms that interact, to provide both the machine of science and the immaterial observer of religion.

This view held for centuries until in 1814, Laplace argued that physical causes alone sufficed:

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.” Laplace, in (Truscott & Emory, 1951), p4.

In this causal determinism, science not only doesn’t need religion, but is better off without it, because the physical world is causally closed. It is a causal chain with no gaps, like a tube of balls where pushing one end makes a ball pop out the other end, with no mind needed to make it happen. If physical events follow a predetermined path, there is no room for mental causes.

Dualism couldn’t counter this because it can’t explain how mind affects matter (1.2.2), and logic confirms that causal closure means that if the mind has a physical cause, it must also be physical and so not mind, and if not, it has no physical effect (Kim, 1999). Physicalism doesn’t let the mind affect the body as we think, so Dualism-B, that mind exists but does nothing, is essentially physicalism.

Supporters of mental causation then sought to demonstrate it by paranormal events like telekinesis (mentally moving objects), or extra-sensory perception (seeing what is physically unseeable), but these results haven’t replicated reliably (Kelly at al., 2007).

Then just as physicalism was destroying the foundations of dualism, quantum theory destroyed its foundations, by stating that no physical event is 100% certain. For example, in the Stern-Gerlach experiment, silver atoms fired into a magnetic field move up or down based on a perfectly random spin that is set when they enter the field. We can’t pre-sort the atoms into those that will go up or down as they are initially identical, and according to quantum theory, the spin that decides their movement is defined when they enter the field, not before. In a causally closed universe, the physical past causes the physical future, but in our universe it doesn’t, and physicalism can’t explain this.

Physicalism then can’t explain the experiential fact of consciousness or the physical facts, and dualism can’t explain how an immaterial observer can exist alongside a material world, but this didn’t stop its supporters from proposing causes that derive from matter.

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If consciousness is a scientific fact, science should be able to discover what causes it. The scientific approach to a fact is to explain it, not to ignore or dismiss it, so the question raised is:

“Why does conscious experience exist?” (Chalmers, 1996), (p5).

A major review of theories on consciousness divides them exhaustively into the following categories labelled A-F (Chalmers, 2003):

A.  Materialism-A. Consciousness doesn’t exist, except as imagined by the physical brain (Dennett, 1991). Physical causes explain everything but the physical brain just invents an observer, so the hard problem doesn’t exist.

B.  Materialism-B. Consciousness does exist, but is identical to certain physical brain states for all practical purposes (Block & Stalnaker, 1999). Again if physical causes explain everything, consciousness must equate to a brain state, so the hard problem is solved.

C.  Materialism-C. Consciousness does exist, but is in theory a physical brain effect (Nagel, 1974) (Edelman, 2003). That physical causes explain everything then just means they will one day explain consciousness, so the hard problem will be solved eventually.

Materialism then concludes that either consciousness doesn’t exist (A), or if it does, it is just a physical brain state (B), or some other physical cause that the future will find (C). Others however suggest various non-physical causes, including:

D. Dualism-D. Consciousness exists by itself in a non-physical realm, where it affects matter which in turn also affects it (Stapp, 1993). Consciousness is then independent of matter, but interacts with it, so the hard problem is solved.

E.  Dualism-E. Consciousness is a brain by-product that helps us survive but doesn’t affect matter (Zizzi, 2003). Consciousness is then an epiphenomenon, like a train whistle that exists but doesn’t affect the physical train, so the hard problem is solved.

F.   Neutral Monism-F. Both consciousness and matter derive from a primal cause that is neither, as a common ancestor causes both (Russell, 2005). Consciousness and matter then both exist but are generated, and neither causes the other, so the hard problem is solved.

In these theories, consciousness exists as matter does in another realm (D), or it exists there but unlike matter affects nothing (E), or something else entirely causes both it and matter (F).

The proposed causes of consciousness then divide into those that attribute it to physical states and those that imply a non-physical cause. How science assesses these theories is now reviewed, starting with physical causes.