31 theories
Quantum & Dimensions: theories of consciousness
Consciousness depends on quantum physics, or on other frontier physics such as extra dimensions, in a way that goes beyond the quantum behavior shared by all matter. Brains may exploit quantum effects, or mind and quantum reality may be linked at the root.
Open Quantum & Dimensions on the mapAll theories A–Z
Quantum theories hold that ordinary neuroscience leaves something out, and that the missing piece comes from fundamental physics. Two motives drive them. Quantum mechanics has its own unsolved puzzle about measurement, and consciousness is the other great unexplained fact, so some theorists suspect the two mysteries share one solution. Others argue more modestly that neurons, like the molecules of photosynthesis, use quantum effects to do something classical biology cannot.
The oldest version ties consciousness to the collapse of the wave function. Fritz London and Edmond Bauer argued in 1939 that the chain of measurement ends in an observer’s awareness, and Eugene Wigner pressed the point in 1961 with his ‘Wigner’s friend’ thought experiment. David Chalmers and Kelvin McQueen have revived the idea by pairing Integrated Information Theory with a physical model of collapse, in a form that quantum computers might one day test.
The best-known brain-based theory is Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction, proposed in the mid-1990s, which locates conscious moments in gravity-related quantum state reductions inside neuronal microtubules. Others look to synapses (Friedrich Beck and John Eccles), nuclear spins (Matthew Fisher) or entangled spins at NMDA receptors. A third strand, including David Bohm’s implicate order, treats mind and matter as expressions of a deeper, holistic level of reality, and still others invoke hidden spatial dimensions or a universal zero-point field.
The standard objection is decoherence. The brain is warm, wet and noisy, and delicate quantum states should collapse long before they could influence neurons. Carlo Rovelli adds that an ‘observer’ in quantum physics can be a detector or a stone, so measurement gives consciousness no special job. Defenders of Orch OR point to recent reports of long-lived quantum effects in microtubules.
Good places to start
- Penrose-Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction Consciousness as Orchestrated Objective Reduction in Microtubules
- Wigner–von Neumann’s Consciousness-Collapse: Experience at the Quantum Cut Consciousness as What Ends the Quantum Measurement Chain
- Chalmers and McQueen’s Quantum Collapse Consciousness as the Trigger of Quantum Collapse
- Bohm’s Implicate-Explicate Order Consciousness as an Extension of the Implicate Order
- Fisher’s Quantum Cognition Consciousness as Nuclear Spin Quantum Processing
All 31 theories
- Wigner–von Neumann’s Consciousness-Collapse: Experience at the Quantum Cut Consciousness as What Ends the Quantum Measurement Chain
- Penrose-Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction Consciousness as Orchestrated Objective Reduction in Microtubules
- Hameroff’s Consciousness Came Before Life Consciousness First, Life as Its Vehicle
- Neven's Quantum Superposition Formation Consciousness Arises When a Quantum Superposition Forms
- Stapp’s Collapsing the Wave Function via Asking “Questions” ‘Consciousness as Quantum Wave Function Collapse’
- Bohm’s Implicate-Explicate Order Consciousness as an Extension of the Implicate Order
- Chalmers and McQueen’s Quantum Collapse Consciousness as the Trigger of Quantum Collapse
- Wolfram’s Consciousness in the Ruliad ‘Consciousness as Bounded Perception in the Computational Ruliad’
- Faggin’s Quantum Information-based Panpsychism Consciousness as Quantum Information in Pure States
- Kauffman’s Mind Mediating Possibles to Actuals Mind Mediating Possibles to Actuals via Quantum Measurement
- Carr’s Quantum Theory, Psi, Mental Space ‘Consciousness as Fundamental Mental Space’
- Smolin’s Causal Theory of Views Consciousness as Novel or Unique Causal Views
- Pylkkänen’s Quantum Potential Energy and Active Information Consciousness Reflects Quantum Holism and Active Information
- Keppler’s Zero-Point Field Consciousness Rooted in the Quantum Vacuum
- Strømme’s Universal Consciousness as Foundational Field Consciousness as the Field Underlying Space–Time
- Beck-Eccles’s Quantum Processes in the Synapse Consciousness as Quantum Trigger in the Synapse
- Fisher’s Quantum Cognition Consciousness as Nuclear Spin Quantum Processing
- Rourk’s Catecholaminergic Neuron Electron Transport Theory Consciousness as the Selected Channel in Midbrain Electron Transport
- Cavelier's Entangled Spins at the NMDA Receptor Experience Registered in Entangled Receptor Spins
- Shiah’s Cryptochrome Theory Consciousness as a Non-Local Force Received by Cryptochrome
- Torday’s Cellular and Cosmic Consciousness Cellular Consciousness linked by Quantum Entanglement to the Cosmos
- Globus's Quantum Thermofield Brain Dynamics ‘Disclosure via Quantum Thermofield Dynamics’
- Dynamic Organicity Theory (DOT) Consciousness as Functionality of Multiscale Complexity
- Gambini and Pullin’s Quantum Panprotopsychism Consciousness as the Inner Aspect of Quantum Events
- King’s Symbiotic Existential Cosmology Consciousness as the Universe's Interactive Complement
- Pacheco’s Science of Unity Consciousness and Matter as One Fractal Continuum
- Tozzi’s Multidimensional Brain Consciousness as High-Dimensional Brain Activity
- Morrison’s Position Selecting Interactionism Consciousness as a Particle Choosing Its Position
- Van Dusen’s Hyperspatial Dimension Theory Mind as Real Higher-Dimensional Space
- QBism’s Primitive, Participatory Experience: Quantum Agency and the First-Person World Experience as the Primitive of Quantum Theory
- Rovelli’s Relational Physics ‘Consciousness as Perspectival Reality’