Article Scientists investigate ‘quantum consciousness’—but the brain may still defy physics

[C C]

https://thedebrief.org/scientists-invest...y-physics/

EXCERPT: In the past few years, interest in the idea of quantum biology has steadily increased. Scientists have already demonstrated that quantum effects can play functional roles in biological systems such as photosynthesis and bird navigation. But the leap from quantum chemistry to human awareness remains enormous.

Central to the debate is consciousness itself, which remains one of science’s most enduring and elusive mysteries. Neuroscience has become increasingly successful at explaining how the brain processes information, stores memories, and controls behavior — what philosopher David Chalmers famously labeled the “easy problems” of consciousness.

The harder question is why physical processes in the brain produce subjective experience at all. Why does seeing red feel like something? Why is there an inner experience accompanying thought?

Quantum theories try to bridge that explanatory gap by proposing that classical neuroscience alone may be insufficient. In their review, Ma and Wang focus on three major “families” of theories currently attracting scientific attention... (MORE - details)

[Magical Realist]

“Quantum-theoretical terms are often invoked in a largely narrative or analogical manner without specifying their precise physical meaning or empirical applicability,” researchers write. “This practice often lacks rigorous argumentation, remains insufficiently constrained by clear mechanisms or empirical support, and therefore does not yet provide a substantive solution to the problem of consciousness.”

That in itself is only symptomatic of the physicalist approach to this. To understand consciousness will require overhauling our present worldview riddled with centuries-old assumptions about what is real, about what knowing is, about what time and space and matter are, and about what the mind is. And that would be an all hands deck evolution of how we speak and reason at all.

“A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing
well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.”― Richard Rorty

In their paper, Ma and Wang also repeatedly return to one key distinction: discovering quantum influences in the brain would not automatically solve the problem of consciousness itself.

Even if future experiments verify that neurons create quantum consciousness in some capacity, the central mystery of subjective experience could remain untouched.

“Quantum mechanisms, therefore, look, at the current stage, more like potential realizers of consciousness than like complete theories of consciousness,” researchers conclude.

That finding may frustrate anyone hoping for a definitive answer to the question of quantum consciousness. Yet, researchers propose that while no definitive answer exists, the field is slowly maturing from speculative theory into a more stringent scientific enterprise.

For now, the authors argue that caution and curiosity must coexist.

“In the explorations ahead, progress should be guided by the scientific method, advancing with a balance of curiosity and skepticism,” researchers write. “The riddle of consciousness remains profoundly complex: Quantum mechanics may be one piece of the puzzle, but a solution will likely require sustained multidisciplinary collaboration.”

“Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding.”
― Werner Karl Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science

The hard problem remains so impervious to any solutions because it posits consciousness as a phenomenon beyond empirical third-person thinking. It is not just one more physical phenomenon to be theorized and mechanically reduced as if it were a mere objective thing for scientists to dissect and analyze. It is on a higher order of ontic being altogether. Which is why, as they wisely suggest, that if we are ever going to understand consciousness, it will require a "multidisciplinary collaboration"---which to me suggests an unprecedented collaborative project including all the hard sciences with all the soft sciences as well with all the arts and histories and humanities and language and philosophy. That's how manifold and quasi-phenomenal consciousness, requiring everything we've learned about ourselves to become even close to being "understood", whatever form that may take.