The ‘Real Problem’ of Consciousness Requires New Physics

Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/c67x9 (7/22)

Part 1/3 (25 minutes)

Orientation

The ‘real problem’ of consciousness (first stated in a mathematical physics form in 2014) strips unnecessary metaphysical baggage from the science of conscious experience. Nevertheless, recent headline publications (in flagship journals like Nature and Science) are premature, to put it mildly: the 1990s initiation of the modern renaissance never completed its own proto-scientific phase, meaning that current work in the mainstream field is typically self-contradictory and inconsistent. (Another way of looking at this is, the attempt to study conscious experience scientifically revealed a pre-existing contradiction in the scientific enterprise as a whole!) Nevertheless, contradictions and inconsistencies can be remedied, by hypothesizing and then testing for a specific kind of new physics.

 
 

Part 2/3 (20 minutes)

The Headline Result, in Detail

The headline result of this paper points out that the current physical foundation of science is ‘dynamically orthodox’: for example, it rules out strongly-emergent properties that can communicate novel information downwards, to the micro-physical bases of emergence. Given an informationally-dual character of reality (according to and as studied by mainstream science!), dynamical-orthodoxy poses fatal problems for subjective-report of experience: conscious experience’s qualia-valued information can’t couple with the real-valued dynamics of the unseen physical world. This means there can’t be a science of conscious experience, under orthodox dynamics, because subjective report can’t be used to collect data! But it doesn’t rule out science completely: under new-physics, strongly-unorthodox dynamics, report - and the real problem! - can be scientific.

Part 3/3 (15 minutes)

Diagnosing Disagreements

Headline results prove the report of subjective experience is not scientifically-reliable under dynamically-orthodox physics. But many people find it impossible to believe that experiential reports such as ‘I am currently experiencing the blueness of the sky’ can be doubted in any way. Similarly, many people believe that we can treat conscious experience as an emergent or contingent property ‘just like temperature’, and therefore can’t see how there could be any sort of methodological, data-collecting problem, in a putative science of experience. (A completely different camp accept that there are fatal problems for consciousness science, but without recognizing - or accepting! - the radically-different character of un/orthodox physical foundations, can’t see how there could be a valid science!) This closing video briefly responds to major disagreements, giving both intuitive and technical responses.