We are told that many physicists have “gotten interested in consciousness”:
…drawn by the so-called hard problem of consciousness. The methods of science seem inherently incapable of describing subjective experience. Our inner mental life is hidden from external observation and does not seem reducible to mathematical description. It strikes many researchers as an unnecessary add-on with no place in the physical scheme of things. By this argument, some researchers say understanding the mind could demand some new principle of science or new way of thinking. Physicists are intrigued that their basic picture of the world could be missing something so important.
That is not the only reason that physicists have been giving thought to the mind. The multiverse is one example of how we may perceive a filtered version of reality, and once you start down this path of wondering how truth might be skewed, you might entertain possibilities that make the multiverse sound tame. Immanuel Kant argued that the structure of our minds conditions what we perceive. In that tradition, physicist Markus Müller of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna and cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman of the University of California, Irvine, among others, have argued that we perceive the world as divided into objects situated within space and time, not necessarily because it has this structure but because that is the only way we could perceive it…
If we find that our theories are clutching at vapors, that’s not a bad thing. It’s reminding us to be humble. Physicists can be full of themselves, but the most experienced and accomplished among them are usually circumspect. They tend to be the first people to point out the problems with their own ideas, if only to avoid the embarrassment of someone else doing it for them. No one ever said that finding the truth would be easy.
George Musser, “How close can physics bring us to a truly fundamental understanding of the world?” at Scientific American
It’s not clear how the Hard Problem of Consciousness would help much with physics. Consider the quagmire below:
SWhy some scientists believe the universe is conscious
Why some scientists think the universe is an illusion
Post-modern science: The illusion of consciousness sees through itself
and
Panpsychism: You are conscious but so is your coffee mug
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The most accomplished are usually circumspect? Might be true in a basic way, but being circumspect isn’t how you get tenure and citations and prizes. Being cautious and avoiding bias is an excellent way to get fired and doxxed and sued.
As to:
Too funny. Physics itself would be impossible without that supposedly ‘unnecessary add-on’. As Eugene Wigner put it,
And as William J Murray also once stated here on UD,
In other words we start with the fact that we are conscious and then we define everything else in the ‘external’ world in relation to our mind. In other words, EVERYTHING we describe in the ‘supposedly’ external world is necessarily an abstraction of our mind. Consciousness and/or mind is, an can be, THE ONLY primary prerequisite of all possible necessary prerequisites. As Planck and Schroedinger put it,
Thus for someone to claim that consciousness is an ‘unnecessary add on’ is, as Pauli might have responded, “not even wrong”.
Moreover, the Atheistic Naturalist’s belief that there is an external physical world ‘out there somewhere’ apart from our conscious observation of it has been falsified by advances in quantum mechanics that have falsified ‘realism’. (‘Realism’ is the belief that there is an external physical world ‘out there somewhere’ apart from our conscious observation of it.)
One falsification of ‘realism’ comes from the violation of Leggett’s inequality. Leggett’s Inequality is a mathematical proof developed by Nobelist Anthony Leggett to try to prove ‘realism’ within quantum mechanics. And, as is usual with challenging the predictions of Quantum Mechanics, his supposed proof of realism was violated by a stunning 80 orders of magnitude, thus once again, in over the top fashion, highlighting the central importance of the conscious observer to Quantum Experiments:
And the following delayed choice experiment, that was dome with atoms instead of photons, also falsified realism. As the researcher stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Thus the profound intellectual and philosophical naivete that allows someone to believe that consciousness is an “unnecessary add-on with no place in the physical scheme of things” is directly falsified by advances in quantum mechanics.
One final note, often times I’ve heard atheists remark that ‘No one understands quantum mechanics’. But contrary to that oft repeated refrain from atheists, I’ve found that having a proper understanding of some of the defining attributes of consciousness greatly facilitates a person in understanding why some of the profound mysteries of quantum mechanics are, and must be, as they are:
Verse: