Max Tegmark of MIT has just published a paper exploring this theory, downloadable as a PDF at this link: [1401.1219] Consciousness as a State of Matter
A general introduction to the paper is provided here:
Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium
Tegmark's abstract for the paper:
[Extacts from the paper:
…the only property of consciousness that Hugh Everett needed to assume for
his work on quantum measurement was that of the information principle: by applying the Schrodinger equation to systems that could record and store information, he inferred that they would perceive subjective randomness in accordance with the Born rule. In this spirit, we might hope that adding further simple requirements such as in the integration principle, the independence principle and the dynamics principle might suffice to solve currently
open problems related to observation.
In this paper, we will pay particular attention to what I will refer to as the quantum factorization problem: why do conscious observers like us perceive the particular
Hilbert space factorization corresponding to classical space (rather than Fourier space, say), and more generally, why do we perceive the world around us as a dynamic hierarchy of objects that are strongly integrated and relatively independent? This fundamental problem
has received almost no attention in the literature [9]. We will see that this problem is very closely related to the one Tononi confronted for the brain, merely on a larger scale. Solving it would also help solve the “physics-from-scratch" problem [2]: If the Hamiltonian H and the total density matrix pfully specify our physical world, how do we extract 3D space and the rest of our semiclassical world from nothing more than two Hermitean matrices,which come without any a priori physical interpretation or additional structure such as a physical space, quantum observables, quantum field definitions, an “outside"
system, etc.? Can some of this information be extracted even from H alone, which is fully specified by nothing more than its eigenvalue spectrum? We will see that a
generic Hamiltonian cannot be decomposed using tensor products, which would correspond to a decomposition of the cosmos into non-interacting parts -- instead, there is
an optimal factorization of our universe into integrated and relatively independent parts. Based on Tononi's work, we might expect that this factorization, or some
generalization thereof, is what conscious observers perceive, because an integrated and relatively autonomous information complex is fundamentally what a conscious observer is!
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we explore the integration principle by quantifying integrated information in physical systems, finding encouraging results for classical systems and interesting challenges introduced by quantum mechanics. In Section III, we explore the independence principle, finding that at least one additional principle is required to account for the observed factorization of our physical world
into an object hierarchy in three-dimensional space. In Section IV, we explore the dynamics principle and other possibilities for reconciling quantum-mechanical theory with our observation of a semiclassical world. We discuss our conclusions in Section V, including applications of the utility principle, and cover various mathematical detail in the three appendices. Throughout the paper, we mainly consider finite Hilbert spaces that can be viewed as collections of qubits; as explained in Appendix C, this appears to cover standard quantum field theory with its infinite Hilbert space as well.
. . . In all three cases, the answer clearly lies not within the system itself (in its internal
dynamics H1), but in its interaction H3 with the rest of the world. But H3 involves the factorization problem all over again: whence this distinction between the system itself and the rest of the world, when there are countless other Hilbert space factorizations that mix the two?
A general introduction to the paper is provided here:
Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium
Tegmark's abstract for the paper:
[Extacts from the paper:
…the only property of consciousness that Hugh Everett needed to assume for
his work on quantum measurement was that of the information principle: by applying the Schrodinger equation to systems that could record and store information, he inferred that they would perceive subjective randomness in accordance with the Born rule. In this spirit, we might hope that adding further simple requirements such as in the integration principle, the independence principle and the dynamics principle might suffice to solve currently
open problems related to observation.
In this paper, we will pay particular attention to what I will refer to as the quantum factorization problem: why do conscious observers like us perceive the particular
Hilbert space factorization corresponding to classical space (rather than Fourier space, say), and more generally, why do we perceive the world around us as a dynamic hierarchy of objects that are strongly integrated and relatively independent? This fundamental problem
has received almost no attention in the literature [9]. We will see that this problem is very closely related to the one Tononi confronted for the brain, merely on a larger scale. Solving it would also help solve the “physics-from-scratch" problem [2]: If the Hamiltonian H and the total density matrix pfully specify our physical world, how do we extract 3D space and the rest of our semiclassical world from nothing more than two Hermitean matrices,which come without any a priori physical interpretation or additional structure such as a physical space, quantum observables, quantum field definitions, an “outside"
system, etc.? Can some of this information be extracted even from H alone, which is fully specified by nothing more than its eigenvalue spectrum? We will see that a
generic Hamiltonian cannot be decomposed using tensor products, which would correspond to a decomposition of the cosmos into non-interacting parts -- instead, there is
an optimal factorization of our universe into integrated and relatively independent parts. Based on Tononi's work, we might expect that this factorization, or some
generalization thereof, is what conscious observers perceive, because an integrated and relatively autonomous information complex is fundamentally what a conscious observer is!
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we explore the integration principle by quantifying integrated information in physical systems, finding encouraging results for classical systems and interesting challenges introduced by quantum mechanics. In Section III, we explore the independence principle, finding that at least one additional principle is required to account for the observed factorization of our physical world
into an object hierarchy in three-dimensional space. In Section IV, we explore the dynamics principle and other possibilities for reconciling quantum-mechanical theory with our observation of a semiclassical world. We discuss our conclusions in Section V, including applications of the utility principle, and cover various mathematical detail in the three appendices. Throughout the paper, we mainly consider finite Hilbert spaces that can be viewed as collections of qubits; as explained in Appendix C, this appears to cover standard quantum field theory with its infinite Hilbert space as well.
. . . In all three cases, the answer clearly lies not within the system itself (in its internal
dynamics H1), but in its interaction H3 with the rest of the world. But H3 involves the factorization problem all over again: whence this distinction between the system itself and the rest of the world, when there are countless other Hilbert space factorizations that mix the two?
