Right now I’m plowing my way through a little-noticed book about the greater implications of quantum physics for science in general, especially for biology, psychology, and the ultimate question about “the nature of the mind”, i.e. what is “consciousness”. (Oh yea, the book is called “The Non-Local Universe” by Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos). This book really wasn’t written all that well, although it does have an occasional chapter full of interesting insights. But it did inspire me to do some thinking on my own. And one of the thoughts that I had while somewhere in the middle of this could-have-been-great book refers to the question of whether we will ever truly understand consciousness.

A lot of modern brain scientists, psychologists and philosophers say that we will. Some even think that we already do (e.g., Daniel Dennett). They compare the problem of how a physical brain uses a mix of chemical and electronic signals to create the vivid mix of experience, feeling and thought that comprise our conscious lives, with past issues that seemed similarly profound and mysterious, but ultimately yielded to scientific reduction. E.g., the problem of life, the problem of heat, the problem of oxidation and combustion, the problem of a media for light waves, etc. In all of these cases, some very smart people concluded that there’s something fundamentally different and unknown about the universe involved in the phenomenon. But they turned out to be wrong. Today, there are some very smart people (and also some so-so people like myself) who think that consciousness hints at an otherwise unknown feature of the universe. However, they/we are in the minority.

The list of seemingly ontological mysteries that eventually yielded to science as we know it is quite impressive. But what the “inevitable solution” promoters (e.g., philosopher Patricia Churchland) don’t tell you is that within the past 100 years or so, there have been at least two major empirical and logical puzzles that did NOT yield to scientific determinism. In both instances, scientists and mathematicians and philosophers had to eventually pull out the white flag, had to admit that we face a borderline of knowledge which we just cannot cross. Those two areas were 1.) the seeking of a complete logical foundation for mathematical methods and formulas, and 2.) the understanding and predictability of matter and energy reactions on the micro-level, i.e. in the quantum world. With regard to the first problem, Bertrand Russell’s “set of sets” rationale bent the proposed logical framework of math into a pretzel of contradictions. Godel did pretty much the same thing with his self-referential proposition analysis. There’s something about our ability to explain things that we ultimately just can’t explain!

With regard to the second area, i.e. quantum indeterminacy, Heisenberg showed that even with the best measuring devices, even with hypothetically perfect measuring devices, we could never know with absolute certainty both the energy level (momentum) and position in space and time of a quantum particle (e.g., an electron or photon). There are other information couplets for which this limitation would also apply. In our macro-world, we can say that an automobile will be exactly at such-and-such location at a particular moment in time, that it weights so many pounds, that it is going so fast, and thus how much kinetic energy (momentum) it has. So we can know its position and energy precisely at the same instant. Good old Newtonian physics insures that we can. But on the quantum level . . . something changes. And those changes involve information barriers, know-ability barriers, epistemological barriers.

Consciousness is NOT a quantum world phenomenon, and is not a logic foundation problem as with math. It seemingly exists on the level of macro-reality that we best perceive. And yet it IS that perception, and not the “macro-reality” that we perceive. So, as with the issue of logical math foundations, it does run into a self-referential problem. Not a good sign. As to the information uncertainty that divides macro-world and micro-world knowledge, there is a question of what information can be had when you cross “emergence” borderlines. I.e., the macro-world that we know so well is a phenomenal “emergence” from gadzillions of interacting events on the quantum level, the swirl of electrons and quarks and photons and other, more exotic bosons and mesons (maybe even gravitons!).

An emergent phenomenon takes on seemingly unique characteristics, characteristics that are not apparent in the many little things that make it up. This is similar to the way that a traffic jam takes on a life of its own apart from the many autos and drivers and roadways involved. When we observe the micro-world using tools from the macro-world (which is the world that emerges from the micro), we can’t get the same complete information as when we stay in the macro-world. Consciousness is recognized as an emergence, emerging from many things happening and interacting in the macro-world (especially in the brain, but ultimately across the whole ecology of living things).

Perhaps when using macro-world tools to cross the emergence borderline into consciousness, once again, there is a limit to what knowledge can be brought back into macro-land. And likewise, what we perceive here in consciousness-land is not the complete story of what goes on in the macro-world, and also in the micro-world for that matter. Immanuel Kant among others made this point in discussing the “noumenal realm” versus the “phenomenal realm”, i.e. the true and complete nature of reality beyond the pure intuitions of time, space and being that allow us to get on with our phenomenon-based lives.

So — perhaps consciousness, just like the dance of the quanta, will remain forever partly shielded from what we can know of it via “macro world”. I.e., via science. But hey — we still know it directly, at least while we’re alive and not sleeping or under anesthesia. I mean — maybe the ultimate lesson will be to stop trying to figure it out and control it as with combustion and nuclear energy (look what wonderful things humankind did for itself with those discoveries: global warming and H-bombs). Just enjoy it while you can, celebrate it, be grateful for it, allow other beings possessing it to experience and enjoy it as much as possible. If science and philosophy ultimately reach such a conclusion and promote it in their rigorous textbooks, they would teach humankind something truly wise and precious. Something so sorely needed in this age of so little faith.