Encinitas 2023 1_10 thomas brophy 1080p

PARADIGMS AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE REVOLUTION
presented at the Summer Symposium:
Neuroscience Needs a Revolution to Understand Consciousness
hosted by California Institute for Human Science and the
Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona
August 18-20, 2023 Encinitas, California

Is Quantum Collapse the Physical Window into Plato’s Metaphysical Realms?
Thomas Brophy
California Institute for Human Science, Encinitas, CA, USA

Categories by Discipline
4.0 Physical and Biological Sciences
Primary Topic Area - TSC Taxonomy
[04.01]........Quantum physics, collapse and the measurement problem

Abstract
The scientific “Hard Problems” of how conscious phenomenal experience is instantiated, and how agency occurs in the physical world, remain unsolved aspects of Reality theory. Yet, ontologically these processes greatly impact what actually happens in our world. This presentation extends an ongoing project to develop a meta-theory that can sustain the existence of conscious agency, called Actual-Theory (A-Theory). Steps in the development of A-theory include: 1) incorporate the non-causal-closure of the physical world established by modern physics, through quantum collapse; 2) connect macroscopic processes to the Born Rule statistical interpretation for the “collapse” process of the quantum wave function, non-algorithmic, non-computational in unique events; 3) connect with global esoteric metaphysical systems’ experience-based descriptions of conscious entities and consciousness “unitive” stages as described by advanced meditators. This presentation situates the Hameroff-Penrose Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) model within the A-theory paradigm. Particularly, Penrose’ (1994 Shadows of the Mind) model of three interactive reality domains (Physical world, Mental world, Platonic world) is examined. Presentations of the Orch-OR model have focused on connections of the Physical world to the Mental world. Penrose also explored Mental world to Platonic world correspondences. This presentation explores approaches to Platonic world and Mental world correspondences to the Physical world, by introducing a fundamental property of the phenomenal world that instantiates conscious experience of being and generates fields that can influence agency. This procedure is analogous historically to James Clerk Maxwell introducing the property of electric charge to explain the category of phenomena called electromagnetism. The new property could be called “noetic charge”, and defined as an ontic property of matter that instantiates experience of being. This presentation explores the contemporary possibility of noetic charge and noetic field-based Property Dualism A-Theory, in the historical context of other new properties that have been successfully introduced to physics and fundamental theory of reality.

Keywords
Quantum Collapse, Born Rule, Causal non-closure, Property Dualism, Conscious Agency, Hard Problem, Platonic