Max Tegmark - Physics of Consciousness

How to explain our inner awareness that is at once most common and most mysterious? Traditional explanations focus at the level of neuron and neuronal circuits in the brain. But little real progress has motivated some to look much deeper, into the laws of physics — information theory, quantum mechanics, even postulating new laws of physics.



Max Tegmark is Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a BS in Physics and a BA in Economics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. He also earned a MA and PhD in physics from University of California, Berkeley.


Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[Jalcolm]

There is no difference between Subjective Experience and Experience. The "Subject" word is injected to make it seem more inaccessible. We should start to call this so-called problem The Soft Problem, since the brain is soft, even if the head is hard. This is not a physics problem; it's a biological problem and therefore requires an evolutionary explanation. Philosophers like to call it the hard problem, because if they were in fact really interested in understanding rather than in argument, they would be out of business.

[simonreeves]

Sean Carol made some interesting observations on this. He suggested that we are thinking about physics the wrong way round, his take was we need to see the physical / material world as erupting from the quantum fields and manifesting particles (the macro environment we experience). If we look at conciseness the same way, it becomes clear that conciseness too is manifest in the quantum fields and expresses itself in/through the brain. I think we will see more research in future that will show that conciseness is not a function of the brain, but that conciseness experiences / filters the material world through the brain. Making the brain a portal between conciseness existing at the quantum field level, and our bodies experience of life at the macro/material level. This posses some very serious philosophical questions about the nature of our existence, and the very nature of the Universe we inhabit.

[DiamondMind]

Heheh I chuckled when Max said, “are you calling me a zombie?” 😄

[lordemed]

simple- there is no physical or 'physics' understanding of consciousness. As Sir Roger Penrose wisely says, a new physics will need to be invented

[jamesruscheinski]

Could energy be a common observer of relativity and quantum mechanics? Is the equation E = m * c-squared (Einstein) useful for both relativity and quantum mechanics?

[spalkin]

Teg's definitely out there, but so is the true nature of things.

[arkude]

The Vedas written thousands of years ago have spoken about the big bang and consciousness. At one point physicists have to come to study these ancient Indian scriptures. The explanation is lucid

[BADTV.]

Thank you so much for having Max back he actually has very reasonable observations and theories👌🏾

[altortugas]

I mean, self is just the categorization of inputs, right? When you hear sounds, you not only hear the whir of your computer or the bird calling outside your window, you also hear the rhythmic pulse of your own heart and the gentle swish of air passing through your nostrils. When you feel, not only do you notice the press of clothes upon your skin or the firmness of the floor under your feet, you also notice the brush of your fingers against each other, the tousle of hair upon your head, and the stickiness of your eyelids. You see the cup of coffee but also your hand that holds it, you smell it’s earthy aroma but also your own feral scent, you taste the bitter-sweetness of a warm and comforting liquid that is promptly chased down your gullet by the slippery, congealed enzymes in your spittle. Consciousness is the active categorization of inputs that delineates you and not you. It’s far simpler than people make it out to be.

You only become aware of this when the need arises to take some action in relation to your environment. You hold in memory a construct of yourself while categorizing inputs, mostly disregarding the “you” category so that you can organize, evaluate, and plan how to deal with “not you.”

Or maybe that’s all rubbish.

[mediocrates]

Dr. Hameroff points out that the cerebellum is "notoriously unconscious." It does information processing, doesn't it?

[dueldab]

Sounds like a guy that wants something to be true just because he wants it to be true.

[TupacMakaveli]

“We’ve tried avoid talking about what an observer is even though physics is supposed to be the subject of observation.”

[soubhikmukherjee]

Max is a superb physicist. I love his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis.

[dilipdas]

Consciousness is beyond material view. It's purely field. We are at most fundamental level field excitation of consciousness

[realcygnus]

Max is a brilliant bloke but confused in this instance IMO. He acknowledges the "hard problem" which essentially is that there is NO way to map the "quantities" of physics(mass, charge, spin etc.) to the "qualities" of experience(red, love, toothache etc.) in a "nonarbitrary" way, EVEN in principle. Yet he conflates the map with the territory, or at the very least, thinks ripples can be separated from water. When in fact, there is nothing to ripples but water. & even IF this "complete 1 to 1 mapping"(ALL the NCC's yet to be discovered) did exist(which it does not), we'd still need a theory explaining how that particular map is the correct one Vs. some other. Panpsychism is "on the right track" at least in as far as C being fundamental but it is just as flawed as materialism in that it needs to appeal to complexity & suffers the same combination issues. But, if C is not just an "additional property" of matter but rather matter's properties are circumscribed by C, then we may at least have a chance. I think a straight up modern analytical Idealism such as "Bernardo Kastrup's Alters" is the best game currently on the table, & by FAR. & IMO such concepts can easily encompass digital physics/VR models as well, though that is not at all what BK does. Just get him on here already !

[machida]

Perception requires quantum computation.
Because a combinatorial explosion occurs in the alternatives of organizing way.
I think the state of consciousness is a quantum entangled state.

[bozo]

The mind is only a small part of what the brain does, and consciousness is only a small part of the mind.

Consciousness is one means of steering animals toward food and away from not-food. That's what it is, that's where it comes from. The rest is superstition.

[jamesbentonticer]

Read Our Mathematical Universe by Dr Tegmark. It's very good.

[doriangray]

When pushed by the host, Max made the usual error. Asked if the "equation" is the same as the "inner experience", Max replied that "consciousness is what information 'feels' like when being processed".

Nope. Not so. Using "feeling" to define "consciousness" is circular logic. It's a common mistake almost everyone eventually makes.

A similar mistake is to declare consciousness an emerging phenomenon (meaning, I have no idea) and to go on to use the analogy of "collection of water molecules giving rise to the notion of wetness". Same mistake. "Wetness" is how the mind perceives water. "Wetness" is a feeling. The physical description is viscosity, not wetness.

Invoking inner experience, to define inner experience, is erroneous. Not cool.

[donny_doyle]

"Why does this quark blob have a subjective experience" is an amazing sentence...