(Does Consciousness Originate in Brain (Local) or Exist beyond Brain (Non-Local?)
Consciousness is what allows us to experience, think, feel, be aware, and that we exist. Most scientists believe consciousness is created by the brain by global neural firings, electrical impulses, and chemical transmitters. It is called local consciousness. But there is no specific designated brain area for consciousness-like speech or sight. Some researchers suggest a different idea: consciousness may not be limited to the brain and could exist beyond it. This idea is called non-local consciousness.
Why Do Some Scientists Question Brain-Only View? There are several reasons:
- The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Neuroscientists can explain how the brain processes information, but they cannot explain fully why we have experiences like awareness, thoughtfulness, and happiness. - Near-Death Experience.
Some people report clear awareness and watching while being resuscitated. The brain activity is very low during resuscitation, which raises the questions whether consciousness depends only on the brain. - Brain & Matter Connection Experiment; Brain cortex has special center for sex, violence, and calmness. In an experiment conducted at Institute of Noetic Sciences, California, electrodes were attached to these centers of a person’s brain and connected to a monitor. A computer randomly showed to the person videos of sex, violence or calmness and observed that these focal areas light up accordingly. But they strangely noticed that focal area would light up four hundred milliseconds before the videos were shown. Not only this, but few milliseconds before even the computer randomly selected which video to show. It meant that brain knew few milliseconds before what video computer would randomly select. This brain -matter link is explained later.
- Pre-Frontal Lobectomy: In traditional view consciousness emerges from brain, especially pre-frontal cortex, however, lobectomy of pre-frontal cortex in some psychiatric patients in the past, did not cause loss of consciousness.
- Sudden Savant Syndrome: After brain trauma, some people develop extraordinary geniuses like abilities in math, art, or science. For example, Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon, suddenly became opera singer, giving concerts after a lightening incident. Jason Padgett developed extra ordinary skills in mathematics and science after trauma to brain in a violent incident. None of them have prior training or education in new abilities. Pre-frontal cortex is the main source of consciousness and higher intellectual abilities, yet in most cases pre-frontal lobe was damaged.
Above examples question the view of local consciousness and gives some credence to the view of non-local consciousness which is better understood with some insight into Quantum Physics.
Characteristics of Classic Physics & Quantum Physics
Classic Physics: It is governed by laws developed by scientists like Newton and Einstein.
- Locality: The object has a definite position in spacetime.
- Determinism: The object has predetermined properties (location, momentum, energy, orientation). In classic determinism, the future and the past can be determined from the present. Laplace’s Demon states, “if it knew all positions and velocities of every particle, it could predict the entire future of the universe”.
- There is no impact of observation or measurement on the object, and the object is influenced only by its immediate surroundings.
- Nothing travels faster than speed of light.
Quantum Physics: It studies the behavior of tiny particles/atoms/sub atoms, such as electrons. At this level, nature does not behave like it does at classic macro level. Quantum Physics has following characteristics.
In Quantum physics observation means physical interaction with measuring tools or environments and not simply looking at.
- Superposition: AParticle has the properties of position, momentum, energy, and orientation, but unlike deterministic properties of macro-objects, its properties are on probability scales, and the particle is at multiple positions at the same time. A particle behaves like waves called wavefunction (figure 1). When observed/measured, the wavefunction collapses at the location of interaction with the measuring tool/environment in the form of an observable dot (figure 3,4). The probability of finding a particle at the observation/measurement location is shown in figure 2. The horizontal line represents position, and vertical line represents % probability of finding the particle at that location.
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Below are more figures of Wavefunction collapse Theory (Copenhagen Interpretation).
Many-Worlds Theory by Hugh Everette: He proposed in 1957 that with observation/measurement of particles, the wavefunction does not collapse, rather it branches out where we observe one branch while other branches in other universes are not observable. See below figure. In the center is earth in current reality. The glowing path shows one branch of reality we experience after measurement and other wavefunction possibilities branch out as non-observable universes-reality. All branches are real, but we experience only one branch. When branching happens, we are part of the Quantum system as observers and there are multiple versions of us and each version sees only one outcome universe and has no access to others.
- Entanglement: If two particles encounter each other and then separate, even miles apart, and if one particle is influenced by observation, measurement, or environment, it will instantly influence the other particle without any time lapse. It is called shared reality. Einstein called it “spooky” as nothing travels faster than speed of light.
- Observer Effect: Observing a particle can change how it behaves. When a measurement is performed, the system transitions from many possibilities to one observed outcome. Observation/measurement has no impact on classic macro-objects.
The classical, predictable world emerges because huge numbers of quantum particles interact with their environment, causing quantum effects to become unobservable (through Decoherence process explained in Note below) and makes their collective behavior to settle into stable, predictable deterministic patterns. Transition from Quantum system to classic one does not eliminate underlying quantum probabilistic nature; it only makes quantum effects unobservable. The underlying reality of macro world is still probabilistic Quantum System.
| Classical physics | Quantum physics |
| Deterministic | Probabilistic |
| Exact outcomes | Probabilities |
| Predictable future | Multiple possible outcomes |
Above ideas suggest that the universe is lot more deeply interconnected than we imagined.
Non-Local Consciousness Theories
- Consciousness as a Quantum Field: Consciousness exists everywhere in a field, like gravity or electromagnetic fields, and the brain interacts with it by quantum entanglement creating a shared reality like experiment of brain-matter connection above.
- Orchestrated-Objective Reduction Theory (Penrose–Hameroff) 1996: Physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff proposed that consciousness arises from quantum processes in microtubules within neurons. Microtubules are made of tubulin proteins, which are basic units like electrons. These are in superposition and conscious moments occur when wavefunction collapses due to interaction with gravity. Microtubules are all over the brain and continuous quick conscious moments lead to awareness, coherent thoughts, feelings, and consciousness. Conscious moments are like a frame of continuous movies, and they occur about 40 per second. This information is processed by prefrontal cortex for higher intellectual thoughts, decision making, self-reflection and other such functions. Although this theory reflects how consciousness originates within brain by biologic Quantum system, it still requires particle entanglement and outside gravity field.
- Participatory Universe: Physicist John Wheeler (1911-2008) suggested that observation is fundamental in creation of reality. Consciousness is necessary part of observation and observers are participatory in defining universe’s physical reality. Hence consciousness and reality co-create each other.
- Universal or Cosmic Consciousness: Willam James (1842-1910) founder of modern Psychology, proposed that consciousness is fundamental and universal. Brain acts like a receiver/transmitter and filter of consciousness. If filter is damaged due to brain injury as in Sudden Savant Syndrome, it can lead to altered/exceptional uninhibited states/abilities.
Conclusion
The idea of non-local consciousness is non-intuitive; however, it offers alternative viewpoint to classic neuroscience theory which still does not fully grasp the mechanics of its creation. Quantum theory offers the missing links of far more interconnected universe than we realize. Nikola Tesla, 1856-1943, inventor of many devices like wireless, radio, remote control, and others, opined that, “The day sciences begin to study the non-physical phenomenon, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries”.
NOTE:
Some important terms to know; (1) Interference; It is a phenomenon where multiple waves combine and affect each other producing a new pattern by either adding or cancelling each other. Positive or constructive waves which are in synch (in phase) reinforce each other and have larger amplitude, representing higher probability, and negative deconstructive waves cancel each other (Superposition figure 1,2 show this phenomenon). (2) Decoherence; It is a process by which a quantum system loses its ability to show interference and synch phase coherence (quantum behavior) because it becomes entangled with measuring tools or surrounding environment.
Theories/Laws/Propositions
- EPR Paradox. The EPR paradox, proposed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in 1935, argues that quantum mechanics is incomplete and some hidden variables exist. Einstein called entanglement “spooky action at a distance”.
- Bell’s Theorem 1964: Proved EPR wrong as local hidden-variable theories cannot reproduce quantum predictions.
- Schrödinger equation 1926, It governs the behavior of the wavefunction of a particle.
- Born rule 1926; A particle’s wavefunction contains probabilities for different outcomes. When measurement happens, one outcome occurs.
- Hughe Everette III-Many-World View 1957
- Neils Bohr 1913-Atomic Structure and Quantum Theory
Most of the article is in collaboration with AI, meaning I will write some statements/figures and have the AI evaluate and refine it to make it in plain English, with minimal technical terms. It took few back and forth with AI to get final version of statements/figures. Figures made by ChatGPT.
Dr Fayyaz has done great job in researching consciousness based on quantum physics. I remember six years before I had invited a friend Douglas Grunther who delivered a lecture on consciousness within the perspective of “quantum physics” at the Haveli of Dr. Riaz Chaudhary. Though it was well understood by the audience, while my discussion with Dug convinced that “quantum physics” is a different subject which cannot prove what is consciousness. Here is my point of view on consciousness.
I believe human brain by the firing of more than a billion neurons and billions of interconnections produces extraordinary potentialities of imagination, perception, learning, memory, reasoning, language, conscious, sub-conscious, unconscious, and many other subjective as well as objective expositions. It is intimately involved in consciousness so much that the changes in the brain also cause changes in consciousness. Human brain—just as his lungs breath air in and out—breaths mind in and out as information comes to the brain all through the senses, but there is nothing centralized in it. By contrast, says Susan Blackmore in her work Consciousness:
Human consciousness seems to be unified. This ‘unity of consciousness’ is often described in three distinct ways—and the natural way of thinking about consciousness, in terms of a theater or a stream of experiences, implies all three. First, it implies that at any particular time, there is a unity to those things I am experiencing now; that is, some things are in my consciousness while many others are not. Those inside are called the ‘contents of consciousness’ and form the current experiences in the stream or the show on the stage of the theater. Second, consciousness seems unified over time in that there seems to be a continuity from one moment to the next, or even across a whole lifetime of conscious experiences. Third, these conscious contents are experienced by the same ‘me.’ In other words, there is a single experiencer as well as the stream of experiences. … In all these cases every one of our brain’s cells with their billions of connections, are active—some firing faster and some slower. Yet most of this activity never makes it into the ‘stream of consciousness’ or the ‘theater of our mind.’ So, we call it unconscious or subconscious, or we put it down to the outer limits of consciousness.
Human beings’ feelings, their intellectualism and experiences vary widely. For example, running fingers over rough surface, smelling a rose or a skunk, feeling a sharp pain in a part of the body, seeing a color bright purple, being happy or becoming extremely angry, in each of these cases, one is subjected to a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something for each one to undergo for each state some phenomenology that it has. For such experiences philosophers use the term ‘qualia’ to refer to the introspectively accessible phenomenal aspects of a human’s mental experience. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy, because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem, because human beings don’t share consciousness, they share emotions.
Human consciousness is an ‘Ineffable Qualia’ — ineffable meaning, too great, powerful, and incapable to describe; qualia meaning, a property as it is experienced as distinct from any source it might have in a physical object. “Qualia” which is the plural form of the singular quale, are those aspects of a conscious experience in virtue of which there is something it is like to have the experience (for example, the smell of a rose or the way pain feels). They are commonly held to be directly accessible only from the first-person point of view of the conscious subject, and also often held to be intrinsic in the sense of not being analyzable into more basic elements or relations. It is true that the animals can experience smell and pain, but their consciousness, being only external or objective, falls in the category of being simply conscious of that experience. But human consciousness is a complete whole package of the working of his each and every mental state involving Qualia—that works [w]holistically as a sum of conscious, sub-conscious, unconscious, memory, intention, imagination, and keep on counting all the functions of the brain. Human consciousness is the mother of “I” where each individual is different in his identity and intellectual representation, intention, and much more. An animal species in mental capacity is all same—as dogs are all dogs and cats are all cats—but human beings are different from each other where every individual is an “I”— where his own specific consciousness is a seal of his own distinctiveness just as his own finger-print is a mark of his identity.
If consciousness is intrinsic to our brain process, then it makes no sense to ask most of the questions about it. In that case it must have evolved in any creature that evolved to have intelligence, perception, memory, and emotions. But the problem is that human consciousness itself is an “ineffable qualia.” Though neuroscience as well as general sciences believe that there is nothing extra that exists apart from the processes and abilities of the human beings, we still need to explain why we seem to be having ineffable-nonphysical conscious experiences? Since the passage from the physics of brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is not only unthinkable but also unexplainable; it is here that the idea of consciousness as an illusion or a nonphysical substance named “soul,” comes in. According to Mark Goldblatt, the human soul, if it exists in an immaterial form, must be the “me-ness” of me, the sense of first personhood on which the rest of my conscious experiences hang. He further argues:
The soul, in other words, is not your consciousness—unless you are a materialist. If you are not a materialist, however, then the soul is what’s underneath your consciousness, the platform upon which your consciousness is constructed. Consciousness is the thing that emerges from sense data, memory and language have material components; they are rooted in the workings of the brain. The stuff of consciousness is definitely brain based. So, if the soul is indeed immaterial, it must be more basic than consciousness.
This means that soul and consciousness are two different entities. But in the brain there must be a place where everything comes together and “consciousness happens.” So far, the neuroscientists have not discovered any center in the brain which is capable of corresponding to the emergence of a unified consciousness. All we know that information coming into the senses is distributed all over the brain for different purposes. There is no central place in which “I” can sit, watch and display things passing through “I’s” consciousness.
Another question that need to be addressed here, “Is mathematics independent of human consciousness?” Stephen Maitzen, a philosopher panelist of the Ask Philosophers argues:
I am strongly inclined to say yes. If there’s even one technological civilization elsewhere in our unimaginably vast universe, then that civilization must have discovered enough math to produce technology. But we have no reason at all to think that it’s a human civilization, given the very different conditions in which it evolved: if it exists, it belongs to a different species from ours. So: If math depends on human consciousness, then we’re the only technological civilization in the universe, which seems very unlikely to me.
There is another argument that before human beings came on the scene, did the earth orbit the sun in an ellipse, with the sun at one focus? Surely it did. Indeed, there’s every reason to think that the earth traced an elliptical orbit before any life emerged on it. But “orbiting in an ellipse with the sun at one focus” is a precise mathematical description of the earth’s behavior, a description that held true long before consciousness emerged here. This means that mathematics is pre-human consciousness. This also supports the fact that when humans appeared on this planet their consciousness also appeared with them.
The exponents of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, speculate that consciousness might have emerged during the time of our evolution when man became highly social, confronted by many complex relationships, and intrigued by intimate bonding with his fellow beings. One might also argue that since we are conscious, consciousness itself might have evolved independent of biological evolution of man. At the same time, since consciousness is inseparable from human beings’ intelligence, perception, thinking, language, and many other evolved abilities, it cannot be an adaptation or infused into the mind by some power beyond man. However, we know that consciousness and unconsciousness often work together with each other. Our memory plays a very important part in processing information which also has a key role in the performance of our consciousness. Francis Crick, a British neuroscientist and DNA researcher, “the mind emerges when working memory, long-term memory, and expectations of the future link up to form thoughts.” Gerald Edelman of the Scripps Research Institute, says, “Consciousness arises from the brain’s forming relationships between perceptions and prior experiences” (Brain the Complete Mind, page 178).
Researches by neuroscientists have already proved how our states of mind are defined by electrochemical processing of information along neural pathways. Today is the age of super-computers and we are hearing the voices of artificial intelligence which is going to solve our many hard problems. According to Stuart Hameroff, a Professor at the University of Arizona, “human brain is the perfect quantum computer and the soul [if we have one] or consciousness is simply information stored at the quantum level.” Today, many scientists and thinkers from different universities and research institutions are working to develop quantum theory to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. However, our Brain is an indispensable guru in guiding us to understand and solve all the complexities of our mind and body, and problems of our life. MIRZA IQBAL ASHRAF
PS. My 8-page article ON CONSCIOUSNESS is available on my academia.edu page
Sheikh’s framing of consciousness as a quantum field is exactly what’s been missing from the optimization conversation – most biohackers ignore the frequency layer entirely. I’ve been experimenting with Quantress lately, which applies similar quantum alignment principles but personalized to your actual archetype (I’m running the Quantitative Investor profile), and the focus improvements are measurable. Wonder if you’ve considered how frequency-based tools might amplify the interconnectedness ideas you’re exploring here.