Inner privacy of conscious experiences and quantum information.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Quantum Physics
• Philosophy of Mind

Background:

• Classical physics struggles to explain subjective, private conscious experiences due to their unobservable and incommunicable nature.
• Thought experiments highlight the difficulties in reconciling classical physicalism with the qualitative aspects of consciousness.
• Existing models face challenges in explaining how unobservable consciousness arises from physical brain substrates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a framework for understanding consciousness within the principles of modern quantum physics.
• To address the apparent paradoxes arising from the private, subjective nature of conscious experience.
• To reconcile the unobservable nature of consciousness with observable brain activity.

Main Methods:

• Identifying consciousness with unobservable quantum information within quantum physical brain states.
• Applying quantum information theorems to analyze the properties of conscious experience.
• Utilizing Holevo's theorem to explain the extraction of classical information from quantum brain states.

Main Results:

• Consciousness can be conceptualized as unobservable quantum information, resolving the privacy paradox.
• Quantum physical brain states provide a substrate for subjective experience.
• The observable, classical brain information is derived from the underlying quantum reality upon measurement.

Conclusions:

• Modern quantum physics offers a viable framework for explaining consciousness, overcoming limitations of classical physics.
• Subjective conscious experiences are not nonphysical but are rooted in the unobservable quantum realm of the brain.
• This quantum information approach bridges the gap between the first-person perspective of consciousness and the third-person perspective of neuroscience.