I will stress the main generally accepted points that should be taken into account when considering the relationship between physics and consciousness. The most important aspects of this issue is the role of human consciousness (opportunities and achievements) in understanding the physical picture of the world.
I hope that my attempts to understand the nature of consciousness and spiritual life will help to find approaches to this problem.
Everything in this world, including me and you, consists of quantum particles (atoms, electrons) and is a quantum system. Everything that happens is subject to the laws of modern physics. Classical physics does not contradict quantum physics, and is applicable to describe objects of large size. Since in everyday life, throughout the entire process of evolution, a person deals with macroscopic objects (an apple, a table), our consciousness was formed on the basis of the classical picture of the world. Accordingly, our language, system of concepts and way of thinking are adequate to the picture of the classical world that exists only in our minds.
As we delved deeper into the structure of macroobjects, it turned out that our traditional concepts were not very suitable for describing the observed phenomena. The same is true of our consciousness. Attempts to penetrate deep into what we call consciousness, to study the processes occurring in the brain at the microscopic level, encounter difficulties similar to those that arose when trying to look inside the material world.
To put it very bluntly, the problem can be compared to trying to measure millimetric objects with a ruler that only has centimeter marks.
For the first time, man came into contact with the quantum world only 200 years ago. This is too short a time for our consciousness to adapt to the new reality. And here the question arises of how applicable traditional approaches to the questions of consciousness are from the point of view of quantum physics.
The key here is that the quantum world is inaccessible to direct human perception. Our sense organs and brain are not adapted for this. In our “classical” consciousness, our “classical” brain creates a “classical” picture of the world based on information received from the senses. All that is possible is to make quantum phenomena manifest themselves in the classical world, using measuring systems for this. It turns out that all judgments about our world at the quantum level are based on quite classical readings of instruments analyzed by the "classical" consciousness. For example, we can use an array of detectors to determine the trajectory of electrons (the well-known slit experiments). We do not see how the electrons "really" move, and we can judge the trajectory of their movement from the electrical signals from the detectors.
Meanwhile, the quantum world sometimes behaves very strangely. For example, electrons are able to manifest themselves either as waves or as particles, depending on the conditions of the experiment. Recently, more and more leading physicists have come to the conclusion that in quantum reality there are no waves or particles at all. They believe that our world is based on a quantum field that manifests itself either as particles or as waves under different conditions of observation. To be more precise, the words "particle" and "wave" are terms from classical physics that are used to interpret manifestations of the quantum world that are incomprehensible to us. This reflects the limitations of the "classical" consciousness. Some phenomena have no analogues in the classical world at all, and special terminology is used to describe them. This terminology does not quite adequately describe quantum phenomena, but only denotes them. For example, such a property as “spin” is attributed to nuclear particles. This term denotes a property that is analogous to the momentum and direction of rotation of macroscopic bodies. But this does not mean that the electrons rotate like a top. Physicists have been forced to attribute this property to nuclear particles in order to make their behavior intelligible.
Those who are interested in this topic are familiar with the oddities that appear when trying to penetrate the quantum world. These include the uncertainty principle, quantum coupling, the observer effect, and the probabilistic nature of measurements.
As in previous articles on this topic, I will not touch on purely physical aspects, which are well described in numerous works on the problems of quantum physics. At present, this discipline is built up almost completely. Its laws and principles have been confirmed in numerous experiments and practical activities. But at the same time, they remain little understood and do not fit well into the traditional ideas of "classical" consciousness.
What is sometimes forgotten is that all these oddities exist in reality, and not somewhere in scientific laboratories, but directly in the world in which we live. Part of this misconception is due to the fact that special conditions and equipment are required to observe quantum effects. Scientific instruments allow us to look into the mysterious world, but our consciousness, remaining classical, does not allow us to adequately realize the essence of quantum reality. But this does not mean at all that the quantum world disappears with the termination of the experiment. The laws of quantum physics continue to operate in the absence of such equipment. It is thanks to the accuracy and reproducibility of physical laws that we can predict the behavior of a quantum system at any given time and determine how the quantum world will manifest itself in the classical world. It is equally important to penetrate inside the "classical" consciousness and find out how quantum phenomena manifest themselves in the processes of formation and development of consciousness.
The question arises: So which world is real - classical or quantum?
My answer to this question is neither. We know too little about how the brain works and about the formation of consciousness. It is now clear that the classical world is an adequate model created by our brain, which is quantum in nature, based on practical activities during the evolution of the human body. It is also clear that studies of the nature of consciousness are impossible without taking into account quantum phenomena, which in themselves are still a mystery.
I have already emphasized the fact that the quantum world is not accessible to direct observation. It manifests itself only under certain conditions when interacting with physical devices. For example, to detect the flow of high energy electrons, a Geiger counter can be used. It does not make electrons visible, but we can judge their presence by the crackle of electronic discharges that occur in the counter when electrons hit it. The number of discharges cannot be used to judge the number of electrons that have passed through the counter. Many electrons pass through the detector without causing a discharge. But knowing the laws of quantum physics, you can very accurately calculate the flux density. If the counter is turned off, the quantum world does not disappear, but we can judge its state only theoretically.
In essence, this means that a person is such a device that interacts with quantum systems and, based on the information received, builds a classical model of our environment. For us, red is just red, and not radiation with a certain wavelength (780 nm) and not photons with a certain energy (1.59 eV). Our eyes register light and interpret the received information in accordance with the classical model of the world. We look at the sofa and see the light reflected by it. The color of a sofa, as well as its shape, texture and upholstery pattern, arises in our minds as a result of the work of the brain. In poor lighting, the sofa will change its color. We can move it to another place, and with it a huge amount of protons, neutrons and electrons. But it's still the same sofa. How in our minds quantum objects are transformed into macro-objects of the classical world, into what we see and feel, is still a mystery. Perhaps our world would look very different if we saw the infrared or X-ray part of the spectrum.
That's why I answered the above question "Yes and no". There is another important circumstance that completely changes the classical ideas about our world, namely: any intervention in the quantum world changes its state, and irreversibly. It is impossible to carry out a measurement (for example, to determine the position of an electron), and then return it and the entire quantum world to the state in which they were before the measurement. Moreover, we can only hypothetically judge the “original” state.
In the classical world, everything is different. Suppose there is an apple on the table. We can pick it up and then return it to its place. Nothing changed. But if we study the motion of electrons, then we inevitably change their state, and in an irreversible way.
In our everyday life, we have the right not to notice these oddities. We simply do not think about the quantum nature of things, although we all (humans, animals and living organisms in general) are quantum systems.
We are sure that measuring the position of the apple or its diameter does not, in itself, change anything. We can take the apple in our hands and return it to its place. Will everything stay the same? Except for one thing: in our minds, something will change irreversibly - we will know the color, size, shape and position of the apple. Somehow this information will be recorded in our brain. We will also remember the smell of an apple, having the opportunity to determine the presence and variety of an apple by its smell. Our actions irreversibly change the state of the quantum world.
The conclusions that can be drawn from this approach concern the connection between the observable world and the quantum world. Our brain forms a picture of the classical world based on the data received from the quantum world. This is similar to generating an image on a computer screen by processing a set of 0-1 codes in a JPG file. Unfortunately, it is not known where these algorithms are located, and who compiled them. Similarly, the processing of information received from the sense organs occurs, the result of which is an emotional state: satisfaction, fear, aggression, etc.
In everyday life (the classical world), we believe that our consciousness exists independently of observable objects. In the quantum world, each of us is part of a system, and each of our actions changes this world, including ourselves. The human brain is part of the global quantum system, and all our actions, including the work of our brain, irreversibly changes the state of the world.