Holographic Duality and the Physics of Consciousness.

Uziel Awret

doi:10.3389/fnsys.2022.685699

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel dual-aspect theory of consciousness that is based on the principle of holographic-duality in modern physics and explores the prospects of making philosophically significant empirical discoveries about the physical correlates of consciousness. The theory is motivated by an approach that identifies certain anti-physicalist problem intuitions associated with representational content and spatial location and attempts to provide these with a consciousness-independent explanation, while suspending questions about the hard problem of consciousness and the more problematic “phenomenal character”. Providing such topic neutral explanations is “hard” enough to make a philosophical difference and yet “easy” enough to be approached scientifically. I will argue that abstract algorithms are not enough to solve this problem and that a more radical “computation” that is inspired by physics and that can be realized in “strange metals” may be needed. While speculative, this approach has the potential to both establish necessary connections between structural aspects of conscious mental states and the physical substrate “generating” them and explain why this representational content is “nowhere to be found”. I will end with a reconsideration of the conceivability of zombies.

Highlights

The biggest obstacle standing in the way of a “mathematical formalization of experience” is probably related to David Chalmers’ “Structure and Dynamics Argument” (Chalmers, 2002; Alter, 2015) and similar to: a) Mathematics is structural. b) Structure can only yield more structure. c) Consciousness is not structural. d) Conclusion: Mathematics cannot describe consciousness.3) Searching for physics that is rich enough to solve the metaproblem.Sec
As we said our search for the “mathematics of consciousness” did not appeal to novel mathematics and “first principles”; pretty much the opposite: first, we looked for physics that is rich enough to solve strategically chosen aspects of the metaproblem, and only asked ourselves whether it has interesting computational or mathematical properties
“. . .the dictionary is greatly counterintuitive and after all these years still seen as in many regards quite mysterious even by the professional holographists” (Zaanen et al, 2012). This is where the interest of the string theorists resides: “the dream is that condensed matter experiment might be used as an analog quantum computer to test the weak conjecture under circumstances where one does not know how to proceed mathematically” (Zaanen et al, 2012)

Summary

Introduction

The biggest obstacle standing in the way of a “mathematical formalization of experience” is probably related to David Chalmers’ “Structure and Dynamics Argument” (Chalmers, 2002; Alter, 2015) and similar to: a) Mathematics is structural. b) Structure can only yield more structure. c) Consciousness is not structural. d) Conclusion: Mathematics cannot describe consciousness.3) Searching for physics that is rich enough to solve the metaproblem.Sec. The biggest obstacle standing in the way of a “mathematical formalization of experience” is probably related to David Chalmers’ “Structure and Dynamics Argument” (Chalmers, 2002; Alter, 2015) and similar to: a) Mathematics is structural. B) Structure can only yield more structure. 3) Searching for physics that is rich enough to solve the metaproblem. “Ineffable and Manageable Anti-physicalist Intuitions” explores the first point of contact. “SMP and ∼P Problem Intuitions” presents what I term the “Structural Mismatch Problem” (SMP) and the “∼P Problem.”. “Magic and Necessity” presents a thought experiment correlating holography and necessity, while “Coding and Necessity” asks whether “deeplearning-based” coding strategies can solve SMP. Sec “NCC Correlations and Empirical Equivalence” explores causation and correlation in the NCC

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion