"Interpretations of quantum physics presuppose the
reality of consciousness. But if a minimal realism about the external
world is true, then the consciousness presupposed by quantum reality
cannot be only that of the scientific observer, cannot be only ‘local’
but must be ‘global’. Global consciousness is argued to have all and
only the essential properties of God. Quantum reality depends on God’s
consciousness and the physical world depends on quantum reality.
Therefore, the physical world depends on God’s consciousness.
We know, from the recent empirical confirmations of Bell’s criticism of the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen experiment (EPR)1,
that quantum reality does not depend on anything classical: there is no
macroscopic Newton–Einstein world more fundamental than the quantum
level. It follows that consciousness does not depend on, and is
irreducible to, anything physical. If the quantum depends on
consciousness, and consciousness were to depend on the physical, then
the quantum would depend on the physical (via consciousness). But that
is precisely ruled out by Bell’s criticism of the EPR experiment and by
subsequent practical work.2
It
has often been pointed out that, for reasons peculiar to it, the
popular Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to
presuppose consciousness. Here, it is argued that no
interpretation escapes this presupposition. The reasons for this are
not always so closely tied to the unique character of the interpretation
in question. Nonetheless, interpreters of quantum mechanics are without
exception forced to fall back upon consciousness. The presupposition is
ontological, not just epistemological: consciousness is entailed by
quantum reality, not just by inquiry into quantum reality, by what would
make the theory true, not just by the consciousness of the
theoretician.3
It
follows that some salient tenets of modernity are false: consciousness
does not depend on and is not reducible to the physical world, in any
sense of ‘reducible’, so consciousness is not a product of evolution. We
should not be surprised by this result because, if consciousness were a
product of evolution, consciousness would be an emergent property of
the brain. But the brain, for all its anatomical complexity, is only
billions of atoms in empty space, and billions of atoms in empty space
are neither logically nor causally sufficient for consciousness.
Consciousness did not evolve.4
Some
important theses are entailed: the Thomist theses that God is his
existence, and God is actus purus, and the idealist thesis that the
physical world depends on consciousness. Being, Presence, and
Consciousness itself are, fundamentally understood, the persons of the
Holy Trinity.
This paper is a summary of an
unpublished book manuscript, and I do not pretend that there is not much
more to be said about the problems and their putative solutions"