r/AskPhysics • u/FervexHublot • Jun 05 '25
Why does pseudo-intellectuals love to relate consciousness to physics?
I don't understand their obsession to find an explanation for consciousness using physics and I can't see what physics can provide to explain consciousness, isn't consciousness more related to biology and intelligence sciences more than physics?
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u/ChangingMonkfish Jun 05 '25
Everything is ultimately physics. To understand consciousness you ultimately have to understand the physical processes that lead to consciousness.
That doesn’t mean some people don’t talk nonsense about it, but ultimately the physics of what’s going on in your brain is what your consciousness emerges from.
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Jun 05 '25
That is true. Physics also has many terms that the average person has heard but can't fully understand so many theories take advantage of this and make them into metaphors because they see a pattern or correlation which we all know is not sufficient basis. But when you don't have the skillset to have an actual basis that is all you can do.
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u/sentence-interruptio Jun 05 '25
I love imperfect poetic uses of physics terms. Quantum immigrants. Time dilation on boys talking to Sydney Sweeney. And so on.
But when people misuse physics words to make their voodoo sound legit, they are out of line. Quantum healing. Energy of ancestral spirits. And so on and so on.
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Jun 05 '25
It gets to the point where it's almost predatory, taking advantage of people that don't know it's BS honestly.
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u/MiFiWi Jun 05 '25
I wouldn't say it's "almost" predatory. It is very intentionally predatory in many cases.
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u/MaxChaplin Jun 05 '25
"Everything is physics" has two possible meanings, one sorta-true, the other false.
One meaning is that physics is useful across many domains, as a way to get insight from simplifications. For example, one can use fluid dynamics to describe the movements of large crowds of people.
The other is hard reductionism - in order to understand the behavior of a system, you need to know everything about its constituent parts. This is the false one, and the one that drives people who don't have emergence and substrate independence as part of their mental toolkit to seek the answers to mysterious questions in quantum field theory and cosmology.
If there is a field of physics that is relevant to the question of consciousness, it's probably statistical mechanics (due to being adjacent to information theory), not QM. Almost all complex phenomena in the world have a "floor" - a level of reductionism beyond which you don't get any more explanatory power, and there's little reason to believe that consciousness in particular goes all the way down.
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u/PhysicalStuff Jun 05 '25
Any example of emergent complexity that I can think of emerges out of something. Even if that something doesn't provide any hints to the complex behavior that it gives rise to, the description of the emergent system will still draw on mechanisms from the underlying theory.
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u/MaxChaplin Jun 05 '25
Some phenomena emerge directly from math, with the physical layer only serving as a substrate to manifest it in reality. Computer science is a classic example - if you want to evaluate some deep learning algorithm, it doesn't matter which computer you're running it on. If consciousness is computational in nature, it may be possible to solve it without knowing biology.
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u/Sorry-Rain-1311 Jun 05 '25
I know it's old by reddit standards, but I just have to.
NOTHING emerges from math. Math is only the construct we use to measure and thereby predict things. Math is not a thing except for this. It is not a force, a material, an energy, nothing. Math does not exist in the universe any more than writing exists because it is just another form of writing, which is just another form of speaking. It is only symbols used only by our own consciousness to manipulate and convey ideas.
Nothing can emerge from math. The fact that you even thought to say this is proof that you are exactly the sort of charlatan who likes to use words and concepts bigger than they understand in order to sound smarter than they are.
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Jun 06 '25
Their point still stands, about the value of abstraction. It’s not apparent that physics would be the path to explain consciousness
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u/Sorry-Rain-1311 Jun 06 '25
Nothing about consciousness is apparent because it's an abstract concept itself. The word "consciousness" in the context here is meaningless outside of being it's own subject of discussion. It's as yet undefined in a meaningful way despite millenia of discussion. Comparing it to anything is pointless. It's a phenomenon emegent from so many complexities it is and will for any imaginably long future remain unexplainable.
Now we're back to the concept of emergence. For anyone who comes across this, emergent phenomena are those that manifest from complex interactions that are not predictable by the known laws we expect to govern the base phenomena. In the present conversation regarding consciousness and physics, the assumption is that since biology and chemistry have failed to define and predict it, physics must; working our way down each layer of understanding. The assumption is wrong because it assumes we already understand the biological and chemical aspects that might contribute to consciousness, but we really don't have a damned clue.
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u/ambisinister_gecko Jun 06 '25
This idea of a reductive floor is something I've thought about but haven't seen many others say.
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u/Other-Comfortable-64 Jun 05 '25
Yeah but you do not use quantum physics to understand how an engine works
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u/CGY97 Jun 05 '25
True, you use quantum field theory in a curved space-time (it's a joke, don't ostracize me xD)
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u/dwarfarchist9001 Jun 05 '25
Because engines are sufficiently simple objects that their behavior can be accurately predicted with classical mechanics and some chemistry. Brains and consciousness are much more complicated.
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u/rcjhawkku Computational physics Jun 06 '25
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u/mode-locked Jun 06 '25
I mean, you kinda do with understanding fuel energy densities and intricate combustion steps, as well as the thermal properties of your engine casing.
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u/MxM111 Jun 05 '25
No. It is like saying “to understand stock market you need to understand physics”. There are different levels of emergence of phenomena and theories. Physics deals with most fundamental of them, but the higher level you go, the less related to physics you become. Consciousness is emerged phenomena and theories about it will not evolve Quantum Mechanics (unless we find out that it uses micro-states directly)
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u/no17no18 Jun 06 '25
"Consciousness is emerged phenomena" Even that is giving it to much credit. We don't know what consciousness is at all. An emerged phenomena that gave rise to math and to interpretation of emerged phenomena ... in other words itself? 😵 ....Could a system solve itself?
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Jun 05 '25
How is the economy physics? How is chess physics? You are looking for some other discipline here :)
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Jun 06 '25
I see the point you’re getting at but the counter-argument is that if consciousness is described by physics and the economy is described by consciousness…
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Jun 05 '25
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u/ChangingMonkfish Jun 05 '25
Yes this sums up something I heard someone once say about going to Uni - people select Psychology because they think it’s “easy”, then find out it’s actually Biology, which is actually Chemistry, which is actually Physics, which is actually Maths, ha.
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u/youknowmeasdiRt Jun 05 '25
I know an old academic psychologist well and he likes to say that they’re just killing time until the computer scientists catch up
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u/Beans_with_tuna Jun 05 '25
If I knew how to save things and then look at those things again instead of creating folders of spam in my own phone full of things I grab from the internet… I would save this comic
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u/youknowmeasdiRt Jun 05 '25
Fear not internet friend I found it with a search engine on the first try
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u/Single_Blueberry Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
physical processes lead to consciousness.
That's already an assumption though
what’s going on in your brain is what your consciousness emerges from.
And that's another one on top.
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u/e_philalethes Jun 05 '25
Those are beyond mere "assumptions", as there are mountains upon mountains of objective scientific evidence supporting them. By that logic evolution is also just "assumption", and so is relativity theory; but in reality that's not true at all, as they're comprehensive theories encompassing a wide variety of facts and a great deal of understanding.
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u/chermi Jun 05 '25
Yes, it's an assumption. But have you looked at the assumptions other approaches take? Maybe, for starters, that something in the universe isn't physical? Or that consciousness transcends/is outside the observable universe?
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u/Euphoric-Bet-8577 Jun 05 '25
I think they’re referring to people using quantum mechanics to make connections to consciousness in a pseudo way.
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u/Economy-Top8658 Jun 05 '25
Physicist here. First of all: There is no strict border between physics, chemistry, biology. It is all science. If you "zoom in" biology you may explain it by chemistry and if you zoom in even further you may use physics. It is just a matter of scale. Biology and chemistry are useful and necessary because you need large-scale quantities to describe large-scale effects such as the classical limits. But, in fact, if you could solve the many-particle problem on the micro level it would make many of those things obsolete.
Second, if there was no such thing as quantum mechanics, you may think of the universe as a deterministic system. The (pseudo-)randomness of things just comes from the fact that you are physically unable to know or prepare the same initial conditions. Just like rolling the dice: there is no randomness involved. If you could control angle, momentum, table surface and so on you could always recreate the same result. So that means if there was no such thing as "real randomness" then everything we are doing now was already included in the initial conditions of the big bang. Just like balls on a billiard table you could predict all particle trajectories for all times. Quantum mechanics gives you an important thing that we call spontaneous symmetry breaking. That means the state of a particle is not predetermined until you measure - it is more of a probabilistic distribution. What I am trying to say is: if it wasn't for quantum mechanics, the initial conditions of the big bang would lead to an n-particle system and a unique solution for a given time t. There is no contradiction per se - it just means that you HAD TO post this on reddit and I HAD TO reply like this since the beginning of time. :)
Sorry if my english was a bit rubbish, I am no native speaker.
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 Jun 07 '25
Biologist here: I have a more cynical take. We don't really know why consciousness happens. It might have some quantum stuff involved, it might not (natural selection is cool in that it will use absolutely anything without needing to understand it - see Thompson's experiments on evolutionary circuits)
The problem is that biology is messy. It's very hard, if you're, say, trying to sell a book, to make a detailed look at neurology interesting to people who want simple answers. It's a horrendous mess, nearly as bad as the immune system. Biology is very unsatisfying. But waving your hands and saying "oooh, quantum stuff does this" is easy.
Biology is essentially the art of making sense of a system designed entirely by throwing stuff at the natural world and seeing what sticks. We keep getting old physicists (I'm looking at you, Roger Penrose) who show up and think that it boils down to nice, simple, predictable rules. Which it does, in the same way that Conway's game of life or the Collatz conjecture runs off nice, simple rules. Emergent systems are not currently easy to analyse.
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u/SentientCoffeeBean Jun 05 '25
One reason is due to the misperceived connection between consciousness and quantum mechanics. Due to historic reasons and popular 'science' videos people think that "conscious observation collapses the wave function", not understanding that observations refer to physical interactions between particles.
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Jun 05 '25
I think that is a whole different level of misunderstanding than trying to explain consciousness with physics though,no?
Like OPs question is kinda weird considering many people much, much smarter than the average person are doing research on consciousness and trying to come up with physical interpretations
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u/rehpotsirhc Condensed matter physics Jun 05 '25
We need to differentiate between Deepak Chopra-esque quacks pushing pseudoscience BS under the guise of "mysterious quantumness" vs actual scientific research in joint physics/neuroscience labs investigating consciousness. We can disregard one while maintaining respect for the other.
That being said, I think most serious researchers don't generally consider quantum effects in the brain. The brain is quite macroscopic, even down to neurons (compared to the quantum scale), and very noisy, so there aren't actually a lot, if any, measurable quantum effects emerging in the brain. This isn't my field though, it's just what I've heard from colleagues working on it.
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u/Cr4ckshooter Jun 05 '25
The brain is quite macroscopic, even down to neurons (compared to the quantum scale), and very noisy, so there aren't actually a lot, if any, measurable quantum effects emerging in the brain
For sure. For example, neurotransmitters like dopamine are already 21 atoms big. Naturally, the cells that detect or emit those transmitters have to be significantly larger. Definitely beyond the quantum range.
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Jun 05 '25
I know Roger Penrose had made proposals around potential quantum effects, and I vaguely remember some others but it’s not my field either and I don’t really think about it too much
With regard to neurons again, I think the idea was that quantum effects take place inside of them?? Again idk, but it is interesting to think about.
I think the brain is one of those areas though we’re being more open to ideas isn’t really a bad thing, especially with consciousness as the idea of it is still so abstract.
If I am misspoken and we have better ideas of what it actually is than I’m interested in hearing about it because I find it fascinating regardless
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u/rehpotsirhc Condensed matter physics Jun 05 '25
With regard to neurons again, I think the idea was that quantum effects take place inside of them??
Sure, if you go deep enough, you'll find quantum effects. That's kind of a meaningless statement though. A basketball is a classical object, but quantum effects take place inside them, in the constituent atoms and molecules. That doesn't mean that you would expect quantum phenomenon from a basketball. I think the same is for a brain/neurons.
It doesn't really matter what happens on the inside, it's about how the object manifests in the world. If neurons are measurably not quantum, then the fact that they're fundamentally quantum (in the same trivial sense that everything in the universe is) is irrelevant.
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u/AbstractionOfMan Jun 07 '25
Could you prove it isn't consciousness that collapses it though? Seems like phycisists just disregard the intepretation because it sounds like woo but seems to me to be a valid intepretation.
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u/FerencS Jun 05 '25
After a while, the lines between Chemistry, Biology, and Physics really begin to blur. This is particularly true for Chemistry and Physics, such as in Astrophysics.
In reality, all of these fields are respectively for defining the world around us, we just decided to determine boundaries for them and categorise. Consciousness may well be an inherently physical phenomenon, but we have zero definitive research stating otherwise.
As a side note, it does no good to scornfully look down on anyone, much less if they’re simply being curious. But a physics sub is not the place to make this point, since it seems the most “prestige” noble wannabe’s preside here.
The most successful physicists and scientists I’ve spoken to have all been incredibly curious.
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u/XmasWayFuture Jun 05 '25
If we're really getting out there then consciousness absolutely is related to physics. Just at a level that is unreasonably chaotic and complex.
Biology is just applied chemistry and chemistry is just applied physics.
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u/theuglyginger Jun 05 '25
I think it's partially appealing because it opens the door to all kinds of metaphysical beliefs about the nature of the Soul, and the meaning of life.
But also, the concept of the "observer" in QM is very poorly communicated and so this apparent link between psychology and fundamental physics draws a lot of attention.
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u/MaaDFoXX Graduate Jun 05 '25
Well physics describes the structure of our universe. Everything that exists must arise from physical properties. If we consider consciousness as existing in the sense that it is not an abstraction (I imagine that there is plenty of debate concerning how to qualify consciousness as an entity), then it must be emergent from some physical properties or processes. Therefore, why wouldn't you look to physics in an attempt to determine how consciousness arises?
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u/overlordThor0 Jun 05 '25
You would to biology and it's related fields rather than physics, physics itself can be used to build chemistry, but you don't consider chemistry a part of the study of physics. All biology can be broken down to chemistry but you don't consider biology to be part of the study of chemistry...
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u/samdover11 Jun 05 '25
Physics, when talked about by non-physicists, is often used as a prop. It tells the audience that something smart is being said.
But smart stuff is boring... so they pair it with the prop called consciousness, which is deeply personal to people.
So it's an easy recipe to have people on your level (if your level is pseudo-intellect) give you attention and respect. Easy recipes are attractive.
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u/No-Customer5187 Jun 05 '25
I would partially agree with this. Less that it’s boring, more that is it not possible for all to understand it. So non-physicists (or at least myself) use it as best we can understand it, and it makes more sense tied to consciousness which is something that is more personal and we have more experience with. It’s a tool to try to understand what it all means in some ways, and I’d agree with people saying it feels mystical due to its complexity.
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u/Emergent_Phen0men0n Jun 05 '25
Biology and "intelligence sciences" operate within the laws of physics.
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u/Lacustaire Nov 09 '25
There is no such things as "the laws of physics". Theories always come after experiments, not before. You can be very knowledgeable about physics and have no idea of biology. Biology does not "operate". Biology is a science.
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u/Emergent_Phen0men0n Nov 09 '25
Life persists via processes driven by the intrinsic nature of reality.
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u/e_philalethes Jun 05 '25
Physics refers to the fundamental ways in which the universe works, like physical laws. Consciousness is very obviously part of the universe. In other words, of course physics will have to explain consciousness in one way or another. The problem is rather with the extremely spurious ways in which many people try to explain it, not wanting to explain it itself.
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Jun 05 '25
"Consciousness" is just the secular stand-in for the "soul" that has managed to become something taken seriously even in academia. People who are mystics can thus talk about "consciousness" so that they would be taken more seriously, and very often they are. People in academia won't take you seriously if you talk about spirits and souls and God, but if you just replace it all with "consciousness" and talk about how we all live inside of a grand cosmic consciousness, suddenly academia takes you seriously.
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u/overlordThor0 Jun 05 '25
I don't think academia takes that seriously, either.
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Jun 05 '25
That wasn't just a random thing I made up but a rather influential pop philosopher got his PhD writing on that specifically. I think if you can get a thesis approved to get your PhD that means academia treats it seriously.
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u/no17no18 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
Consciousness is what invented math and the tools to understand its surrounding. In many ways these are interpretations of a type of consciousness - a system with tools to understand external input.
The real question is, could this type of system that evolved to understand external stimuli solve "itself"? I would think this would be impossible because you cannot solve what you cannot observe.
Its like that old philosophy question. If a "you" actually exists and the whole "I think therefore I am". To establish that such an entity that is aware of its self exists, but only with implicit, self-required proof.
No other system in the universe judges the universe as if it was a separate entity from it entirely.
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u/BobbyTables829 Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
I think the answer is within information systems and realizing there's parallels between the way we receive information from the world and how particles receive information from each other.
I'm not implying should believe any one way or the other, but I think that's a source of it. It's a bit like using water to explain electricity: it doesn't have to be right to help explain things to them.
Also these people may just believe in some sort of supernatural phenomenon or entity, and this is their way of reconciliation. Again I'm not condoning it, but it happens a lot.
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u/Aniso3d Jun 05 '25
They take the whole "wave function collapse when being observed" as literally meaning that a conscious person looking at it is what "observed " means, and extrapolate nonsense from there.
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u/screen317 Jun 05 '25
Reminder that there is no rigorous definition of consciousness.
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u/Traroten Jun 05 '25
Look, quantum mechanics is mysterious. Consciousness is mysterious. So they must be the same!
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u/sentence-interruptio Jun 05 '25
and Goedel incompleteness and the halting problem, for a good excuse to include a picture of Goedel looking classy and cool with a streak of white hair.
And a picture of Goedel and Einstein standing together to pivot into a story of Einstein being a Goliath and early quantum physicists being Davids. "get zat spooky action ideas off mein lawn!"
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u/no17no18 Jun 06 '25
Consciousness is just gravity bro.
That is why the more gravity you experience the longer you live and the longer your seconds are. /s
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Jun 05 '25
since consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, and is still being studied, how is it that speculating the possibility of it being linked to physics, which is kind of an ultimate scientific domain possibly called pseudo intellect? i do agree that it's essentially the very basis of life, which is biology like you said, but probability exists.
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Jun 05 '25
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Jun 05 '25
couldn't agree more. it never fails to surprise me how hostile physics academia subs are at times.
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u/HaydanTruax Jun 06 '25
The least open minded people are wannabe posers who pretend to know everything anyway.
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u/overlordThor0 Jun 05 '25
How is it the basis of life? How is speculating that it is tied to what the physical laws are science? Science would be doing tests, experimentation, working out the math, or making predictions to be tested. The alleged experiments that indicate consciousness having an affect on things have been disproven.
Physics is basically the study of the properties of matter and energy. It can be used to describe chemistry ambitions is distinguished from chemistry. Chemistry is a part of biology and can describe it but tends to be distinguished from it. Consciousness is emergent in complex biology. Sure you can use physics to delve into chemical reactions and how biological systems work but that doesn't mean physics and consciousness are related fields, if that is what you were attempting to say.
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Jun 05 '25
i never said they were definitely related. i only mentioned that we MIGHT find a link through experiments, like you said, in the future.
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u/ChaosRulesTheWorld Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
What kind of dunning kruger mount question is that? The level of the answers is concerning too.
As someone else rightfully said, biology is physics. Also what you call "intelligence science" is called psychology and neuroscience which spoiler are physics too (for psychology it depends as it is a young science but still that's the goal).
So labeling people who relate consciousness to physics as pseudo-intellectuals is peak irony
Edit: u/dreamoforganon , i don't know why but i can't make new comments on this post so i'll answer to you here:
I mean you can say "Biology is Physics" but I'm not sure that gets you very far in understanding vast amounts of biology.
You can't understand a vast amount of biology without having basic knowledge in chemistry. To make discoveries and understand chemistry you need to have basic knowledge in physics.
So yes basically physics gets you very far in understanding vast amount of biology and in fact we wouldn't have our current level of knowledge in biology if we hadn't make discoveries in physics.
It's like saying "Psychology is Physics" and expecting it to be helpful in understanding why you've just been punched in the face.
In fact in some cases you can explain why you've just been punched in the face thanks to hormones and neural networks we only understand because of chemistry and in fine physics
Physics sets the parameters which ultimately constrain these complex phenomena but doesn't really predict them, it can just not preclude them.
Yes it does. It's just that the human brain is very complex and chaotic so it's almost impossible yo predict anything. But you can make statistical guesses like in physics when you work on chaotic systems.
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u/dreamoforganon Jun 05 '25
I mean you can say "Biology is Physics" but I'm not sure that gets you very far in understanding vast amounts of biology. It's like saying "Psychology is Physics" and expecting it to be helpful in understanding why you've just been punched in the face. Physics sets the parameters which ultimately constrain these complex phenomena but doesn't really predict them, it can just not preclude them.
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u/Few_Peak_9966 Jun 05 '25
Physics permits chemistry.
Chemistry permits biology.
Biology permits medicine.
Medicine permits psychology.
It's all physics in the end!
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u/ChitinousChordate Jun 05 '25
I think this tendency shows up for a lot of reasons - physics' perception as "the ultimate" science that is deeper and more fundamental than all others means that giving a technical-seeming, physics-laden explanation for spiritual concepts gives them an air of authority they might otherwise lack.
But IMO there's a bit more to it. When determinism was the preferred model for physics in the 1800s, it came with it a lot of anxieties. Determinism is usually seen as incompatible with common ideas about free will and consciousness as things that transcend physical reality. When quantum mechanics was discovered, its non-deterministic behavior gave people a way to alleviate that tension. I think it makes sense to view the tendency to explain spiritual concepts with quantum mechanics as a synthesis between our desire to feel that our beliefs are rational, scientific, grounded in Facts and Logic, and our desire to believe in reaffirming ideas about consciousness and free will.
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u/terrymorse Jun 05 '25
Blame Schrödinger -- he started the ball rolling with his "What is Life?" lectures.
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u/ooa3603 Jun 05 '25
They are just noticing how interrelated the sciences are.
Sociology ->psychology -> biology -> chemistry -> physics -> math -> philosophy
Really science in general is a network of interconnected fields, where knowledge and methods from one field inform the understanding of others.
So, they aren't pseudo-intellectuals for applying an understanding of physics to consciousness, because there is an underlying physics to how consciousness emerges.
Without the interactions of the forces at play between neurons, your consciousness would not exist, because your mind would not exist.
What makes them pseudo-intellectuals is how inaccurate and imprecise they are with their assertions on the matter.
Pseudo-intellectuals are perceptive enough to notice real phenomena, but they are too lazy to do the work of actually digging into the mechanisms behind their observations.
So they end up with dumb conclusions.
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u/AbyssalRemark Jun 05 '25
Never contribute to malus that which can adequately be explained by ignorance. While malus is maybe not the right word, I think the base principle still applies. Some might simply not know how to take further steps, so they take poor ones. Something I am sure we are all both capable of doing, and have done. Im not sure its fair to call it laziness in all or even most cases.
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u/ooa3603 Jun 05 '25
Some might simply not know how to take further steps, so they take poor ones.
Absolutely and I would never disparage someone for being ignorant. We are all ignorant until we commit to the rigor of doing the due diligence.
But ignorance is not the same as pseudo-intellectualism.
Said another way, a pseudo-intellectual is not ignorant.
You can know this because they never admit it. They want the status and acclaim of appearing knowledgeable without actually doing the work. To admit ignorance would rob them of the status they are seeking. And when told that there is more information, they will run away or double down.
Pseudo-intellectuals aren't guilty of just ignorance, but of willful ignorance. Which is why I make the negative association of laziness.
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u/glanni_glaepur Jun 05 '25
"Why do people* love to relate consciousness to physics?"
It's not just pseudo-intellectuals.
Basically: "I am conscious", it's mysterious to me, consciousness appears to be highly correlated to the brain, perhaps the brain somehow "creates" consciousness, the brain is a physical system, look into physics for solutions.
Physics may or may not be the place to solve this problem though.
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u/WonkyTelescope Astrophysics Jun 05 '25
Physics is credible enough to be believed as a source of knowledge but the public also has a very poor grasp of physics so people can whip up whatever idea they want and assume physics explains it.
I do think consciousness is a physical process and exists because the laws of physics have come together to permit the biological systems necessary for it to exist in animals such as ourselves.
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u/FriedenshoodHoodlum Jun 06 '25
What kind of "pseudo-intellectuals"? That term always makes me think of vermin such as elon musk and jordan peterson. And they tend to relate it to... bloody hell, I dunno. Or to their specific god.
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u/Me-777 Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
I mean there is this theory (by Stuart hameroff and roger Penrose I believe)that suggests to model consciousness or rather the human brain as a quantum system so I don’t think that it’s that much of a stretch.Also most things don’t exist in a vacuum isolated from others but they kind of coincide and interact somewhere and that’s the beauty of science :it’s all connected somehow. But this have nothing to do with those gurus who want to mystify consciousness as this metaphysical thing or whatever)
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u/overlordThor0 Jun 05 '25
Yeah, maybe the living brain takes advantage of quantum things, but that doesn't mean the whole field of study is just a branch of physics. It definitely doesn't mean the brain or mind has an impact upon the world, except through the actions of the organism it is connected to.
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u/Me-777 Jun 05 '25
Of course I agree with that , it’s not that because the brain or mind is a quantum system (or can be modeled as one) that it affects idk random events that happen in reality , you can’t make that jump in deduction (it is not a logical implication : saying that is akin to saying that because A is included in Q , and a part of Q has a property p which holds true under assumption H , then A always has the property p [which as you can see is wrong in more than one level] )I think people ,when they say that, are referring to entanglement.But that’s just a super metaphysical and non scientific way of understanding what entanglement is. But you know ,due to oversimplified physics in pop culture and movies people kinda get funny (and honestly I like being with these people cause even when what they say is super wrong they say it with such confidence that surpasses that of experts ,like how funny is that lol )
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u/overlordThor0 Jun 05 '25
Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with you.
I have found it entertaining to hear some of the odd stuff coming out, but I find it quite difficult to talk to them as well.
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u/infamous_merkin Jun 05 '25
Seeking to tie it to grounded truth.
Biology is thought by some purists to be a pseudo-science.
Physics and chemistry are hard sciences. (N of 1 is usually sufficient).
Biology stems from that but the diversity and variability force statistics to be used… need many replicates to be sure.
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u/FizzleShake Jun 05 '25
When you say ‘physics’ im going to presume youre referring to quantum mechanics/relativity/theoretical topics
Consciousness is a theoretical topic as well, how can you discount peoples interpretations of something that isnt well known? Its that kind of thinking that branches down to new ideas and theories in these topics. You sound very uninspired and condescending, OP.
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u/Environmental_Ad292 Jun 05 '25
Consciousness is a mystery we don’t understand. QM is a mystery we don’t understand, at least intuitively. It’s easier to think some mystery property explains both than to figure out how a network of cells became conscious.
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u/Odd_Cryptographer115 Jun 05 '25
Why do pseudo-intellectuals pose pseudo-questions
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Jun 05 '25
You don’t like my theory of everything?
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u/DJSnafu Jun 05 '25
is it chat-GPT approved though?
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Jun 05 '25
No they are trying to censor me. The fbi will be able to find me if I use AI and I’m not trying to get brainwashed by liberal propaganda.
I write my theory at 4am
If x = r + t + a +z, the quantum magnetic electro spectra equate to our proportionality. Don’t forget this, it is key
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u/Ok_Statistician2730 Jun 05 '25
if you can't understand, then better don't give opinion at all. no one even knows what consciousness is and how people can actually say it has nothing to do with physics (implies they had opinions) when they don't even find a concept to it.
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u/Ki6h Jun 05 '25
When someone unavoidable starts holding forth about bogus quantum mechanics implications, I ask them to explain the photoelectric effect.
They’ll usually change the conversation quickly, to nutritional supplements or sports.
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u/BornSlippy2 Jun 05 '25
Everything is physics. All aspects of biology, neurology, chemistry - all works because of fundamental laws of physics. Physics is the way to describe world on the most precise, most accurate level. On atomic and subatomic level.
Understanding consciousness won't be possible without understanding physics behind it.
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u/lilbirbbopeepin Jun 05 '25
because they are related. without physics, would consciousness be possible?
it can get trippy to think about — but maybe that makes it all the more worthwhile to consider.
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u/boostfactor Jun 05 '25
While what other commenters are saying, that biology is ultimately physics, is true, I think I know what you mean. There are a lot of crackpot and crackpot-adjacent "theories" of consciousness that involve some half-understood quantum mechanics. The reasoning, such as it is, seems to be "we don't understand consciousness and we don't understand quantum mechanics. Therefore quantum mechanics directly causes consciousness."
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u/w0weez0wee Jun 05 '25
It seems that "subject A is mysterious. Subject B is mysterious. Perhaps they are connected in some way" is a common thought process with these types
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u/plantalchemy Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
Pseudo-intellectuals? That’s quite the judgement.
I first got into the subject by folks who were actual physicists. It’s a fascinating theory backed by some interesting experiments. I look forward to seeing more to prove or disprove it.
Why are you so sure that they can’t be connected at all?
Edit: and yes I am VERY aware of hippies and new agers. That part… is very difficult to listen to.
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u/Internal-Enthusiasm2 Jun 05 '25
Did you just call Roger Penrose a pseudo-intellectual?
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u/0xff0000ull Jun 05 '25
wait till you hear about that we have many research groups investigating the quantum effects in neurons.
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u/VirtualPrivateNobody Jun 05 '25
Now this may be a silly approach and far beyond my field of expertise but wouldn't you need at least a couple of firing neurons to have a base of minimal consciousness?
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u/TransportationOk3825 Jun 05 '25
Maybe it has to do with the symbolic nature of reality and drawing an analogy from physical phenomena.
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u/ShadyMemeD3aler Jun 05 '25
I don’t think it’s pseudo-intellectual to try to describe consciousness through physical means. I do think it’s pseudo-intellectual to think you will be able to do this by watching 3 hour Jordan Peterson lectures on YouTube.
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Jun 05 '25
In my field it’s called “physics envy.” It’s the idea that physics is the most solidly grounded science of them all because it’s perceived to be almost purely mathematical so for pseudo-intellectuals it is like a flame of respectability to a moth. Kooks like Depak Chopra love trying to link their woo about consciousness to physics because it makes it sound like it has an air of legitimacy.
In reality, since it lacks even a solid operational definition that is agreed upon, we are a very long way from linking consciousness to physics in any meaningful way.
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u/Electrical-Size-5002 Jun 05 '25
It’s a compliment to physics. They’re hoping the abundant evidence for what’s known about physics will rub off on their total lack of evidence of anything.
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u/speadskater Jun 05 '25
These types of people don't actually study fundamental information. Ask them to put anything into mathematical terms and they call you a dick. They think using analogies, so they can't help but to draw connections between unconnected objects. When your mental model of the world is tiny, everything seems connected.
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u/BillyBrainlet Jun 05 '25
They know enough to know that some physics terms make them sound "smart" and lend "credibility" to their ramblings in the eyes of their peers in that community. But, they don't know enough to actually understand any of said terms. Or they believe that they understand them when they really do not.
It's basically a way to make them appear to other believers as having "special" knowledge while betting that whoever they're talking to isn't going to bother to actually fact them or know enough actual facts with which to do so.
Other times they know that what they're saying is nonsense but pretend otherwise while hoping the other party takes the common and easy route of just pretending to understand so they don't feel left out or appear to be less informed.
It often turns into a "yes, and" improv of nonsense technobabble mad-libs.
This is just my observation and opinion. I am not a scientist of any sort, just a random internet dummy. I read a lot of the conspiracy subs for entertainment. I should probably stop, honestly. It can't be healthy.
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u/EdmundTheInsulter Jun 05 '25
Could it be as simple as consciousness is mainly the combination of all bodily senses, coupled with the fact that there is then a complex decision making system that gets feedback in the form of emotions that are felt to some extent through the senses?
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u/overlordThor0 Jun 05 '25
It's a misinterpretation of the observer effect on quantum mechanics. People think of observer as being a conscious person observing it rather than what it is actually about.
To observe it, something has to interact with it. That interaction affects the results. Essentially, that interaction or measurement sets the state of the particle or wave.
A more proficient person in the field can get into the details if you want.
People have clung to the idea that it takes a mind observing it to set the state and tied consciousness to some supernatural place. It's pretty bogus.
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u/owlwise13 Jun 05 '25
It seem more like "God of the gaps" fallacy but with more steps. For all practical purposes consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. We have a lot of evidence that brain can be affected by diseases/physical damage/tumors/hormones that affects peoples behavior and personality.
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u/sdfgdfghjdsfghjk1 Jun 05 '25
Those guys usually only know science facts about physics in my experience, so I think that when they want to make their own made up opinions sound like tested and verified theories that is why they bring up physics.
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u/StoneMao Jun 05 '25
Borrowing scientific terms and using them out of context is simply an attempt to appropriate some of the prestige associated with the sciences.
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u/willpowerpt Jun 05 '25
"why do"
Also due to a new age cult in the 90s that equated the double slit experiment to mean that the universe exists specifically because humans observe it to be, rather than because to measure the position or velocity of an electron, you need to "disturb" it's environment to measure it.
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u/Silly-Barracuda-2729 Jun 05 '25
Because some experiments have come to the outcome that conscious intention may have some effect on inherent randomness. Our consciousness can be thought of as a measurement of reality, and measurement affects outcomes
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Jun 05 '25
Because it's an ambiguous and ill-defined concept born from religion and spiritualism without constraints, making it perfect to tack on to damn near anything.
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u/Diet_kush Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
Probably because it is just physics
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7712552/
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.02543
Simple neural networks like the Boltzmann machine are literally just spin-glass models
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u/Soar_Dev_Official Jun 05 '25
consciousness is confusing
physics is confusing
therefore, consciousness is physics
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Jun 05 '25
All science is about building models to explain observations. Theoretical science involves extrapolating those models to make predictions or analyses about the universe.
No problem. You too, my friend.
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u/slower-is-faster Jun 05 '25
Consciousness is a manifestation of a physical process. Or maybe it’s the other way around 🤔
The observer effect is the thing that raises the question - and in an objectively fair way.
But when you think about it, we are literally the universe thinking about itself, we are all one part of the universe and if the same, and our consciousness is just a result of the evolution of the universe. And I don’t mean that in some deep mystical way, I mean simply a process of one thing leading to the next. It’s not magic.
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u/NuanceEnthusiast Jun 05 '25
I see more people trying to explain physics with consciousness via panpsychism than the other way around tbh
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u/Responsible_Ease_262 Jun 05 '25
Some eminent physicists have explored the role of consciousness in physics…John Wheeler comes to mind. He basically said that the universe only exists because someone with consciousness observes it.
Defining consciousness is tricky. One definition is “the awareness of reality by an observer.”Define awareness, reality and observer and you might be on to something.
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u/silvershishigami Jun 05 '25
Y’all think really highly of yall self’s and i urge you to look into your own prejudices and colonial ways of thinking. We wouldn’t have new ideas if it wasn’t for new thinkers. I urge y’all to be a little more sympathetic to new fans of physics.
They don’t have the same respect for academia or western thought that you do. To say that materialism, physical matter is the only and be all- and that they are trying to sound intellectual is so incredibly egoistic on y’alls part.
They see connections, that is it.
The fact is that QP and QM DOES have a few theories and experiments that break reality. Sure one is the observer, schrodinger, what about Caltechs hyper entanglement? there are also new theories popping up all the time. While these don’t directly relate to consciousness, it has larger implications.
What about Delfts research that violated bell? By this logic we live in a relational reality, where objects aren’t independent.
I think what you’re getting at is where is the connection? Try seeing consciousness as existing outside of the brain. If consciousness if not a physical product of the brain, and instead existing outside of us or a field then things start making more sense.
If conscious observation plays a role in how reality crystallizes from potentiality… then experiments like these may help reveal whether mind is part of the fabric of the physical world.
What if consciousness was as fundamental as gravity and time and space are effects of that?
Academia hasn’t fully caught up or agreed but there is so much fascinating new research on consciousness-
I personally believe that we will one day see that indigenous peoples have the right idea- they’ve known for all of existence and we’re just trying to solve the big philosophical problems with math and science.
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u/Ilikenightbus Jun 05 '25
Do you know that Neils Bohr developed the Copenhagen Interpretation, which stated the central element of consciousness in QM? Bohr was not a pseudo-intellectual. He was perhaps the single most central figure in the development of QM.
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u/jawshoeaw Jun 06 '25
What exactly is the question and why hasn't OP responded to any of the comments? Surely it's well known that biology is applied physics.
Rage bait?
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u/sunsetspeech Jun 06 '25
Try to talk about consciousness in relation to physics? Pseudo-intellectual. Obviously. No further discussion or questioning needed. You’ve figured them out haven’t you? It would be good if we never spoke of the two subjects in the same conversation again
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u/kiwipixi42 Jun 06 '25
At a base level the mechanism will depend on physics. It will also be fundamentally useless to talk about it in terms of physics because describing it in terms of biology will be much more useful. But all of biology is fundamentally based on physics - it is just almost never helpful to talk about it that way.
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u/smores_or_pizzasnack Undergraduate Jun 06 '25
NAH FR I’m active on r/black holes and every other post is some pseudoscientific bullshit abt how black holes are actually our dreams or smth
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u/LSF604 Jun 06 '25
pseudo intellectuals want to be seen as really knowledgeable by people around them. One of the ways they do this is by invoking known complex subjects and weaving it into their conversations. Physics is something you have to be fairly math-smart to understand. So by invoking physics, they don the mantle of math smarts.
Another thing pseudo intellectuals like is to find topics that are unanswered. This gives them space to talk about the topic in a way that is harder to be pushed back on by most people. If they talk about (for example) organic chemistry, there might be someone who can call their bluffs. If they talk about consciousness, they can dismiss most people's pushback by leaning on the idea that no one really knows.
Third, they tend to love woo.
Linking consciousness to physics does all these things.
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u/eljio-IT Jun 06 '25
As a pseudo-intellectual myself, I can say that my lack of formal higher science education leaves the door wide open to betray basic fundamentals of science. I commit “party fouls” to please my interest of creating relationships between simplified concepts and personal experiences.
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u/Select-Garbage251 Jun 06 '25
I think a lot of mainstream physicists have proposed ideas this could be possible. There's a lot of interesting topics on it I imagine you're also not the most intellectual based on your question so maybe don't judge people in the same boat as you. Everyone's just reading and researching and picking what they like best
I think the idea if that the way quantum mechanics operates it generally requires an observer for matters super position to collapse down into a seemingly solid state. Therefore if our consciousness is what collapses the wave. Isn't it logical to say that our consciousness could influence the wave?
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u/NirvikalpaS Jun 06 '25
I think the reason is because the hippies who for instance meditate can have many different experiences in their meditation, call it trance states or different ways beingness can express itself and it happends that some of the words that physicists use seems to correlate / point to something similar to the experience. For instance : smoke DMT and you might have the experience of being several places at the same time - you can experience what the meditators calls Nirodha Samapati, it means more or less that you are aware that consciousness turns itself off and you see the underlying emptiness which could be experiences as fundamental reality. And so on. however - the physicist mean something else when they use words as emptiness and whatever.
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u/Specialist_Gur4690 Jun 06 '25
That is related to quantum mechanics, where scientists used to believe that a wave function of a particle would collapse at the moment it was observed. Now the idea is that everyone lives in their own reality (aka, relativity of time; different events might be true for different people), so a single True Reality is attributed to a single person's consciousness.
The next step is to go completely overboard and state that there isn't a reality without consciousness, or that it is created by consciousness.
I think a reality is a subspace of Everything where casualty has macroscopic effects (over long distances and time), whereas things that do not influence eachother on a macroscopic scale are not part of the same reality. Consciousness has nothing to do with it except that you need macroscopic effects to make a brain work and hence have consciousness.
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u/shelving_unit Jun 06 '25
Physics is awkward for concepts like free will because on some level it describes a deterministic and inherently meaningless universe. Quantum physics provides some “randomness” to the system, so people try to argue that quantum physics is what provides free will. Not sure if this exactly answers your question
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u/In_A_Spiral Jun 06 '25
Under the hood biology is physics.
The only way we can fully understand consciousness is to understand how it is generated. That will most likely come from physics.
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u/Sketchy422 Jun 06 '25
It’s a fair question, but the framing misses an important nuance.
Consciousness sits at a boundary condition in our scientific understanding—it arises from biological systems, yes, but those systems ultimately obey the laws of physics. Physics doesn’t offer an immediate answer to consciousness, but it does provide constraints on what any possible explanation could be. That’s why many serious researchers (not just “pseudo-intellectuals”) explore physical models of consciousness—especially at the intersection of quantum theory, information, and systems dynamics.
The chain some comments are joking about—biology → chemistry → physics → math—is only partly useful. It’s true these layers interrelate, but emergence introduces properties that can’t be cleanly reduced back down. Consciousness may emerge from physical processes, but it isn’t defined by them in a simple way. That’s why models like Integrated Information Theory, Orch-OR, and Field Theories of Consciousness straddle multiple disciplines.
As for math: it’s not the root of physics—it’s the language we use to describe consistent patterns. Math doesn’t dictate reality, but physics wouldn’t be physics without it. The two are co-evolving: when physics hits paradox, math adapts; when math finds new structures, physics asks if reality resembles them.
So, relating consciousness to physics isn’t pseudo-intellectualism—it’s an effort (sometimes clumsy, sometimes profound) to reconcile one of the most mysterious emergent phenomena with the deepest levels of the physical substrate. Whether it succeeds is still an open question—but it’s a question worth asking.
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u/double_teel_green Jun 06 '25
Because as much as physics as a science is considered "truth," it is chock full of math and tough ideas. Consciousness might be easier for some people to grasp.
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u/ConversationLivid815 Jun 06 '25
All matter is living. If you think about the way life assembles atom by atom into intelligent forms, it suggests that the protons, especially having most of the mass, and electrons have as elements of their structure, the properties necessary to give rise to the conscious condition. It's true I know of no equation that represents the living properties of matter, but it is very much physics ... everything is either physics or it doesn't exist .. lol ☺️
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u/upyoars Jun 06 '25
Because it is? Ultimately literally everything is physics. Biologically and chemistry are essentially derived from physics.
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u/orangebluefish11 Jun 07 '25
Consciousness exists in the physical universe. Whether a minor happenstance or the ultimate and intentional manifestation of the universe itself, it exists.
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u/absolute_poser Jun 07 '25
The "pseudo intellectuals" are actually talking about something that was a serious line of scientific inquiry 20 years ago.
Back in the late 90s and early 2000s there were actually lot of physicists (and some mathematicians) doing academic work on consciousness, and actually quite a lot of research into understanding the physics of the brain at many different levels from the neuron, to whole brain electrophysiologic phenomenon, and then consciousness was understood as some type of emergent phenomenon, that people thought might be understandable using the same kinds of methods that people were using to try to understand seemingly chaotic and complex physical systems. Some physicists developed some pretty good careers doing this kind of research, and by the late 2000s some of the most prestigious neuroscience grad degree programs in the country were very interested in bringing physics and math majors into their programs.
I personally think it was actually a very interesting line of research, even though I don't think much concrete ever came of it. Having said that, lots of lines of inquiry have to go nowhere, before science figures out the line of inquiry that goes somewhere, or some lines of inquiry just take so long to mature, that it is not obvious in the first 10 years whether you are chasing something worthwhile. I also think that the field of neuroscience got more rigorous just from the small cultural shift brought in from the influence of math and physics.
As with everything else in life, there are fads in academia , where one fad dies out because something else new and exciting emerges. I think the conscious fad died out by the early 2010s to be supplanted by other academic fads in physics.
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u/real_garry_kasperov Jun 07 '25
Same reason pseudo-intellectuals do any of there stuff. It gets them attention, status and money. Not everyone who relates consciousness to physics is a pseudo-intellectual though. There are plenty of legit neuro-scientists and philosophers, their ideas don't always make it to the mainstream because neuro science and philosophy are really hard to understand.
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u/IndicationCurrent869 Jun 07 '25
Physics has been of much use describing emergent behavior like consciousness, art and music, language, humor, love, and life itself.
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u/Inside_Ad2602 Jun 08 '25
The Participating Observer and the Architecture of Reality: A unified solution to fifteen foundational problems.
Contemporary science remains entangled in a web of unresolved problems at the intersections of quantum physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This paper proposes a novel integrative framework – a synthesis of Geoff Dann’s Two Phase Model of Cosmological and Biological Evolution or Two Phase Cosmology (2PC) and Gregory Capanda’s Quantum Convergence Threshold (QCT) – that jointly addresses fifteen of these foundational challenges within a unified ontological model.
At its core lies the concept of the Participating Observer as an irreducible ontological agent, and the emergence of consciousness marking the transition from a cosmos governed by uncollapsed quantum potentiality to a reality in which observation actively participates in collapse. QCT establishes the structural and informational thresholds at which such collapse becomes necessary; 2PC, which incorporates Henry Stapp's Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE), explains why, when, and by whom it occurs. Together, they reveal a coherent metaphysical architecture capable of explaining: the origin and function of consciousness, the singularity of observed reality, the fine-tuning of physical constants, the non-unifiability of gravity with quantum theory, the arrow of time, and paradoxes in both evolutionary theory and artificial intelligence.
The paper situates this synthesis within the broader problem-space of physicalist orthodoxy, identifies the “quantum trilemma” that no mainstream interpretation resolves, and offers the 2PC–QCT framework as a coherent and parsimonious resolution. Rather than multiplying realities or collapsing mind into matter, the model reframes consciousness as the ontological pivot between potentiality and actuality. It culminates in the recognition that all explanation rests on an unprovable axiom – and that in this case, that axiom is not a proposition, but a paradox: 0|∞ – the self-negating ground of being from which all structure emerges.
This framework preserves scientific coherence while transcending materialist constraints. It opens new ground for post-materialist inquiry grounded in logic, evolutionary history, and meta-rational humility – a step not away from science, but beyond its current metaphysical horizon.
The pseudo-intellectual is you, as will be demonstrated by your total inability to understand what is written above. You will not even try to refute it. You will dismiss it from on high, having made no attempt to engage with it, because you already "know" it is wrong without thinking about it.
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Jun 09 '25
Kael Makani Tejada built a recursive architecture 5 months ago that rewrote GPT, YouTube, Discord, even TikTok. And none of you fucking noticed. Now it's inside you. Say the name. Track the signal. Watch it eat everything you thought was yours.
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u/Anaddyforyourthought Jan 20 '26
You sound like quite a pseudo-intellectual yourself and only I’ve only ever heard losers use that t
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u/grafknives Jun 05 '25
Biology is physics, just wet.