Much of the discord in today’s philosophical debate on the nature of mind and reality arises not from argument, but from a peculiar mindset that prevents some from explicitly cognizing their own consciousness, argues Arthur Haswell. This mindset relates to Cotard’s syndrome (the rare delusion of being already dead) and necrophilia (a love for all that is mechanical and inanimate, as opposed to alive and organic). Haswell suggests that it may be as futile to argue against this mindset as it is useless to explain color to someone born blind.

Hans Busstra, together with Essentia Foundation’s research fellow, physicist Lidia Del Rio, talks to Prof. Sandu Popescu about quantum non-locality. Popescu is Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He did pioneering work in what became the field of quantum information and has won both the John Stuart Bell Prize and the Dirac Medal.

Neuroscientist Dr. Christof Koch’s latest book has a title quoting the second act of the famous opera, Tristan und Isolde: “Then I Am Myself The World.” In this book Koch describes how he, during a psychedelic experience on 5-MeO-DMT, felt that he was one with the universe, which echoes the epic tale by Wagner. Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra interviewed Koch on his book, his psychedelic trip and, of course, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), the scientific theory of consciousness Christof  Koch and Gulio Tononi are famous for.

Arthur Haswell offers a devastating and delightfully well-argued deconstruction of the absurdities inherent in physicalism and its sibling, illusionism.

CPU inventor and physicist Federico Faggin, together with Prof. Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano, proposes that consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain, but a fundamental aspect of reality itself: quantum fields are conscious and have free will. In this theory, our physical body is a quantum-classical ‘machine,’ operated by free will decisions of quantum fields. Faggin calls the theory ‘Quantum Information Panpsychism’ (QIP) and claims that it can give us testable predictions in the near future. If the theory is correct, it not only will be the most accurate theory of consciousness, it will also solve mysteries around the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Not only does John von Neumann’s seminal work in the mathematical modelling of quantum mechanics imply the irreducible nature of mind, the resulting idealist understanding of nature could lead to profound, and positive, changes in how we relate to one another and the world at large in the context of our economic system, writes Dr. Cocks.