Abstract
Physicalism, the view that the physical world is exhaustively described by the equations of physics, is incompatible with the existence of consciousness, which is seemingly not reducible to material processes. To reconcile these seemingly incompatible views, the paper proposes a new theory: physicalistic idealism. This theory proposes that consciousness is not merely a product of physical processes but rather that it is the fundamental nature of the physical world itself. The paper argues that the quantum superposition principle, a core concept in quantum mechanics, provides a plausible mechanism for the binding of distributed neuronal micro-experiences into unified, conscious experiences. The paper further argues that this theory is experimentally testable and suggests a protocol for testing it using molecular matter-wave interferometry on in vitro neuronal networks. The paper’s theoretical framework could revolutionize our understanding of consciousness and the nature of reality itself. – AI-generated abstract.
