Dancing Chief in the Brain or Consciousness as an Entanglement

Yukio Pegio Gunji*, Kyoko Nakamura

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Free will in intentional consciousness is exposed to skeptics since it was found that subconscious neural activities, what is called readiness potential, precedes the intention to an action. The question of whether free will is an authentic illusion has been argued not only in psychology but physics and philosophy. Most of scientists, however, think that the intentional consciousness who believes to have his/her own free will, is determined by readiness potential in advance, and that free will cannot coexist with determinism. We here point out that knowing to be determined in advance cannot be verified till local event at a local site can be known from a different local site without disturbing the event. That is the assumption of locality. We here show that determinism, free will and locality are three essential elements in consciousness, and show that they constitute trilemma. The fact that one of three elements must be abandoned can lead to three types of consciousness. Absence of free will can constitute type I consciousness which is consistent with symptoms in autism spectrum disorder such as weakened theory of mind. Absence of determinism can constitute type II consciousness which is consistent with symptoms in schizophrenia such as thought insertion, self-other integration. Absence of locality can constitute type III consciousness which is consistent with typical people. We can find the entanglement of intentional consciousness with unconsciousness including readiness potential only in type III consciousness. Finally, we show that sense of agency and free will cannot be established until consciousness as an entanglement is implemented.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)151-184
Number of pages34
JournalFoundations of Science
Volume25
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Mar 1

Keywords

  • ASD
  • Entanglement
  • Free will
  • Schizophrenia
  • Sense of agency

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General
  • History and Philosophy of Science

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