Abstract

The hard problem of consciousness is the question how subjective experience arises from brain matter. I suggest that quantum physics may be part of the answer. The simultaneous unity and complexity of subjective experience is very difficult to understand from a classical physics perspective. In contrast, quantum entanglement is naturally both complex and holistic. Building on recent remarkable progress in quantum technology and neuroscience, I propose a concrete hypothesis as a basis for further investigation, namely that subjective experience is related to the dynamics of a complex entangled state of spins, which is continuously generated and updated through the exchange of photons. The proposed hypothesis raises many interesting experimental and theoretical questions in neuroscience, quantum physics, evolutionary biology, psychophysics, and philosophy.