Christmas consciousness in the Many Worlds

Here's an interesting paper I found on arXiv: "Quantum features of consciousness, computers and brain".

I haven't heard of author Michael Mensky and his ideas before, and it remains unclear what his science qualifications are. Here's his home page.

He calls his idea the Extended Everett's Concept (EEC). (That's referring to Hugh Everett's "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics.)

This paper is rather frustrating. His explanation of the background debate of the role of consciousness in quantum physics, and Hugh Everett's many worlds theory, seems all quite reasonable and (as far as I can tell) accurate. But his own EEC idea seems poorly explained. For example, we get this:

Although consciousness in EEC is directly connected with quantum features of our world, no structure in brain of the type of quantum computer is suggested. Rather the whole quantum world is a sort of quantum computer supporting the phenomenon of consciousness and superconsciousness.

I need more meat on those bones. Here is another interesting line, apparently the crucial feature of EEC:

It is accepted in EEC that not only consciousness separate the alternatives but consciousness is nothing else than the separation of alternatives.

I should note that this paper is not the first he has written on his EEC idea; he came up with it in 2000, apparently. So I am not suggesting that this paper is inadequate for not explaining it well enough.

But when he gets to the consequences of the idea, it starts to sound a bit New Age flaky:

....the separation of alternatives disappears in the unconscious regime so that one obtains access to all alternatives. Therefore, in unconscious regime one obtains super-consciousness having access to all classical alternatives. This not only predicts ‘supernatural’ capabilities of consciousness but also explains why these capabilities reveal themself when (explicit) consciousness is turned off or weakened, for example in dream or meditation (the fact well known in all strong psychological practices).

This explains not only parapsychology but such well known phenomena as intuitive guesses including great scientific insights. In fact superconsciousness is a mechanism of direct vision of truth.

Hmm. Mensky has been published in the grandiosely titled journal "NeuroQuantology." (I wish I had come up with that name.) I see now that he has had an earlier paper up on arXiv, but I don't have time to read tonight. The abstract notes that:

The brain serves as an interface between the body and consciousness, but the most profound level of consciousness is not a function of brain.

So our individual consciousness is all just a subset of the the universal super-consciousness that is accessed via the brain? I'm not sure if that's what he means, but I am interested enough to read some more. (It also sounds consistent with some Eastern religious beliefs, too.)

Anyhow, this is just the sort of stuff that I find pretty intriguing. I may be enjoying the coming Christmas not just in this world, but in many others too, and while I sleep I may catch a glimpse of them. It's a good thing I don't have many nightmares.

On a final note: given that "many worlds" is pretty popular amongst scientists now, has any theologian considered its implications for Christianity? (I know Frank Tipler believes in it, and is a Christian, but I am not sure he has much dwelt on the theological implications.)

I mean, Christianity can live with the idea that God may have had incarnations in alien species in the universe we can see, but can you expand that to include his necessary incarnation in all of a spectacular number of branching universes? Just wondering...

Update: here's a recent internet forum in which the question about Christian theology and Many Worlds was asked, and some useful contributions follow. I also see that there was a 1998 seminar on the whole topic, with the likes of Paul Davies, Lee Smolin, a Vatican scientist and even Richard Dawkins attending! I'm betting nothing was resolved.