研究意识问题的物理学途径

文章介绍了物理学理论和技术在研究意识问题中的应用进展。首先列出意识活动的一些主要特性,其次介绍新的仪器技术在确定意识的脑功能定位上的研究成果。最后介绍物理学的理论（特别是量子理论）在解释意识的机制上的作用,介绍信息理论在意识复杂性计算方面的应用。     

物理学中的"STS"问题

STS是科学（Science）、技术（Technique）、社会（Society）三个词汇的英文缩写。STS教育是引导人们去认识科学、技术、社会乃至观念、意识、文化之间的复杂关系；去研究并掌握如何对这些关系进行有效调控，从而使人类文明得以长期稳定的一种教育．在中学物理课程中进行STS教育，要求学生不仅掌握物理学的基本知识和技能，而且要懂得这些知识的应用价值，懂得在社会中如何对待和应用这些知识，培养学生的科学意识、技术意识、社会意识，使新一代公民能够形成关于科学技术与人类福利、社会发展相统一的价值观，并努力推动科学、技术与社会的进步。因此物理学与STS问题有着天然、广泛的联系。     

2010年栏目设置简要说明

1．科学前沿 介绍物理学前沿问题的发展，来稿希望写得通俗易懂． 2．物理学与科技创新 （1）介绍历史上由物理学原理推动的科技创新（新技术的产生及应用）．（2）介绍最新物理学成就及其技术应用前景．     

物理教学必须与实际相结合

物理教学必须与实际相结合刘扭参（河南纺织工业学校郑州４５０００７）物理学是现代技术和工业的理论基础，物理知识有着极为重要的应用价值．现在，国内外学者都强调物理知识在现实中的应用．因此，物理教学应与实际相结合，努力培养学生的工程意识、科学意识和环境意识...     

物理学在促进农业发展中的作用

介绍了核技术、电磁学、光学、声学、离子束等物理学技术在农业上的应用和精确农业，指出了物理学各项技术可使农业获得更多的经济效益和生态效应，从而使农业得到持续的发展。     

2009年高考"科技信息题"赏析

高中物理课程的基本理念中有“在内容上加强与学生生活、现代社会及科技发展的联系,反映当代科学技术发展的重要成果和新的科学思想,关注物理学的技术应用所带来的社会问题,培养学生的社会参与意识和对社会负责任的态度”．为体现这一基本理念,在2009年高考物理试题中,注重理论联系实际,关注科学、技术和社会的联系,注重物理知识在生产、生活等方面的广泛应用,     

生物物理学的几个热点领域

物理学与生物科学的交叉由来已久，这不仅解决了自然界许多重大的理论问题，并且在高层次上开辟了新的技术领域，如生物信息学、纳米生物学和脑与认知科学等，文章对当今生物物理学的这几个热点领域进行了介绍。     

强化物理学意识 普及物理学知识--2005世界物理年

在纪念爱因斯坦的“奇迹年”(1905)100周年之际，2005年已被称为“世界物理年”(WTP），2005世界物理年的一系列重大活动的目的在于提高世界范围内公众的物理学意识与广泛普及物理学的科学知识，本文对2005世界物理年进行了描述，讨论了1905年在科学史上的重要性，也简要介绍了2005世界物理年的国际方案以及欧洲物理学会(EPS)、美国物理学会(APS)、中国物理学会(CPS)与各国物理学会的活动计划等。     

2010年栏目设置简要说明

1．科学前沿 介绍物理学前沿问题的发展,来稿希望写得通俗易懂． 2．物理学与科技创新 （1）介绍历史上由物理学原理推动的科技创新（新技术的产生及应用） （2）介绍最新物理学成就及其技术应用前景．     

2010年栏目设置简要说明

1．科学前沿介绍物理学前沿问题的发展,来稿希望写得通俗易懂．2．物理学与科技创新（1）介绍历史上由物理学原理推动的科技创新（新技术的产生及应用）．（2）介绍最新物理学成就及其技术应用前景．3．课程改革探索当前大、中学课程改革有关的探索,包括理论的探讨及实践经验介绍,特别是作者亲自试验中的体会4．大学物理教学高校物理专业及非物理专业的普物、理物及相关课程的教学经验、体会．     

Correlations of continuous random data with major world events

The interaction of consciousness and physical systems is most often discussed in theoretical terms, usually with reference to the epistemo-logical and ontological challenges of quantum theory. Less well known is a growing literature reporting experiments that examine the mind-matter relationship empirically. Here we describe data from a global network of physical random number generators that shows unexpected structure apparently associated with major world events. Arbitrary samples from the continuous, four-year data archive meet rigorous criteria for randomness, but pre-specified samples corresponding to events of broad regional or global importance show significant departures of distribution parameters from expectation. These deviations also correlate with a quantitative index of daily news intensity. Focused analyses of data recorded on September 11, 2001, show departures from random expectation in several statistics. Contextual analyses indicate that these cannot be attributed to identifiable physical interactions and may be attributable to some unidentified interaction associated with human consciousness.     

Non-Separability of Physical Systems as a Foundation of Consciousness

A hypothesis is presented that non-separability of degrees of freedom is the fundamental property underlying consciousness in physical systems. The amount of consciousness in a system is determined by the extent of non-separability and the number of degrees of freedom involved. Non-interacting and feedforward systems have zero consciousness, whereas most systems of interacting particles appear to have low non-separability and consciousness. By contrast, brain circuits exhibit high complexity and weak but tightly coordinated interactions, which appear to support high non-separability and therefore high amount of consciousness. The hypothesis applies to both classical and quantum cases, and we highlight the formalism employing the Wigner function (which in the classical limit becomes the Liouville density function) as a potentially fruitful framework for characterizing non-separability and, thus, the amount of consciousness in a system. The hypothesis appears to be consistent with both the Integrated Information Theory and the Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory and may help reconcile the two. It offers a natural explanation for the physical properties underlying the amount of consciousness and points to methods of estimating the amount of non-separability as promising ways of characterizing the amount of consciousness.     

Consciousness and Endogenous State Reduction: Two Experiments

There is a tradition in science that regards consciousness as merely epiphenornenal. Accordingly, physical systems can create and influence consciousness, but consciousness can have no influence on physical systems. Indeed, the current understanding of quantum mechanics provides no way for consciousness to alter the wave function of a quantum mechanical state. Furthermore, there is nothing in molecular biology that would suggest that the human body is anything more that an automaton that operates on the basis of purely physical and chemical interactive forces. However, I believe that the epiphenomenal view is fundamentally flawed, and I suggest the following experiments as a way of demonstrating the existence of an influence of consciousness on material systems. The first uses Positron Emission Tomography (PET) with a human subject, and the second used autoradiography with rats. Detailed arguments for my position can be found in three papers that have been published in recent years. A brief summery of the arguments is initially given below, where it is claimed that pain consciousness might be correlated in a certain way with the relative binding of opiates to receptors in a subject's brain.     

The Meta-Dynamic Nature of Consciousness

How, if at all, consciousness can be part of the physical universe remains a baffling problem. This article outlines a new, developing philosophical theory of how it could do so, and offers a preliminary mathematical formulation of a physical grounding for key aspects of the theory. Because the philosophical side has radical elements, so does the physical-theory side. The philosophical side is radical, first, in proposing that the productivity or dynamism in the universe that many believe to be responsible for its systematic regularities is actually itself a physical constituent of the universe, along with more familiar entities. Indeed, it proposes that instances of dynamism can themselves take part in physical interactions with other entities, this interaction then being “meta-dynamism” (a type of meta-causation). Secondly, the theory is radical, and unique, in arguing that consciousness is necessarily partly constituted of meta-dynamic auto-sensitivity, in other words it must react via meta-dynamism to its own dynamism, and also in conjecturing that some specific form of this sensitivity is sufficient for and indeed constitutive of consciousness. The article proposes a way for physical laws to be modified to accommodate meta-dynamism, via the radical step of including elements that explicitly refer to dynamism itself. Additionally, laws become, explicitly, temporally non-local in referring directly to quantity values holding at times prior to a given instant of application of the law. The approach therefore implicitly brings in considerations about what information determines states. Because of the temporal non-locality, and also because of the deep connections between dynamism and time-flow, the approach also implicitly connects to the topic of entropy insofar as this is related to time.     

Mechanism Integrated Information

The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness starts from essential phenomenological properties, which are then translated into postulates that any physical system must satisfy in order to specify the physical substrate of consciousness. We recently introduced an information measure (Barbosa et al., 2020) that captures three postulates of IIT—existence, intrinsicality and information—and is unique. Here we show that the new measure also satisfies the remaining postulates of IIT—integration and exclusion—and create the framework that identifies maximally irreducible mechanisms. These mechanisms can then form maximally irreducible systems, which in turn will specify the physical substrate of conscious experience.     

Implications for Cognitive Quantum Computation and Decoherence Limits in the Presence of Large Extra Dimensions

An interdisciplinary physical theory of emergent consciousness has previously been proposed, stemming from quantum computation-like behavior between 10⁹ or more entangled molecular qubit states (microtubulin). This model relies on the Penrose-Diósi gravity-driven wavefunction collapse framework, and thus is subject to any secondary classical and quantum gravity effects. Specifically, if large extra spatial dimensions exist in the Universe, then the resulting corrections to Newtonian gravity cause this model to suffer serious difficulties. It is shown that if the extra dimensions are larger than 100 fm in size, then this model of consciousness is unphysical. If the dimensions are on the order of 10 fm in size, then a significantly smaller number of microtubulin than originally predicted are required to satisfy experimental constraints. Some speculation on evolution of consciousness is also offered, based on the possibility that the size of these extra dimensions may have been changing over the history of the Universe. PACS numbers: 87.16.Ka, 03.67.Lx, 04.50.+h.     

A Traditional Scientific Perspective on the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness

This paper assesses two different theories for explaining consciousness, a phenomenon that is widely considered amenable to scientific investigation despite its puzzling subjective aspects. I focus on Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which says that consciousness is integrated information (as ϕ^Max) and says even simple systems with interacting parts possess some consciousness. First, I evaluate IIT on its own merits. Second, I compare it to a more traditionally derived theory called Neurobiological Naturalism (NN), which says consciousness is an evolved, emergent feature of complex brains. Comparing these theories is informative because it reveals strengths and weaknesses of each, thereby suggesting better ways to study consciousness in the future. IIT’s strengths are the reasonable axioms at its core; its strong logic and mathematical formalism; its creative “experience-first” approach to studying consciousness; the way it avoids the mind-body (“hard”) problem; its consistency with evolutionary theory; and its many scientifically testable predictions. The potential weakness of IIT is that it contains stretches of logic-based reasoning that were not checked against hard evidence when the theory was being constructed, whereas scientific arguments require such supporting evidence to keep the reasoning on course. This is less of a concern for the other theory, NN, because it incorporated evidence much earlier in its construction process. NN is a less mature theory than IIT, less formalized and quantitative, and less well tested. However, it has identified its own neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) and offers a roadmap through which these NNCs may answer the questions of consciousness using the hypothesize-test-hypothesize-test steps of the scientific method.