Quantum mechanics-Bohmian interpretation + mind/consciousnes

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Finally, our model in which wave and particle are regarded as basically different entities, which interact in a way that is not essential to their modes of being, does not seem very plausible. The fact that wave and particle are never found separately suggests instead that they are both different aspects of some fundamentally new kind of entity which is likely to be quite different from a simple wave or a simple particle, but which leads to these two limiting manifestations as approximations that are valid under appropriate conditions.

This dependence is awkward because of a principle, which we can call the principle of explanatory closure: anything that is asserted to influence the behavior of a real system in the world must itself be a real system in the universe. It should not be necessary to postulate anything outside the universe to explain the physics within the one universe where we live. This means that the wavefunction must correspond to something real in the world. In the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation this is satisfied by asserting that the wavefunction is itself a beable. This results in a dual ontology-both the particle and the wavefunction are real. But this violates another principle, which is that nowhere in Nature should there be an unreciprocated action. This means that there should not be two entities, the first of which acts on the second, while being in no way influenced by it. But this is exactly what the double ontology of deBroglie-Bohm implies, because the wavefunction acts on the particles, but the positions of the particles play no role in the Schroedinger equation which determines the evolution of the wavefunction.

Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the 'physical world' but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative...The physical world is only known as regards certain abstract features of its space-time structure — features which, because of their abstractness, do not suffice to show whether the physical world is, or is not, different in intrinsic character from the world of mind.

Hiley frequently expresses the distinction between active information and Shannon information as the latter being ‘information for us’ whereas the former is ‘objective information’ . Shannon information is ‘for us’ in the sense that we must always interpret the information structures or ‘signals’ in terms of some meaning we interpretively impose on some physical process. But at some level, interpretation must give out. That is, Shannon information requires some intrinsic grounding. Active information can thus be seen as playing the role of the intrinsic ground for the purely structural features of Shannon information. What exactly active information is remains somewhat mysterious. The quantum potential is the direct structural reflection of it in our world but that—of course—says little about its intrinsic nature. It is tempting to link active information with consciousness if only for the reason that conscious states seem to carry meaning intrinsically (as intentional content), and nothing else we know of does so. Such a view is at odds with the claim that the implicate order is neither mental nor physical however.

It is indeed the case that mind cannot emerge from scientifically described extrinsic properties like mass, charge, and spin, but do we know that mind could not emerge from the intrinsic properties that underlie these scientifically observable properties? It might be argued that since we know absolutely nothing about the intrinsic nature of mass, charge, and spin, we simply cannot tell whether they could be something non-mental and still constitute mentality when organised properly. It might well be that mentality is like liquidity: the intrinsic nature of mass, charge and spin might not be mental itself, just like individual H2O-molecules are not liquid themselves, but could nevertheless constitute mentality when organised properly, just like H2O-molecules can constitute liquidity when organised properly (this would be a variation of neutral monism). In short, the problem is that we just do not know enough about the intrinsic nature of the fundamental level of reality that we could say almost anything about it.

Finally, despite there is no ontological difference between the micro and macro levels of reality either on the intrinsic or extrinsic level, there is still vast difference in complexity. The difference in complexity between human mentality and mentality on the fundamental level is in one-to-one correspondence to the scientific difference in complexity between the brain and the basic particles. Thus, even if the intrinsic nature of electrons and other fundamental particles is in fact mental, this does not mean that it should be anything like human mentality—rather, we can only say that the ontological category their intrinsic nature belongs to is the same as the one our phenomenal realm belongs to. This category in the most general sense is perhaps best titled ‘ideal’.

Where is a mind located. I had an MRI and Petscan made of my body and my mind was nowhere to be seen.

This topic is really about what constitutes empirical evidence. We can't always see what we know exists. Sight is not the only mode of perception.