Du Hasard Quantique à la Conscience

Emmanuel Ransford has dedicated many years to investigating the foundations of quantum mechanics and its relationship to philosophy, advancing his own model as a way of integrating consciousness and matter while addressing major perennial issues such as the role of chance, free will and transcendence. In this brilliant and deeply informed exchange with musician Estelle Guerven, Emmanuel is able to lay out his ideas with great clarity and precision. His thinking is characterised by a number of new concepts – he proposes a quantum panpsychism or psychophysics, introducing an internal causality at the quantum level, which is reflected in discussion of free will at the macro level.

He rejects determinism based exclusively on external causes, and proposes a model of consciousness as both immaterial and immanent, although I did wonder about the limits of his (panpsychic) bottom-up assembly approach characterising brain consciousness as a lamp – what happens when it goes out? (He does argue that this does not entail that consciousness is material). Further themes of discussion include Gödel's theorem, quantum realism, the anthropic principle, entanglement and non-locality. In his afterword, Jean Staune notes that Emmanuel's views are underdetermined in relation to the experimental evidence, as a number of different theories are compatible in this way. He nevertheless opens up worthwhile new vistas for consideration – the book should be read by any serious student of the interface between quantum physics and philosophy. And for non-French readers, three introductory papers can be found on the Galileo Commission site by searching under his name.