Abstract

Theory of everything must include consciousness. In this article, we focus on the subjective experiences component of consciousness. In Vimal (J Integrative Neuroscience, 2008: 7(1), 49-73), it was hypothesized that fundamental entities (strings or elementary particles: fermions and bosons) have two aspects: (i) material aspect such as mass, charge, spin, and space-time, and (ii) mental aspect, such as experiences. There are three competing hypotheses: superposition based H1, superposition-then-integration based H2, and integration based H3 where superposition is not required. In H1, the fundamental entities and inert matter are the carriers of superimposed fundamental subjective experiences (SEs)/proto-experiences (PEs). In H2, the fundamental entities and inert matter are the carriers of superimposed fundamental PEs (not SEs), which are integrated by neural-Darwinism (co-evolution, co-development, and sensorimotor co-tuning by the evolutionary process of adaptation and natural selection). There is a PE attached to every level of evolution (such as atomic-PE, molecular-PE, … genetic-PE, … bacterium-PE, … neural-PE, and neural-net-PE). In H3, a string has its own string-PE; a matter is not a carrier of PE(s) in superposed form as it is in H2, rather matter is a proto-experiential entity and has two aspects at every level; H3 is a dual-aspect panpsychism. These two aspects are rigorously integrated together by neural-Darwinism. One could argue for H3 that the PE keeps on transforming appropriately as matter evolves from elementary particles to atoms to molecules to eventually neural-networks. For example, when long wavelength light is presented to the V4/V8/VO neural-network, the neural-net PE takes the form of SE redness, in analogy to water takes the shape and color of the container. However, one has to unpack this mystery. In H1, a specific SE arises in a neural-net as follows: (i) there exist a virtual reservoir that stores all possible fundamental SEs/PEs, (ii) the interaction of stimulus-dependent feed-forward and feedback signals in the neural-net creates a specific neural-net state, (iii) this specific state is assigned to a specific SE from the virtual reservoir during neural Darwinism, (iv) this specific SE is embedded as a memory trace of neural-net-PE, and (v) when a specific stimulus is presented to the neural-net, the associated specific SE is selected by the matching and selection process and experienced by this net. In hypotheses H2 and H3, a specific SE emerges in a neural-net from the interaction of its constituent neural-PEs, such as in feed-forward stimulus-dependent neural signals and fronto-parietal feedback attentional signals, in analogy to water emerges from the interaction of hydrogen and oxygen. In all hypotheses, SEs occur when essential ingredients of SEs (such as wakefulness, attention, re-entry, working memory, stimulus at or above threshold level, and neural-net-PEs) are satisfied. We found that the followings in physics are invariant under the PE-SE transformation: Schrödinger equation, current, Dirac Lagrangian, electromagnetic strength tensor, electromagnetic stress-energy tensor, the Lagrangian for free gauge field, the Lagrangian for a charged self–interacting scalar field, electromagnetic theory (Maxwell's equations), Standard Model, Lagrangian for the electromagnetic interaction of a charged scalar field (Higgs Mechanism), Newtonian gravitational potential and field, special theory of Relativity and Lorentz transformation, geodesic equation, general theory of relativity and gravitational field, the metric gmn, Ricci curvature tensor Rmn, Ricci scalar curvature R, the cosmological constant L, the stress-energy tensor Tmn, the PE-SE transformation, Loop Quantum Gravity, and string theory. For H1 and H2, we quantitatively introduced the superposition of experiences (SEs/PEs) in the mental aspect of bosonic and fermionic strings using the Polyakov action. We conclude that experiences are independent of the time-like and space-like parameters (t,s). This is interpreted as a string is dual-aspect entity and all fundamental SEs/PEs superposed in the mental aspect of the string remains invariant with time and space. The introduction of mental aspect in this manner suggests that the mental aspect of string could be in all dimensions: both (3+1)D real dimensions and also in the hidden dimensions that are compactified (curled up). In addition, the Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions were also satisfied. These led us to conclude that the material aspect of the behavior of system in string theory remains invariant under the introduction of experiences in the mental aspect of strings as a function of experiences. For hypothesis H3, the equations of string theory remain the same; we simply need to acknowledge that a string has dual-aspect; its mental aspect is string-PE. We concluded that it is possible to unify consciousness with all four fundamental material forces by the introduction of (i) SEs/PEs (as in H1) or PEs (as in H2) in superposed form in bosonic and fermionic strings or (ii) the bosonic-string-PE and fermionic-string-PE based on integration principle (as in H3). This leads us towards the theory of everything.