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"What is consciousness?" This timeless question resonates through the ages. In his talk at the 6th International Conference of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQxI) in Tuscany, Italy, Rodolfo Gambini offers insights into how physics provides its perspective on this profound mystery.

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Keywords: Physics, Consciousness, Gambini, Quantum

5 days later

Gambini says in his recent arXiv paper (1): “The task of describing consciousness in action is extremely difficult. We are so immersed in our projects and work, in our affections and fears, that the basic functions of our mind remain implicit and any attempt at analysis is incomplete and falls into contradictions.”

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When, O when, are physicists going to notice that they themselves are an essential part of their own symbolic models of the world? These symbols might be written or spoken word and sentence symbols, or they might be mathematical symbols on a page or screen. Physicists differentiate/ discern difference in the symbols and physicists move and change the symbols.

When it is noticed that physicists play an essential part in the model, then the model becomes a truer, non-contradictory, representation of the nature of the world.

And this is the clue as to the function of consciousness: consciousness is the essential aspect of the world that discerns difference. The conscious experience of all those colours and shapes and sounds IS the high-level discerning of difference in one’s surroundings, the high-level aspect of which has only come about after the living organism has analysed and collated the low-level information coming from the senses.

From its very foundations, a differentiated world (differentiated into different categories like mass and position, and different numbers) needs to differentiate/ discern difference in its own categories and numbers. This is the essential function of consciousness.

This foundational aspect of the world can't be represented with mathematical symbols alone, because consciousness is the foundational aspect of the world that discerns difference in what the mathematical symbols represent.

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  1. Quantum panprotopsychism and the combination problem, by Rodolfo Gambini and Jorge Pullin, 4 Feb 2024, https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03393 .
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