Schneider and Bailey’s Entangled Superpsychism

Philosopher Susan Schneider and data scientist Mark Bailey develop a new version of panpsychism, which they call “Superpsychism”—where “the fundamental level of physics has a more advanced form of consciousness than spacetime occupants do, in the sense that it exhibits maximal coherence, zero entropy and holistic integration of conscious states.” In this theory, Schneider and Bailey argue that rethinking the nature of quantum entanglement may offer an inroad to “Two of life’s greatest mysteries… the phenomena of consciousness and the fundamental nature of physics.”

They do so by framing and defending “a position in which spacetime emerges from an aspatial, quasi-temporal, reality called ‘prototime.’” According to the authors, prototime “is a more fundamental, ‘protemporal’ dimension or parameter from which spacetime emerges.” They call this view of quantum phenomena the “Prototime Interpretation.” This, then, leads to their new version of panpsychism, Superpsychism” (Schneider & Bailey, forthcoming).

The Prototime Interpretation

Here is how Schneider and Bailey propose that prototime could work. They say, “ours could be a universe with two temporal dimensions, one that involves time in the familiar sense of spacetime and in which time has a direction or arrow, and a different quasi-temporal dimension or parameter (not a spacetime metric) that lacks a direction or arrow. Further, because time has a definite direction upon decoherence, notice that positing a timeless or prototemporal arena in this context does not seem to introduce time paradoxes—situations in which an event causes an effect and the effect, in turn, seems to impact the cause.”

Their controversial claim is that their prototime interpretation of quantum mechanics “stands to be the best explanation for a range of puzzling, yet well-confirmed phenomena in quantum mechanics: superposition, no signaling, spooky action at a distance, the wave-particle duality, the double-slit experiment, and delayed choice” (Schneider & Bailey, forthcoming).

Superconsciousness and Superpsychism

With respect to consciousness, Schneider and Bailey start by recognizing that “property dualists, panpsychists, and physicalists tend to agree on the following: consciousness supervenes on the fundamental physical level. This means that unless there is something that supplants quantum theory, we would expect that consciousness in the brain to somehow depend upon quantum phenomena. If spacetime emerges from entanglement, macroscopic phenomena, including cognitive, phenomenal and perceptual states, supervene on this base.”

Moreover, they say, “if the prototime interpretation is correct, then the persistent coherence (past, present and future) in entangled systems contributes to a form of unified experience instantiated by the entanglement object. In this scenario, there would be an immense entangled system — a sort of ‘superconsciousness,’ if you will.”

So, in the context of the prototime view, superconsciousness is “a property of experiential states that are in maximal coherence because they are in a perfect phase coordination, having zero entropy, being timeless in the classical sense and exhibiting high levels of resonance.” Relatedly, superpsychism is “the entanglement ‘megaobject,’ due to holistic entanglement and maximal resonance, [that] possesses a higher form of conscious resonance than spatiotemporal entities.” Schneider and Bailey distinguish prototime “from cosmopsychism, which locates the fundamental unit of consciousness in the very big,” by claiming that “the greatest form of consciousness is found in the holistically entangled structure that is not even spatiotemporal and which underlies spacetime itself.”

In sum, according to Schneider and Bailey, “the Prototime View stands to offer a coherent explanatory framework that could unify the seemingly disparate phenomena of consciousness and quantum mechanics. The Prototime Interpretation provides a novel perspective on the quantum realm, offering insight into perplexing phenomena ranging from superposition to nonlocality. Further, from a philosophical perspective, the Prototime View suggests a panpsychist picture in which the classical world emerges from a kind of protoconsciousness exhibited by a web of entanglements that are non-spatiotemporal… from a philosophical standpoint, all entities in the universe emerge from a kind of superconsciousness.”

Schneider and Bailey stress that “it would be premature to conclude from our discussion that we are creations of a cosmic mind, or that we are inside the mind of a God, although it is natural to ponder these matters. For all we know, this could be a natural phenomenon, or the workings of an incomprehensibly vast and complex simulation” (Schneider & Bailey, forthcoming).