Smolin’s Causal Theory of Views

Physicist Lee Smolin approaches the question of how qualia fit into the physical world in the context of his “relational and realist completion of quantum theory, called the causal theory of views” (Smolin, 2020).

Smolin has long focused on a “realist” double completion of quantum mechanics and general relativity that would give a full description of, or explanation for, all individual physical processes, independent of our knowledge or interventions. Such a completion is required for unifying gravity, spacetime, and cosmology into the rest of physics. His common theme has been that of a relational “hidden variables” theory: a realist description of precisely what goes on in each individual event or process, which reduces to quantum mechanics in a certain limit and averaging procedure.

Views as the Basis of Reality

In Smolin's theory, the first key idea is that “the universe is constructed from nothing but a collection of views of events, where the view of an event is what can be known about that event's place in the universe from what can be seen from that event.” In other words, “the beables of this theory [‘beable’ is short for ‘maybe-able,’ i.e., anything that could possibly be, in any superimposed quantum states] are views from events, the information available at each event from its causal past, such as its causal predecessors and the energy and momentum they transfer to the event." Smolin calls this the “view” of an event—that is, “a causal universe that is composed of a set of partial views of itself.” Within such an ontology of views, Smolin says it's “natural to propose that instances or moments of conscious experience are aspects of some views. That is, an elementary unit of consciousness is not a single qualia, but the entire of a partial view of the universe, as seen from one event” (Smolin, 2020).

Novel Views and Consciousness

Smolin's second key idea restricts the views that are associated with consciousness to within a very small set. Most events and their views are common and routine, he says, in that they have many near copies in the universe within their causal pasts. He proposes that these common and routine views have no conscious perceptions. Then, “there are a few, very rare views which are unprecedented, which are having their first instance, or are unique, in that they have no copies in universal history.” Smolin proposes it is “those few views of events, which are unprecedented, and/or unique, and are hence novel, [i.e., they are not duplicates of the view of any event in the event's own causal past] which are the physical correlates of conscious perceptions.”

This addresses, he says, “the problem of why consciousness always involves awareness of a bundled grouping of qualia that define a momentary self. This gives a restricted form of panpsychism defined by a physically based selection principle which selects which views have experiential aspects.”

To summarize, Smolin bases his theory on two concepts: First, the beables of a relational theory to be the views of events. Second, the possibility of making a physical distinction between common and routine states, on the one hand, and novel and unique states, on the other. “A relational theory that incorporates both ideas offers a possible setting for bringing qualia and consciousness into physics. The physical correlates of consciousness would be the novel or unique views of events” (Smolin, 2020).