Can Understanding Consciousness Resolve The Interpretation Of Quantum Mechanics Dilemma ?

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It's been almost a century since the inception of quantum mechanics - a holistic theory that describes the nitty-gritty of the universe at the fundamental level, yet there is great turmoil in the scientific community as to a way to best describe the quantum processes - how out of the many quantum states, a particular quantum state comes into physical existence. This has led to what is now called the '' Interpretaions of quantum mechanics '', of which originally began with series of debates between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, both being early founders of quantum mechanics.

The interpretations are numerous in number and as physicist David Mermin puts it, and i quote ''New interpretations appear every year, None ever disappear '' , what's most striking is that most of the interpretations includes something whose exact meaning and nature has eluded even the greatest minds since antiquity.

What then is this something ?, You must have guessed right, this something is consciousness. Nobody really knows what the word ''Consciousness '' actually is, from a generalised perspective it is defined as awareness of the environment, but in certain disciplines it is often attributed to only humans, some even go as far as attributing it to animals and others to intelligent agents. If the general definition were taken to be a true fact, then can't everything in the universe be said to be conscious ?, implying that everything possesses a mind in addition to it's body, as suggested by the Panpsychists - philosophers who believe everything possesses a mind. Take a simple and common scenario such as change in state, for example ice to water,

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When ice is in a hot environment, it interacts with it and gives a response by changing state to water, implying that it is aware of it's environment. From a technical level, assuming at normal pressure and no impurities on/in the ice, this change in state is possible if the temperature of the environment is above freezing temperature of water - 0º celsius. Looking at it from the mind perspective, the ice is aware that when the environment's temperature is above 0º celsius it should change state and from the body perspective the information is stored somewhere in the ice, however the stored information for the same ice cannot be the same for all observers, as different observers in other planets would convey different values for the normal pressure, implying that it's mind is subjective. This scenario is analogous to humans whom the mind and body is more attributed to, when i tell you to come to my house tomorrow, you would, provided it interests you, it interesting you is an attribute of free will of the mind but you coming tomorrow implies that the information was stored in your brain.

Well, if you take your time to study the double slit experiment or the delayed choice experiment, it appears the universe at fundamental level is itself conscious and also from our ice to water scenario, it thus implies that everything could be conscious and possesses a mind. One interpretation that seems to take the mind into serious consideration is Quantum Bayesianism, sometimes called QBism (pronounced ''Cubism ''), according to this interpretation as suggested by Christopher Fuchs - one of the founders, quantum mechanics describes the observer's experience, not the objective universe. The experience can be different for different observers and can be attributed to a kind of consciousness originally proposed by the notable philosopher Ned Block and is called the subjective consciousness (an attribute of the mind), also according to this interpretation the observer need not be human, it could be anything, since every observer including instruments gains it's own experience and keeps record, implies that everything in the universe could possess a mind in addition to the body and thus could be conscious.

However, this doesn't mean that Quantum Bayesianism is absolutely a correct interpretation. Resolving the quantum interpretation dilemma could require explaining why there are different interpretations, implying a new kind of interpretation somewhat related to Quantum Bayesianism, and also leads to the question originally proposed by the philosopher, David Chalmers which is, why we (everything) possess subjective consciousness - from a generalised perspective, popularly called ''The hard problem of consciousness'', .

Whatever the answers might be, the universe awaits us.