It's Me!

<p><em>It’s Me!</em> is science fiction in the literal sense. As modern science seems to be incapable of explaining consciousness – specifically, the binding of distributively processed, neuronal microexperiences into unitary, experiential objects apprehended by a unitary phenomenal self – David Pearce argues that we will need to revise our notions of both the intrinsic nature of the physical and the quasiclassicality of neurons. As a consequence, his essay “Nonmaterialist Physicalism“ gives a novel, experimentally testable prediction of quantum superpositions (“Schrödinger’s cat” states) of neuronal feature-processors in the central nervous system at sub-femtosecond timescales. In Ingo Niermann’s companion piece “How the World Thinks Itself Up”, the fundamental claims of quantum physics are borne out by phenomenological introspection while Newtonian classical physics appears counterintuitive.</p>