The question of consciousness after death has long intrigued humanity. This exclusive Q&A investigates the hypothesis of an immaterial realm to which consciousness might return upon death, exploring various philosophical and scientific viewpoints that challenge conventional mind-body paradigms
The “hard problem of consciousness” is the question of how consciousness and mental processes can arise from physical processes in the brain.
For centuries, philosophy and religion have placed consciousness and the mind outside the body. This dualistic view, introduced by René Descartes in the 17th century, suggests that the mind and body are distinct entities. His dualism continues to cause problems in modern medicine, where we separate clinics and doctors into those who treat “mental” problems and those who treat “physical” diseases.
However, recent insights show that the mind and body are an indivisible entity; the mind influences the body, and the body influences the mind. For instance, our immune system and even our microbiome can affect our brain and mental state. Neuroscientist and Doctor Monty Lyman explores this connection in his 2024 book, The Immune Mind: The New Science of Health.
The core issue remains that we still don’t understand how physical processes in the brain generate mental ones. A growing consensus suggests that consciousness and mental conditions are a product of biological information processing within the body, especially in the brain. Yet, because Descartes’s dualism is so deeply embedded in science and medicine, the hard problem of consciousness remains difficult to resolve and even to discuss in scientific research.
Q. How do theories of an immaterial world challenge the traditional scientific understanding of mind and body?
From the moment mankind acquired language and could imagine a world beyond their immediate experience, we have tried to reason about and understand our surroundings. Anything we could not
grasp was often attributed to an invisible, immaterial world.
Traditional science, which began with Galileo Galilei and is based on experiments, causality, and falsifiability, struggles to describe or resolve this so-called “immaterial reality.” Moreover, as science progressed, it became clear that reality was relative (Einstein, 1915) and composed of elements so tiny and strange that they challenged our intuitive understanding of the world (Quantum Mechanics, 1925).
To this day, there is no unified scientific understanding of the mind and body. How physical processes in the brain create a mind, a mental state, or consciousness remains a scientific problem to be solved. We must unravel the process of biological information processing and how the brain interprets the information it receives to truly understand how we create our own internal state and the reality we perceive. A growing number of signs indicate that information is a fundamental building block of reality, developing and shaping our brain, our consciousness, and our notion of reality from birth onward.
Q. Why do some philosophers and scientists argue that consciousness could be a distinct property of an immaterial world?
Religion is one of the oldest inventions of mankind. It is often assumed to have originated when a group of people grew too large to be controlled by their leaders alone. An immaterial entity from an immaterial world was then said to dictate the laws on how to behave, with the promise that an immaterial soul would find rest and peace after the physical body had died. Thus, even long before Descartes, a version of the mind-body problem existed, born from the practical challenge of organizing a crowd of people.
In searching for answers, our ancestors had no way to explain their “mental world” or “consciousness” emerging from physical processes. Instead, they came to believe in an immaterial world as an explanation for the reality they experienced, and a guide for how to coexist. The idea of an immaterial world, therefore, is deeply rooted in human history, and its influence continues in our modern world today.
Q. What are “qualia,” and how do they relate to the debate on the nature of consciousness?
“Qualia” are the subjective, felt qualities of conscious experiences. They represent our “inner world,” encompassing feelings, emotions, memories, tastes, colours, smells, and pain.
For dualists and immaterialists, these qualia – and likewise, consciousness – cannot be produced by physical processes in the brain. They argue that an immaterial world exists alongside our physical world, and that this immaterial world has basic properties like consciousness and qualia.
This point of view, however, causes several difficulties:
- Why would a mind or consciousness need to inhabit a physical substance for a few years before returning to an immaterial world after its chosen body dies?
- How does an immaterial mind select and connect to a specific baby’s body?
- How can an immaterial mind move a physical object? For example, how does the intention to move my arm get transmitted from my mind into my neural system to trigger the necessary nerve impulses and muscle contractions?
- If consciousness is an entity separate from the body, why does it evolve and change over a lifetime, and why can an aging physical body influence it?
- Animals also have an inner world. Does their mind come from the same immaterial world, and if so, how are specific “minds” chosen to possess a dog, a monkey, or a fish?
The fact that the quale “anxiety” in crustaceans responds to the same drug, Xanax, that is used to treat humans also presents a problem. How can a material substance – a specific molecule – influence the immaterial mind in the same way across different species?
A growing consensus suggests that qualia and consciousness are physical processes emerging from the complexity of brain structures and their biological information processing, which is interpreted into an “inner world.”
Q. What did Nobel Prize winner Roger Penrose suggest about the existence of different worlds, including a mathematical one?
Nobel Prize winner in physics, Roger Penrose, along with anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, proposed the “Orchestrated Objective Reduction” theory on the origin of consciousness, based on quantum physics and quantum gravity. They hypothesise that microtubules – protein structures within nerve cells and brain cells – can reach a quantum state, significantly boosting the brain’s processing capacity. When these microtubules collectively reach a critical mass, their quantum state and wavefunction are said to collapse due to quantum gravity, and the released information then creates consciousness. They suggest that this information originates from an immaterial realm and returns there when a person dies. However, despite many years having passed, there is no empirical proof for their theory.
On the other hand, research from a German and an Oxford group has mathematically demonstrated the opposite: that consciousness causes the collapse of a wavefunction, meaning observation, measurement, perception, and interaction with the environment cause wavefunction collapse. This might be compared to how paralysed individuals, after training, can use their minds to switch microswitches on and off.
Roger Penrose holds the view that consciousness is a basic property of the universe and that upon a person’s death, their consciousness remains forever in a non-physical, immaterial world.
As a genius in physics and mathematics, he also believes in the existence of a third world: an independent realm of mathematics and figures that regulates and steers the entire complexity of the universe, including life. In my belief, however, mathematics is a product of evolution and endless information gathering through pattern recognition, or, as Albert Einstein put it, ‘a product of human thought.’
Q. How does panpsychism propose that even inanimate objects possess a form of consciousness?
All fundamental particles can be described by their quantum figures, which are revealed only once observed. These particles also possess specific properties like mass, magnetism, and electrical charge. Panpsychists believe that consciousness is a fundamental property inherent to all physical particles and to all matter, both living and non-living. Thus, for them, the floor you walk on, the stone you throw, or the car you drive is considered conscious.
In contrast, theories like the Integrated Information Theory, primarily developed by Giulio Tononi and discussed by David Chalmers, propose that consciousness is generated only when a system or physical object reaches a certain complexity and degree of integrated information processing. According to this theory, your computer, for example, would be considered a conscious being.
However, a prevailing view suggests that consciousness is inherent to life, emerging from complex biological information processing and its interpretation within living systems.
Q. What philosophical questions arise about personal identity when considering changes in consciousness over a lifetime?
If we suppose our consciousness and mind originated from an unknown, immaterial world and arrived in our physical body, several ethical questions arise: Who am I? Who chose me to be me? How does this immaterial substance interact with my physical self? Furthermore, what rules regulate the evolution of my conscious state over my lifetime and through the process of aging?
The development timeline of a brain illustrates this evolution: A mouse’s brain reaches full development after only six weeks, a macaque’s after three months, but a human brain takes 20 years to mature, constantly shaped by a stream of information from the outside world. A baby typically develops self-awareness around the age of three, marked by phrases like “That’s mine.” Our cognitive capabilities require two decades to fully develop and be shaped by new information. A toddler has a different personality from an adolescent, an adult, and an elderly person.
This raises profound questions about personal identity:
- Who was my father? The person I last knew when he died, or the person I never knew when he was a child or a young man?
- Who am I? My past self, my current self, or my future self?
- If an immaterial world exists, which version of me lives on in that world after I die?
If my mind and consciousness come from a separate, immaterial world, how can they change so profoundly over my lifetime? Why would my “inner self” need to leave its precious immaterial world to be attached to a physical body for a few years, only to have to return afterwards? And what, exactly, does “returning” mean?
The simplest explanation is that my body, my material substance, and my complex brain create me and my inner world. This self is ever evolving through aging and new experiences. An injury, an accident, or an illness changes my metabolism and biological processes, and in doing so, it changes “me.” Consciousness and personality are not static; they change over a lifetime. The person I once was now rests only in the memories of the brains that survive me.
Q. How might events like brain injury, illness, or surgical intervention affect a person’s sense of self or consciousness?
All mental and psychological processes, including consciousness and personality, originate from complex brain functions involving information processing and interpretation. The human body, consisting of approximately 37 trillion cells, is a tremendous volcano of microscopic activity that appears as a consistent whole on a macroscopic level. Despite having only one-fiftieth of the body’s mass, the brain consumes 20% of its energy – a remarkable feat of efficiency, equivalent to the power consumption of a 20-watt light bulb and making the brain millions of times more energy-efficient than a standard computer.
A single dendrite on a neuron is capable of complex computations, and a single neuron’s processing power requires at least five to eight layers of artificial neural networks to replicate, according to recent Israeli research. This level of complexity is profound. Before the human genome was mapped, scientists expected hundreds of thousands of genes. The discovery of only 40,000, later reduced to around 20,000, challenged the idea that genetic code alone could explain the brain’s complexity.
A latest theory, “infotropy” (information and entropy), attempts to explain this. Just as plants seek sunlight and bacteria seek sugar, the brain searches for information. It uses its environment to shape itself and can only develop through a constant supply of information. Neural circuits require interaction with the outside world to develop correctly. As neuroscientist David Eagleman writes in Livewired, the brain’s neural circuits are “ever-changing and adapting.”
This is supported by Andreas Wagner, who states that “organisms live and die by the amount of information they acquire about their environment,” and Paul Davies, who asserts that “the thing that separates life from non-life is information and the possibility to store and process information in an organised manner.”
This shows how deeply life is invested in information. The DNA in every human cell contains two terabytes of information, and one cubic millimetre of the brain can hold two petabytes of information, making the whole brain’s capacity approximately 200 exabytes. Neurons can fire at a frenetic rate, and the brain is able to execute about 1015 logical operations per second.
When something changes within all this complexity due to injury, illness, or surgical intervention, mental and psychological processes will inevitably be altered. The first documented case was Phineas Gage, whose brain is still preserved and studied at Harvard University. In an 1848 accident, a metal rod penetrated his brain and damaged his orbitofrontal cortex. He remained conscious and recovered after two months, with his walking, talking, and memory intact. However, his personality – the person he was before – changed completely. He went from being a responsible, quiet, and socially adapted person to exhibiting inappropriate and antisocial behaviour.
Later studies in neuroscience have provided further evidence:
- Damage to the thalamus, the brain’s information collector, can lead to impaired awareness.
- Surgically severing the corpus callosum to treat extreme epilepsy was later found to have resulted in two separate consciousnesses. Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry reported that one cerebral hemisphere was no longer aware of what the other hemisphere saw.
- In cases of hemispheric neglect, where one cerebral hemisphere is damaged, affected persons appear to have no awareness or consciousness on the corresponding side. For instance, left-hemisphere damage leads to a total loss of self-awareness and consciousness on the right side of the body and even in abstract space, where the right side ceases to exist for them.
- Recent research shows that microglia cells can cause brain inflammation, leading to mental illnesses such as severe depression and psychoses, and subsequently to changed personalities.
- Even the simplest life form, the rabies virus, has evolved the capability to change an animal’s or human’s brain and personality. To spread through saliva, the virus alters its host’s brain to become a violent, brutal fighting machine that bites other creatures.
The amazing story of Ulrike Meinhof provides another powerful example. A gentle and dedicated investigative journalist, a brain tumour caused damage to her amygdala, the brain’s centre for coordinating emotions and fear. As a result, she transformed into an extremely brutal and violent terrorist in the “Rote Armee Fraktion” in Germany during the 1970s. The remaining question is: who was Ulrike when she died at the age of 41?
Q. In what ways do technological interventions like brain implants complicate our understanding of identity and selfhood?
Changes in the brain lead to changes in our mental states, consciousness, and personality. Science has advanced to the point where we can directly intervene in the brain, creating significant ethical dilemmas. For example, people with brain implants to reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease have reported “being a different person” when the implant was removed for maintenance, saying, “I wasn’t me anymore!”
While we may be wary of interventions due to historical examples like the electroconvulsive therapy depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, modern ECT is a highly controlled treatment option. Likewise, helping paralyzed people walk again with neural implants is widely celebrated as a victory for science.
However, the rapid development of brain-computer interfaces forces us to confront a fundamental question: does every such intervention affect “who I am”? These technological interventions don’t so much complicate our understanding of identity as they prove that our sense of self is inextricably linked to our physical brain. As Dick Swaab argues in his book, We Are Our Brains: From Womb to Alzheimer’s, our identity is not a separate entity but the direct product of our brain’s complex activity.
Q. What ethical or existential dilemmas are posed by the idea of minds reuniting in an immaterial world after death?
If we accept the idea of a mind originating from an immaterial world, a number of challenging questions arise. Who were these minds before they were attached to a physical body? Who are they once they return? Could they come back and take over another body, and would this new person have the same identity and personality as the deceased? Who has the property rights over an immaterial mind? Though these questions may seem naive, they must be raised when considering an immaterial world.
If an immaterial world is a place of perfect peace, why would a mind leave it for our chaotic Earth? Imagine if I drove while drunk and, in a car accident, killed my wife, two of our four children, and myself. What if our minds were to meet again in an immaterial world?
We spend our lives on a wonderful blue satellite called Earth – a tiny pixel in an immense universe. Yet, with all its perfect conditions, life as we know it was able to arise. Organised matter and streams of information within it created life, reproducibility, and evolutionary processes, leading to the development of mankind and our cognitive capabilities.
To paraphrase Hannah Arendt in her 1968 essay, The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man: “Causality, necessity, and lawfulness are categories inherent in the human brain and applicable only to the common-sense experiences of earthbound creatures. Everything that such creatures ‘reasonably’ demand seems to fail them as soon as they step outside the range of their terrestrial habitat.”
We have no need for an immaterial world; all the evidence we have points to the profound, material world we inhabit.
