Operative Closure and Orchestrated Collapse: What the Quantum Physics of Consciousness Cannot Derive
Adonis Liranza Diaz
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) September 9, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22678059 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Wiest's quantum mechanism for separating conscious subjects commits a petitio principii by presupposing the biological boundary it aims to explain, a problem split-brain cases and active inference's Markov blanket do not resolve. Proposes instead a two-principle framework of actualization and individuation, termed Àṣẹ and Orí in Ifá philosophy, which the author claims accounts for graded clinical states like depersonalization and supports an interface rather than local-production reading of Orch OR data. |
Abstract
Recent work by Michael Wiest on Orch OR theory (Penrose/Hameroff) revives, on new empirical grounds, the hypothesis of a quantum substrate for consciousness, and proposes to solve the problem of the separation of subjects through a mechanism of amplitude cancellation specific to each conscious body. This article establishes that this mechanism presupposes the biological boundary it is supposed to explain -a petitio principii that Wiest himself identifies without resolving, and that his own treatment of split-brain patients renders untenable, and which recourse to the Markov blanket of active inference does not repair. This mainly negative result is contrasted with a framework distinguishing two principles -actualization and individuation, Àṣẹ and Orí in the vocabulary of Ifá philosophy -derivable from the structure of the problem itself prior to any terminological borrowing. This distinction accounts by construction for graded clinical states, such as depersonalization, which Wiest's one-principle model cannot by construction explain, and opens, without imposing it, a reading of Orch OR data compatible with an interface model rather than with a local production of consciousness.