Comments on Rolf Froböse's article at
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rol...or-the-immortality-of-the-soul_b_5499969.html .
This is essentially a collection by a German science journalist of some evidence for life after death, and of the partly-baked ideas of various theorists. He makes much of degrees of reputation of the scientists described.
First, evidence described, and is a fairly standard apparition following a suicide.
The theorists are:
1.
Hans-Peter Dürr, who thinks that any coded information is equal to consciousness, and thus the copying and preservation of that information is equivalent to immortality. He has some general ideas of 'planes of existence' that might be good, but these are not properly related to quantum physics or consciousness.
2.
Christian Hellweg is trying to investigate mind-body connections. His theory is a bit confused. He first says that spiritual things have no direct connections with natural sciences, then goes on to say that they correspond exactly to quantum phenomena. He forgets that quantum phenomena
is the theory in natural sciences (such as atomic and nuclear physics). He has some general ideas of a 'realm of our world that is not yet factual" that might be good. But 'realms of possibility' do not necessarily indicate minds: they really only indicate indeterministic or random dynamics.
3.
John Archibald Wheeler reminds us that there are quantum phenomena also on large scales.
4.
Robert Jahn has done many experiments on mind influences on quantum processes. These may be good experiments, but he does not have a proper theory yet. He talks about 'molecular binding' for consciousness and matter, but still goes on to say that quantum processes are themselves conscious. This is panpsychism, and goes well beyond what his experiments indicate.
5.
David Bohm quoted concerning a "an inner, uniform, transcendent reality" that is supposed to include "The very depth of human consciousness".
6.
Jeremy Hayward says that we can openly state (or, at least, openly speculate) about consciousness being "a fundamental element of the world - perhaps even more fundamental than space and time." This may well be true, but the relations to spiritual and material things are not clear.
Overall, this is an advertisement for Froböse's book ""The Secret Physics of Coincidence. Quantum phenomena and fate - Can quantum physics explain paranormal phenomena?"
My overall conclusion is that many physicists turn out be aware of the great difficulties of purely materialistic theories of reality, and so read about various 'new age' ideas about consciousness. But they really have no positive ideas about what that 'consciousness' really is: how it is related to minds, feelings, memories, sensing, moving body, thinking (etc.), and how it has real causal effects in the physical world. They can tell that it must be related to minds and have causal effects, but there are as yet not sufficiently good ideas that could be part of 'science' properly. Nuclear physics is not yet changed in any way by these speculations.