1 - The relativistic Bloc-Universe (see Part One)
The Clock maker (d'Espagnat)
Circles in the Water
Figure 01 (reversing a wave)
Entropy has gone up again!
Figure 02 (tossing up 6 coins)
Figure 03 (nothing is less unlikely)
Where is the Future hiding ?
Figure 04 (three relativistic events)
The Big Roll
Now for the Eternity
The Backside of Time
Figure 05 (A bloc-Universe)
Resurrection
Summary 1
2 - Quantum Universe (see Part Two)
The Action Quantum of Planck
The " Uncertainties "
Undulatory mechanics
The Phase space
The Kid's physics
The World is discontinuous
Four Mirrors and one Photon
Figure 06 (four mirrors and one photon)
Figure 07 (four mirrors and one photon)
Figure 08 (a bomb)
The " probability Waves "
In Simple words
The Garden of Forking Paths
Figure 09 (adding vectors)
Bell's Inequality
A Non-separable whole
Parallel Universes
The Multiverse
Summary 2
3 - The Sum of All the Stories
The Story of a Cat
A Case of Conscience
Free Will
Figure 10 (a present " moment ")
Figure 11 (a " life line ")
Figure 12 (the " lines of one life " in the multiverse)
Why a Conscience?
Making All out of Nothing
The end of the Route
Summary 3
Bibliography

      We are walking since a long time now in the Garden of the Forking Paths, but are our steps proceeding in the same direction?
- Not really. There were a few contradictions, backwards steps, important points left in a shadow. The fact of living the same present life for the eternity is probably not a bliss, for example, nor a thrilling idea. We skated over that, somewhat too quickly. We skated over the definitive world of the bloc-universe, permanently extended in its irremovable space-time and we didn't try to understand, let aside an elegant pirouette, how it would allow its room to free-will.
- That's true.
- And now, I will admit my disappointment. We talked a lot about Schrödinger and his equation. I'm still waiting news about his cat!
- Of course, the cat of Schrödinger, as well known now than the Cheshire Cat of Lewis Carroll. I wondered if I should let him enter on the stage.
- It's about time.
- Let's go. Well... we spoke a lot about this or that, not perhaps too much about the quantum superposition. Except, yes, when we told the story of the Garden of Forking Paths, if you remember it: it was said that every photon should be seen as the sum of all the stories (Feynman's expression) of his travel, the sum of the possible paths? This notion enjoys a very general range. To know the evolution of a particle in time, we use the Schrödinger equation, that is the "wave function" that guides the particle.
- The particle is guided by a wave?
- Not really, a particle is not an object, it is more of a concept. Getting from such a point in space, one looks for the position of the particle as it evolves during time. The "wave function" defines, for the different points in space, the probability you have to find the particle there. It happens that the equation includes many solutions. Each solution defines a state with an amplitude, hence the fact that many states coexist. It looks peculiar, but strangeness is not an objection: a particle, I already said it, is a physical entity and not a small, round, and necessarily localized object. Yet, when we observe a particle (that is, when we perform a measure on that entity with an adapted device) we record the existence of one state only (that is to say, only one position in space, or only one level of energy, and so on, in function of the kind of measure that was performed). There is nothing in the Schrödinger equation to say when or why such a choice should be carried out. You would say that it is the operation of a deus ex machina. Such a toss up much worried Albert Einstein. It is called the "wave reduction", or the "Psi collapse" if you like voluble empty speach. That is strange, things evolve a dislocated way, that is to say, no, they evolve during some time in a smooth and deterministic way, as one may hope from a well behaved wave, along with the superposed states of Schrödinger equation, and then, suddenly, that evolution is interrupted by a choice, unpredictable and unexplained, of one state among many. The smooth evolution looks physical. The "reduction" intervenes without rhyme or reason.
- According what circumstances?
- Oddly, as soon as an "observer" looks at what is going on. At that very moment occurs this non-physical, unpredictable, undeterministic process of wave reduction, it is a toss up.
- Does the measurement device trigger off the reduction?
- Not even that. According the computation, a device measuring an object in a quantum superposed state sets itself in a superposed state. For example, if the device includes a dial with a needle and you're waiting for the needle to set upon a digit, let it be the zero or the one, the superposed needle points to zero and one, that's all.
- The needle is blurred?
- No, the superposition is an addition of precise states, not a blurr. The needle is in both states, not between. As a matter of fact, there are two needles. To that point, these physical objects, particle and measurement device, evolved in a smooth and deterministic way according to the equation, no problem.
- If I look at the device, I see only one needle.
- And that is the problem. The fact that you are looking at induces the wave reduction, and the amplitude, and the probability, and the toss up: all the states were there at a time, and now remains only one. That happens outside any physical grounds, because there is nothing in the equation to foresee that serrated evolution. Your look...
- Are you kidding, what should my look take place in the evolution of the process?
- Wigner said that your awareness is decisive.
- Awareness or conscience are not physically defined. There is no vital force, vital impulse nor anything like that, what is that action of consciousness upon matter! We are floundering in doubtful metaphysical theories.
- You're right but...
- That's silly!
- It is exactly what Schrödinger had in mind, when he devised the adventure of his cat: showing that superposition of states was silly. He failed. May I point out that the whole story is only a "thought experiment": no physicist ever dared to torment so gracious a pet. - Nobody gets worked up for a guinea-pig.
- I said a physicist. Physicists don't care for guinea-pigs, and this is how they picture the story of the cat:

- Schrödinger puts in a strong metal box...
- The safe of the manager...
- ... for example, a glass bulb with a very small amount of radioactive element, so small that during one hour, there is only one decay, or not at all. Notice exactly what he meant, there is one atom evolving in the bulb in such a way that after one hour this atom is in a quantum superposition of states (according his equation): atom intact and atom decayed, with a probability of fifty fifty. All's well. A Geiger counter is disposed beside the glass bulb to eventually detect the decay. Schrödinger then puts the cat in the safe and the door is hermetically closed. After an hour, the counter is correlated with the state of the atom, that is itself being in a quantum superposed state, dumb counter and active counter. This counter (did I say that?) is tied to an electric relay that (eventually) triggers a small hammer upon a glass cyanide vial.
- How horrible, it's a horror movie, your tale...!
- Yes it is. After an hour lapse, the cyanide is itself in a superposed state, locked in the vial and spread in the safe. Of course, the cat becomes a live cat and a dead cat.
- What's that. I've never seen a superposed cat.
- This is exactly the "offended common sense" reaction that Schrödinger waited for. Everybody is ready to accept the superposition of states of an electron, even of an atom, and this for two reasons. The first, and good one, is that it's exactly what foresees his equation and many observations already checked that with a high precision. Please remind the Feynman's graphs and his "sum of all the stories": a way of computing and nothing else. Feynman sum, Heisenberg matrix, or Schrödinger equation, different computing devices and all the same results. Any other computing shebang, carried out without the superposition of states, would fail. The physical superposition is here to stay.
- What about the other reason?
- Yes, of course. I promised the bad reason. The other reason is that nobody did ever "see" an atom, let aside an electron, then it doesn't matter much to "common sense" that this special sort of beast may be superposed or not. If one photon goes through the two slits of a screen at the same time, it's strange, but if it is happy like that, why not. A silver atom in a Stern and Gerlach device may go along two different paths at the same time. Why not, a silver atom is not a silver spoon. If a silver spoon should be at the same time in its box and on the table...
- The cat, the cat, I'm waiting for the cat!
- Be patient. Well, let's imgine that we spent one hour chatting, and open the safe.
- We shall see now in which state was the poor thing...
- No, it's not like that. She's not, this peculiar animal, in a state or another, she's alive and dead! There is no reason to think that the electrons and atoms the cat is made of remained superposed, and not the cat.
- I'm ready to think that we ignore the state of the cat, but she must be...
- This is not a problem of ignorance. We know that there is a superposition of states and we have to face a real indeterminacy. Your attention please, after an hour of smooth physical evolution according to the Schrödinger "wave function" we open the door of the safe and our looking at will trigger the "wave reduction", the serrated evolution and the toss up. Look at her, the cat is alive and purrs with pleasure.
- ... a great sigh of relief... get her out... my conclusion is that she remained alive all the time.
- You're wrong. This won't solve anything of the crucial question, that is: when, how, and why comes to an end a superposition of states? In fact, most physicists act as you do, they see a cat alive - or a silver atom going down - and that looks like an adequate evidence that a reduction occured. In that case, it is without any explanation. One sees with one own's eyes, and give up understanding. It is just what Feynman said to his students: "If you think that you understood, come back to your physics textbook, it only means that you have understood nothing at all". It is a somewhat discouraging solution. Never forget that, for particles, a lot of experiments have been carried out and showed that before a measurement, the particle was not at all in the precise measured state. Try to imagine that, before being observed alive and purring, the cat was not in such a happy state, she was alive and dead. We looked at and, in a way, between the two states one has been choosen.
- It's difficult for me to picture such a superposition.
- There's nothing surprising about that. Try to think to it during a few years and the most surprising will be, not the superposition, an indubitable physical process, but the collapse of the wave, the reduction, also known as the "quantum leap", a toss up of one possible among many. Why that toss up? There is no explanation. Some physicists, with Roger Penrose, recourse to gravitation, other ones think to a relaxation time strangely compared to the age of the universe, for Wigner it is the role of consciousness, but the awareness of the observer, but a conscience is hard to compute within an equation? Von Neumann showed that it doesn't matter much that the reduction occurs here or there, between the atom and the measurement device, between the device and the eyes that look at, between the eyes and the brain and so on... He computes, but the question remains.
- It is the reduction that worry me.
- Please, don't worry. There are a lot of classical processes where it occurs. Think only to music waves. Listen to a piano and violin sonata, you listen at the same time to the musical wave of the violin and the wave of the piano. Let's say that you're listening a record. Look at the diaphragm of the loud-speaker, it is in one single position at every moment and emits only one wave, this wave is the superposition of the wave of the piano and the wave of the violin... it is true, because a sound wave is a linear process, and the superposition of two sound waves is still a sound wave... In quantum physics the matter is not that simple, but the superposition remains a fact. If two states exist, a linear combination of the two states is still a state. The silver spoon in the box is a state, the silver spoon on the table is a state, hence the silver spoon in the box and the silver spoon on the table is still a state.
- Wait a minute. Stop. I'll now admit all the stuff. The cat is a superposed cat. I open the safe, the chain correlated states extand to my eyes, my brain, myself, I'm now living in a superposed state "I see a cat alive and I see a dead cat", what do you think of that?
- Cheers, you did it. Now, you at last understood. And you save the cost of the reduction. No more dislocated behaviour, no more toss up, all remains in the deterministic domain of a physical smooth evolution. It's now perfect.
- Don't make a fun of me, I only said that to have a good laugh... That is I never, never felt superposed. What does it look like, being superposed?
- Of course, the question has been moved, but the new question is much more interesting. The evolution of the physical process is now acceptable for the mind, it obeys to a deterministic law, all's well. The disgusting toss up of the " collapse " quantum interpretation is avoided.
- But the remaining question is not an easy one. I don't feel superposed, I have no idea of what it could be. By the way, how is the cat feeling herself? You should ask her.
- You know, we said it already.
- No?
- Yes. Remind the "many-world" concept of Hugh Everett. His doctorate thesis, notice it. Upon each and every quantum leap the whole universe divides into branches, in one branch "I see a live cat" in another one "I see a dead cat". This is why you aren't aware of a superposition. You are in a superposed state, as is your awareness, but each split conscience is only in one state and there is no reason why you should feel it: there were two paths, and you choosed one.
- Oops... you know what, is there some coffee left? I'd have a cup.
- The pot is ready to boil. Now that I think to it, you forgot your first question, remember what, about the EPR paradox and the Bell's inequality.
- Yes, of course, about non-locality, non-separability and that holistic universe...
- Exact. The polarization of the photons, as it has been said, is set only when the measurement occurs. As a matter of fact, you already understood that there is a superposition of the polarization states. That is why it is true that the polarization is not set from the start. It is not. The polarization, from the start and beyond is, and remains, a superposition of states. But if, and when, you measure...
- I "choose a path"!
- Of course, and in that very path, as long as the two photons are correlated, you already know the polarization of the other one... No use of a faster-than-light signal nor anything. In the universe you belong now, the photon is as is, period. The water boils, the coffee is about ready, hand on your cup.

- One lump of sugar, please, thank you so much, I hope that my spoon is not a superposed one. Now, I have to understand what's a conscience, let aside what should be a superposed consciousness.
- We are coming now to a sterile speech. There are whole libraries of books about conscience, but they leave you upon a hopeless impression, without the matter being never really tackled. They hold forth about physiology, neurology, electronic computing, artificial intelligence, about all but this: this unique insight, the feeling of being, the more difficult to define that everybody lives it in an obious and immediate way. In fact, I'm alone to know what is my own conscience, perhaps are you a robot.
- Feel easy.
- As far as I know, you're a robot that says " feel easy ".
- I have my own conscience.
- Very well then. Are all the human beings conscious? What about the cats? Didn't you ask if the cat of Schrödinger had enough conscience to collapse her own superposition? And the oysters, is there an awareness of the oysters?
- Wait a minute, if the conscience is a brain function, I'd say yes for the cat, no for the oysters? No? Did I say something silly?
- Not that much. What's called intelligence comes from the brain, for sure, it's perhaps in that domain that the comparison with a computer is the less injustified. Though a computer computes rather well, without any awareness of the fact that it is on, up and running.
- Let's assume.
- Remove some part of the brain, as for a malignant tumour, and you change the behaviour of a person, you affect the intelligence, the awareness remains, as well as the unique feeling of personnality.
      I remember the story of a painter, I was a medicine student in Marseille in a neuropsychiatry ward, a painter who couldn't put up with the smells of paint, linseed oil, turpentine and so on. The other smells he didn't care. He had a tumour of the temporal lobe. It was removed. Afterwards, all went well. He didn't smell the paint, or didn't bother. But an unexpected, and dreadful thing happened. He was married, father one little girl. After the surgery he was always himself, recognized everybody, had no trouble of any kind, but he no longer loved his wife and his girl, he adored before.
- Oh...
- Yes, you said it! We all were ready to admit a sensory deficiency, a lacunar amnesia, a slow down of the expression, but that... I remember his wife, bursting into tears, asking us... Yes, he was always kind with her and the child, yes, he did what was due, but all the little gestures, the kind attentions, the smiles of complicity, all was gone in the bowl with the tumour.
- One is little thing, Mrs Whatsit.
- You may laugh. It wasn't funny.
- All that tale to remind that, in the human life, the brain plays a major part. The discursive thinking is not tied to a kind of soul, immortal or not, independant from the matter, the dualism doesn't hold, as far as our concern goes. We are an animated flesh. For all that, are we robots? The brain would be conceivable as a machine: but why me! Why is there a me, identifiable, attentive onlooker, present. We should use two words to define the consciousness, there first is all the movie of the life with all its content, tied to the brain functionning, but there remains this me, unique and persistent, that awareness to being, dogged, literally indefinable, shuddering, hoping, determined, responsible, considered useless by the physiologists, though it's not.
- What do think the advocates of artificial intelligence who write it with a big "A" and a big "I"?
- We shall only skim through this vast domain, the domain of the meaning. You may - it works everyday - make a translating electronic machine. The computer is supplied with a dictionnary, a grammar, it spots the words, the synonyms, their position and function in the context, it transposes all the stuff in other words with another grammar, another language. There are classical pitfalls of translation, as in the sentance: "The astronomer married a star". You understand of course that the star in question belongs to the world of showbiz, but in that context the computer will goof. Of course, a supplementary program could help. I said that, only to point out that the machine relates to the shapes and ignores the meaning.
- It is obvious.
- It is not at all. The advocates of artificial intelligence deny in a good mood that anything like the meaning would exist. What exists is a brain algorithm, a kind of very convoluted computing, carried out with all the data brought in by the eyes and the ears, as well as with all the stock and store of the memory, the outcome of the computing being thus an interpretation of the listened, or heard, word. That interpretation will be very closed to, but never identical to that of another person, because, within other reasons, the use of the memory data. A definition is not a meaning. Notice please that the digits get a definition and no meaning. The digit "2" is perfectly defined, it has no content nor meaning, and that is why the computers compute so easily. No convoluted algorithm to use, no problem of consciousness and the outcome is always the same: mathematicians are people that understand each other.
      Then, these advocates deny the very existence of the meaning. The meaning is like the feeling of free will, the meaning would be mere illusions. The meaning is only a very complicated and convoluted brain computing, that's all.
- It is only asserting... Remains to know above what degree of complexity an electronic device abruptly begins to think that it is computing...
- Think to it. A human being thinks, what about a cat, does an oyster think? What's more, let aside computing and intelligence, we didn't even consider what it is to be me.

- There is a connex problem. You insisted many times on the definitive determinism of a world "spread out in time as in space", it is a beautiful picture of the eternity, but you should admit that it leaves no room for the free will.
- If anything like free will exists.
- Oh...
- It is true that, for a tough but fair materialist, it is impossible to make room to free will. There is no play in the physical mechanisms. You may think, hesitate, make your mind, so what? How could your mind act upon matter? There are only four physical forces, gravitation, electromagnetic (in everyday life), weak and strong (inside the atom). Obviously they don't bother the mind. There is nothing like a "vital force". Then, no thought should physically alter the course of events. A physicalist will explain that your conscience is an epiphenomenon, that it is the outcome of the brain activity, that the brain is controlled by physiology, that physiology has chemical roots and you know that chemistry is tied to physics. That's all. The consciousness comes second to brain physiology.
- So what for free will?
- Free will is illusions, it is tied to the fact that, afterwards, you picture that you could have made your mind another way, that's all. We are plain robots, with a useless conscience on top of that.
- Let aside a me even more useless. I remember a preface of André Malraux, I think, to a book by Faulkner. It was said that the characters of Faulkner look like these travellers in the South, sitting back on the dumpster of a truck, dangling their legs: they live with their face towards a past they brood over, reluctantly carried away towards a future they don't mind. A fair picture of your robots.

(back to table)

Figure 10 Between a vanished past (left) and a future to be born (right), a life shrinks to one single "present" point precariously balanced, evanescent...

- That's true. Remember in passing what we said about time and eternity. You shouldn't picture a lost past, a future to be born and, alive alone, a thin slice of present. The present is here to stay, the future is already alive, the world is not becoming, it is.
- Then the description of the robots sticks more seriously to reality. There is no free will, no responsibility, I wonder why one is racking one's brains, what is the sense of right and wrong due to, what are judging the judges and why. We should as well retire from the world in a far away place and wait in silence for our end.
- You're wrong.
- Oh dear!
- Yes. Let's come back to the "many-world" interpretation of Everett...
- It is uselessly convoluted, it makes me feel sick. We'll use the razor of Occam to prune it out of its too many branches. By the way, that unceasing splitting, that compulsive multiplication of boughs, all that is inconciliable with the thermodynamics second principle and with energy conservation. Forget it all.
- I see. It is the multiplication of the branches that worry you. But because this interpretation is not truly that of Hugh Everett himself, but his commentators' (there are many), the name of "many-world" theory is perhaps not the fair one. We shall talk, after him, of the "relative states" concept. What Everett had in mind is this: there is a wave function for the whole universe and all the superposed states are there forever. The whole universe doesn't split, it is, and remains, superposed.
      Remember once more that bloc-universe "spread out in time as in space", that universe that is rather than it becomes. This universe is already more symmetrical than an evolutive universe: given in the past, to be built in the future. John Bell, the man of the inequality, made a penetrating remark about the Everett's theory: this concept removes all its reality from the idea of past.

(back to table)

Figure 11 In the bloc-universe the past (left) and the future (right) remain "present", life becomes a "life line", but it is deterministic, irrevocable, it is a jail.

- how come?
- It's astonishing at first sight. But it is true. Let's see at that. The concept of "many-world" with its unceasing splittings portrays the history of the universe as a tree, a common trunk in the past, with more and more branches and boughs in the future. A past, set up for the eternity, a future to be chosen. There is no symmetry there. The "relative states" concept - with all its forever superpositions - is not carrying this hereditary defect. One shall not say that there are many ramifications in the past, as roots and rootlets, a common present trunk and branches to come, because the present bears as many ramifications, it is reticulated as are the branches and the roots of the ficus elastica, to carry on our arboricultural metaphor. The universe is definitive, presently spread out in all its space as it is in all its duration, following the picture of the "relativity" of Albert Eistein, but it is as well, following the "relative states" concept of Hugh Everett, spread out in all its historic potentialities.
- What a strange and penetrating idea...
- Yes, all that could have been, exists forever; all that can now happen, exists as so many superpositions; all that could happen in the future, as well exists already. For a me that wanders there, many paths are open... but towards the past as well as to the future, the remark of Bell is subtle and true. There is nothing as a lone given past, all that could have been is, as well as all that could happen is.
- Let's see that... I once said yes and the entire course of my life changed... my life unfolded, my past appears as a tangible reality, my biography is my own and not another one.

(back to table)

Figure 12 In the Multiverse, from past to future an infinity of potentialities are superposed, the " lines of one life " split, intertwine, meet up in an open " fabric ".

- You once said no, and the entire course of your life changed. It is true, as is true the superposition of the cat. As a matter of fact, you are bestowed with an incredible multitude of lives, your life itself is a garden of forking paths. At each fork, each time you had to make your mind with consciousness and a sense of responsibility, you chose a path, but of course the superposition doesn't collapse for all that, we completely gave up the idea of reduction, you have one consciousness alive in this path and you have another one along that other path, independently. So much for your past: this important choice you made dragged you in a path of your life. There remain other ones, the past is not any more given as is the future.
- But how come I am me, precisely in the state I'm living now?
- But how come I'm living now, why didn't I die a long time ago, why am I not due in the future? Why am I me and not anybody else? What spirit livens me up? Don't you remember that these questions have been asked already, and what was the answer of Schopenhauer? As a matter of fact, that me is characterized by its being at present, now and for the eternity. In that sense one never dies. Why am I me and not anybody else? You'll have to ask another question, and you did it already, why am I me, precisely in such a state I'm living now and not in another one?
- But my past, my memories are unequivocal?
- Yes, your memories are a listing of all of your successive states, they are together correlated states, as they are correlated to the states of the people around you, and that way they may agree with you about what happened. But there remain other planes of correlation gathering other correlated states of consciousness, of which yours. There remains a great many more planes where you don't exist, and will never explore.
- It's madness. It's a doubtful metaphysical theory...
- Yes... and no. Physics, the sound and solid start point, it's the quantum superposition. Beyond, it is what's called an interpretation, an idea we're making up, to satisfy the mind in need of understanding. It's a representation model, a metaphor. In that respect there is nothing to prove, the metaphor satisfies the mind or not: it is perfectible at will. It gives a fair account of the free will, because there is no necessity now to act upon matter and we understood that is impossible. The matter is there, a me is going its way, as a shadow silently wandering in an indifferent garden.
- That's stunning.
- Somewhat, yes.
- Do you mean that... should I be able to come back, make other choices, better choices?
- You should ask the Creator of the Garden of Forking Paths, or to think twice about what has been already said. The everlasting life has been said. The universe of Hugh Everett offers to the intuition of Schopenhauer the huge territory it needs to let our me always in the present: "I am, once and for all, master of the present; during the whole eternity the present will be my companion, as is my shadow..." Do you remember that Jerome asked a question: "However Almighty God may be, He can't give back her virginity to the one who has lost it". It's to venture setting limits to the heavenly powers. The example Jerome picked is not innocent. One may always picture a healing, but the most important is what we called a biography, that entire set of memories, happy or heavy, tied to one another; and we can't cancel and get away with it. Now look at that world of relative states, and at the profound remark of John Bell about the unreality of the past: all the paths, all the choices together exist, the world is complete and immutable. Of course, for the shadows wandering in the garden, the time looks one way. What is doing a me here or there? Could not the Almighty pick a me in His fingers as a small pawn on a great chessboard and set it in a preferable square or path, if He wants, and what would Jerome think about that?

      We'll now have to try to understand consciousness in physical terms, the goal of our maneuver, because any appeal to supernatural is a way of evading the problems without solving anything. To begin with, we should ask if the birth of consciousness had been promoted by the mechanism of Darwinian evolution. What about does the fact of getting aware bring a point in favor of a living being? What is the use of a consciousness? There is a big part of the encephalon, wonderfully and skillfully working, a part that would meet the standard of "convoluted computing" the advocates of artificial intelligence consider as the source of consciousness: the cerebellum. The cerebellum manages the balance. You may walk on your feet, even run without falling and you are never aware of being endowed with the task. The cerebellum has no consciousness, why does the brain have one? The survival, the quest for some prey, the reproduction, all that could be run as is the digestion or the balance on one leg, without any conscious problem nor consciousness. There are long worms in the depths of the middle oceanic crests, in a total darkness, they live beside the white or black smokers that bring them heat and energy. Are they aware of their comfort, of their problems, of the solutions they implement to continue? May I doubt it. Then, why consciousness? What is the use of a consciousness? In what circumstances does it take place?
- Most of the time, to be unhappy.
- You don't appear reasonably optimistic... I would have said... What the use is to be happy, without the awareness of being so?
- It's the same, the down side of the same coin.
- I would have said... to be uselessly unhappy... to be worried...
- To be wondering about?
- Yes, a hundred times yes, that's a positive point. The consciousness helps in asking questions. Back to the free will, because, when there is no question to ask, there is no choice to make. What does the young crocodile do when it goes out through its egg, and has never seen anything before?
- I acknowledge my lack of experience in crocodiles...
- Never try to cajole the little one with a friendly finger: the young reptile will decisively stick its teeth into it. He knows nothing, has never seen anything, he only knows that, to attack. The lone and only credentials of the " reptilian " brain are that: die or win. We all have our "reptilian brain" deeply buried under our cortex, that reptilian brain in charge of agressivity. But we rule it (most of the time), whereas crocodiles stick to it and that is enough for them, to survive generation after generation. Are they aware? Not sure. They bite, and when they bite the stronger one they die, no luck. A lot survives. I had a stuffed crocodile hanging on my wall: he had had no luck. Well, we go on. The Darwinian evolution covered our reptilian brain with a mantle, the cortex. What is the use of it? Making pictures, comparing them, choosing? It's roughly that: don't bite... if, to survive, there is better to do.
      Therefore, we're making choices.
      Other questions are tied to that, because choosing asks for a memory and choosing means to anticipate.
What is consciousness? What does it mean to be me?
      The consciousness faces choices, it remembers, it anticipates. There is something more, tied or not to the latter: the consciousness lives in the movement. However, we have seen that the multiverse is made of a huge, definitive and motionless set of present moments. No time, no movement. If the flow of time is a subjectivity of the human mind, so must be the movement. What is the use of it? To choose is to anticipate, it is to make one's mind according to the future. To choose, it is to implement - in a way - the final cause. Would the movement be tied to choice?
      Is it possible to picture the consciousness as an entity moving successively upon the different moments of the multiverse, according to such and such logic? This idea holds a certain fascination, but it is misleading in that way that it reintroduces a new kind of time. There is already the temporal dimension of the bloc-universe's space-time, and if we need a supplementary time to take in a moving consciousness, then we go around and around. There are as many me as moments where the conscious being belong. The question "which one is the true me" has no meaning either. All of them are me.
      In fact, there are two things left to explain, as we look to the characteristics of the human mind, the first one is the idea of movement, so natural in all aspects though it has no room in the immutable bloc-universe, the other one is the free will. To end with, there is the nature of the human mind, as it keeps its supernatural look.
- It is a wrong track. The human mind is part of the creation and should find its natural room in the multiverse... Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitas, said William of Occam, with a tough common sense...
- Yes, of course, yes. We had let the human mind "off the domain of science"...
- It's about time to whistle the end of playtime!
- Yes. But we are now walking on eggs. What are the characteristics of movement, let aside the awareness of movement? What are the characteristics of freedom, let aside the consciousness of a choice?
- I bet I know...
- Yes, look at a movie, as the operator shows it... the reel is complete, all the pictures are there at the same time, nothing moves... the reel is set up the projector...
- I know! By the way of persistence of vision arises a continuity in the mind of the audience...
- The audience should see the pictures one after the other and in particular, on top of the memory of the past pictures, a present one, but motionless!
- Wait a minute, the previous pictures persist, as it's said.
- That way, several pictures are superposed in the mind... back to the superpositions...
- Let's see, it is the live and dead cat once more, isn't it?
- At least the cat looking in front of her and a little sideways and a little more...
- Do you mean that the human mind is in a superposed state of several " present moments " of the bloc-universe?
- Yes, of course yes, you got the idea. The human mind is not a supplementary entity, but truly that superposition of states that worried Schrödinger so much. The idea of movement, now acquired, leads to the idea of change, and the idea of possible leads to anticipation... - Yet remain choice, and freedom.
- The idea of possible would be of no interest, from the Darwinian evolution side, without leading to a choice, and the choice presupposes the comparison. Once more, it comes that the human mind is in a superposed state of several "present moments" of the quantum world, not only two or many more previous "present moments" of the relativistic bloc-universe, but two (or many more) possible "present moments" of the multiverse.
      You said a moment ago that you never felt superposed. What happens is that you didn't identify it. Every time that you are aware of a movement, you are superposing some present moments. Every time you are aware of making your mind you are superposing some possible moments. So goes the life. And we get back to what we said about the cerebellum, the wonderfully working master of balance that allows such a person I knew to carry a water bucket on his head...
- It had to be in Africa, a lot of people there do that.
- Yes, he did, carrying a water bucket on his head and riding a bicycle, not that it was commonplace. He didn't fell, nor did a drop of water, he went, while thinking of other things, because his cerebellum was driving the maneuver without the least consciousness of what was done. On the other hand, his brain was consciously thinking about what he had to buy at the market place, that is, either a little mirror for his wife, or a small heap of five cigarettes for him. A choice.
      Back to the cerebellum. There was at every second a choice to perform and a decision to make. To bring the weight of the body to the right side, to tilt the head a trifle on the right side and forward, to bring the weight of the body to the left side, to lean a little more on the right handle of the bicycle, and so on. What I mean is that, according to the environment, to what the eyes see or the semicircular canals of the ears do feel, to what the skin of the head does feel, there is at each and every tenth of a second a decision to be made. A choice? No, it's completely deterministic: to go on riding without an accident, there has to be done such a gesture, and nothing else. In fact, the automatic pilot of an aircraft does the same. Neither the cerebellum nor the automatic pilot has a consciousness, they don't need any.
      On the other hand, the riding water dealer is reaching a fork, are we going to the market, are we coming home? There is nothing deterministic in that situation, there is no vital risk, there is free will, it's a task for the brain, the brain has to compare and anticipate, the consciousness is in a superposition of states.
- Nothing but an idea.
- Yes, it's only an idea, but not without logic and it brings the birth of the consciousness back in the domain of Darwinian evolution. It has been said that "the consciousness is an epiphenomenon, a mere audience with no power to change the course of things". False. In the multiverse there are many possibles, hence there are choices to be performed. These choices are not at all determined by a logic examination of the available data. That's the way a computer runs, that's the way a cerebellum runs. Human choices are always emotional. - Yes, in case of "falling in love"!
- No, all choices are emotional and "falling in love" is only a borderline caricature, Antonio Damasio brought evidence of the fact. All the choices are emotional: are you always able to tell why you made your mind in such a way? You explain your choice afterwards, you expand your argumentation... if only arguments were taken in account, a super-cerebellum would do, and there would never be consciousness nor debate.
      The awareness of movement, the idea of becoming, free will, as well as the smile in favor of the good choice, that is human consciousness. It owes nothing to supernatural. You said that you never "felt superposed"? As a matter of fact, without the quantum superpositions you would never "feel" anything, because the consciousness is born of the superposition of states.

      Is it enough to give a fair account of consciousness, of the subjective idea of movement, of the idea of becoming... "the concept of becoming has no application outside the human consciousness" said Grünbaum. We already feel that it's difficult to link the definition of the energy level of a photon with the subjective red color, for example... From time to time a lot of books come out to explain for good the consciousness; they talk about physiology or whatever, but never of that inside, careful life... We know at least that without consciousness there would have never been any idea of becoming, nor any project nor freedom. If there is an advantage according to the evolution of species, it's this one.
- Not only the consciousness would look "too many", you could say the same about the whole universe, about the whole endless universe to be accurate.
- Why is there something instead of nothing?
- Yes.
- A rather big question. Not that it's really a physical question. But in a way, it may bo possible to release the beginning of an answer.
- Oh yes?
- Yes. Albert Einstein once noticed that...
- Once more him?
- If being a genius is being able to notice obvious simple things that nobody noticed before, he's a genius. Well, he said that gravitation is a negative energy...
- What's that... negative energy... how come... How could any energy be negative?
- Of course it is. Let's look, as a comparison, to a heap of sand. If you add sand to the heap...
- It will grow up.
- Yes. And now, would you be able to picture such a heap that would decrease while you add more sand?
- Let me see, well... yes, a hole?
- You're right. A hole is a negative heap. Now, what happens when we add energy to gravitational energy. Do you know the old clock with its weights?
- Yes of course.
- Do you know how to wind it up?
- To wind it up, yes, the weights go up.
- To do so, you'll provide energy?
- Yes, and sometimes very much, I got such a clock, it runs for one month and winding it up is a hand's agony.
- Do the weights bear more energy after the performance?
- Of course...
- Let's see. What you get back is a work in return of a work, yes, but what about the energy itself? While you move away from the center of the earth, the gravitational attraction drops, isn't it?
- That is...
- Please, is it yes, or no?
- Yes. The product of the two weights divided by the squared distance, it is indisputable, the gravitational energy drops. I never thought about that before.
- Don't worry too much, before Albert Einstein nobody did. Picture a clock a hundred thousand miles high, and the colossal energy you would have to spend to wind it up. It is the work of the Saturn rockets and other ones... well, the weight of the "weights" would come to about nothing, and so of the gravitational energy!
- You are anew telling the story about the heap of sand that vanishes when I add sand on it.
- You're right. Einstein then went quite a long way on. He made an estimation of the total gravitational energy of the known universe; then he added up the other energies there are in it, positive energies, including light, kinetic energy, and the mass-energy equivalent according to his own well known " e = mc2 " formula.
      Now we have, for one part a negative gravitational energy, for another part a positive energy. It happens that both add up to zero. The sum of the universe is null. That's like that. To make a world, you need the know how, and nothing else. The universe is there, and if it has been made, it simply needed nothing.

      It has often been asked why God created evil. Notice that with the complete multiverse, past, present, future, with the superposition of the states, all has been created. What's more, for the live beings that wander in the garden, that entire story began in the Garden of Eden, that paradise lost, it should be feasible to find one's way, the right way, even after having been long and irremediably lost. Of course, one could indefinitely lose one's way, again and again. Such an explanation is nothing but a metaphor, but a fair metaphor is better than nothing at all, please remember the vision of John and the New Jerusalem.

      We could be built to always choose the right way and we would then be the above said robots. Would you be happy without the awareness of being happy? We could be robots in the Garden of Eden. It is not the case. We are endowed with a responsible me longing for the right way. This possibility of failing is the, heavy, cost to pay for freedom. The search for the new Jerusalem offers to life an irreplaceable finality, even if we are beginning to understand that the road could be a rather long.one: "During the whole eternity the present will be my companion, as is my shadow..." said the philosopher. Now let's read John (Ap 21, 1-4):

      Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, because the first heaven and the first earth had vanished, and there was no sea. And I have seen, coming down from the heaven, from beside God, the new Jerusalem, ready, as a betrothed bride for her husband. And I heard the powerful voice coming down from the divine throne; it said:
      "Here is the house of God with men; He will remain with them, and they will be His people, God Himself will be with them. He will wipe away all their tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death; and there will be no more tears, no more cries nor sadness; because the first creation will have vanished".

      Remember the quotation of Bernard d'Espagnat, above referred to "But it is clear that even the theological enthusiasm of a Newton or a Maxwell couldn't succeed in awarding this new idea of a God mainly "Clock maker" the distinctive nature of a view which could be, for the human mind, as " supporting " as the former one".
      It has been a long detour since Galileo, but - with what are now saying the contemporary physics about the open paths and about this present moment that is now for the eternity - we are witnessing a come back of this "supporting" vision to which the text of John gives a very encouraging meaning.

Summary:

(back to table)       As far as physics is concerned, there is nothing like time nor direction of time. The feeling of the flow of time is a psychological experience. The relativistic bloc-universe is immutable and eternal. It is made of a huge collection of present moments. These present moments are tied to one another by what is called the laws of physics. What is due already exists, what has been still exists. Quantum physics - to explain a group of unexplained interference or non-locality phenomena, for example - asks for the existence of other present moments; all that could have been possible however exist, all that could eventually happen also exist in a computable proportion. These worlds, that together make up the world, are not juxtaposed and independents, they are tied by quantum physics laws in one unique multiple universe that was given the name of the Multiverse. The conscious, subjective idea of movement is tied to a quantum superposition of - logically - successive present moments. The free and conscious choice originates from a superposition of parallel present moments. The flow of time doesn't meet any physical reality, there is no such thing as an end of time nor death. Life is now for the eternity.

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