Active Information and the Nature of Consciousness: Bohm's Theory in the Context of Contemporary Science

David Bohm's 1990 article proposes a non-Cartesian theory of mind and matter grounded in physics, introducing concepts like active information and the implicate order. This analysis places Bohm's work in the historical mind-body problem context, compares it with modern theories such as Orchestrated Objective Reduction, the holographic brain model, Integrated Information Theory, and the Global Workspace model, and examines its relationship with Relational Quantum Mechanics, Loop Quantum Gravity, and Qbism. The article does not offer a complete theory of consciousness but anticipates information-ontological trends of the twenty-first century, serving as a philosophical-physical metatheory whose relevance has grown since publication.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This study offers a comprehensive analysis of David Bohm’s article “A New Theory of the Relationship of Mind and Matter” (Philosophical Psychology, 1990) — one of the most original attempts of the twentieth century to overcome Cartesian dualism on a physical foundation. The paper proceeds in sequence through the historical context of the mind–body problem, the physical basis of the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, the central concept of active information, and the implicate order. Bohm’s framework is then compared with several major contemporary approaches: Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Hameroff & Penrose, 2014), the holographic brain model (Pribram, 1991), Integrated Information Theory (Tononi, 2004), and the Global Workspace model (Baars, 1988; Dehaene, 2014). A dedicated section examines the relationship between Bohm’s ideas and Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (Rovelli, 1996), as well as Loop Quantum Gravity (Rovelli, 2004; Rovelli & Smolin, 1995), and Qbism, developed by Christopher Fuchs, Rüdiger Schack, and Carlton Caves (Fuchs, 2002; Fuchs et al., 2014). The concluding section evaluates the compatibility of Bohm’s ideas with quantum field theory and modern quantum information science. The principal conclusion is that Bohm’s 1990 article does not constitute a complete theory of consciousness, yet it anticipates with remarkable prescience the information-ontological tendencies of the twenty-first century and may best be understood as a philosophical-physical metatheory whose relevance has only grown since its publication.