The Inside/Outside Problem

Abstract: Physicists have contributed hugely to modern neuroscience and artificial intelligence, but there is—or should be—a reverse intellectual direction, too. Many of the thorniest puzzles in fundamental physics hinge on the nature of the observer, on which neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, A.I. researchers, and philosophers of mind are the authorities. In my 2023 popular-level book, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, I framed these puzzles as instances of what I call the inside/outside problem: a tension between the third-person description of the world that physical science traditionally seeks and the first-person perspective of an embedded observer. Examples include the quantum measurement problem, the hard problem of consciousness, the measure problem in cosmology, and the nature of time. In exploring these questions, I'll make meta-comments about how journalists, lacking strong scholarly commitments, can find common ground among opposing scientific positions and disciplines that often don’t talk to one another.