I recently came across an article in Vanity Fair about the Apple TV mini-series ‘Dark Matter’, based on Blake Crouch’s bestselling novel. The article, titled ‘The Real Science Behind Dark Matter Will Melt Your Gray Matter’, caught my attention.

The writer of ‘Dark Matter’ says some interesting things, like: “The physics that’s coming out now does support, more and more, that reality is a creation of our mind. Reality does not exist independently from observation, from awareness. Biocentric beings create reality”, Crouch says. “A lot of this stuff was far less en vogue when I was writing the book (in 2016, ed.). It’s bananas. It’s so mind-melting when you really think about it.”

He even refers to Robert Lanza, the proponent of the biocentric universe theory that suggests consciousness manifests reality by reducing infinite possibilities down to one. “It’s a little out there and some of it is hard to swallow, but I think a lot of it has the ring of truth to it”, Crouch states.

The article also mentions two recent pieces in Scientific American that explore consciousness: ‘Understanding Consciousness Is Key to Unlocking Secrets of the Universe’ and ‘Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?’ Reading all this, I thought, ‘Did I launch Free-Consciousness too late? Has everyone already embraced this mental-universe concept?’

It turns out that’s not quite the case.

First, I read ‘Dark Matter’, which is indeed an engaging sci-fi thriller. However, the novel’s scientific foundation isn’t biocentrism but rather the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. According to MWI, the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and there’s no wavefunction collapse. Instead, all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are realized in alternative universes.

This interpretation is popular with materialist physicists, like Sean Carroll, because it gives no special role to observers or experiences. It is a quintessentially mechanical theory, which is perfectly compatible with materialism.

In his book ‘Something Deeply Hidden’, Carroll writes: ‘No, we don’t need to invoke any special role for consciousness in order to address the quantum measurement problem. We’ve seen several counterexamples. Many worlds is an explicit example, accounting for the apparent collapse of the wave function using the purely mechanistic process of decoherence and branching.’

As for the Scientific American articles, the first one discusses how consciousness research is increasingly interdisciplinary, involving physics, neuroscience, AI, and philosophy. By examining neural networks and leading theories such as Karl Friston’s predictive coding and Giulio Tononi’s integrated information theory, the book by George Musser that is discussed argues that consciousness might emerge from complex systems of interconnected processes, which is again a materialist view.

The second article describes a recent conference where panpsychism was discussed with several prominent scientists. Panpsychism posits that all material particles have some degree of consciousness. According to surveys in the article, over half of academic philosophers still endorse materialism, viewing consciousness as an emergent phenomenon from matter. About one-third reject materialism in favor of alternatives like panpsychism.

Biocentrism receives minimal attention here, represented only by conference speaker Donald Hoffman who calls it conscious realism, and his perspective is scarcely covered. By contrast, materialists like Sean Carroll and Anil Seth are given significant space.

On a positive note, many philosophers at the meeting agree that materialism or physicalism falters when it comes to consciousness. “If you know every last detail about my brain processes, you still wouldn’t know what it’s like to be me”, said Hedda Hassel Mørch, a philosopher at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. “There is a clear explanatory gap between the physical and the mental.”

But that is still a long way from accepting biocentrism or the mental universe model as the standard scientific model in which we look at the world. For Free-Consciousness, a platform promoting these ideas, this means there’s still plenty of work ahead. For creators of popular entertainment like Blake Crouch, who seems to have embraced aspects of biocentrism, the challenge lies in weaving this complex theory into compelling content, making its ideas accessible to a broad audience.