Mathematical Consciousness Science

Mathematical Consciousness Science (MCS) is an interdisciplinary field in the intersection between the scientific study of consciousness and applied mathematics. Many mathematicians have taken an interest in consciousness over the centuries including René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell and Alan Turing, to name a few, whilst others have developed areas of mathematics that are finding new applications in MCS including Thomas Bayes, Ludwig Boltzmann, Andrey Markov and Claude Shannon.

The term Mathematical Consciousness Science began to be used and recognized from around 2018 onward following a rapid increase in the development of new mathematical and/or computational models and formal theories of consciousness that began from around 2005. Many researchers in the MCS community anticipate that mathematical approaches are needed to tackle challenges such as the Hard problem of consciousness, which is the problem of explaining why and how we have phenomenal experience, and how consciousness relates to the physical domain, particularly regarding the brain and artificial systems and also, more fundamentally, regarding questions involving Quantum Mechanics. Such challenges are at the heart of MCS but any research concerning consciousness, some aspect of consciousness or some issue involving consciousness, where mathematically or computationally formulated models or theories play a central role, fall within the field’s scope.