From: SMTP%"PSYCHE-D@LISTSERV.UH.EDU" 25-AUG-1997 05:51:01.55 To: STAPP CC: Subj: Re: QM and Consciousness Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 04:53:20 -0700 From: STAPP@THEORM.lbl.gov Subject: Re: QM and Consciousness Sender: "PSYCHE Discussion Forum (Theoretical emphasis)" To: PSYCHE-D@LISTSERV.UH.EDU Reply-to: "PSYCHE Discussion Forum (Theoretical emphasis)" Message-id: <970824045320.2e606c04@theorm.lbl.gov> Approved-By: metacom@MINDSPRING.COM William Robinson has asked some detailed and pertinent questions that probe essential features of the quantum mind-matter synthesis I proposed. They demand detailed answers, which I shall give here. These answers rest on technical properties of quantum theory. But I believed I can describe the points in a way will be clear to non-physicist. There have been many attempt by physicists to `get mind back out of physics': i.e., to reverse the contamination of physics brought in by Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli and company in 1927. I believe those decontamination efforts have failed, even though I myself have worked hard to achieve it. So I am taking now the other tack, and trying to build a coherent ontology around the orthodox ideas. In particular, I am accepting as basic the idea of real events that collapse the wave function (or ARE collapses of the wave function). I assume that these events are ubiquitous in nature. Certain events of particular interest to human beings are events associated with human body/brains and our conscious experiences. A key point is that the evolution of the state of the universe between the collapse events is mathematically very different from the evolution of this state associated with the collapses: the former are "local" and "unitary", whereas the latter are neither. The "unitarity" property means several things. One the one hand, it means that the evolution is in some sense no change at all: the internal or intrinsic structure of the state is unaltered. One can imagine that only the way the state is being describe is changed. It also means that the transformation operator that changes the state at an earlier time to the state at a later time does not depend on that initial (or final) state: there is in this sense NO SELF-REFERENCE! According to the model I am proposing there is, in accordance with the orthodox ideas, no experiential reality associated with the unitary part of the evolution: there is no essential change and no self reference, and hence, reasonably enough, no experience. Experiences are associated only with the nonunitary parts of the evolution, where there is essential change, and the dynamics involves self reference. In the classical limit only the unitary evolution survives. So from a quantum mechanical point of view it is absurd to look for mind in classical physics, for that is an approximation from which the experience-producing part of the dynamical process has been removed. Let me apply this understanding to Robinson's questions Robinson writes (in regard to my response of 8/19/97): ----- The first part of this response suggests that (1) neural activity patterns are the (proximate) causes of conscious experiences. This claim would have the consequence that *if* those same patterns could be brought about without the supra-physical processes, conscious experiences would occur. But (this first view continues) in fact the neural activity patterns that (proximately) cause conscious experiences *cannot* themselves be brought about without being preceded by supra-physical processes. A natural question for this view (1) is, Just why can the requisite neural activity patterns not occur without being preceded by the supra-physical processes? ----- The answer is that each actual conscious experience is created, according to this model, by the nonunitary process of actualizing the state whose actualization is that experience: it is the actualization of the state that is the experience, not the continuing (via unitary evolution) existence of that state. The patterns of neural activity that are present before the nonunitary process sets in are causes of what will transpire because they are---in accord with Heisenberg's idea that the state represents a "potentia" for the upcoming event---the raw material for the nonunitary process. This raw material consists of a superposition of different (unitarily evolving) states that correspond to different mutually exclusive possible experiences, in the sense that the actualizing of one of the states by the supra-physical nonunitary process would create the corresponding experience. Robinson then writes: ----- The second part of Henry Stapp's response suggests instead that (2) the supra-physical processes *themselves* are the proximate causes of conscious experiences. (They "generate" them.) The neural activity patterns are merely after-the-fact mechanisms for carrying out appropriate actions, and recording the right memory traces. One natural question here is: Which of the two views is the better interpretation of the response? -- Of course, the answer could be "They're both misinterpretations." _____ As I have explained, the pre-existing (superposed) patterns are causes of the eventual experience in that they are the physical foundation of the supra-physical nonunitary process that creates that experience by actualizing the state whose actualization is that experience. Notice that the mathematical entities that we deal with in physics are supposed to represent, ideally, real things that enjoy the requisite mathematical properties. The mathematical entities in quantum theory, the states, should not be conflated with the real things that they represent. But what is the nature of these real things? According to my proposal, the real things that are represented by the state vectors in quantum theory are not experiences themselves, but things whose actualizations are experiences. It is quite common in physics to introduce things whose changes are more real than the things themselves. Energy in nonrelativistic physics is one example. The gradient of phase is significant in quantum mechanics but the phase is not: the gradient of the vector potential can be significant, but the value itself is not. Here it is the actualization of the state that IS the experience: the state itself is mere "potentia" for experience. [The term "experience" must be interpreted broadly here: for certain events in body/brains of human beings it means human conscious experience. But events in other physical systems will have their own kinds of "experiences", which can be very different from human experience.] Since the reality represented by the mathematical desciption is essentially experiential we do not have the awkward mind-matter duality that arises from classical mechanics. But the mathematical structure secures the connection to spacetime and to classical physics in appropriate limits. Robinson continues: ----- Or, the answer could be that they are both right, and not incompatible, as they appear. But what follows suggests that they are not really compatible -- or, at least, explains why they appear incompatible. View (2) seems to lead naturally to some questions that view (1) does not seem to raise at all. Namely: (A) Can a superposition cause a conscious experience? It seems not. Why? Because it might get "resolved" into one or another of *different*, and therefore incompatible, states. Since Stapp emphasizes "slightly" different, let's not think of red or blue; let us think of one shade of red or a close but different shade of red. Still, I couldn't be experiencing *both* in the same part of my visual field at the same time. But (if I follow the response) once the resolution has taken place, it might be either of two memory traces that occurs, and would be correct. It would seem that whatever generates a conscious experience has to be something that occurs either after a superposition has been resolved (as in view (1)) or *during* a resolution of a superposition -- a resolution that is destined to have one result rather than another. ---- I think what I have said clears up this confusion. ----- Robinson continues: ----- And this last alternative raises a further question, ----- But that is not the alternative that I use. Robinson continues: _____ (B) What is the time course of a "resolution"? and how does it fit with the time course of conscious experiences? One might have a pain that lasts with only very minor change for, let us say, three seconds. Or one might have an afterimage that lasts almost unchanged for a comparable period. Neural activation pattern theorists have an easy account of the causes here; i.e., they can say that the same pattern of neural activity continues over a stretch of several seconds (or, of course, longer in some cases and shorter in others). (That is, one instance of a pattern takes some time, and then it can be repeated as many times as necessary to account for the duration of experience of the kind that that pattern causese.) Is it possible to assign a finite time for a resolution of a superposition to occur? If such a time is in the tens of ms range, is it possible to have a series of such resolutions? Is it physically plausible that such a series could occur in a brain? ----- In a quantum theory with real collapses there are two times: physical time and collapse-process time. The collapse events are instantaneous in physical time, and there is supposed to be a rapid succession of these in physical time. One can imagine the evolution as occurring in a complex-time space, where the real axis represents physical time and the imaginary axis represents collapse-process time. The nth state of the universe lies at collapse-process time= Im t= n. Thus the evolution proceeds along the line Im t = n, then moves at fixed Re t up to Im t = n+1, etc. I have given an extended description of the situation in physical time in my book, in Ch 6, which can be accessed through my Home Page, under "Quantum Theory of the Mind-Brain Interface". All of that work carries over to the elaboration being descibed here. Quantum physicist will understand the origin of the two times by considering the representation of collapses in the Heisenberg picture. I can explain it in another posting if there is interest. Henry P. Stapp