On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, Pat Hayes wrote:

> Hi Henry
> 
> Thanks for your long reply.  Im about to travel for a while so I'll send a
> quick response. Your reply seems to me to betray a fundamentally dualist
> perspective which Im just unable to accept, and to be based on premises
> which I find quite implausible.

Dear Pat,

I will not expect a reply for a while at least. 

But  I  thank you for your very SUPPORTIVE letter. I say
*supportive* because your letter consists mainly of vigorous
arguments in support of the very positions that I enunciated as 
the basis of my approach. Our differences must be much less than you
think. For you repeatedly  seem to disregard what I actually say,
and then either argue forcefully FOR the very position I took, while
seeming to think you are opposing my view, or argue for something not
opposed to what I say. Let me go over your letter, and explain this
apparent convergence.

>[Pat]
> More generally, however, it seems clear that your focus is making sense of
> quantum theory, while mine is making sense of consciousness. No doubt our
> perspectives each make the other's chief concerns seem remote and the
> other's significant details seem unimportant. Certainly, your account of
> 'knowings'  seem to me to not even make first base as a *beginning* of an
> account of consciousness or mental life. They dont even make plausible
> science fiction, let alone science. I'll try to explain why below.
> 

My objective is to make sense of consciousness, but within the context
of contemporary scientific knowledge.

>>[HPS, earlier]
> >Your comments all revolve around the basic difficulty in trying to
> >ontologicalize orthodox quantum theory, staying within science: human
> >experiences surely are not the only experiential-type things in the
> >universe, yet human science is based on these alone.
> 
> This sentence seems to already make several basic mistakes. First, my
> concern is nothing to do with ontologizing orthodox quantum theory, but is
> rather concerned with what it means to know, or to be a 'knowing'. 

Your CONCERN is not about QT, but your comments do revolve about the issue
of how our conscious knowings fit into nature, as nature is understood
with science. That is the core problem in the ontologicalization of QT. 

> Second,
> I dont find it at all implausible that human or human-type knowings might
> be the only such in the universe (I include pig-type and dog-type and
> machine-type, if we ever manage to create them, and maybe even
> paramecium-type for the present discussion; but not vacuum-type or just
> plain vaguely-more-general-type.) 

I said ``*human* experiences surely are not the only 
experiential-type things in the universe'': human experiences do not
include pig, dog, or machine experiences. Indeed, I argued FOR the
existence of pig-type, and dog-type knowings. So you are
AGREEING with what I said.

> And I dont accept that human science is
> based on human knowings alone, in any nontrivial sense. 

Human science is based on what human beings know or might know: we observe
pig behaviour, and dog behavior, and machine behaviour, but our
human scientific enterprise resides in the thoughts and ideas of human
beings. 

> It certainly isnt
> *about* human knowings alone, in any case, no matter what Bohr said about
> physics.
> 
 
I said "based upon", not "about". To speak about "aboutness" requires 
making some distinctions between possible meanings. I have no
disagreement with what you *mean* by your statement, nor would Bohr.
Bohr was very careful with his words: I doubt that he ever said that
science was ``about'' our knowledge. He stressed that in science our
descriptions of what we do and learn from the experiments we perform are
expressed by using the classical concepts. So in that sense science
is about the behaviour of those classically describable contents of our
experience. 

> >The rest of
> >nature could, as far as the empirical evidence is concerned, be devoid of
> >quantum collapses and the associated experiences: we have at the moment
> >no (accepted) empirical evidence  that would require any other
> >collapses or experiences in nature.
> 
> Quite. Maybe there arent any, then. What is the problem with that?
> 

You just argued FOR the existence of dog-experiences: WE AGREE, I think,
that it would be unreasonably anthropocentric to assume that the only
experiential-type happenings in the universe are human experiences;
dog knowings ought not be excluded. Similarly, it would be overly
anthropomorphic to assume, at the ontological level, that human beings
are the sole systems that induce collapse. That was a key point
in my argument, and you will be arguing, presently, 
IN FAVOR of this proposition that human beings should play no
special ontological role: we AGREE on that.


> >
> >>
> >> My main problem is that I dont know what a 'knowing' is supposed to be.
> .....
> >> But all of these kinds of examples clearly require there to be a knower who
> >> is expereincing these knowings. If these are the examples I am to use to
> >> understand the concept, then the idea of a pure knowing, bodiless and
> >> impersonal, seems simply incoherent.
> >>
> >
> >What my paper is about is precisely the question of the connection between
> >experiential-type things and their bodily hosts.
> 
> Im afraid this sentence already seems to make a philosophical mistake, by
> referring to experiential-type THINGS. People (etc.) have experiences. 

Yes, I slipped up: I usually say ``events'' or ``happenings'' or
''processes'' or ``occurrences'', not ``things'': the word ``things''
often does cover items such as these, but I try to avoid using the word
``thing'' in that broader sense, for fear someone might misinterpret it 
narrowly, as you have done.

> It
> doesn't follow that experiences *exist* in any more than a metaphysical
> sense. This is the dualism I mentioned. 

I agree that it is better to say that experiences ``occur''.
The idea the that experiences are substantive things is exactly opposed to 
my position. Nor is my position basically ontologically dualistic, as I
shall explain later.

> Seems to be that I *am* a body
> which has some experiences, not a experiential-type thing that usaes a body
> as a 'host'. (Oddly Christian terminology, by the way!)
> 

What to you ``seems to be'' could be wrong and misleading: you cannot
assume that what ``seems to be'' to you is necessarily what actually is.

A more secure assumption would be that the ``seemings'' occur;
and that the content of these ``seemings'' includes, in its fringe,
the impression that there is a bodily person, namely ``Pat Hayes'', that
``has'' these experiences. These experiential ``seemings'' are the
``knowings'' that I am talking about. And we agree that they are
associated in some way with some appearance that goes by the name ``Pat
Hayes''. The question is: What is the nature of these two appearances, 
the ``seemings''and their apparent bodily homes, and how are these
``seemings'' related to ``what seems to be''.


> >In quantum theory the
> >human knowings are certainly connected to human bodies. I take a human
> >being to consist of both his bodily and experiential aspects, and am
> >trying to determine on the basis of the available evidence both the nature
> >of these two aspects, and the nature of their relationship.
> 
> Well, here's a thought for you. A central part of an experience is that it
> has content: it is about something. (Not all would agree, but I find the
> idea of a contentless experience incoherent, in spite of the Tao. Even the
> professional Eastern investigators tell me that while in a trance they have
> a sense of time passing, for example: its not like anaethesia. That might
> not be much, but it is content.) To be about something, the relevant
> information must be somehow represented. The representation must be
> physically encoded in a way that allows it to be causally linked to the
> external world. Any account of the relationship of your two 'aspects' which
> doesnt at least get to this level of detail doesnt make first base.
> 

That is  MY position. I distinguish the ``central part of an
experience'' from a fringe part that includes an impression of the 
existence of the bodily home of the experience. And I have said 
in more detail [cf Secs 5.4 & 6.3 of my book] essentially what you said
here about representations.

> >In the light
> >of the failure, at the basic level, of classical ideas about the nature
> >of the physical world one cannot just take it for granted that the bodily
> >aspect are basically in accord with ideas of classical mechanics,
> 
> This depends on scale. QM predicts that when observed at a 'human' scale,
> the universe will behave classically (to a reasonable approximation.)
> 

Scale is not enough: there are meter-sized (and even kilometer-sized)
systems that HUGELY fail to behave in accordance with  classical ideas,
but whose behaviour is described very accurately by QT. There is no
evidence that functioning brains behave in accord with the classical
concepts, as contrasted to quantum concepts: physicists have found many 
reasons, based on the more generally applicable principles of QT, why the 
classical principle could or should fail to work in living functioning brains.

> Nobody feels that, say, oncology is fundamentally flawed because it uses
> classical physical models. If classical physics is good enough for
> medicine, why might it not be good enough for psychology?

Cells, like other physical systems, are certainly much better
understood in ordinary physical terms than our thoughts are.
We understand the cell in terms of the idea that it IS a big collection
of tiny particle that push and pull each other about: but we do not
understand how, e.g., an experience of greeness IS a collection of such
particles, or even is a happening composed of the activities of such 
classically conceived particles.

> >and that
> >our experiences are thus either just some epiphenomenal ``nonphysical kind
> >of stuff'', or nothing but matter itself as matter was classically conceived,
> >or some aspect of nature that can be adequately conceived within the
> >framework of an essentially classical-type conception of the nature
> >of the physical world.
> >
> >This question is certainly a wide open question in science.
> 
> Its not 'wide open'. There are libraries full of detailed work on it. You
> need to find out more about the cognitive sciences before claiming that
> their subject matter is a 'wide open' question.
> 
 
The subject matter of cognitive science is not experiences, per se.
Certainly, studies of computers, as contrasted to living
functioning brains, have not come to grips with consciousness. 
In the absence of an empirically supported theory of the connection
between animal brains and consciousness , or a connection via quantum
theory, there is no rational way of connecting the structures studied in
cognitive science, as contrasted to neuro-psychological studies, to the 
kind of experiential-type happenings that we human beings have. Behaviour 
resembling consciously directed behaviour is not enough to infer the 
actual presence of consciousness. 

> >I take human knowings to be the foundation of human science. This seems to
> >me the only reasonable thing to do in the face of the challenge to the
> >basic correctness of the ideas of classical mechanics that quantum theory has
> >posed, and the fact that the orthodox scientific solution to the puzzles
> >of quantum phenomena was to retreat to this more secure knowledge-based
> >position.
> >
> 
> It seems quite ridiculous that human knowing should be of any particular
> significance in the overall picture of the universe, since human beings are
> such a very small part of the universe (in just about every sense of
> 'small' one can imagine) and such a very special and particular
> construction within it, and probably in cosmological terms a very temporary
> one. 

That is exactly MY point: a reasonable ONTOLOGY cannot place human beings 
or their knowing on a special pedestal.

But the point I was making in the passage quoted above is that, although
the ONTOLOGY must not single out human beings, the human endeavour
known as ``HUMAN SCIENCE'', being based on human knowledge, does
give special role to human knowings. That is the basis of the Copenhagen
interpretation.

You seem to be paying no attention to my actual words, and to the
key distinction between ontology and human science that lies 
at the core of what I am saying: what exists exceeds what we human
beings know.

> As a physicist, does it really strike you as plausible that the entire
> physical universe, from subatomic particles to galaxy-clusters - a size
> range of what, 35? orders of magnitude - should be somehow reducible to the
> experiences of minute creatures with a miniscule lifespan inhabiting a thin
> wet film on the surface of a minor rocky planetoid orbiting an
> insignificant middle-sequence star at an arm of one galaxy among billions?
> The very idea seems to me to be utterly absurd. Human beings are obviously
> totally unimportant to the workings of the universe, and any account which
> suggests otherwise is clearly making a gross error - one very familiar in
> human thinking, incidentally, from the earliest times. Human experiences
> don't matter a damn to anything except humans. We are not at the center of
> the universe, and it is not made for our benefit. We and our experiencings
> are a tiny accident, and the universe would have gone on its way virtually
> unchanged if we, or any other living thing, had never evolved.
> 

You have missed the MAIN POINT of what I have been saying.
I am denying that  human beings play a special ontological role.
We AGREE!

> >> Im prepared to accept that pigs and dogs, and even maybe - for the sake of
> >> this argument - paramecia, might be said to have such knowings. But in all
> >> these cases there is a knower somewhere. Which implies that until there was
> >> at least life of some kind, 'knowings' like this simply couldnt have
> >> existed.
> >>
> >
> >You reject, then, the idea that machines could be conscious?
> 
> No, because (to follow Descartes), pigs, dogs and humans *are* machines in
> the required sense, ie physical devices working according to physical laws.
> The problem is how to account for the working of parts of the universe
> where no such mechanism can possibly exist (because, typically, it is too
> damned hot.)
> 

I was referring to your reference to LIFE: by ``machine'' I meant
NON-BIOLOGICAL MACHINE. 


> >I certainly tried to make it clear that in order to encompass other kinds
> >of physical hosts our human knowings had to be regarded as a very special
> >case of a general class of events.
> 
> Yes, but my central complaint was that you gave us no clue about what this
> more general class was supposed to be. If I start talking about 'foodles',
> and you ask what they are, and I say that a cat is a foodle, for example,
> but only a very particular special example which might be quite
> unrepresentative of the whole, then you are left still unable to follow me.
> Thats how I feel about your 'knowings'.

You have AGREED with what I actually said, namely that our HUMAN knowings have
to be regarded as a very special case of a general class of ontological
elements. That more general class ought to encompass DOG knowings and PIG
knowings, among others. That is what I said here, and you agree!
 
> 
> ......
> >> But now you shuffled the cards. All the examples we have been given refer
> >> to human or human-like experience embodied in physical bodies. How do we
> >> generalise this intuition to these 'more general' events? What category is
> >> this new, more general, concept, of which we have no examples other than
> >> the proper subset with which we are all familiar?  Can you give us just a
> >> sketch of what a "knowing" might have been at the time when, say, the
> >> universe's temperature was so high that atoms had not yet formed? Or inside
> >> a main-sequence star? Or in deep space where the 'boiling vacuum' is busily
> >> creating high-mass particle-antiparticle pairs and then reanihhilating them
> >> so quickly that the violation of mass conservation doesnt escape the
> >> Heisenberg limit?
> >>
> >
> >The theory of the early universe is not in very good shape: I think
> >all experts agree that a lot of tinkering is still needed.
> 
> But the objection is a massive, central, one: its not a matter of
> tinkering. There is no evidence whatever for any kind of 'experience'
> existing without some complex physical substrate to be the experiencer.
> There is no evidence whatever, and plenty of evidence against, disembodied
> experience. 

There is no real evidence even for dog-knowings. We do not have a secure
enough theory of human knowing to extrapolate even to dogs: we are just
going on what seems reasonable to scientifically oriented thinkers.

All the experiences that I am talking about are associated with physical
systems, though not necessarily solid bodies. I do not know of any evidence
against the possibility of the existence in association with liquid our 
gaseous physical systems of something that lies in some broad ontological 
class the contains also human experiences. 

> So to talk of 'tinkering' to get the early universe - when,
> surely everyone will agree, there werent any things like brains or
> computers, or even microtubules, around to contain 'experiencings' - is
> just the wildest flight of fancy.

We shall have to wait and see whether collapses of the wave function
are needed to account for the development of the early universe. But
I have said that I doubt that there is a sharp boundary between life and 
nonlife. So one should expect collapses even without life. 

But IF there are collapses in the infant universe, and IF human and animal
knowings play an essential role in determining which collapses can occur
in connection with human and animal bodies, then there ought to be some
analog of human and animal knowings also for the early collapses:
there ought to be something that plays a similar causal role in
these early universe cases. How much  experiential similarity they have
to human knowings is very conjectural: I have stressed that the character
of our experiences must be expected to be highly dependent on the
structure of our brains: different kinds of brains should have different
kinds of experience, and I have stressed that systems with no brains
should therefore have nothing that is experientially very similar to a
human experience.

It is by virtue of the *causal role* that they play that these events
are analogous to human knowings. Yet if these events are causally similar
it is reasonable to ask whether there is any *imaginable* way in which
the primitive events ``might conceivably'' have some rudimentary or
elemental proto-experiential aspect that could eventually develop,
in conjunction with the development of the physical systems with which 
they are associated, into human-like experiences.
 
> 
> >The question
> >of what role the quantum collapses played then has not really been put in.
> >It is possible that the universe evolved for billions of years with no
> >collapses until the first primitive life form occurred, and then there was
> >a stupendous collapse.
> 
> There is no clear distinction betwen living and nonliving that could
> possibly account for such a Grand Collapse. 

That, again, is MY position.

> Did it happen when the first
> RNA-like molecule appeared, or maybe the first amino acid? Or was a cell
> wall necessary? Could a virus-like thing have sparked the first great
> cosmic Decision?
> (Can't you see how ridiculous this idea is??)
 
Yes indeed! That is why I reject it.

> >Perhaps the ``anthropic principle'' could be
> >explained by some such scenario. But I think we should allow, at this
> >point in the development of an adequate understanding of the early
> >universe, also the possibility that there were collapses at earier times,
> >prior to the emergence of life.
> >
> >Perhaps there would be no ``experiential-type'' event associated with
> >such a collapse. But there is the problem that there exists today no
> >understanding of what it is that chooses the particular collapse event
> >that actually occurs, insofar as one stays within the confines of the
> >``physical'' aspect of nature specified by the (Hilbert-space) state
> >vector: that (Hilbert-space) aspect seems naturally suited to give only
> >statistical properties. Some other aspect of nature seems to be needed
> >to fix what actually happens: i.e., to fix which one of the various
> >possible collapses actually occurs.  So it seems that a purely physical
> >description of nature (i.e., Hilbert-space description) is not complete:
> >some other aspect seems to be needed.
> 
> I see that this might be a problem for physics, but it seems to have
> nothing to do with psychology or consciousness. And you need to be very,
> very careful if you are going to claim that consciousness or knowing or any
> other 'free' thing can *choose* how the wave-function collapses. 

I do not claim any ``freedom'' for consciousness: the choice or selection
is not determined by the Hilbert-space description, because that is a
representation merely of some statistical properties of nature. The
failure of the actual choice to be described by a representation that
describes only statistical properties does not entail any fundamental
``freedom''. [See my Appendix D]

> This seems
> to immediately lead to predictions that have been quite thoroughly refuted
> within physics. 

I am careful to maintain fully the validity of the statistical predictions
of quantum theory, with no biasing or other deviations in connection
with consciousness.

> If a kind of Heisenberg's Demon can choose how to collapse
> wave-functions, then it would have to be diabolically clever to disguise
> its decisions well enough that they obey random statistics as well as
> actual physical observations do.

I retain the full validity of the predictions of QT, without any
clever demons. [See my section 11: Origin of the statistical rules]

> 
> >This problem of the early universe is at least as hard as the mind-matter
> >problem because of the sparsity of data. We have human brains in
> >abundance, close at hand, and can do all sorts of experiments on them.
> >So I do not think it makes much sense to say that we have to produce a
> >detailed theory of the early universe as a part of a proposed approach
> >to the mind-matter problem at the human level: things could go in many
> >diiferent ways in the extrapolation to the early universe.
> 
> But they can't go in a way that allows brains into it, for sure.
> 

True.

> >But in answer to your challenge  to what a ``knowing'' during the early
> >stages of the universe ``might have been'' I refer you to section 14,
> >``What is Consciousness?''. The purpose of that section was to provide an
> >answer to your question. If the collapses are basically to states defined
> >by vibrations in certain degrees of freedom of the universe, then I can at
> >least dimly imagine that the raw basic experience could be some basic
> >prototype ``sound'' of those vibrations.
> 
> Well, all I can say is, you have a better imagination than mine. This seems
> to me to be complete nonsense. 

If it does not grab you disregard it. It is merely ``just a sketch of
what a possible ``knowing'' *might have been like* at that time'': 
That is what you asked for.
It is a conceivable-to-me  kind of  primitive proto-experiential
forerunner of our experiences, which could conceivably evolve into
the kind of experience we know.

It would have empirical ramifications, because my basic premise is the
the only possible collapses are those that express the restriction
imposed by a ``knowing'', BROADLY DEFINED so as to include
proto-experiences. Human experiences should be just a special complex 
kind  of element in some class of elements that ought to have also simple
primitive elements.

> I don't think that all of David Chalmer's
> arguments for the 'hard problem' being all that hard are convincing, but he
> does have a point: one does need to be able to at least find a connection
> principle remotely plausible. I cant imagine what principles could connect
> experience to a "vibration in a physical degree of freedom". Just as a
> start, for example, what kind of psychological predictions would that make?
> What properties of awareness *in brains* would follow from this hypothesis?

What it suggests is that every human experience is the`` sound'' of a
complex chord of vibrations in certain degrees of freedom associated with
a human brain. This would have empirical ramifications in neuro-psych.
In mapping out the mind-brain connection, the relevant brain properties
would be chords of vibrations of degrees of freedom of the brain. This 
is a very special sort of NCC. 

To bring this idea into cognitive science, 
I suppose one could design computer models in which certain chords of
vibrations in certain elements are the central units of control in the 
processing. To make the system analogous to a quantum system there would
be massive parallel processing that would generate alternative possible
chords. When a chord reaches a ``steady state'' there would be a random
choice, with weights controlled by prior performance success, that would
either kill it off or permit it to activate a corresponding templated
activity in the nonparallel processing part of the processor, and send a
message to all parallel processing units that the new boundary condition
is in place: the nonparallel processor is already committed to the
execution of a certain template for action.  The quantum collapse
would automatically reset the boundary conditions globally, and also
instantaneously, without any need to send signals. The elements
entering into the chord could be located in different parts of the brain
without prior coordination of delicate timings: the coordination in
timings could be fixed by the collapse, with quantum tunnelings and
quantum diffusion serving to feed states that do not have the correct
timings---and which, therefore, in a classical model would hang
indefinitely in limbo, because the component generated in different 
regions do not properly mesh---into nearby states that do
have the correct timings. These automatic features of a quantum brain
could give it such a huge performance superiority over a classical brain.
Thus I would expect  natural selection to exploit it.

A key point in the quantum processing that I am referring to 
is that there is no need to maintain long-range coherence:
that would seem to be very hard to do in a warm, wet brain. 

{To see the point, here, in more detail, suppose the allowed experience
involves a specific behaviour in each of ten elements scattered over the brain.
and that each of the corresponding ten regions in the space of appropriate
variables is bordered by nine other region that do not fit onto the allowed 
template, but which is equally likely to get populated, due to the effects
of various (e.g., thermal) uncertainties. Classically there is only
one chance in 10^10 that the system will not hang up. But a rapid quantum
tunneling could rapidly fill up the `hole' (corresponding to the missing
``good state'') that would be present in the brain state that is LEFT OVER 
after the good state is actualized (and hence removed from what is LEFT OVER).
Then that newly filled (by the quantum tunneling) good state could be 
actualized, etc. Thus all of the 10^10 regions, only one of which is a 
good state (i.e., one that can be actualized by an experience) could be 
rapidly converted to actualized good states, whereas in the corresponding
classical model only one of these 10^10 states would lead to an experience, 
and the associated integrated action, due to the mismatched timings of all
but the good state.}

Quantum diffusion can have a similar effect. [See Sec. 12: The Efficacy
of Knowings]

> 
> >Of course, the ``sounds'' that we  experience are surely tremendously
> >enriched by the input elicited from our memories, and it is perhaps
> >impossible for us to have a clear idea of the raw pure experience of
> >the sound of a vibration outside of our human situation.
> 
> My problem is that I don't even accept that his idea makes sense. You just
> havnt given us enough to even begin to make judgements about what you are
> saying. To discuss difficulties of observation is premature. (The reason
> you can't see foodles might be that they are often a long way away, as far
> as we know.)
> 
>

OK. If the suggestion does'nt grab you ignore it: it is not important that
we have any intuitive idea of what the primordial proto-experiences are
like. By the time the experiencing system has evolved to something as
complex as a human being there is no compelling reason why the primordial
experiential elements should still be accessible to our thoughts.
 
> >Still, if one wants to hold onto the idea that there are collapses outside
> >animals, and indeed in the infant universe, and that SOME sort of
> >generalization of human experience should be associated with such
> >collapses, then I think that this idea that `primordial experience is like
> >the experience of the sounds of the vibrations that are being actualized'
> >is an intuitively accessible notion.
> 
> Not to me, Im afraid. You just made a giant imaginative leap, from
> non-human to disembodied.
> 
  
OK, forget it. I can fathom the idea of elemental proto-experiences that
are simpler than human experiences, but that play a similar causal
role in the determination of what collapses can occur.

> .........
> >
> >But IF human thoughts are somehow connected with the choice or selection
> >of WHICH (from among the various possible) collapses are made in human
> >brains---and it is this connection what would give our thoughts some
> >nonepiphenomenal role of the physical world---
> 
> See earlier comment. This has immediate empirical consequences which are
> obviously wrong, and which indeed violate the predictions of QM itself.
> 
 
In my model experiences and possible experiences play the role of fixing
the circumstances under which a collapse can occur, and the possiblities
for what the collapses might be. But the probabilities for the various
possible outcomes of that collapse are strictly in accord with the quantum
rules. 

> .....
> >..... We have no data about
> >the ``knowings'' of non-humans, and no data about collapses that are not
> >associated with accretions in human knowledge. So within the bounds of
> >contemporary science one is pretty much confined to the human mind-brain,
> >plus the reasonable general principle that human mind-brain process
> >should not be some unique process in nature: it MUST (I hold) be a special
> >case of a more general process.
> 
> Maybe this can be used to focus the discussion. I find this quite
> implausible. On the contrary, I think it likely that what we call
> 'experience' can only occur in devices with powers of representation and
> rapid symbol-processing, and therefore is a very particular phenomenon,

AGAIN WE AGREE. I stressed that an experience resembling a human
experience is expected to occur only under conditions where some system
that functions like a human brain is present: representation and symbol
processing are things I have talked extensively about in that connection.
[cf. secs. 5.4 and 6.3 of my book MM&QM]

> and
> not an instance of soemthing more general in the physical world. Where do
> you get the confidence of the "MUST" ?

We have repeatedly agreed that *the human mind-brain process*
should not be the unique carrier of experiences: it MUST be a special
case of a more general process that includes e.g., dog experiences and pig
experiences, among others: you AGREE with what I said, and have argued 
vigorously for it. 

What I said does not exclude the possibility of
primitive proto-experiences that play the same causal role!

> 
> > So all I am trying to say here is: let us
> >admit that human mind-brain process is just a special case of a
> >general natural process,
> 
> Again, I disagree; I find this totally implausible and don't see a shred of
> evidence for it. The extraterrestrial-life seekers generally talk about
> likelihoods of evolution on similar planets, not a kind of loose
> consciousness floating around in a vacuum. Even Hoyle's sci-fi classic at
> least had the good sense to imagine a giant dust cloud that (somehow)
> embodied consiousness, not the vacuum itself.
> 

YOU HAVE AGREED that dogs and pigs have experiences: experiences are not
confined to human beings. Thus HUMAN MIND-BRAIN PROCESS is just a special
case of general natural process, which includes dog mind-brain process
and pig mind-brain process, for example. HUMAN MIND-BRAIN PROCESS
is not the only thing like that in the universe.

And I have repeatedly insisted that each generalized knowing is associated
with a physical system: they are not ``floating around in a vacumm''.

> .....PS.
> >
> >You ask why do our experiences have the form they have.
> >
> >That is just what my paper is all about.
> >
> >I think we do agree that your experiences are causally associated more
> >directly with your own body/brain, than with some aspect of nature such
> >as the record player out there that is playing the Verdi opera that you
> >are listening to and hearing, or the performers and musicians that
> >produced the music in the first place. There is a causal chain going
> >back to them, but the aspect of nature most directly associated with your
> >experiences is your own body/brain. I do not think that, in talking to
> >you, I need to produce an argument for that.
> 
> Depends exactly what 'directly associated' means. As in other parts of our
> conversings, you seem to mixing up two distinct ideas: (1) the physical
> substrate of a mental representation (which is of course in the head) and
> (2) the content of that representation - what it is about - which is
> usually outside the head. Our experiences are 'made' of the content of our
> representations. How a symbol structure can be about something  is a
> complicated question about which a lot has been written.
> 

By `directly associated' I do am referring to the physical substrate.
Considerations of illusions, curved mirrors, holograms, etc.
show that it is what is going on in the body/brain that determines
what the experience is: what is outside affects our experiences by
affecting what is inside our body/brain. So the basic problem is
to understand the connection between what is inside our body/brains to
what our experiences are. 

> It has almost nothing to do with physics.

It is certainly neither established nor obvious that the experience
does not depend on what is happening physically. 

This may be the core of our differences. I assume that each experience
is associated with a physical happening, and that the problem is to
find the relationship between a physical structure and an experiential
structure. This depends crucially on physics, because it is physics
that specifies the nature of the physical possibilities. For example,
in quantum physics there are sudden jumps called collapses of the wave
function that are associated with increments in knowledge. Scientists
looking for the NCC will presumably find some such connection, eventually.
This will involve particular physical systems,  human and animal brains.
Extension of such mind-brain connections to other kinds of physical
systems, beyond brains that are like human brains, is a whole further
problem in itself.  

There is also, beyond the simple fact that our thoughts are
DIRECTLY ASSOCIATED with our brains, the questions of the specific
CONTENTS of our thoughts, such as particular PERCEPTS, and the connections
of those CONTENTS to physical structures outside our body/brain.
I pay a lot of attention to these distinctions.


> >But why do you hear the music rather than experiencing the patterns of
> >neural firings in your body/brain directly as patterns of neural firings
> 
> See Dennett for a layman's introduction to why this is a silly question.
> 

The distinction between view from within and view from the outside
is a core issue here: why is there a view from within? It is not
specified by the principles of classical physics, which, in conjunction
with boundary conditions, are supposed to be able to represent or describe
all purely physical aspects of the universe. There is something here that
needs to be explained.

> >If one follows my notion that your experience is the "sound" of
> >vibrations in your brain, then all that is needed is a particular
> >causal mapping that maps the acoustical vibrations in your ear
> >to some appropriate corresponding neuronal vibrations in your brain, and
> >you would be able to hear the music. Of course, there can be a tremendous
> >accompaniment of other vibration brought about by associations. So our
> >experience can be correspondingly complex.
> 
> But look, seriously. This kind of loose, vague idea just won't do. Over
> here in cognitive sceince we are working with models of cognitive
> processing which are all controversial, to be sure, but at least are
> detailed enough to make testable predictions or to be implementable. The
> psychophysics and neurobiology of sound perception is known in excruciating
> detail, in fact, especially in bats. You can't come up to an entire science
> and expect its practitioners to take seriously an idea this ludicrously
> simplistic. If my consciousness of Verdi is just a kind of harmonic
> response to the sound waves, how is it that phonic DIScontinuities
> (plosives, for example) are so significant in speech perception? If
> 'association' (already a discredited notion in cognitive psychology, eg see
> recent reviews of concept-meaning theories in psycholinguistics) is itself
> brought about by vibrations, how is it that metaphoric associations work,
> and how are noun-phrase meanings composed from their parts? This isnt a
> blank area any more: there is now about 30 years worth of careful
> observations and critiques of theoretical ideas which any new idea has to
> somehow cope with. Cosmic vibrations, like most other initial, simple,
> ideas, just don't work well enough.
> 

My model is much more than just that simplistic idea.

 
> >But this possible vibration-sound association is subsidiary to my main
> >argument.
> >
> >The key premise of my theory that the each human experience
> >is associated with a collapse that actualizes a template for action,
> >of the body/brain, and that the experience is the experience of the
> >intention of that action, which can be either to intend or to attend,
> >where the later is intention to update of the body-world-mind schema,
> >which is the brains representation of the body-world-mind.
> 
> This kind of vague template/schema-talk belongs in the 1950s. Cognitive
> science now has LIBRARIES of languages for 'schemas', analyses of their
> syntactic and semantic and computational properties, etc.. We know which
> ones admit sublinear search times on neural-net architectures using phase
> encoding, which are NP-complete (and therefore in general computationally
> intractable), how they are related to various kinds of model theory, etc.
> etc. etc..  One thing we know for sure is that most simple ideas of 'action
> schema' just arent adequate to support human linguistic and perceptual
> performance. Now, what exactly do you mean by "schema" ? How are your
> schema related to Hilbert space?
> 

I will give some details of my model below.

> >The "mind" part
> >is an extention of the body-world part, and it includes our more abstract
> >ideas. The fixing of an intention is represented in the physical realm
> >[i.e., in the Hilbert-space representation of certain statistical
> >properties of nature] by the actualization of a projected [i.e., intended]
> >state of the body-world-mind schema. The natural selection is supposed
> >to have coordinated the experience (i.e., the knowing) associated with the
> >actualization of a body-world-mind schema to the mechanical evolution that
> >follows from the causal structure of the body-brain in such a way that the
> >causal effect of the actualization of a body-world-schema that is
> >connected to a certain experienced intended action will, under
> >appropriately directed attention, generally be to produce a subsequent
> >state of the body/brain that is likely to have a collapse that actualizes
> >a body-world-mind schema that corresponds to an experiencing of the
> >intended action.
> 
> That sounds like a cute idea, but how does this nonphysical natural
> selection work, exactly? Is it Darwinian? If so, how does a creature pass
> on its nonphysical traits to its offspring?
> 


Yes, it is Darwinian. Suppose, just by way of example, that we accept
the notion that an important real aspect of the universe is the existence 
of ``sounds''. These include not only the complex experiences that we human 
beings call sounds, but also much more primitive proto-experiences. Nature
is composed of these ``sounds'' and a ``causal'' mathematical process that 
brings them into being in some sequence. This process has statistical
regularities that are represented by a Hilbert-space state of the universe
that changes each time a new chord occurs. So the experiential sounds
are  real happenings, and each such sound is associated with a set of 
degrees of freedom of this state, and in particular with the actualization 
of some brief ``tone'' (i.e., vibration) in that degree of freedom.

Just as a system of organ pipes (or a telephone tone-dialing system) can 
respond only to certain frequencies, so each physical system can respond 
only to certain sounds. Now the occurrence of an appropriate chord of sounds 
associated with a system activates a characteristic response , which 
might include producing in that system conditions that make it likely, 
according to the quantum statistical rules, that a similar chord will 
occur  on that ``instrument'' slightly later. This cyclic behaviour would
give the system a certain tendency to endure.

A system that cycles back to itself physically, tends to 
endure, in the sense that its physical (i.e., Hilbert-space) form 
regenerates itself, Such systems tend to proliferate. That is
how similar physical objects come into being. 

But stable systems can collide. The quantum laws govern
statistically the outcome of such collisions.

The effect of the actualization associated with the occurrence of a chord
will, in a stable system, of course not have merely the effect of inducing
a similar chord to occur later: it will also have other effects on the 
system. Since the information put into the system by the actualizatization 
has a certain mathematical structure it is possible that some 
of the external configurations of that system produced by the actualization
of the chord can exhibit a certain isomorphism to the structure of the chord.

In a biological system both the structure of the allowed chords and the
connection between the chords and the resulting bodily configuration will
be determined by the physical structure of the system, which is controlled
in part by the genes.

Suppose the living system evolves in such a way that the actualization
of certain chords activate motor systems in a way such that 1) motions of the 
system are generated that 2) activate sensing systems that 3) create the 
likelihood that 4) a chord similar to the original chord will occur 
slightly later. It is a key part of my theory (following James) that each 
experience, though experienced as a whole, has a sequence of temporal 
slices correspond to parts that enter the sequence of experiences as 
temporally displaced components. [cf. Sec 8. Ontology: Quantum Stuff]
This allows aspects of the experience to be compared, and progressing 
activities to be monitored, within the experience. 

In animal-type systems the progression of events is not rigidly fixed.
The classical and quantum fluctuation allow branchings of the temporal
dynamical development to occur: the animal can do either this or that.

In our own case, the sequence of conscious events that control/curtail
the proliferation of quantum possibilities that, without collapses, 
would, in a human brain, be a necessary consequence of quantum theory, 
is such that the sequence of events can monitor and control the activities
of the body/brain system. That is, there is this feed-back that I have been 
describing where the activity generated by the experiential event is such
as to generate (under proper conditions of attention) a similar follow-up
experiential event. In this situation the sequence of events can
function to keep the quantum generation of successive possibilities
on a coherent track: selections between coherent courses of action will be 
made, but there will not be pandemonium. The strong tendency will be for
successive quantum choices to be between actions that are in generally line
with what has been chosen just before. For systems strongly controlled
by an associated sequence of experiential events there must such a be
a recurrence type of structure at the experiential level in order for
directed and experientially monitored behaviour to be possible.  
 
If the animal system were not organized with this sort of recurrence,
then the successive selections needed to choose between the quantum
possibilities that are being continually generated would produce chaotic
activity, rather than activity that has inertia: i.e., a sustained direction.
The possibility of sustained directed activity is, of course, essential to
survival.

So Darwian evolution should produce animals having this crucial connection
between the experiences (which are the cause of the collapses of the wave 
function that are trimming away the quantum proliferation of alternative 
possible branches of temporal development) and the effects of these collapses 
both on body/brain activity and on the subsequent follow-up experiences.

> >
> >It seems to me that only in this way will our experiences be able
> >to play the executive role in the control of our actions and thoughts that
> >they appears to play.
> 
> Seems to me to much more likely that this 'appear' is simply an illusion,
> and that our conscious expereinces don't, as a matter of fact, play such a
> simple 'executive' role, but are more like a story we tell ourselves as we
> go on to make sense of our own actions.
> 

It may be significant that if one adheres to what contemporary physics 
tells us about our brains, rather than starting from a fundamentally 
incorrect conception of the nature of the brain, then we do not have to 
invent any tales of illusions and deception: we can preserve our deepest
intuitions about our own nature by simply following through on what 
science has revealed about ourselves. Tales of delusion and self deception
might be acceptable if they allowed us to bringing our ideas INTO accord with 
science, but not for trying make sense of a conception about our natures that 
science has found to be profoundly wrong.


> >Natural selection ought then to hone and mold the
> >connection between the experience and its effect, which is the collapse
> >that brings the wave function of the body/brain---and more specifically
> >the body-world-mind schema, which is the brains representation of the
> >body-world-mind---into this causal accord with the subsequently
> >
> >This naturalistically generated connection between experiences,
> >collapses, and templates for action formulated in terms of the
> >body-world-mind schema explains the connection you required, namely the
> >fact that our experiences  seem to be direct knowings of the (perceived or
> >intended) state of our ``body'', as we feel it, or the state of the
> >``world'' as it is classically conceived, or of ones ``mind'', or of these
> >things in some combination.
> 
> Without a LOT more detail, this account doesnt explain anything at all.
> 

It is an overview.

> ....>
> >But in quantum theory it is the knowings that are the real things, and the
> >knowings associated with human body/brains have the qualities that we
> >human beings experience. These knowing are connected to each other
> >in a way that can be codified, at least in some good approximation, and at
> >least with regard to certain statistical regularities, in terms of a
> >mathematical formalism that involves such notions as spacetime and
> >Hilbert-space vectors, and that allows connections between our knowings to
> >be represented mathematically, at least in some useful approximation, in
> >terms of changes in a certain Hilbert-space vector that can be imagined to
> >represent an objective state of knowledge that each knowing, human or
> >otherwise, contributes to.
> 
> OK, let me challenge you directly. Once, I watched my mother break an egg
> against the side of a bowl, open the shell carefully and drop the contents
> into the bowl, all with one hand. I was astonished and asked her to show me
> how to do it, which she did, and Ive been able to do it ever since. Now,
> this seems to me about as clear a case as one can come up with of a
> 'knowing'; I came to know something (both intellectually and somatically) I
> had not previously known. Right now I am involved in a group effort to
> formalise at least part of this knowledge in a way that a robot might find
> useful; it turns out to be surprisingly complicated. How can this 'knowing'
> be represented mathematically in terms of changes in a Hilbert-space vector?
> 
> Pat Hayes
> 

That is a fair question.

Of course, it is supposed to be formulated in the context of some 
appropriate program that is simulating an experiencing quantum robot.
The experiencings/knowings would be represented, let us say, by chords
of sounds. If we allow, say N ``tones'' and M intensities for each tone we 
a space of possible experiences/knowings that has M^N distinct elements. 
The body/brain has set of D degrees of freedom, with D>>N: the N tones are 
associated with some influential subset of N of the D degrees of freedom 
of the body/brain of the experiencing/knowing robot. The robot has a 
non-parallel processing part that provides the sensing channels and the 
motor channels, and that corresponds to the rate controlled processes
in animals, and a parallel processing part that corresponds to the 
essential quantum processes that are associated with knowings. This
later part operates within the boundary conditions specified by the 
non-parallel processing part. It generates the optional courses
of possible actions: these options are trimmed back when an 
experience/knowing occurs. The various processes are governed by
deterministic equations of motion, but each knowing is specified also
by a tie into a random number generator, so that the system simulates
a quantum system.

We are to suppose that before the egg-breaking learning occurs, the
system already ``knows'' about the appearances and handling of eggs and bowls.
This means that cycles have been establish (by prior learning)
that connect various ``experiences'' pertaining to the simultaneous seeing, 
and feeling, and handling of eggs into feed-back loops of the kind I have 
described, wherein an experience (represented in this simulation or mock-up
by a fixing of certain of the N degrees of freedom of the body/brain)
intiates a motor sequence that intitiates a sensing sequence that produces
a high likelihood of producing in a later temporal slice in the knowing
a likeness of the aspect of the experience that initiated the experience.
[One must, in order to accommodate the necessary degrees of freedom 
corresponding to this temporal dimension, extend the degrees of freedom
that describe the experience so as to include a sequence of Snap-Shots
of the passing parade of temporal slices, as I have described in many places.]

If your learning involvede hearing your Mother's explanation of what she was 
doing, them we must expand the model to include language skills, and 
motor-visual-tactile interpretations of heard instructions. I believe 
this same sort of model can cover language skills, provided the
space of possible knowings is large enough, and the appropriate linkages
to motor and sensor processes exist: I note that each experience contains
a whole sequence of temporal slices, and that actions controlled by such whole
sequences have been honed by learning so that the actions generate reactions 
back on the evolving sequence of slices in which the generated incoming 
slices are similar to, and temporal extensions of, the sequence that 
generated them. I look upon learning as the generation of successful 
repertoires of experiences (each consisting of a sequence of temporal slices) 
that generate smooth prolongations of themselves. 

Sequences that produce smooth prolongations of themselves will recur and
thus reinforce themselves by neural mechanisms in animal brains, or by some
corresponding designed feature of the robot: such sequences will be 
``facilitated'', and will tend to arise more easily.  

Of course, chords have 
subchords, so there are vast possibilities of combinations of already 
established subchords. There must be, honed into brain structure by evolution 
and training, or by designed features in the robot, variable rules of 
composition that tend to extend recognition to combinations of subchords that 
often arrive together, or in some particular sequence.

I do not see the question of exactly how the designed facilitations
work as particularly challenging.

Your learning how to crack an egg on a bowl with one hand is an example
of fitting a number of already learned repertoires about handling
such things as eggs together by running through the sequence a few times
either with actual motions generated by combining already known motions in a 
new way, or perhaps by running through the sequence only in your imagination,
which would involve brain action, but no appreciable bodily motion.

This answer to your challenge may be far less detailed than you would like, 
but I believe that it is enough of a blueprint to allow me to write 
a C++ program that would function satifactorily: combinations of already 
established objects, representing experiences and their actions and 
reactions back onto the class of experiences, would be the building blocks, 
with each experience representing a sequence of temporal slices that causes
a physical action. Experiences act nonlocally on many degrees of freedom
simultaneously. The presence of these potentially very complex
controlling elements, each  with sequences of temporal slices give this model
greater power than simpler models.  

I hope this message will cement our many points of agreement,
and will bring us closer to FULL agreement.

Best regards, Henry

{http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html}

<hpstapp@lbl.gov>