From hpstapp@lbl.gov Wed Oct 14 09:38:03 2009 Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:38:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Henry P. Stapp To: Casey Blood Subject: Re: Mindful Universe Dear Casey, See my answers below. Thanks for your inquiries. Henry On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, Casey Blood wrote: > I read the two papers you sent me and found the Budapest one particularly > clear. But I have two reservations concerning your scheme. The first is > that I don?t understand why one needs collapse, and the second is that the > collapsing scheme seems so complicated. Perhaps it is best to illustrate > using an example. > > > > Suppose we have a baseball whose center of mass wave function is spread > out > over a meter, and we have an observer who perceives the position of the > baseball. For our purposes, the basis vectors will be determined by the > firing pattern of the neurons in the observer?s brain; there will be a > different basis vector for each firing pattern. The wave functions for > the > different firing patterns are orthogonal, and so the total wave function > of > baseball plus observer?s brain will be partitioned into a denumerable > number > of different, non-communicating universes. In each universe, the baseball > is localized, at a position in accord with the firing pattern of the > neurons > in the optic nerve. > HPS: This way of partitioning the state of the brain into a denumerable set of orthogonal states corresponding to different experiences is not satisfactory. Some precise way of specifying at each instant whether a neuron is firing or not is needed. But then as time advances continuously there will be abrupt changes in the set of neurons that are firing. The Schroedinger evolution cannot instantly change a state to an orthogonal state. Hence the mind-brain connection would depend upon the exact time that the partitioning is made: a partitioning made at a slightly later time will specify a different mind-brain connection. And no mind-brain connection enduring even for a microsecond is well defined. A more realistic connection would involve, rather, the brain states that persist over intervals of the order of (at least) a millisecond, and perhaps over 10s of milliseconds. Is it really one single neuron's firing or not firing that distinguishes one thought from another? > > Now in my understanding of your scheme, there is a *mechanism*, outside > the > laws of QM, which ?asks? Yes-No questions. ?Is this particular pattern the > ?real? objective pattern?? And the Mind answers yes or no and > correspondingly reduces the wave function. > > Note: With odds of approximately 1 in 210,000 (assuming just 10,000 > neurons > in the optic nerve are relevant to perceiving a baseball) for obtaining a > Yes answer, it seems like the mechanism would have to ask a lot of Yes-No > questions (in a millisecond) before getting a yes for a pattern. > HPS: The Yes/No question is of the form rho--> P rho P + P' rho P' where rho is the density matrix of the universe, P is a projection operator on a brain state that corresponds to a particular experience, and P'= (I-P). Thus each "Yes' correspondes to a whole experience. The pattern picked out by P is, I believe, a persisting macroscopic oscillating pattern of the electomagnetic field. (See attached paper) > > > Why does one need collapse when each version of the observer perceives > only > what is in his own universe, and therefore perceives a localized baseball, > in agreement with experience? It is not needed to prevent perception of a > smeared out baseball because such a perception never occurs in QM. I > agree > that just one version needs to be singled out for perception or awareness, > but I don?t think either collapse or asking a Yes-No question is > necessary. > HPS: I regard the Process 1 choice that specifies the mind-brain connection as the important collapse. The issue resolved by process 1 is: "What is the partitioning such that experiences do not involve any cross connections? Experiences that involve cross-connections between different components of the partition are ruled out by process 1. Your "individual- neuron-firing-based" criterion says that no two state that differe by even a one-neuron-firing can contribute to a single thought: a very strong claim. I prefer a macroscopic resonance-state-based criterion. The second (process-3) collapse (nature's choice) is 'needed' only to make sense of the probability rule: to make sense of the idea/prediction that the 'Yes' outcome "occurs" (say) 10% of the time. I had a day-long discussion with Euan Squires in which I tried to convince him that it made rational good sense to say that the 'Yes' outcome occurred in "my" stream of consciousness in, say, 10% of the trials within an ontology in which both of the two alternative possible outcomes---'Yes' and 'No'--- occur in Henry Stapp's brain in each trial, and in which both a 'Yes' and a 'No' experience occurs to a Henry Stapp in each trial. His refusal to budge led me to adopt the attitude that, in order to avoid this controversy about probability in situations where both alternatives occur in each trial I would go along with the simple (Dirac) idea that "nature chooses" between 'Yes' and 'No' in concordance with the quantum probability rule. Then the logical origin and meaning of the all-important probability rule seems intuitively very clear: one choice actually happens in (say) 10% of the trial and the other alternative actually happens the rest of the trials. Putting this potent choosing power in Nature's hands may seem to you too fantastic to use merely to make the notion of quantum probability clearer. But for me it is the process 1 collapse that is really important. Given this process 1 collapse---which defines the mind-brain connection, and STRICTLY eliminates the "cross terms" from all computations pertaining to future human experiences---the notion that "Nature" should have a power similiar to, but stronger than our own consciousness-related individual-human power seems rather tame. Whether process 3 is regarded as an absolute collapse, or as a mere identification of the disjoint component in which we---a collection of comunicating experiencers---find ourselves, makes no difference to practical application. Insisting that some forever-unexperiencible aspects of "reality" really exist seems to me to be a metaphysical extravagance that the founders of QM chose to avoid. I see no need to reverse their practical judgement on this point that makes no empirical difference. > > Suppose next the observer would rather concentrate on listening to music > than on watching the baseball. Then presumably there is a > *non-mechanistic*question-asker (a ?mind?) who wants to listen to > music. > So it keeps asking appropriate questions until the answer comes up Yes to > the listening template (which one would guess resides in the wave function > of the thalamus). > > HPS: The first question is, as James sees it, generated by a brain process and it reflects the propensities already imbedded in the state of the brain. Then a corresponding experience occurs, which evinces feelings. These feelings, which are a consequence of the brain state, are allowed to cause the same query to be posed multiple times in rapid succession. This rapid succession of queries can cause bodily behaviour to differ from what it would otherwise have been. I allow the passage from the original brain-generated feeling to the choice to activate a rapid sequence of similiar queries to have a mental component not causally determined by the brain state alone. So I have a dynamical scheme that rests directly on the quantum rules, and is completely concordant with the quantum laws, but that does admits a very limited input from mind that is not causally determined by the physically described aspect of reality alone, and allows the incessantly empirically 'confirmed' conclusion that "my thoughts can influence my actions" to be dynamically encompassed within the ontology. > > Again, I don?t see why it is necessary to have a ?question-asker? (which > has > both a mechanistic and a non-mechanistic aspect) and a ?collapser.? > > HPS: I do not claim that it is *necessary* to have a non-mechanistic aspect. I claim only that it is *possible* to have a non-mechanistic aspect, that would violate neither the quantum laws nor the empirical evidence. The known laws of nature and the empirical evidence ALLOWS mental realities to influence or physical behaviour in the way that it seems to do. Conscious will does not NEED TO BE an illusion, in a quantum world. Whether future scientific developments will find this possibility useful remains to be seen. > > Why not use a simpler scheme in which there is a ?mind? that concentrates > on > (or perceives; or is aware of) just one version of the brain wave > function?without causing collapse?with the selected version being the one > we > are aware of? This ?mind,? which is not subject to the laws of QM, would > also be the aspect that ?freely chooses? (where ?free? means not > determined > by mathematical or mechanical means, and free choice does not apply to the > selection of outcome of outer events). It is the aspect of us that exerts > ?effort of attention.? > > > What are your reservations concerning this simpler scheme? > > HPS: I thought that you were trying to argue FOR a many-minds QM! Now you seem to be going for a ONE MIND approach. My approach is basically a one-mind approach. But I do not give the mind a free hand. In order to preserve the basic knowledge acquired by science I explicitly accept all of von Neumann's formulation of QM, and also the ideas of relativistic quantum field theory, but exploit certain causal gaps to introduce into the dynamics the sort of effects of our minds upon our bodies that seem to be empirically supported by the normal successes of our strong mental intentions to influence our actions in the intended ways. This avoids having to regard as illusions these ubiquitous effects that are the foundation of our reason-directed lives. Thus I am challenging those philosophers who seem to believe that--- apart from some uncontrollable quantum fluctuations---our actions MUST, according to the precepts of modern science, be completely specified by purely physically described dynamical laws. > > > Casey > From hpstapp@lbl.gov Thu Oct 15 23:22:00 2009 Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:21:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Henry P. Stapp To: Casey Blood Subject: Re: Mindful Universe On Thu, 15 Oct 2009, Casey Blood wrote: > Dear Henry, > > > > OK, I will yield to your ?continuum? argument in the smeared out baseball > case. > > And yes, I am definitely a one-mind-per-observer advocate. > HPS: I meant ONE MIND in the global sense! > > > I read your philosophy paper (thanks). Perhaps the best way to proceed is > to summarize the similarities and differences in our approaches. > > > > Agree on the basics. > > (1). It is a near certainty that there is no particle or hidden variable > theory underlying QM. (This is what my San Rafael talk is on.) > > (2). There is a high probability that there is no mathematical theory of > collapse underlying QM. > > (3). It seems to be certain that the Everett interpretation, in which all > that exists is the wave function, with all its branches, is fatally > flawed. > > From this, one can apparently draw the conclusion that one > version of the observer is singled out as *the* observer, with the > perceptions of that version corresponding to our perceptions. Since there > is no singling-out process in the mathematics of process 2 QM, that > process > must involve something that does not obey the mathematics. So I > completely > agree with you: there is no doubt that these results show that > physical-only > advocates are skating on very thin ice (or maybe no ice at all)! > > > > Disagree on the singling-out mechanism. > > It is primarily the singling-out mechanism that we do not agree on. You > advocate ?mind?-aided *collapse* and I advocate *awareness* of a single > version by the non-physical ?mind? (as if the non-physical ?mind? ?lived > in? > just one of the universes corresponding to the different branches). > > Perhaps the point is that our current knowledge is not > sufficient to determine which approach is correct. We have no way of > knowing whether von Neumann?s *reduction* hypothesis is correct. It may > not > be possible at this point to deduce anything beyond the strong probability > that physicalism is incorrect. > > HPS: I have said only that the collapse events have an aspect that is not determined by the known physical laws (RQFT), and that the dynamics therefore *could*, in harmony with RQFT, have a mental aspect that is not completely determined by the physically described aspects of this theory, and that corresponds in some way to the experiential aspect of our being. > > > > Agree on templates. > > It is necessary in both approaches for there to be *templates* for actions > (and for brain-based thoughts). And the quantum-based points of control > would be the same in my interpretation as in yours. But the template > selection process is more direct in my scheme?no quantum Zeno effect is > needed. > > > > Disagree on probability. > > I assume your position on probability is that |a(i)|^2 is an *intrinsic* > probability, implemented by the Mind (the answerer of the Yes-No queries). No! I do not think that the quantum probability law is "intrinsic". I think that it comes from the fact that the deterrmination of the outcome is controlled by some aspect of nature that is so complex and far removed from the variables that we measure that it "appears" to be random, and that, because of the invariance of the size of a unit (h-bar) of phase-space under the dynamical evolution, any "effectively random" choice has an a'priori probability proportional to the size of phase space, and that this a priori weighting corresponds in quantum mechanics to the trace operation. > I have a tentative, radically different approach. My claim is that > probability follows from process 2 QM, plus an assumption about the > ?perceiver.? That is, I assume there is no *separate* probability law, so > that |a(i)|^2 does NOT represent an *intrinsic* probability. > > To illustrate, we do a 2-state experiment N times (N>>1) and > suppose the apparatus records only the number of times, m, that state 1 is > observed. We then look at the value of m in the end. (That is, we don?t > perceive intermediate results.) The amplitude squared for that result is > > > > [N!/m!(N-m)!] [|a(1)|^(2m)] [|a(2)|^(2N-2m)]. > > > > As a function of m, this has a sharp max at m = N|a(1)|^2. Can it just be > coincidence that the max coincides with the value specified by the > probability law? I think not. > > And so, I assume that the non-physical ?mind? (of my > interpretation) is *much more likely* to perceive a state with a > relatively > very large norm. This implies m will essentially always be *perceived* > (by > the non-physical ?mind,? and therefore by the physical ?me?) as being near > N|a(1)|^2. In this way, the probability law (for large N, with > intermediate > results not observed) follows from a somewhat weak assumption about the > non-physical ?mind.? > > Because |a(i)|^2 is not an intrinsic probability, classical > probability concepts need not be obeyed. So it is quite possible that the > |a(i)|^2 probability law is not obeyed if each outcome is observed! This > gives an experimental way of checking the ideas. > > Do you think this argument has any chance of being correct? If > not, what do you make of the coincidence of the max being at the value > given > by the probability law? > HPS: I do not have the time right now to reflect upon this. But it may be akin to my own idea described above. Henry