Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 05:53:47 -0700 From: gordon g globus Subject: Reply to Sarfatti on "Stapp's Breakthrough?"--Henry Stapp MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" From: Henry Stapp Subject: Stapp's Breakthrough? Jack Sarfatti (Oct 14) [Stapp-prev2] But the proper way of science is first to see whether the data can be accommodated within the most orthodox framework, without allowing violations of the *predictions* of the theory, which is something that "all" quantum physicists agree about, no matter which ontological or interpretive framework they may favor. [Jack - prev] Correct, but evidence on precognitive remote viewing violates the passion-at-a-distance of orthodox quantum theory. {Stapp-prev1] I have repeatedly pointed out that the Eberhard theorem of "orthodox quantum theory" is based on the extra assumption of "good measurements"; my vN/W theory is completely orthodox, but it relaxes the requirement that every experience corresponds to a "good measurement" in the sense of von Neumann's theory of measurement. Consequently, it can, if certain assumptions about the absence of relevant proto-experiences (and hence reductions) are made, automatically accommodate the purported evidence. [Jack] This is a very pleasant surprise. I have completely missed this most important part of your theory. [Stapp] This should not be a surprise to you: I have strongly emphasized it in I think every (or certainly almost every) reply to you on this forum. [Jack] Can you collect everything you have written on this particular point and put it here on the list so we can all conveniently examine it? [Stapp] There is too much of it to do that. Let me list some places; Tucson II, p. 604-607. Target article: (Whiteheadian approach... q/mind Aug3-4 sect.4] In J. of Mind and Behavior /H. Stapp/ Science of Consc. and the Hard Prob. p. 182[80] -183[81] Chance, Choice, and Consciousness (Tucson II before cutting to fit space demands] http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html or http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/37944mod.tex section 6. The point of the target article was precisely to explain this point. [Jack] I don't recall you saying anything like this in your book, for example. I had no idea that you had a way to get around Eberhard's theorem in an orthodox setting. You need to explain your above paragraph in much more detail. I predict that when your expanded notion of "measurement" is examined in detail in Bohmian terms that it will correspond exactly to the post-quantum notion of the feedback-control loop between the explicate and the first implicate order. [Stapp] As regards the connection to Bohmian mechanics, the key point is that *I* am starting from the Solvay 1927 point of view, where our conscious experiences, as we actually experience them, and more specifically the experienced increments of knowledge that we can describe in an appropriate language to ourselves and to our technically trained colleagues, are already identified as the basic realities that quantum theory is about; and from the fact that the relationship of these experiences, described in this way, to the mathematical structure of quantum theory, is just what was resolved in a practically useful and logically satisfactory way at the 1927 Solvay conference. This basically epistemological connection, which is the essential element of the Copenhagen interpretation, is integrated and into vonNeumann/Wigner interpretation, which is closer to an ontological interpretation of quantum theory. On the other hand, the central purpose of Bohm's model, with its classical world line weaving through 3n-dimensional configuration space, was to get consciousness out of physics: to bring physics back to a geometrically visualizable (in 3-dimensional configuration space, to be sure) form not involving the consciousness of observers in a way that is basically different from the way they enter into classical physical theory, namely as passive observers of processes in brains that somehow represent information about the world received by the senses. Using a theory designed to get consciousness out of physics in order to get consciousness back in leads to logical problems that I will describe below. My approach is to recognize, among other things, that quantum theory probably gives only a partial description of the causal connections between our experiences. I show how a certain looseness in the vN/W theory allows there to be another causal strand that is entangled with the physical, but is not causally determined by physical. It acts through conscious experiences that "supervene" on the physical, but that are not causally determined by the physical. As explained in the Tucson II passage, and as I explained also in previous answers to you on this forum, the connection of Bohmian mechanics to experience is via the idea that the evolution of the wave function (of the world) in a "good measurement" situation is such that this function will break up into a superposition of terms that are nonzero over essentially disjoint pockets in the 3n-dimensional configuration space (because of a disjointness in some "pointer variable"), and Bohm's rules then give, for each such pocket, the correct "probability" that the world line will be in that pocket. But in the non-good-measurement case there is no separation onto such disjoint pockets: there is one big conglomeration of superposed overlapping states, but no clear way to pick out from this conglomerate some particular projector P_e that corrsponds to the question "Will experience e occur next?" And, in sharp contrast to the "good measurement" situation, the actual course of physical events can strongly depend now on which questions are asked in which order! Thus the looseness mentioned above allows---in ways that I have explicitly modelled, and explained in detail in the cited references---there to be a dependence of the flow of physical events upon choices of which experience e occurs in the question: "Will e occur next?" In your model there is a "back action" of the world line on the wave function, and this back action eradicates the components of the wave function corresponding all of the OTHER pockets, in case the separation into pockets is well defined. This back-action will be accompanied by the occurrence of the experience corresponding to that pocket, if the pocket, and the relationship of the pocket to an experience, is well defined. Your back action produces, in effect, a collapse of the wave function, which you associate with a conscious experience. Your logic is different from the one I employ: I say, in line with the pragmatic approach, that IF an experience occurs, THEN the wave function (i.e., state) of the universe, which represents knowledge, reduces to the part compatible with the new added bit of knowledge. But you start with the geometric Bohmian description, and assert that there will be experientail qualities associated with certain changes in the physical description in terms of the evolving wave function and world line. Thus the causal direction appears, at least superfically, to be opposite in the two theories: it *seems* that in your theory the physical description in terms of the world line and collapsing wave could in principle be causally described (at least statistically) without explicitly bringing in the explicitly experiential aspects per se: the experiential qualities themselves do not appear to be a key part of the causal process. The collapse/reduction, regardless of whether it is a consequence of the experience or is a cause of it, will have the usual FORMAL precursive effects: the quantum rules themselves ensures that the actualization occurring at time t of a particular state S will pull out of the state existing prior to t just the part of that prior state that is compatible with what was learned at t: the prior (quantum) state of (universal) knowledge, which gives some statistical information about the upcoming increment in knowledge, becomes reduced by the actual occurrence this increment in knowledge e to the part compatible with this knowledge. But the instantaneous action S-->(P_e S P_e) entails that expectations regarding *future* increments in knowledge will be affected by this formal back-action of the present increment in knowledge upon the state existing prior to the present increment in knowledge. A simple example is the spin version of the EPR experiment. Suppose the preparatiom occurs at clock time t = 0 and the measurement occurs at clock time t=T. Suppose the prepared Heisenberg state (which determines *formal* expectation values over ALL space-time) is the spin-singlet state. Then the formal expectation values in the interval 0(P_e S P_e) corresponding to an increase in knowledge. This jump has *real* consequences only in the future. But of course the quantum formalism automatically ensures, as explained above, and without any talk about "handshakes" or "transactions" or "backward causation" or "advanced potentials", that the past is "refined", in the sense that only those components of the potentialities present before the reduction that are compatible with the choice made at t will be contributing to what will be observed later. This is just pure straightforward ordinary quantum theory. [Jack] If you also choose 2, rather than 1, then there is no essential functional difference between our two theories at this time. [Stapp] My theory is essentially different from yours. You would have to define "essential functional difference" in order to prove your claim. .... [Jack] Here is the problem. I, for one, do not understand what you mean here. For example, what is the "intentional-attentional aspect of an experience e" in the context of your theory? I do have a clear picture of that in my theory, but I do not understand it in your theory. ... .The CONSCIOUS experiential quality "e", or "attention" that is associated with that unconscious Wigner action is the direct equal and opposite-in-time Wigner self-reaction of that brain material back on that mind. [Stapp] An experiential quality IS actually experienced quality: it is not something else. That does not mean that our recollections of it are infallible. But an experience IS that felt experience. In science we try to describe mathematically certain relationships between our experiences, as we describe these experiences to ourselves and to others in appropiate languages. This is the pragmatic conception of science that was adopted by the founders of quantum theory for dealing with physics in a way that encompassed in a uniform and coherent way all the results of classical and quantum theory. Since this mode of description encompasses classical and quantum theoretical description of the brain and includes also the descriptions the associated experiences am suggesting that it is the natural framework to use also in the scientific study of the brain/mind system. [Jack] So, for example, in our toy Libet model above, the "intention" is the really physical retroactive action of mind on brain from time t back to earlier time t1. [Stapp] An "intention" is *really* an aspect of an experience: it is the aspect that we describe as a willfulness to do or act in some particular way, or to make something happen. [Jack] The "attention" is then the direct back-action (self-reaction) from t1 to t of the brain material on the mind. [Stapp] In the flow of experience there is a momentary focussing of each thought on some feature that we say is "being attended to" [Jack] So I have a clear picture of what I mean. In contrast, I doubt that anyone, other than you, has a clear picture of what you mean. [Stapp] Tomes have been written about "intention" and "attention". I doubt that anyone (psychologist, psychiatrist, philosopher of mind) would understand your meaning of these terms, or agree that your definition corresponds to what they mean. But I think most educated people would have a pretty good idea of what I mean by these words: they are I think at least roughly what most people mean, although a somewhat different technical meaning has been given to "intention". But my dictionary defines "intent" as "The state of mind active at the time of an action; volition." It is basically about mind, not brain. [Jack] So let's try to make it clearer what you mean. If anyone else can explain clearly what you mean, let them do so for all of us to see. [Stapp] The addition is this: the experienced intention in `e' to attend to a possible experience e~ is assumed to identify the experience e that occurs in the question to be put to nature "Will e occur next?" Quantum dynamics stalls unless some definite question like this is is put to nature, but there is nothing else within vN/W quantum theory that fixes what the experience e in the question put to nature is. Note that in the Copenhagen interpretation the experimenter makes this choice by choosing, earlier, to set up some experimental procedure such that if his subsequent experience of the outcome is e then the state S will be reduced to (P_e S P_e). [Jack] Again this is not as clear as it should be. I have a clear notion of exactly how the question is "put to nature" is a self-determined way. My theory has no ambiguity on this point. In ordinary QM the "question put to nature" is the basis of eigenfunctions in Hilbert space of the measured Hermitian observable. This basis translates into a landscape of basins of attractors for the Bohm worldline in configuration space. The above intentional-attentional action-reaction loops in time I have described shows how this landscape, hence the questions put to nature, co-evolve with the answers to these questions. The "answer" is the active occupied basin of attraction. [Stapp] The issue is how the psychologically defined realities, "willful intent", and the feature of experience that is "being attended to" enter into the dynamical process when there is no disjunction of basins, but rather one big basin that encompasses many overlapping possibilities. In my book MM&QQ I considered only the good measurement situation, and in that case the Heisenberg choice (of which question to pose) makes no difference, after doing the appropriate averagings. But in the general case it can make a big difference. So in order to bring experiential qualities per se directly into the causal process I have turned to the general case. Then the model I have described in my target article shows how---by allowing the willful action in an earlier experience e' of "attending to a possible experience e~" to answer the otherwise unresolved Heisenberg question of what e to put into the question put to nature "Will e occur"---one introduces into the causal brain/mind process a direct causal role for experience per se, and one that allows willful intent to control in large measure brain behaviour without this intent being causally determined by the state of the brain together with outcomes of the random Dirac choices: another strand of causation runs through the experiential realm, closely tied to, but not causally determined by, brain process + random process.