The Cookie-Dough Analogy 1. The Human Person has both physical and experiential aspects. How does the internal dynamics of that system work? 2. Classical physical theory covers phenomena in which the observer can be considered to be a passive witness who has no influence on the physical causes of his experiences. Descartes assumed that mind was not passive, but acted back on the brain, but Twentieth-century philosophers have generally accepted the classical physics motion that mind does not DISRUPT the physical micro-determinism entailed by classical physics. Then mind becomes either: 1) A (perhaps emergent) nonefficacious supernumerary, or 2) An ASPECT of the classical physical world. [The existence, or identification, of this aspect does not disrupt the classical micro-physical determinism, but provides the basis for an alternative higher-level of description that is compatible with classical micro-determinism.] 3. Quantum theory covers the general case where the observation does significantly affect the observed system. 4. For the case of a real physical observer engaged in introspection it is prejudicial to assume that we have the special case covered by the classical theory. Using the general theory immediately alleviates the main philosophical problems that arise from using the special theory: mind is not required to be either causally INERT (%) or IDENTICAL with something of a different ontological or logical type (#) 5. The special (i.e., classical) theory IS IN PRINCIPLE NOT APPLICABLE to the study of the mind-brain system. According to the special theory the system is micro-deterministic: the classical microphysical laws determine the evolution of the system. But an analysis of the consequences of the uncertainty principle in the flow of calcium ions in cortical nerve terminals from ion-channel exits to trigger sites for release in vesicles of neurotransmitter shows that quantum effects MUST significantly disrupt the micro-determinism entailed by classical theory. Thus there is, in principle, no possibility that classical micro-determinism could prevail. If one tries to pursue the notion that classical determinism prevails one MUST IN PRINCIPLE eventually reach a point where the uncertainty principle limitations prevent one from going further. One MUST IN PRINCIPLE turn to the general theory (or some new and even better theory) to go further. 6. The cookie-dough analogy. I'll explain the essence of the difference between the special (classical) theory and general (quantum) theory by talking about cookie dough rather than mathematical formulas. Imagine a chunk of cookie dough spread out thinly on a cookie tray. Each point on the tray corresponds to a classical state of the entire brain of a person (or perhaps an entire organism or a biological cell): the point is imagined to determine the position and velocity of every particle in that system (and also the values of the EM and GRAV fields at each point in the system. In the special (classical) theory the changing state of the system is represented by the motion of that point on the cookie tray. But in the general theory the changing state of the system is represented by the entire chunk of dough, whose parts are flowing about on the tray. An "observation" of the system corresponds to taking a cookie cutter, of some specified shape and location, and plunging it into the dough, thus separating the chunch of dough into two parts: the part inside the cutter and the part outside the cutter. The basic statistical rule of quantum theory says that if this "observation" is performed then either all the dough outide the cutter will disappear or all the dough inside the cutter will disappear. The is the famous "reduction of the wave packet" or "collapse of the wave function". The relative probabilities that inside or outside parts will survive is directly proportional to the amount of dough inside or outside, respectively. The big essential questions are these: 1) What determines the SHAPE of the cookie cutter? 2) What determines the LOCATION where it is applied? 3) What determines WHEN it is applied? 7. The mind-blowing answer give by the founder's of quantum theory is this: The shape of the cookie cutter and the location where it is applied is such that every point on the cookie tray what lies inside the applied cookie cutter corresponds to the same EXPERIENCE OF THE OBSERVER! And the TIME of the application is at the moment when the observer ATTENDS to the question. This brings the EXPERIENCE OF THE OBSERVER into the dynamics in an essential way. 8. There was tremendous opposition to bringing the observer's experience into the dynamics in this way: physicist's were accustomed to the notion that the observer's experience's play no role in the dynamics. But the idea WORKED BEAUTIFULLY, and practical-minded physicist's soon accepted it, in practice. 9. von Neuman and Wigner reformulated the theory so that this dynamical interaction between experience and the physical world occurred in the BRAINS of the observers. This allowed the theory to be understood as a desciption on what was actually happening, rather than just a set of mysterious rules connecting our experiences. 10. The central idea is that the quantum uncertainties cause the cookie dough to spread out so that it moves into regions of the cookie tray corresponding to different possible experiences: a given external stimulus can thus lead to a set of alternative possible experiences, depending on internal set and other factors, or to different possible intended courses of action. 11. Working out the details shows that if "mental effort" can speed up the RATE at which the questions are put to nature ( i.e., the rate at which the cookie-cutter cuts cookies) then mental effort can influence behaviour by keeping the dough from spreading as fast as it would if the rate were slower. 12. If there is a maximum rate at which the cookies can be cut then this constitutes a "mental capacity" or "mental resource", which can be divided among different tasks. A large amount of detailed empirical data pertaining to the processing "bottle neck" has been collected by psychologists, and the details appear to be naturally explained by this theory of how mental effort can influence behaviour.[http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/vnr.txt Last section] 13. I am not claiming that the mental processing is fundamentally nondeterministic, but only that the general (quantum) theory puts experiences, per se, explicitly into the mind-brain dynamics in a way that the special (classical) physics does not. The special theory is supposed to cover only cases where experiences of the observer do not alter the dynamics, whereas the general (quantum) theory is able to cover in a natural way the possibility that our experiences do alter the physical behavior in the way that introspection seems to reveal (James) and that explains a mass of empirical data (Pashler). ------------------------------------------------------------------ (%) Problems with causally Inert experience: It involves action without reaction. (Wigner) It seems unnatural that nature would create this whole ontological category that has no function. It creates the problem of how, in the evolution of the brain, does the mind stay closely aligned with the brain if there is no back-action that keeps it in check. (James) (#) Problem with Identity theory The characteristics that define "hurricanes, oak leaves, physical temperature, physical light, a computer running a certain program/software, a biological cell, etc. can be expressed, according to the ideas of classical physics, by regarding these things as entities or properties or activities that are built out of classical micro-elements that obey the classical laws. All physical properties are, according to the ideas of classical physical theory, defined in terms of spacetime locations and shapes of collections of micro-elements that have no properties other than those spelled out in classical physics. But the defining characteristic of a painful experience, namely that it is an experience of the painful kind, is not entailed by considering it to be built out of classical micro-elements that obey the rules of classical physics: there is a logical (i.e., definitional) gap.