From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Aug 17 09:43:28 1998 Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 00:02:45 -0700 From: Automatic digest processor Reply-To: Quantum Approaches to Consciousness To: Recipients of QUANTUM-MIND digests Subject: QUANTUM-MIND Digest - 13 Aug 1998 to 14 Aug 1998 [ Part 1: "Included Message" ] Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 00:02:45 -0700 From: Automatic digest processor Reply-To: Quantum Approaches to Consciousness To: Recipients of QUANTUM-MIND digests Subject: QUANTUM-MIND Digest - 13 Aug 1998 to 14 Aug 1998 There are 5 messages totalling 543 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. [q-mind] Reply to Stuart and Matti on Decoherence Hypothesis - E 2. [q-mind] Heisenberg's choice - Chris Nunn 3. [q-mind] Self organizing quantum jumps - Matti Pitkanen 4. [q-mind] We need logical analysis - Eduard Burian 5. [q-mind] To observe the unobservable - George Ryazanov ============================================ Contributions distributed to this list are automatically archived at http://listserv.arizona.edu/lsv/www/quantum-mind.html ============================================== For information on how to customize your subscription options, or to un-subscribe, send an "INFO REFCARD" command to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU. ============================================== [ Part 2: "Included Message" ] Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 14:35:24 -0500 From: "Robert G. Flower" Subject: [q-mind] Reply to Stuart and Matti on Decoherence Hypothesis - E From: Eduard Burian Subject: Reply to Stuart and Matti on Decoherence Hypothesis I welcome your comments about decoherence hypothesis. I really appreciate it! The most important fact there seems to me is that we really can come to common picture. [Stuart] The Orch OR model sees consciousness as a sequence of discrete, conscious events. I assume Eduard would agree that an objective reduction would be conscious since it is a form of decoherence. However he goes further and is claiming that any type of reduction, or collapse, including reduction which occurs by environmental decoherence would be conscious. Until recently I would have disagreed, and said that only objective reduction by the quantum gravity threshold involved conscious experience. The reasoning (developed with Roger in our papers) was that environmental decoherence was a random process, lacking non-computable input from the Planck scale Platonic realm. However Roger has recently suggested (last June at the HeartMath conference) that all reductions, even environmental decoherence would have simple, random and disorganized conscious experience. Nothing like our human conscious experience except in a very rudimentary fashion. It would be happening all the time all over the place. [Eduard] The problem with environmentally induced decoherence is that it depends on point-of-view, it is relative. The coherence is literally not destroyed here, it is only brought away. But "occasions of experience" which may be adjaced to condensations of potentialities to reality should not have such dubious face. A possibile escape is that there are objective processes of state reduction, that are maybe diverse and could be covered with environmental decoherence. This is, I find, preciselly the standpoint of Hameroff-Penrose quantum-gravity reduction: [Stuart] For organized consciousness with binding, qualia and Platonic values I think you need Roger's objective reduction to tie consciousness directly and literally to physical reality at the Planck scale. That is where qualia and platonic values must reside. [Stuart (elsewhere)] I wouldn't say the tomato as a whole is proto-conscious, but that the underlying spacetime geometry which describes the macroscopic tomato is proto-conscious. The important difference is that of level, or scale. I think that fundamental properties exist, or derive from, the most fundamental level---namely the Planck scale. [Eduard] However, this kind of state reduction need not be the only one, even the underlying structure at lowest physical level may be the same. E.g., vacuum can serve as a source of "zero level" noise and destroy the entanglement by self (next time I would hear a materialist speaking about C. I will ask him: "is vacuum conscious?"), or we can speculate about Planck level full of non-linear topology which is manifesting itself as a heat bath for our quantum prince. Black holes are also entropy generators, etc. In this case, the entanglement to environment will be sooner or later destroyed in objective, physical way. In other words, we are saying "Marry goes lost in the wood" despite the particular wolf, coyote, bear, troll or elsinore that does the necessary hard work. We are still not deserting our front line claiming C. in not the most fundamental thing in Universe. It is! However, the "fundamentality" seems to be of an another kind as the "smallest" or "quickest", and resembles the fundamentality of information, which addresses the Chalmers "intrinsic feature of any information". Despite Chalmers, we claiming that not that it IS information, it SHARES all the levels, or it occupy all the levels, which could be occupied by information. And there lies the fundamentality of consciousness: it occupies not only the Planck level, it occupies ALL physical levels! [Stuart] So what is destroyed? What is quantum information? The quantum superposition is (in the Penrose view) actual separation in underlying spacetime geometry. In reduction or decoherence the separation un-separates, or anneals. So consciousness occurs at the edge, or surface in Burian's description, between the quantum world and classical world. [Eduard] Also, if I can follow there, spacetime geometry mirrors the quantum coherence and vice versa, so even described in language of environmental decoherence, the necessary instruments for reduction can be each time found at bottom physical level. [Matti] That information is *lost(!)* in conscious experience looks somewhat peculiar idea to me. I would regard as a more promising and precise hypothesis the identification of moment of consciousness as a quantum jump in which quantum information associated with subsystem (self knowledge) is *created*(!) by the reduction of entanglement between subsystem and surrounding world. [Eduard] As I expected, notion about information loss that is intrinsically connected with creation of consciousness will be not recognized without else. It is still the effort for function, for activity, creativity, intelligence etc. which is in the primary scope of researchers. This is OK; consciousness in the widest definition encovers all that, and maybe most of the active-side problems can be solved only with the passive- or dark- or hard-side problems. But now, simplicissimus, we have to DIVIDE and CONQUER. Again, consider the levels! There has been a guess of visual consciousness bit rate (10^10 bits/s), and even the realistic flow may be 10-100 smaller, it is still much more than effects of c. on behavior, speech etc., which could be about 10^3 bit/s. This is not accidental and it may hold also for microphysical level: the count of acquired (classical) information must be lower or at least the same as the volume of lost coherence. Also, we have a PROCESS, which can serve information with some efficiency, but the coefficient is anytime less than one. [Matti] Quantum entanglement between sybsystems binds their experiences to single experience. [Eduard] I can sign this anytime. [ Part 3: "Included Message" ] Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 16:36:29 -0500 From: "Robert G. Flower" Subject: [q-mind] Heisenberg's choice - Chris Nunn From: Chris Nunn Subject: Heisenberg's choice In recent postings both Stan Klein and Gordon Globus have implied that Henry Stapp's 'free will' model demands some sort of (separately conceived) agent or soul to decide on the 'questions to nature' that should be posed. But a particularly attractive feature of the model is that it generates its own 'soul' in the form of complexity with its associated capacity for pattern recognition. There's a boot-strapping operation inherent in the model whereby symmetry breakings due to pattern recognition generate ever greater complexity and hence ever more subtle pattern discriminations (which amount to ever more subtle Heisenberg choices), etc. Of course one might argue that, from nature's point of view, our free will is not really free on this picture since deterministic (though unpredictable) descriptions can always be concocted to account for apparent 'free will'. The beauty of Stapp's model is that it suggests this is only half the story since, from our point of view, nature itself is determined by our free will operating in the context of the immense mountain of previous 'questionings' that has accumulated since the universe became complex enough to accomodate pattern recognition. Interestingly, a similar circularity has bedevilled discussions of the merits of materialism versus idealism. It led Strawson (a philosopher) to comment:- 'This raises the question of whether any idealist theory of mind is coherent. The answer to this question is probably 'Yes'. But there is a more important question to which the answer may be 'No'. This is the question whether any idealist theory of mind is both coherent and interestingly distinct from a materialist theory of mind.' (p. 107). Chris Nunn Reference. Galen Strawson (1994). Mental Reality. The MIT Press. Cambridge MA and London. [ Part 4: "Included Message" ] Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 17:03:52 -0500 From: "Robert G. Flower" Subject: [q-mind] Self organizing quantum jumps - Matti Pitkanen From: Matti Pitkanen Subject: Self organizing quantum jumps Stuart Hameroff seems to associate the attribute 'self-organizing' to the quantum jump. I have actually also done so for half a year or so. Below a short summary of how Topological Geometrodynamics [TGD] leads to quantum theory of self-organization. Self-organization seems to be closely related to the generation of fractal patterns, and the book of Barnsley about fractals gives rather convincing arguments supporting the belief that a very general class of fractals can be regarded as *fixed points of iteration*. The space in which fixed point exists is rather abstract: typically it belongs to the set of subsets of some space, say, 3-dimensional Euclidian space. This fixed point can be a landscape, biosystem, ecological population, hydrodynamical flow,... For instance, the success of this receipe in reproducing even a virtual photo of a forest is amazing. Even evolution could be regarded as resulting from this kind of iterative process leading gradually to a fixed point. One can even consider the possibility that iteration, if understood in sufficiently general sense, could be the basic element of self-organization. There is no obvious manner how this iteration could result from the equations of the classical physics. For instance, Haken has been ready to consider the possibility that subsystems, even electrons, are actually certain kind of computers, cellular automata and that the basic computational step would provide the required fundamental iteration step. TGD suggests that the quantum jump between quantum histories could be the fundamental iteration step! Iteration is here understood in very general, almost metaphoric sense. Strong form of Negentropy Maximization Principle (NMP) tells that in a given quantum state only one of the most quantum entangled subsystems can perform the quantum jump. Since alertness is measured by entanglement entropy, one can also say that quantum jump is performed by one of the most alert subsystems or equivalently: the reduction of the entanglement entropy/negentropy gain/information contents of conscious experience in the quantum jump is largest possible. Strong NMP predicts that self organization and fractalization can occur only for open systems fed by entanglement entropy. Strong form of NMP allows two kinds of quantum jumps. Active quantum jumps involve the selection between eigenstates of the subsystem density matrix. Active quantum jumps can be accompanied by passive quantum jumps in which subsystem state function is changed by a phase factor only so that the physical state remains invariant. These two kinds of quantum jumps explain the active (conscious selections, free will) and passive (sensory perception) aspects of consciousness. Subsystem can apply two strategies in order to have moments of consciousness: 'bad boys' try to maximize their entanglement entropy and 'saints' try to minimize their entanglement entropy. In this picture one can understand the fundamental perception-reaction feedback loop of biosystems as resulting from the combination of the active and passive quantum jumps. TGD indeed gives good hopes for understanding self-organization using quantum level concepts: a) Quantum criticality of TGD suggests the existence of macroscopic quantum systems in all length scales so that quantum theory of self-organization might apply also in the description of the hydrodynamical self-organization! As well known, 1/f noise is one consequence of criticality, and is difficult to understand in standard physics context since critical systems are by definition extremely unstable. Therefore the universality of 1/f noise could be thus regarded as a direct support for the quantum criticality of our Universe! b) The replacement of the point like particle with a 3-surface brings in an infinite number of zero modes characterizing the shape and size of and the classical Kahler field (essentially the classical electromagnetic field under rather general assumptions) associated with the 3-surface. Even macroscopic 3-surfaces behave like elementary particles in these degrees of freedom. These zero modes serve as fundamental order parameters, which in the ordinary theories of self-organization must be introduced in an ad hoc manner. Long range quantum correlations are crucial for quantum self-organization and are indeed possible in these new degrees of freedom. c) Arbitrarily large join-along-boundaries condensates of 3-surfaces are possible by quantum criticality. This means the possibility of arbitrarily large macroscopic quantum subsystems and self-organized criticality. Especially interesting biological examples of the join-along-boundaries bond are chemical bonds, the MAPs connecting microtubules and gap junctions connecting cells. d) The many-sheeted spacetime concept having hierarchical structure provides the realization of a fundamental slaving hierarchy at the level of the spacetime geometry. p-Adic length scale hypothesis makes this hypothesis quantitative. e) Spin glass analogy leads to an infinite-dimensional generalization of Thom's catastrophe theory and the maxima of Kahler function play the role of the minima of the potential function in Haken's theory of self-organization. Vacuum functional of TGD in turn is in the role of the generalized partition function appearing in Haken's theory. This picture also allows to generalize Haken's classical theory of self-organization to quantum context. In particular, the classical theory of the feature detection generalizes to quantum context; not surprisingly, passive quantum jumps are in a key role in this theory. One can also generalize Haken's theory to describe how biosystem acts to external world; in this theory the active quantum jumps play the key role. With Best, Matti Pitkanen [ Part 5: "Included Message" ] Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 00:37:52 -0500 From: "Robert G. Flower" Subject: [q-mind] We need logical analysis - Eduard Burian From: Eduard Burian Subject: We really need the real logical analysis [in reply to Luca Mana's posting titled "Wittgenstein's Perspective"] There is nothing strange about that things are falling down. If I tear an apple and this will continue to stay in the same height about earth, I would say: "how strange". The natural direction, where all the things are falling, has been named "down", so what could be there strange? What kind of explanation are you waiting for, something like "down is down because it is not up" or what? Maybe, Earth is not flat. First of all, there should be a clear message given for all analytical philosophers who are tempting turning us to the true faith: We realize that only hidden leaks, if not substantial errors in logical analysis could define us, excuse our existence. Therefore, it is worth nothing to SHOW us the resolvation details which in turn conclude in claim that investigation of consciousness in not possible! That consciousness is observable, that there is no "black spot" in our logical eyesight which could forever hide the deepest level that cannot be so further reduced in process of language-mediated verifying, that is what DEFINES us! The first paragraph of our faith is "Consciousness can be a subject of scientific investigation", and from this standpoint we cannot go away! And in turn, because positivistic logical analysis claims the opposite, the second paragraph must sound "We believe that the present-state logical analysis is inconsistent." In other words, however it is named, it is NOT AN ANALYSIS! Otherwise, our existence losses any support. Defining the status of Theory of consciousness as "having possibility to express statements about qualities of consciousness in other beings or physical systems" we are faced with the old problems of color qualia inversion etc., i.e. of our inability to compare contents of our experiences. Even the speculations lead deep to the past, first the Wiener [Vienna philosophers] group SHOWED us that it is principally impossible to compare it, or better, that any statement about qualities of consciousness in other brains has no sense. How they argued: Moritz Schlick: "... we have indeed to do with logical impossibility of verification. To speak about equality of percepts in the same consciousness has a sense; it can be verified by immediate experience. When however we ought to speak about equality of data in different consciousnesses, it is a new concept, it must be new defined. The new definition is just equality of reaction of the both individuals; we cannot imagine any other. (...) Some philosophers were tempted in overcoming the seeming difficulty they were faced to with various speculations and Gedankenexperiments ... they thought that perhaps an artificial link between nervous systems of two people can access the experiences of one to the second and compare them mutually. This, however, cannot help, because even in that fantastic way there will be compared only contents of one and the same consciousness." [EB] And where lies the error: Yes, when we would agree that there are isolated integrities of consciousness, like isolated insulas in see of usual information, we really must come to conclusion about incomparability of experiences. When symbols have no experiences, then, how to mediate it in order to enable comparison? Moreover, installing a link between two brains would lead, it seems, to emergence of one consciousness, so in this way man cannot compare two absolutely isolated consciousnesses. Also, they argue fully logically and correct that two absolutely isolated consiousnesses cannot be compared. But in a turn they conclude that there cannot exist theory of consciousness, in the sense we defined above. Which is THE fundamental failure of logical analysis. What you would say about me, if I find a solution for equation x^2=4 in form x=2 and then I will SHOW you that 2*2=4, which proves that I am right! Because there are TWO solutions: X1: When the integrities of consciousness are isolated from each other, then there is no theory of consciousness (in the sense of possibility of comparison of qualities) ever possible. X2: There are no two absolutely isolated conscious phenomena in the Universe at all. And the consequences: 1. The place of consciousness in Universe: X1: It emerges on higher levels of complexity or it is an epiphenomenon etc. X2: It is present at all physical levels. It must be explored with means of advanced physics. Furthermore, panexperientalisms is not some direction in search for theory of consciousness, it is a logical PREREQUISITE for it! 2. Objective reality: X1: There are no data about mediators, so the reality is declared be isomorph with my own experiences. There are also no data about experiences of others, so their notions about reality cannot be mixed together. Also, there is no way to resolve statements about "objective reality". X2: Reality is again isomorph with experiences, but because all the experiential events are parts of an integrity covering all Universe, we can declare the "objective reality" for "what is experienced in all Universe". Also, what is EXPERIENCED, that IS. To have a notion about that integrity, we can use an analogy with Mandelbrot set: you can zoom in it to see a daughter set resembling the mother in many details, which is seemingly independent, isolated of the whole set. But this is not true! Even the computer screen cannot show any detail, there are still thin black fibres that belong to the set and that bind all the daughter sets and other features together. There is only one not dis-continual set, even hugely structured! 3. Function of consciousness X1: There can be read anything, but finally they have no good reason for such thing. X2: Consciousness enables direct observation. Like in the human consciousness where colors of two isolated spots in visual field are directly compared for equality (a man has experience that qualities of colors are the same or not), it serves ANYWHERE as mediator-less method for presence/quality verification. Two components of Universe (any two components, particles, molecules etc.) may join their own experiences to a single integrity of structured experience, which proves their mutual existence directly! Consider two physical systems, not necessary conscious, which are isolated except a physical channel may mediate communication. A message, or a quality present in one system should be mediated to the second, but without disturbing the content of the message - in other words, it can be seemed as mediator-less communication. We know now that there is a method to do this: quantum cryptography. It is so that quantum theory enables to put away the effect of mediator - it enables direct messaging. Is not the direct verification of experiences the same thing? Then, quantum entanglement is necessary for binding - for establishing an integrity of consciousness. My hypothesis is, that it is the only what we need for integrity, although not sufficient for establishing experiences. In this sense, consciousness, and maybe even the quantum organization was developed in order to enable direct evidencing - to directly prove the existence of more or less independent parts of Universe. As whether the Universe needs some His part may say: it is LOGICALLY possible to prove that this and this thing exists, that they exist OBJECTIVELY. This is not negligible: only such possibility enables objective existence of Universe! And why He needs be objectively existing... maybe because Universe is not flat, again. To conclude, I will state that there exists a rigorous theory of consciousness which binds the logical analysis (without adjectives) and physical theory. Maybe the message there is that logical analysis cannot be further maintained isolated of physics, as an independent "language usage protocol" - once the information is subject of physical investigation, we must improve our understanding of "logic". The ball is indeed on the Wittgensteinian's side now. [ Part 6: "Included Message" ] Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 01:12:39 -0500 From: "Robert G. Flower" Subject: [q-mind] To observe the unobservable - George Ryazanov From: George Ryazanov Subject: To observe the unobservable, or How does our world change when we do not look at it? I want to address the questions raised in QUANTUM-MIND Digest (12 Aug 1998 to 13 Aug 1998): [Henry Stapp] There is a very basic question here: Can experiential qualities *be* defined to be certain ``physical'' properties, where "physical'' properties are conceptually identical to what they are in classical mechanics, which takes physical properties to have no experiential aspect? [Jan Verhey] I think this question has to be redefined : Can ANY experiential OUTPUT be used to FUNDAMENTALLY back-track how unexperienced/unknowable input and pre-conscious brain processing can account for that same experiential output ? This question is inevitable if we assume something that is directly unobservable. There are many examples of this kind: physics before vacuum (or Universe in my theory) is taken into account, physics before anybody has seen it, unconsciousness, and so on. Any existing theory is putting for unobservable dynamics something from the observable level. This procedure seems very suspicious. This problem is the topic of all my life work. I pretend to solve it, but it is impossible to describe this solution in concise form and in plain language. Nevertheless I'll try to give some hints. Solution has four steps: 1. I assume that our [cultural] traditions are the result of direct contact with some unobservable dynamics that reveals itself in all realms of culture. 2. But these revelations are described by languages of other (lower) levels. Then I put forward a procedure to rectify these revelations and translate them from our today language to language of their own. 3. Our today languages and structures are the results of closing and symmetry breaking of this rectified language and its dynamics. 4. In our culture derived in such a way, we find justification of assumption of point 1. In this advanced form of culture we can return to our source. All this is described in more detail in my website at http://www.angelfire.com/hi/georgii but only as some hints. Now I am rewriting this home page and any question and comment will be very useful for me. Till now anybody having seen my home pages breaks off any contact with me. That is the sign of something non-trivial. George Ryazanov.