From: THEORM::STAPP 22-AUG-1997 09:19:43.02 To: SMTP%"psyche-d@listserv.uh.edu" CC: STAPP Subj: Re: References and causal linkage Aaron Sloman (Aug17) gave a detailed criticism of my posting of Aug 14, in which I briefly put forth some reasons to strive now for a mind-matter synthesis based on quantum theory. I subsequently sent in two postings that explained my proposal in more detail. Having now set forth the outline of my proposal---so that we're not talking in terms of a completely unexemplified abstraction--- I think it may be useful to look more closely at Aaron's criticisms: others subscribers also may be put off by arguments similar to his. Aaron's main point was that this mind-matter business is very complicated and confusing, and that we should straighten out some of the confusion before advancing to the construction phase. I believe that the confusion Aaron finds stems directly from the endeavour of trying to find consciousness in an idealization of the body/brain that has had its connection to consciousness squeezed out. This idealization is one in which the body/brain is conceived of as being built out of ordinary physical matter, where "ordinary physical matter" means physical matter of the kind imagined to exist by the ancient greeks, and refined by the physical scientists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. That sort of matter is, in fact, just the kind of matter that arises from quantum theory in the so-called "classical limit", in which Planck's constant is set to zero, and the wave packet is fully reduced. But this approximation eliminates the action of mind on matter that arises in the general case. Thus a person's body/brain should not be confused with the classical idealization of it---if one wants to preserve the two-way connection of matter to mind that twentieth century physics has opened up. The advantages of accepting quantum theory (beyond the fact that it is in concordance with the empirical evidence, whereas the basic ideas of classical mechanics are fundamentally incompatible with that evidence) are: 1. It's orthodox form is explicitly formulated in terms of human knowledge, which therefore must occur in any corresponding ontology, and occur in a way restricted by the way it occurs the physical theory. 2. The *part* of the quantum dynamics that is expressed in terms of the physical aspects is incomplete in a way that provides a perfect place for dynamically efficacious conscious experiences. 3. This place for consciousness disappears in the classical approximation. Having thus encapsulated my ideas, I return to Aaron's criticisms. Citing the failure of the proponents of the thesis (duality) and the antithesis (physicalism) to communicate, I suggested that "the time is ripe for an Hegelian synthesis." Aaron demurred, suggesting that the failure was due to confusion that needed to be cleared up first. I've given my answer: this confusion is nicely cleared up by distinguishing the physical body/brain from its classical idealization, which has had its link to consciousness snuffed out. My next point was that the founder's of quantum theory believed that the character of the empirical evidence demanded a break with classical ideas about the physical world, and a retreat to the more primitive and secure position that science is based ultimately on our experiences. Aaron replied that: 1. Science is not based on authority. 2. There is no unanimity among scientists on some of these matters. 3. The physical sciences are about the physical world, not about the psychological lives of physicists. My replies: 1. I was merely describing how the founders coped with the problem of devising a rational framework for codifying in a coherent and useful way the observered structure of the accumulating empirical evidence. 2. I myself have spent a lot of time trying to get `mind out of physics', and examining the efforts of others to do so. None of these efforts have been accepted by the physics community at large: all have awkward features, which generally are recognized by their promoters. These "failures" do not mean that the orthodox approach is necessarily "right". But it makes reasonable the idea of constructing a naturalistic rational ontology that naturally imbeds the orthodox epistemological approach. 3. The proposed ontology allows most of physical process to proceed without anyone's being around to observe it. But the general process naturally encompasses *also* efficacious human thoughts/ideas/feels/experiences in association with the physical activities of human brains: these experiences are part of a supra-physical superstructure that sits ON, not IN, the physical world, as it is represented in quantum theory. If we seek a scientific theory of consciousness, it must be in part about our conscious experiences and their connection to physical processes in our brains. I said that: "the very essence of the orthodox interpretation is that we MUST build our basic theory on conscious human experiences, in order to have a rationally coherent theoretical framework." Aaron countered that any claim "that we MUST build our physical theory on conscious human experience is just false" My assertion was not that that claim is true: it was rather a factual assertion about the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation. Aaron's arguments for his claim "...is just false" are based on his observation that an adequate physical theory must allow to happen anything that does happen, e.g., a thunderstorm. However, his argument does not come to grips with the problem of the breakdown of ordinary ideas about causality that the founders of quantum theory were struggling to cope with. There is no problem at all with imagining that the phenomena that we observe in connection with a thunderstorm are caused by a collection of energetic tiny particles moving around in some well-defined way. But there was at the time of the founding of quantum theory, AND THERE CONTINUES TO BE, no rational way to comprehend in terms of substantive "matter" ALL the patterns of physical phenomena that experiments reveal, without allowing `spooky actions at a distance' that are incompatible with the relativisic idea that causal influences can propagate only into the future: i.e., there is NO POSSIBILITY of preserving the normal idea that the past cannot depend upon what someone whimically will choose to do in the future. Due to the failure of this normal idea about causality there definitely is no rationally coherent way to maintain the idea that a world that conforms to the patterns codified by quantum theory *could* be built out of normal "matter". Hence analogies to thunderstorms, and other phenomena that can at least be imagined to be caused by "normal matter", are irrelevant to the issue of what changes in our scientific theories are needed to obtain a rationally coherent way of coping with the fundamental inadequacy of the normal concept of matter. It is true that the assured breakdown of the notion that the physical world is built of "normal matter" does not by itself necessarily force one to retreat to all the way back to the ground-floor stage of saying that we MUST formulate the theory in terms of a certain kind of human knowledge. Indeed, Heisenberg himself, though always sticking firmly to the idea that the mathematical formalism of quantum theory must be interpreted in terms of human knowledge, sometimes espoused the idea that the real world itself should be understood in terms of "events" out there. Indeed, the ontology I propose encompasses that idea. But the structure of the phenomena does lend itself very naturally to the orthodox epistemological interpretation, which is the most lean, elegant, and practical of the possible interpretations. By adopting an ontology that encompasses *also* this orthodox epistemological interpretation one brings our experiences into the ontology in a natural yet highly restricted way. I said that the mathematical structure of quantum theory was "in full accord, insofar as we have been able to check the theory empirically, with the actual structure of our experiences." Aaron said he did not believe it. He cited `itches' and other such things, and said: "I dont believe there's ANY mathematical structure in ANY current physical theory that has anything remotely to do with any of these experiences, let alone being `in full accord' with their `actual structure', as Henry claims." I claimed only full accord in cases that have been empirically tested: the case of `itches' has not been tested. But I believe that the experience of "feeling an itch on my right palm" is not fundamentally different from the experience of "seeing the pointer on a measuring device swing to the right", and predictions about experiences of this latter kind have been tested and confirmed with high precision, and they have never been found to fail. Aaron said: "Most of the theories of consciousness that I have read have little to do with the actual structure of human experience, whose richness and depth and diversity far outstrip ALL formal theories I've ever come across." In the ontology I am proposing human conscious experiences are supposed to be part of a superstructure built on the quantum mechanical representation of a human body/brain. Thus they inherit from the (quantum) description of the physical world, as raw material, a huge richness of possible patterns of neural excitations. Aaron said: "Fortunately, I think my own conscious experiences are capable of influencing the course of physical and mental events via some other [i.e., non-quantum mechanical] routes." Well, a hurricane can influence the course of physical events, and so can a thermostat, or a computer that controls the east-coast power grid. But insofar as the behaviour of these physical systems is explained by classical mechanics (relativistic field theory) these influences can be traced down to a microscopic level, and the influence of the large system can be said to be merely the composite effect of all of the micro-elements acting together: the whole physical system is causally reducible in principle to the local effects its of micro-parts, although adequate descriptions of the macro-phenomena in terms of higher-level concepts may also be possible, and more useful in practice. Insofar as classical mechanics is adequate in principle to explain the brain dynamics, and conscious experiences can be identified as aspects of brain dynamics, one might be able to claim, similarly, that conscious experiences are causally efficacious. However, there are essential differences. Insofar as classical mechanics is adequate, "the hurricane" is normally interpreted to mean the swirling collection of particles and fields that is the "cause of our conscious experiences of the hurricane": "the hurricane" itself is not a human conscious experience. It is "the hurricane" that is deemed to cause both the direct physical effects of the hurricane, and also our conscious experiences of the hurricane: these conscious experiences are, according to the classical concepts, not the actual cause of the physical effects of the hurricane. In analogy it would be some pattern of brain activity, which we might call "the cause of Aaron's conscious experience" that, according to the classical conception, is influencing Aaron's physical behaviour, not his conscious experience itself. From the standpoint of classical mechanics an extra assumption would be needed to equate Aaron's conscious experience to its physical cause. Since both the conscious experience and its physical cause seem to be in some sense in Aaron's body/brain, that identification might seem to be justified by Occam's razor, were it not for the following two facts: 1. The classical approximation is provably inadequate-in-principle to describe brain dynamics (see my discussions, in various places, of the dynamical importance of the Heisenberg uncertainties in the motions of the pre-synaptic calcium ions); and 2. The orthodox quantum-mechanical treatment draws a very sharp distinction between the physically described brain and the conscious experiences associated with it: the former is controlled between conscious events by the (local) Schroedinger equation, whereas the latter do not exist between conscious events, and are connected to a nonlocal process. It would not seem reasonable to collapse into one thing, on the basis of ideas drawn from an inadequate-in-principle approximation, things that are completely different in the more general framework. Henry P. Stapp P.S. The "companion posting" that I sent in on August 19 was apparently scotched by the moderator. You can get it at my Home Page under "Companion Posting August 19". Home Page: http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html