From stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Tue Oct 13 12:20:05 1998 Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 12:12:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Henry Stapp To: quantum-mind Cc: kleinlist , bdj10@cam.ac.uk, brings@rpi.edu, brucero@cats.ucsc.edu, chalmers@paradox.ucsc.edu, ghrosenb@ai.uga.edu, hameroff@u.arizona.edu, hpstapp@lbl.gov, "jeffery m. schwartz" , keith@imprint.co.uk, stan klein , patrickw@monash.edu.au, phayes@nuts.coginst.uwf.edu Subject: Clarification of experiments On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: Henry, I'm confident that it will be quite easy for me to devise physiologically plausible mechanisms to account for any of the experiments you mentioned, without any need for quantum mechanics. Stan ***************************************************** Dear Stan, I am amazed that you believe that you can account for causal anomalies of the kind I was describing within a classical framework. You must have misunderstood what I was saying. In the experiments I was proposing the subject is holding some idea (e.g., resisting a strong urge to give in, and allow the tic to occur) in place by a strong effort of will. Then at a signal timed in some random way, and communicated to him, he turns off this willful effort. In any classical account any effect in his body/brain of this turning-off of his effort must occur *after* the signal has been sent. One must of course design, execute, and analyze the experiment with care. But in a sufficiently well designed, executed, and analyzed experiment it may be possible to identify certain changes in body/brain behavior (say at the neural level) that are reliably correlated to the time that the signal is sent. If the timing of the signal is suitably randomized to preclude any systematic correlation with the pre-existing physical/mental state of the subject if the signal is not actually transmitted to the subject, then if there is a systematic change that is correlated to signal time when the signal is communicated to the subject, and that change occurs *before* the signal is sent, then I claim that this timing anomaly would not be explainable within the normal classical-physics framework, where all such observable cause-effect correlations have cause prior to effect. Henry ************************************************** >From klein@adage.Berkeley.EDU Mon Oct 12 22:06:35 1998 Subject: precursive Henry, Thanks for the clarification of what you meant by the word "precursive" I thought you were talking about the many time anomalies that Libet found. Indeed in the experiment you clarified that violates causality I wouldn't dare to look for a classical explanation (other than the ET helpers). All of Libet's experiments, on the other hand, have easy classical explanations. Stan