5. Agents and Evolution.

Human beings play a singular role in Copenhagen quantum theory: 
within that scheme science is viewed as a human endeavor, 
performed by human beings for human beings. Still, most scientists 
believe that something was going on before Homo sapiens arrived on 
the scene, and many hold that the task of science will not be finished 
until we have a science-based idea of what that something was, and 
how our species emerged from it. 

My intention here is to find the place of human beings in a broader 
non-anthropocentric setting, and I believe that this can be done by 
building upon the foundation laid by the creators of quantum theory, 
rather than by retreating to a mechanistic conception of man that 
ignores consciousness, or tries to replace it by something else, such 
as classically describable brain processes. Indeed, the approach of 
scientists and philosophers who base their thinking on the classical 
conceptualization of human brains depends on a promissory note that 
can never be redeemed. 

That promise, or completely unsupported hope, is that someday we 
shall be able to understand how a conscious experience---a feeling or 
knowing---can either be, or be a necessary consequence of, a 
structure built exclusively out of the elements specified by classical 
mechanics. However, as already noted in Chapter 1, the classical 
concepts and laws entail all kinds of microscopic and macroscopic 
geometric, behavioral, and functional properties, but nothing in those 
concepts and principles can ensure or dictate that some changing 
arrangements of numbers assigned to space-time points, which is 
basically all that classical physics can ever provide, will necessarily 
be accompanied by, say, a “painful feeling”.  

Thus feelings can be only gratuitous---not rationally entailed---add-
ons to any structure built solely from entities possessing only the 
properties specified by the classical concepts. Such 
supernumeraries, being non-entailed either rationally, dynamically, or 
logically, can be stripped away without effecting the course of 
physical events prescribed by the theory, and hence are devoid of 
survival value. Nor can it be argued that feelings must emerge from 
such systems because we ourselves are the living proof. For we 
ourselves are certainly not built out of elements that conform to the 
idealized unphysical concepts that are the basis of classical physics. 
We, insofar as contemporary science has correctly informed us, are 
built out a very different kind of stuff that is more like information and 
tendencies for experiences to occur, than like classical matter. 

In short: in order to get something like consciousness out of a theory 
one must put something like consciousness in.  Quantum theory 
already requires, in order to yield well defined predictions, the 
existence of Process I, which by its intrinsic nature is both a 
dynamically efficacious element of the theory and a link between the 
experiential and physical aspects of the theory. Thus quantum 
physics already provides, as an essential feature of the dynamics,  
what was formerly provided by metaphysics, namely a link between 
the physical attributes of an agent, which are described in 
mathematical terms, and the experiential aspects that are described 
in psychological terms?  
 
So far I have restricted myself to the orthodox framework created by 
the founders of quantum theory, and developed by John von 
Neumann. The focus of those works was on human agents, and on 
intentional actions that created scientific experiments. I shall apply 
the same equations and ideas more generally.

So how does the evolutionary scenario work? 
According to this theory, the universe initially evolves under the 
governance of Process II alone. All possibilities are mechanically 
generated by this evolving wavelike state.  Given the nature of the 
laws implemented by these laws---which support, among other 
things, the possibility of the formation of organic molecules---the set 
of all possibilities will eventually lead to the formation of potential 
agents, which are simply mechanical subsystems that exist for a time 
in equilibrium with their environment, as (perhaps rudimentary) 
stimulus-response (input-output) system. These systems can be 
roughly conceived of as smeared out cloudlike collections of classical 
states that tend to endure for intervals of time in communication with 
their environments.
Each of these quasi-stable subsystems has, due to its wave-like 
(cloudlike) nature a tendency to degenerate into less cohesive states. 
However, nature has armed all potential agents with a counter-
weapon: access to Process I, which is able by means of the Quantum 
Zeno Effect (to be described presently) to preserve over extended 
periods, in the face of all sorts of disruptive processes, the physical 
integrity of the agent.
We have as our building blocks the assumed existence of Processes 
I and II, and the known existence of feelings. This brings us to the 
critical questions: (1) What determines when a Process I event 
occurs? (2) What determines the specific form of that event? And (3) 
How is that event related to the “feeling” aspect of nature?
Due to the inherently wave-like quality of physical systems the 
quantum state of a potential agent will tend to evolve into a collection 
of states that represent alternative possible courses of action. Within 
that collection there may be a maximal state of high organization (low 
entropy) in which various modules---partially autonomous 
subsystems---within the agent act together in mutual support to form 
a state of quasi-stable equilibrium. This state will extend over a large 
region, and hence cannot be grasped or identified as a whole by the 
dynamically local Process II. But it can be specified by a projection 
operator P acting on some slowly changing degrees of freedom of the 
agent. The feel associated with Process I can be identified as the 
grasping of this state organization and separating it from the prior 
state S. This enduring state of quasi-stable equilibrium is the state 
PSP specified by Process I. 
One might object that if the effect of this “feel” is precisely definable in 
terms of the mathematically defined projection operator P, then the 
“feels” could, just as in the classical case, be eliminated from the 
dynamics, rendering the feels superfluous and without causal 
efficacy. But the situation in this regard is very different from the 
classical one. In the classical case an ontology (i.e., reality) is 
specified that has no hint of the existence of anything like a “feeling.” 
And there is nothing physical for a feeling to do that is not already 
done by the classical physical process. But in quantum theory the 
physically described Process II, does not by itself lead to a well 
defined predictive theory, or to any understanding of the structure of 
our human experiences. Thus orthodox quantum theory introduces 
Process I not to link consciousness to a theory that is already 
dynamically complete, but rather to complete the dynamics in a way 
that will bring the theory into concordance with our conscious 
experience. This process must involve “feelings,” if, following William 
James, we recognize all experiential happenings to be feelings of one 
kind or another.  
This grasping event is represented in the mathematics by a von 
Neumann Process I event. Each such event separates the prior 
physical reality into two independent branches, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. The 
‘Yes’ branch, PSP, contains the organized state of equilibrium, which 
persists long enough for its physical traces to be etched into the 
physical structure of the agent, and for the action that it specifies to 
be initiated. The left-over ‘No’ branch (I-P)S(I-P) would not in general 
be associated with a quasi-stable state of equilibrium, and hence 
should not be directly connected to a (recollected) experience. 
However, subsequent Process I events can occur in either one of the 
two branches, and this would allow experiences to become 
associated eventually with either branch.
The theory assigns a statistical weight to each branch. The weights 
associated with the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ branches are given by the formulas 
Tr PSP/Tr S and Tr (I-P)S(I-P)/Tr S, respectively, where for any 
matrix M the expression Tr M represents the sum of all of the 
‘diagonal elements’ M(i,i) of M. (You need not understand these 
formulas, but should know that such probability formulas exist.)
Subjectively, these statistical weights determine the “probabilities” 
that the agent will experience the ‘Yes’ feeling or will not experience 
that feeling. They determine also the probability that another agent 
who is observing first agent will observe his actions to accord with the 
state PSP or (I-P)S(I-P). 
The simplest explanation of these empirical facts is that “Nature 
chooses” either the state PSP or the state (I-P)S(I-P) in accordance 
with a “propensity” or “objective tendency” specified by the above 
formulas. However, this idea of a real objective eradication of one 
branch or the other leads to the conclusion that Process I events 
occurring in distant parts of the universe are linked together by 
“instantaneous” action-at-a-distance effects. Some physicists find this 
conclusion unacceptable, even though it generates no conflict with 
experience, and prefer to believe that no real objective choice is 
made between the two states, but rather that it only seems like that. 
Von Neumann makes no commitment as to whether there is or is not 
a real objective eradication of branches, and I shall follow his lead of 
not becoming embroiled here in that controversy. 
The really important fact is this: If the rapidity of nearly identical 
Process I events in a chain of ‘Yes’ choices is sufficiently great then, 
a straightforward application of the probability formulas given above 
shows that, the probability associated with this evolving ‘Yes’ state 
will not decrease as quickly as it otherwise would. Thus this state of 
organization can sustain itself by means of this “Quantum Zeno 
Effect” in the face of mechanical processes that tend to destroy it. 
This means that agents that have structures that tend produce 
suitable sequences of Process I events would enjoy a survival 
advantage over competitors that lack such structures. Our own large 
capacity to use Process I would then be an example of the adaptive 
tendency of living organisms to exploit the intricacies of the laws of 
nature.
It is important that the Quantum Zeno Effect of a rapid sequence of 
Process I events associated with a projection operator P would tend 
to keep the original state PSP confined to states of the form PXP, but  
that the factor X would evolve in a normal way. Thus a focus of 
attention associated with a projection operator P could be sustained 
in the face of strong mechanical disruptive tendencies while the 
mechanical processing within the subspace specified by that fixed 
focus of attention proceeds normally
This capacity of mental intention to keep attention focused in the face 
of natural distractions could produce large deviations in the behavior 
of a quantum agent from his classical zombie (i.e., nonconscious) 
counterpart. Mental effort can make a big difference in brain activity! 
And the dynamical equations that allow mental effort to make this big 
difference lie at the core of quantum theory.