From: THEORM::STAPP 19-AUG-1997 22:18:27.29 To: SMTP%"psyche-d@listserv.uh.edu" CC: STAPP Subj: Re: References and causal linkage Quantum Ontology and Mind-Matter Synthesis {abstract} The physicalist/materialist thesis that our conscious experiences are merely aspects of physical matter rests heavily of the assumed internal dynamical completeness of the physical world. According to the precepts of classical physics the physical world is in fact dynamically complete. But Heisenberg's uncertainty principle entails, in situations in which a person makes a choices between open options, that the classical laws of motion are not sufficient to specify which option will be chosen by that person: a quantum treatment is mandated. However, the orthodox quantum mechanical representation of the dynamical rules is radically different from the classical one. It is based on ``events'' rather than on enduring physical substance, and the quantum representation of the physical world is in principle not dynamically complete: some extra process, not to be found within the quantum representation of the physical world, is required to complete the dynamics. A quantum ontology covering the events in inanimate systems was proposed earlier independently by Stapp and by Haag. The natural extention of that ontology to events in human body/brains imbeds the orthodox pragmatic quantum theory in a Whiteheadian-type ontology that synthesizes the physical and experiential aspects of nature, and makes our conscious experiences into supra-physical causal elements of Nature's full dynamical process. Invited Paper: The X-th Max Born Symposium ``Quantum Future''. 1. Introduction. The modern era was created probably as much by Descartes' conceptual separation of mind from matter as by any other event. This move freed science from the religious dogmas and constraints of earlier times, and allowed scientists to delve into the important mathematical regularities of the observed physical world. Descartes himself allowed interaction between mind and matter to occur within the confines of a human brain, but the deterministic character of the physical world specified by Newtonian mechanics seemed to rule out completely, even within our brains, any interference of mind with the workings of matter. Thus the notion of a completely mechanical universe, controlled by universal physical laws, became the new dogma of science. It can readily be imagined that within a milieu dominated by such thinking there would be stout opposition to the radical claims of the founders of quantum theory that our human experiences, and the knowledge they contained, had to be taken as the basis of our fundamental theory of nature. However, the opposition to this profound shift in scientific thinking was less fierce than one might suppose. In the end, no one could dispute that science rests on what we can learn about Nature from our experiments, and quantum theory was formulated in practical human terms that rested squarely on that fact. Hence the momentuous philosophical shift was achieved by some subtle linguistic reformulations that were inculcated into the minds of the students and practicioners of quantum theory. The new thought patterns, and the calculations they engendered, worked beautifully, insofar as one kept to the specified practical issues, and refrained, as one was instructed to do, from asking certain ``meaningless'' metaphysical questions. Of course, there are a few physicists who are dissatisfied with purely practical success, and want to understand what the practical success of these computational rules is telling us about the nature of the world in which we live. Efforts to achieve such an understanding are proliferating, and the present work is of that genre. Historically, efforts to achieve increasinly coherent and comprehensive understandings of the clues we extract from Nature have occasionally led to scientific progress. The outline of the present work is as follows. In section 2, I document the claim made above that the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory is based squarely and explicitly on human experiences: on human knowledge. The aim of the paper is to incorporate this orthodox pragmatic epistemological theory into a rationally coherent naturalistic ontology. The main point is that the arguments for physicalism/materialism crumble under scientific scrutiny. This is because they are based on the assumption that the world of physical matter is internally dynamically complete. But the chief finding of physics during this century is precisely that the ideas about physical matter that have come down to us from the ancient greeks, and that were refined by the scientists of seventheenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, are fundamentally wrong: the real world cannot be made of such stuff. Moreover, although there is a quantum-mechanical generalization of physical matter, the dynamical rules expressed in terms of this physical aspect of nature are not dynamically complete. Some other process that is not expressible in terms of the orthodox quantum representation of physical matter is needed! This finding is highly relevant to the mind-matter problem, because it can be shown that this extra process necessarily plays a decisive role in controlling human choices between open options. In section 3 I describe an ontology that causes our conscious experiences themselves to be brought efficaciously into the quantum dynamics. The basic point is that in a theory with objectively real quantum jumps, some of which are identifiable with the quantum jumps that occur in the orthodox epistemological interpretation, one needs three things that lie beyond what orthodox quantum theory provides: \noindent 1. A rule, or process, that defines the conditions under which these jumps occur. \noindent 2. Something, or some process, that selects which of the possible outcomes actually appears. \noindent 3. Something, or some process, that brings the entire universe into concordance with the selected outcome. Nothing in the normal quantum description of nature in terms of vectors in Hilbert space accomplishes either 1 or 2. And 3 is simply put in by hand. So there is a huge logical gap in the orthodox quantum description, if it is considered from an ontological point of view. {\it Some potent process not describable within the orthodox physical description is needed.} One is thus led to ask: What is the simplest way of imbedding the successful orthodox pragmatic rules in a naturalistic ontological conception of nature? Pursuing the ideas of Heisenberg it seems reasonable to introduce an ``actualization'' process. This process should involve a {\it supra-physical superstructure} that grows out of the raw potentialities represented by the quantum theoretical description, and that allows the processes 1, 2, and 3 to proceed in some natural way, rather than as abrupt random choices unmediated by any structure. This superstructure should grow out of the potentialities represented by the Hilbert space state vector of the universe, and should eventuate in a new quantum state vector representing the newly created set of potentialities. This idea of a real structure underlying the quantum processes 1,2, and 3 is reminiscent of the ideas of A.N. Whitehead. Indeed, Haag [1996] and Stapp [1975, 1977, 1979] have independently proposed for the ontological underpinning of quantum phenomena, in the special case of inanimate processes, essentially the same Whiteheadian-type process. The central ideas are that the fundamental reality in nature is a sequence of ``actual events'', that each event can be associated with a finite spacetime region related to some (potentially) enduring physical system, and that each such event is represented in the quantum mechanical formalism by a ``reduction'' of the state vector of the universe. The process of selection and actualization that achieves the results 1, 2, and 3 described above is, however, not represented within the quantum mechanical representation of the physical world. Whitehead suggests that the appropriate language for describing the process that converts the set of physical potentialities that exist before an actual event to the set of physically described potentialities that exists after this event is a psychological language. And he regards the whole universe to be more like a single organism than a single machine. This latter suggestion mirrors Bohr's insistence upon the recognition of a certain element of wholeness in nature that is completely foreign the local mechanistic classical conception of nature. This feature of wholeness was the core of a famous debate between Bohr and Einstein, and is exhibited in part by the nonlocal character of the quantum world proved by Stapp[1997]. I am {\it not} proposing here that there be, in conjunction with a simple inanimate measuring device, for example, a psychological process that would resemble a human psychological process. Yet I do assume that the ``actual events'' in nature's process not be associated exclusively with human beings, and that there must be {\it some supra-physical process of selection and actualization } associated with each of the quantum actual events. The orthodox pragmatic epistemological rules of quantum mechanics are about human experiences, and the knowledge they carry. These are the basic realities of the theory. In order to imbed these rules naturalistically in the Whiteheadian-type ontology I assume that certain of the actual events are complex high-level events in human body/brains, and that for these particular events Whitehead's suggestion of the appropriateness of a psychological description of the supra-physical process is valid. In particular, I propose that for each such actual event a key causal step of the Whiteheadian process of the actualization of the next state will consist of precisely the next psychological event experienced by the person in question, and that this experience is the experiencing of the meaning or significance to the human being of the activity that is initiated by the ``template for action'' that is actualized by this actual event. It may be objected that this proposal is speculative. Although it does appear to do the required job of the explaining the occurrence and causal efficacy of our thoughts, it is not verified by any specific new supporting empirical evidence, apart from the general verification that it receives by accounting, ontologically, for the validity of the pragmatic epistemological rules of quantum theory. However, the key point here is not speculative. The key point is this. A person might be in a situation that obviously calls for one and only one response: a charging bull is heading staight at you, and a protective wall is just behind you. If you're not in a suicidal mood you're going to get behind that wall `mighty quick'. But there might be a few open options about the fine points of exactly how to get behind the wall expeditiously, and the choice between these options might depend upon the fine details of the state of your brain when you first catch sight of the charging bull. According to the ideas classical mechanics, your exact behavior is in principle completely fixed by the complete state of the physical world at the moment when you see the charging bull: there is in principle no indeterminateness about which choice nature will make. And this choice is completely fixed by the earlier state of the physical world: no other information, or supra-physical process, is needed. But in the actual world this is not the case! In the actual world the physical state is, according to orthodox physical theory, represented by the quantum state of the universe (i.e., by the wave function of the universe). This state is the quantum-mechanical analog of the physical world of classical mechanics, insofar as there is such an analog. However, the fine details of the dynamics of the brain depend, for example, upon the effects of the motion of the pre-synaptic calcium ions: upon which of them reach triggering sites for releasing vesicles of neurotransmitter into synaptic clefts. But the Heisenberg uncertainty in the velocity of each pre-synaptic calcium ion as it enters the nerve terminal (bouton) through a microchannel (of diameter one nanometer) is about .004 times its thermal velocity, and it must travel about 50 nanometer to get to the trigger site. Hence the wave function will spread out to a size at least comparable to the size of the calcium ion itself. But then the question of whether or not the calcium ion is captured at the trigger site {\it is not fixed by anything in the physical world,} as that world is represented in modern physics. {\it Something not represented in the physical world, as it is described in orthodox physics, is needed to determine what actually happens.} The Whiteheadian idea of what this ``supra-physical'' part of the universe is like may seem speculative. But {\it something} outside our present orthodox representation of physical reality is definitely needed, and the Whiteheadian idea, as proposed here, brings in only things that are known to exist, and that are in fact the basic realities of contemporary physical theory, namely our thoughts. And these thoughts are brought into the dynamics of human brains in a manner that does nothing but fill---in the most natural way---an existing void in our contempory orthodox physical theory in a way that accounts parsimoniously for the valididy of the pragmatic epistemological rules of quantum theory. {\bf References} Haag, Rudolf (1996), {\it Local Quantum Physics: Fields, Particles, and Algebras}, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, pp.313-322. Stapp, Henry P. (1975),``Bell's Theorem and World Process'', {\it Nuovo Cimento} 29, 270-322. Stapp, Henry P. (1977), ``Theory of Reality'', {\it Foundations of Physics} 7, 313-323. Stapp, Henry P. (1979), ``Whiteheadian Approach to Quantum Theory and the Generalized Bell's Theorem'', {\it Foundations of Physics} 9, 1-25. Stapp, Henry P. (1997), ``Nonlocal character of quantum theory'', {\it American Journal of Physics} 65, 300-304.