Core and More 1) Quantum Conception of the Human Person: The Core Argument. 2) Mind and Emergence. 3) How Attention guides Action -------------------------------------------------------------- Quantum Conception of the Human Person: The Core Argument. I. Introduction. 1. Two science-based aspects of the human person. A. Brain/Body aspect: * reports of readings of instruments probing brain/body * studied by neuroscience, physiology. * described in terms of locations in spacetime B. Mind aspect: * reports of the subject about his experiential inner world. * studied by psychology, phenomenology. * described in terms of feelings, thoughts, ideas, knowings, 2. Cartesian ontology: Two levels of reality, physical and experiential. 3. Unity of Science. Different fields of science use different languages and concepts. Connections between levels are understood through the assumption that everything is built out of physical micro-elements and experiential qualities/events 4. Two traditional ideas of the relationship between mind and matter. Materialism: Mind is just an aspect of matter. (Pro: Matter was prior to life; body persists during sleep.) (Con: The classical concept of matter is dynamically complete: but has no place for mind, which does exist) Idealism: Mind is basic: matter derivative. (Pro: The idea of matter is just a theoretical construct; Experience is all that we really know.) (Con: Ideas are to insubstantial to build matter.) II. The Main Points of vN/W QT: * The Quantum Reality is a new kind of reality that lies mid-way between mind and matter: The real stuff is efficacious information. * There is a "dynamical gap" in quantum mechanics. (Not the statistical element.) * This dynamical gap provides a perfect opening for the entry of mind---as an non reducible element--- into the dynamics of the brain. * vN/W QT provides a rationally coherent dynamical theory of the mind-brain system III. This science-based understanding of the human person provides a rational foundation for human values. * Values are rooted in self image, and science provides one. * The nature of Free Will. IV. The (vN/W) Quantum Conception of Reality. * The universe is built out of information, not substance. It is a growing collection of bits of information. * Each new bit is the objectification of a subjective bit of knowledge. * This informational structure is instantiated in clouds of virtual classical-type worlds. * Quantum Dynamics is like twenty questions: Subsystems choose question with Yes-No answers; Nature delivers an answer. V. I explain this without using mathematical formulas by using the THE COOKIE-DOUGH ANALOGY: * Picture a cookie-dough tray. * It corresponds to a physical system. Examples: A particle, A biological cell, A human being, The entire universe. * Each point on the tray represents an `entire' possible CLASSICAL state of that system: It specifies the location AND the velocity of each particle in the system. * In classical physical theory the physical systen would be represented by a single point moving around on the cookie- dough tray. * In quantum mechanics the system is represented by a CHUNK of cookie dough! The chunk moves about on the tray, and, in general, spreads out. * A key dynamical property is this: Occasionally a cookie cutter is applied to the dough. It separates the dough into two parts: 1) the part inside the cookie cutter, and 2) the part outside the cookie cutter. * Then the cookie-dough immediately resets (collapses) either to the part `inside' the cookie cutter, or to the part `outside' the cookie cutter. * This collapse is `statistically' determined: the propensities to collapse to inside or outside are proportional to amounts of dough inside and outside the cookie cutter. * Thus the dynamics consists of a sequence of deterministic dynamical evolutions (via the Schroedinger equation), punctuated by a sequence of statistically determined resettings (collapses). VI. The Gap in the dynamics: What determines: * The SHAPE of the cookie cutter? * The location WHERE it is applied? * The time/instant WHEN it is applied. These are NOT fixed by the Schroedinger equation. VII. A Key Postulate of Copenhagen and vN/W QT: * The questions about the shape and location of the cookie cutter are answered by reference to EXPERIENCE: What lies "inside" any applied cookie cutter corresponds to a single coherent thought/feeling/experience. *The collapse to inside eliminates from the state all components that are incompatible with that thought/feeling/experience. *This brings the `experiences of observers' into the dynamics. *The collapses are nonlocal: each resetting can immediately alter aspects of the state pertaining to physical systems in distant places. These properties are all mind-like features. VIII. The Deterministic Aspect: * Between collapses the dynamics of the whole chunk of cookie dough is controlled by the local deterministic Schroedinger equation, which is analogous to the equation of motion of classical mechanics. * The chunk of cookie-dough is a cloud of virtual classical systems evolving by an equation that is connected in a simple way the corresponding classical equation of motion. These properties of the state are matter-like qualities. IX. vN/W Mind-Brain Dynamics. * Most physicist accept the Copenhagen stance that quantum theory is, as Bohr repeatedly said, "merely" a set of rules for for computing expectations pertaing to future experiences. * Most of the rest strive to GET THE OBSERVER OUT of the theory. * But von Neumann and Wigner, being mathematicians, let their concept of nature be dictated by the mathematical structure, rather than by unreliable "physical intuition"! * In Copenhagen QM there are two element of freedom beyond the well known statistical element! They are the free choices by the experimenter as to which aspect of nature he will probe, and when he will do so: The observer enters the dynamics by choosing a) WHICH Yes-No question will be put to nature, and b) WHEN will this question be put to nature. This experimenter/observer stands outside the dynamics: His actions are NOT FIXED BY THE QUANTUM DYNAMICS. 5. In vN/W QT there is a corresponding DYNAMICAL GAP: Some choice must be made as to * WHICH question will be put to nature, and * WHEN will it be put to nature. 6. This "dynamical gap" allows "choices" made by the human person to enter into the dynamics. X. Why do experiences/feelings exist? What is their dynamical role in nature? Answer: The choices made by the human person are based on "evaluations", and the substrate of these evaluations consists of "feelings": the choice of which question to put to nature is decided by feelings, and feelings are built out of other feelings. The point is that the QT dynamics consists of TWO processes, not just one, as in classical physical theory, and although * the basis of one of these processes (the deterministic one) is a structure in space-time, * the ontological basis of the other one (the evaluative one) is "feelings", XI. These human choices are not "free" in the sense of popping out of the blue. They are, indeed, not determined by local mechanical process alone. But they are elements in a causal structure that involves both a local deterministic structure and evaluations based on feelings. XII. I have spelled out elsewhere (see How Attention guides Action) how value-based consent influence action in a way that explains a great deal of data from both introspective and experimental psychology. (.../~stapp/vnr.txt) VIII. This quantum-theory-based conception of the human person is in accord with our intuitive idea of the human person as an agent responsible for his actions. It thus confutes the claim that science shows that the actions of human beings are necessarily mechanical consequence of processes beyond their control, rendering them not responsible for their own acts. XIII. The nonlocal aspects of quantum theory also support a self-image of man as more than just a complex localized structure of mud-like matter: he is more deeply integrated into nature than that: his every thought has ramifications throughout the universe, according to vN/W QT. ********************************************************************** Mind and Emergence At the meeting "Science and the Human Person" most neuroscientists used the term "Emergent" to characterize the place of mind. I argue here against that position. I. Current neuroscience provides no evidence against the fundamental validity of quantum theory. Brain science is based on the concepts of electrical pulses, permeable membranes, ion channels, chemical reactions, and expressions of genes etc. and hence on chemistry and physics. The only known way to bring all this physics and chemistry together in a single logically coherent rational structure is to take quantum theory as the theory of the underlying physical structure. None of the results obtained by brain studies casts any doubt on the idea that quantum theory adequately describes the physical foundation that ties together the disparate elements used in brain science. II. At the level of the behaviour of the neurons the classical approximation is adequated, in present-day experiments, because the quantum effects are buried in the noise: no precise classical dynamical computations are possible in situations where conscious choices are important. There is no evidence within neuroscience that distinguishes between the model in which consciousness is an epiphenomenal by-product of classically conceived brain activity, and this quantum model where consciousness is causally efficacious. III. But there is the still the question of how `mind' is connected to brain. Many neuroscientists invoke the word "emergence" to explain mind. I believe that notion, as it is used, is anti-scientific. "Emergence" seems to mean to everyone something involving top-down causation. Sperry's example of the wheel, held together by classically understandable forces, is a paradigm example of top-down causation. More generally, in a classically conceived world the dynamics of complex systems of various kinds might be most efficiently described in terms of appropriate high-level concepts. There is nothing at all mysterious about this. It just a matter of using the most convenient and appropriate concepts and macro-structures for describing the consequences of the basic laws in various circumstances and contexts. In the same way various "logical" concepts could be appropriate for describing the dynamics of (classical-physics-based) computers built in certain ways, and running certain programs, etc.. I would call both of these examples cases of "trivial emergence", since all of the higher-level physical structure is basically spacetime structure that can be understood to be *in principle* a rational consequence of the basic laws that govern the interactions between the elementary micro-elements out of which the complex structures are built, together with the boundary conditions. High-level concepts are useful and appropriate *in practice* for describing a dynamics that can be understood to be controlled *in principle* by the principles of classical physics. But "Mind" does not emerge from classical physics in this trivial way: the existence of "feelings" is not a rational consequence of the principles of classical physical theory, and boundary conditions in the way those other things are. So, within the framework of classical physics, the emergence of mind is a sort of "miracle": something not rationally entailed by the basic classical laws and physical elements and boundary conditions has popped into being: "feelings". Beyond the ontological question of how "feelings" are constructed out of elementary classically conceived micro-elements, there is the dynamical question of whether "feelings" make any difference in the flow of physical events? If they are "truly emergent" in the sense of being something beyond mere aspects of patterns of motions of the the clasically conceived microelements, then if they make no difference in the physical flow why do they exist, and if they do make a difference in the flow of physical events then this violates the premise that classical physics is in principle adequate. IV. But if it admitted that classical physics cannot be held to be adequte *in principle* then the rational thing to do is to ask whether quantum theory, which has replaced classical physical theory at the basic level, and which brings in mind right from the start as a primary reality, can be adequate in principle. If the inadequate classical theory is replaced by the more fundamentally correct quantum theory then no miracle is needed! Why invoke miracles when none are needed, and when the basic physical theory created by physicists seems to be compatible with all the data, and has significant explanatory power relative to a lot of data from psychology. V. The question I pose to emergentists is: Do pains affect actions, and if so by what means within classical physical theory? The identity-theorist has a rational answer, but most neuroscientist that I talk to do not believe that a "pain" is identically the very same thing as a pattern of classically conceived brain activity. If it is "truly emergent" then is it epiphenomenal? And if not, then how can it be reconciled with the idea that classical physical theory is adequate in principle. And if it cannot, then why not consider what the more accurate quantum theory can say? ************************************************************************* How Attention guides Action Spelled out in detail my current model is this: 1) The shape and location of each cookie cutter is determined by the condition that if its interior is actualized one single coherent experience will occur: from a classical perspective we would say that the virtual possible classical realities corresponding to each of the points inside the cookie cutter correspond to *the same experience*. Thus the basic puzzle, or elements of doubt, in the construction of quantum mechanics---insofar as collapses are view realistically as events that really to occur---which is "what determines the "questions" (i.e., what determines the projections operators P that enter into the dynamical equations)" is answered by bringing in consciousness: each "question" (i.e., P) is such that the Yes answer is characterized by an associated unified experience. This move is the major radical step in Copenhagen and vN/W QT: it brings consciousness into the dynamics in a central way. Other interpretations strive to leave consciousness out. 2) James says: "My experience is what I agree to attend to" [Principles Vol I. Beginning of Ch on "Attention".] In my model each act of attention is a query: "Is consent given to ask Nature for an experience of type E?" Each E is associated with a P(E) that acts on the degrees of freedom of the brain/body of the person. Thus each pair (E,t) has a "statistical weight" W(E,t))= Tr_b P S_b(t)/Tr_b S_b(t). Hence there will potential experiences whose statistical weights "rise" and "fall" over the course of time t. One can postulate, for definiteness, that if the E with maximal weight reaches a maximum, which is above some threshhold, then personal consent will either be given or withheld to put to nature that question. 3) This decision to consent or not consent is based on an evaluation, and this evaluation is carried out in the realm of "feels". This is the reason why "feels" exist: they enter into the evaluative process of giving consent. This consent may be a consent to veto some action-in-the-making. (Libet's veto) According to this model, each conscious experience (or feel) occurs in association with some subsystem, and in conjunction with the `resetting' of the wave function, S--> PSP or (1-P)S(1-P). The choice between these two possibilities is specified by Nature's choice Yes or No. This `resetting' (or collapse) represents the addition of one bit of information to the state S of the universe, which is an objectively existing compendium of information/knowledge. Human volition enters the into causal chain with the "consent", which acts in the realm of possibilities, but will be felt as the first phase of the actual experience E if Nature's answer is Yes. James distinguishes Passive Attention from Active Attention. Active Attention is attention that uses QZE to keep attention focussed for a long enough time to put into operation, in opposition to lower-level mechanical forces, and noise, some plan that has a high enough valuation to hyperactivate consent. This hyperactivated consent is "effort": it generates rapid-fire posing of the question, which via QZE keeps the brain confined in the subspace characterized by P(E)S P(E) long enough to put into effect the plan of action associated with experience E. I regard any experience as some sort of "feel", and that even certain very primitive systems can produce/have (rudimentary) feels (proto experiences), and thus make use of this mechanism by which "feel" can influence "action" within the dynamical framework provided by vN/W QT. Effort allow the person to "catch" the fleeting possibility, and, by keeping attention focussed on this intentionality, allow the plan to be fixed and put into effect, just as James described. From stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Thu Jan 4 10:11:33 2001 Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 10:05:46 -0800 (PST) From: stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Reply-To: hpstapp@lbl.gov To: hpstapp@lbl.gov Subject: Re: Core and More (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 16:56:57 -0800 (PST) From: stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Reply-To: hpstapp@lbl.gov To: Stanley Klein Cc: hpstapp@lbl.gov, kleinlist , brucero@cats.ucsc.edu, hameroff@u.arizona.edu, Jeffrey M. Schwartz , keith@imprint.co.uk, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey , phayes@ai.uwf.edu Subject: Re: Core and More On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Stanley Klein wrote: > Henry, I have questions about the vN/W Dynamical gap: > > [Henry] > IX. vN/W Mind-Brain Dynamics. > > 5. In vN/W QT there is a corresponding DYNAMICAL GAP: > Some choice must be made as to > * WHICH question will be put to nature, and > * WHEN will it be put to nature. > > 6. This "dynamical gap" allows "choices" made by > the human person to enter into the dynamics. > > XI. These human choices are not "free" in the sense of popping out > of the blue. They are, indeed, not determined by local mechanical > process alone. But they are elements in a causal structure that > involves both a local deterministic structure and evaluations > based on feelings. > > > [Stan] > It seems that there is some outside mental reality that decides on WHICH > question and WHEN. What are the laws that control the WHICH and WHEN. > Are they within the realm of future physics? Are these evaluations > based on feelings outside the realm of future physics? > I take the view that science is a "work in progress", not a basically finished and complete story, as it appeared to be, after the work of Maxwell (except for an understanding of the local mechanism responsible for gravity---later added by Einstein) A framework is provided by vN/W QT, but one "gap" is not filled in: this "gap" is a detailed understanding of exactly how the decision is made to "consent" to "hang onto" the current question/focus-of-attention. In this connection let me give another quote by Wm James: April 30, 1870: "I think yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second `Essais' and see no reason why his definition of Free Will---`the sustaining of a thought *because I choose to* when I might have other thoughts'---need be the definition of an illusion." [1] This insight or understanding seems to me to be the cornerstone of James's thinking about Free Will, greatly elaborated upon in his chapters on Attention and Free Will. The point is that Free Will is, according to this point of view merely the act of "hanging onto" or "sustaining" a thought already present in the mind, but a thought that would otherwise perish if no effort of will were made. Notice three things about this way of thinking about Free Will: 1) It is in perfect accord with quantum theory, where the dynamical gap in our current/contemporary understanding consists exactly in WHICH question is asked and WHEN it is asked. Within the model that I proposed this choice was reduced to a "consent" to "sustain" the current focus of attention, and this choice can effect action via QZE. 2) It successfully evades the two horns of the dilemma of "determinism vs pure chance": the totality of nature could be deterministic in the final analysis, yet meaningful free choice could be accommodated by separating the full determinateness of nature into three parts: a) The local mechanical determinateness encapsulated in the Schroedinger equation, which captures the local mechanical aspect of nature exhibited by the classical approximation. b) The binary choices `on the part of Nature' to answer `Yes' or `No' the Posed Question. c) The binary choice to sustain the present focus of attention by posing `now' the question; Shall this thought be sustained? This locates "Free Will" in the mental realm where the decision to `sustain or not sustain' the present thought is supposed to be made. Yet it is completely in line with the basic laws of quantum theory. 3) "Free will" is "free" within the part of the dynamics described by contemporary physical theory, but is, I assume, determined within the other part of the dymnamics, the mental part, in a way that is in line with our intuition about the grounding of our mental choices in felt evaluations. The basic point here is that quantum theory allows, in a very natural way, for the possibility that the physical aspect of nature ---the part described by contemporary vN/W quantum theory, without the mental part---is not dynamically complete, but must be supplemented by, or combined with, a mental aspect that is not reducible to, or fully expressible in terms of, the physical aspects. Stan's question is: Are these laws that act in the mental realm part of future science? [I use the term "science" not "physics", as Stan did: some people claim that even neuroscience is not "physics"] Let me answer by saying a few things about "future science" as contrasted to "classical science". By classical science I mean science that accepts the premise of classical physical theory that, in the words of Daniel Dennett: "the brain was always going to do what it was caused to do by current local mechanical circumstances"[2] That false idea, which asserts that the local mechanical aspects of nature are dynamically complete, is the foundation of a whole conception of what science is. It leads to the notion that mind/consciousness either: 1) IS an aspect of the physical brain, or 2) Is an "emergent" phenomenon, which emerges from the particular complexity of the brain. The first possibility attempts to build mind out of a classical conceived brain, which is ultimately built out of localized particles. Quantum theory completely undermines that program by showing that the localized particles do not exist (at least according to orthodox Copenhagen thinking). According to Copenhagen thinking the construction really goes in the other direction, in the sense that the localized particles are idealized limits extracted from our experiences of small objects. Hence experience becomes primary: matter is constructed, in a certain sense, from mind. Psychology becomes primary, and physics a tentative, provisional invention of the mind. This Copenhagen approach is objectionable, from an ontological viewpoint, because human thoughts cannot stand alone as the ontological basis of reality. vN/W QT takes the middle ground, in which reality has two aspects, the mental and physical, neither of which is dynamically complete or reducible to the other. Psychology is thereby raised in stature: it is no longer a mere sideshow to physics. Just as physics is basically a theoretical contruct that joins actual observations together by an unseen network of hypothesized connecting linkages, so should our other ideas be conceptualizable as aspects of network of realities whose nature we must devise. vN/W QT frees up our theorizing about the mental realm, but keeps the linkages to the physical realm that are actually needed to account for the sucesses of classical physical theory and quantum theory and also the basic features of the mind-brain connection described by James, as well as the data described by Pashler. The idea that consciousness is "emergent" is much more in line with QT than with classical physical theory. Within classical physical theory any emergent property is merely "trivially emergent" in the sense that the "wheelness" of a classically-conceived wheel is an emergent property: it is a property that did not exist before wheels existed, and exerts top-down causation, But it is trivial in the sense that it is merely a re-expression of the causally links between the microscopic elements already completely specified by the laws of classical physical theory. Quantum theory allows for essentially a whole new network of relationships: it allows for "true" emergence, in the sense of relationships that are not merely re-expressions of the laws of physics, but that can come into existence only in systems with appropriate complexity, and exert downward causation. The neuroscientists that I met at the recent meeting in New York all seemed to adhere to the notion that consciousness was an "emergent" property of brains, i.e., not "the very same thing" as some aspect of classically conceivable brain activity. But the "emergence" that they spoke of was NOT of the trivial genre typified by Sperry's wheel. So I believe that, while they did not realize or admit it, their idea of consciousness is quite in line with what quantum theory suggests and allows, but is not compatible with what classical physical theory allows. I did not have time to pursue this point to point of getting them to see this, but I think that this conclusion is implicit in their assumptions. It can be argued that this freeing up of our "scientific" ways of understanding nature is premature and unwanted: it might be argued that we should stick to the narrower classical program until that program is PROVED to be unworkable or inadequate. But science does not usually proceed in this way: what causes paradigm shifts is the appearance of a rationally coherent alternative that covers the established science and seems to work better in the new area. vN/W QT meets this criterion in the sense of providing a rational basis for a "true" emergence of consciousness. I see no reason why the methods of science cannot be used to develop a more detailed theory of the mental aspect of the mind-brain system. The data is human experience, just as is the data of all of science. --------------------------------------------------------- [1] The Writings of William James, ed, John J. Mc Dermott, Random House, 1967, p.7 Note: Schroedinger, in "What is Life" cites Goethe in the prologue to Ch.3: "And what in fluctuating appearance hovers, Ye shall fix by lasting thoughts" [2] Dennett in Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Mind, ed. S. Guttenplan, Blackwell, p.237 From claytonp@SONOMA.EDU Tue Jan 9 08:32:48 2001 Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 21:34:50 -0800 From: Philip Clayton To: hpstapp@lbl.gov Subject: Re: Core and More (fwd) [ Part 1, Text/PLAIN 9 lines. ] [ Unable to print this part. ] Henry, On the run: am much encouraged by your distinction between "trivial" and real emergence and your assertion that QT is compatible with -- and it alone is truly compatible with -- the perspective of emergence. There's more to talk about here, of course. But I think I can again see some common ground. Philip