From ggglobus@UCI.EDU Thu Mar 4 07:13:34 1999 Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 22:36:59 -0800 From: gordon g globus Subject: [q-mind] Response to Sarfatti--Henry Stapp From: Henry Stapp Subject: Response to Sarfatti [Stapp, prev] The Bohm theory succeeds completely in getting consciousness out of quantum physics, at the price of bringing in a `classical world'. [Sarfatti] This is a specious argument. That the classical world is there is a fact. [Stapp] It is not fitting for a scientist to make, categorically, a claim that has no evidence to support it. [Stapp, prev] So it is indeed true that Bohm does succeed in eliminating consciousness from the quantum level: he puts it back where it was in classical physics, with a very different problem of the connection between the classical physical world and consciousness. [Sarfatti] This is a completely false characterization of Bohm's position as Hiley has already remarked on. I am truly surprised that Stapp would write such an inaccurate sentence. Bohm does not put consciousness back in the classical explicate order. He puts it in the post-quantum "super implicate order" beyond the orthodox quantum "first implicate order". Stapp is setting up a Straw Man here. [Stapp] In Bohm's analysis of the measurement process the basic presumption is that consciousness follows the classical world W [the Bohm `point']. To make his theory work [explain the predictions of orthodox QM] Bohr had to assume the very thing that philosophers found so troubling about classical physical theory, namely the association certain aspects of the physical world with streams of conscious, even though these streams of consciousness could have no effect upon the physical world. The main impetus behind the idea that consciousness is connected to quantum theory arises from the fact the quantum theory, prima facie, automatically brings consciousness into the dynamics in an explicitly causally efficacious way. This problem of the connection of consciousness to the classical world is hardly a Straw Man: it is exactly the problem that Jack tries to solve with his back-action. As for what Bohm himself tried do about this problem, we need only look at his paper on the subject. [A new theory of the relationship between mind and matter: Philosophical Psycholgy Vol 3, 271-286 (1990), and J. Amer. Soc. for Psychical Research 80, 113-135 (1986)] Bohm mentions, there, the implicate order: ``the implicate order is still largely a general framework... it lacks a well defined set of general principles... what is missing is a clear understanding of just how mental and material sides are related.... Evidently what is needed is an extension of the implicate order, which develops the theory in the way indicated above. In this paper, we shall go in another approach that in my opinion goes a long way toward filling this requirement. This is based on what has been called the causal interpretation of quantum theory" He mentions Bohr's "very subtle analysis" which "has the merit of giving a consistent account of the meaning of quantun theory" but says he want more "intuitive insight", and thus uses the causal interpretation as his foundation, not the implicate order. He goes on to show how the causal interpretation brings in the whole, via the wave function which act like an information field. Thus the wave function is mind-like, and it act on matter, as represented by the classical world. The book develops this idea of how, from the perspective of the causal theory mind gets tied to the classical world. This issue is hardly a Straw Man: it is THE mind-matter problem, from the Bohmian perspective. I stand by the accuracy of my sentence. Bohmian mechanics, like classical mechanics, postulates that streams of consciousness are tied to a classical world, and thus it is presented with the problem of explaining just what this connection is and how it works. In some sense this problem is a bigger problem in Bohmian mechanics than in classical mechanics, because there are, in Bohmian mechanics, all the objective existing branches of the wave function into which the classical world did not enter. So one must explain why consciousness is connected only to the single branch in which the classical world moves. Everett would claim that any branch that contains the state of an evolving human being ought to contain also the corresponding stream of consciousness. I am not claiming that this problem is unsolvable; only that it exists, and is of pivotal importance. [Stapp, prev] quantum theory ... brings consciousness directly into the quantum dynamics, and brings it in in a way that is also completely practical as regards predictions. [Sarfatti] "Predictions" is a Red Herring in this context. You do not need consciousness to explain practical quantum theory predictions for phenomena. What is relevant here is the proper mode of explaining The World's Meaning to thoughtful people. That is what this battle of wits (and half-wits too :-)) in cyberspace is all about! [Stapp] What needs to be explained is the observed connections between our experiences. [Stapp, prev] I am able to show how, within the orthodox framework, by looking carefully at the dynamical control *already* dynamically associated with consciousness, one naturally obtains a dynamical role for conscious experiences per se in brain dynamics. [Sarfatti] You have a detailed model justifying what you just said? Where. [Stapp} http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html Attention, Intention, and Will in Quantum Physics. [Jack] Supposing you do have such a model about how consciousness influences brain dynamics, as I do also have, that is only half the story here. How do you answer the missing half? That is, how does brain dynamics back-act on consciousness to modify it on the basis of sensory inputs etc? That is precisely what post-quantum back-action is all about! Check Mate! I win. [Stapp] You'd better check my theory before making rash claims. My theory accounts for the two-way interplay between a person's conscious experiences and his brain/body, and does so within orthodox quantum theory, without bringing in any Bohmian classical world. [Sarfatti] Furthermore, you have contradicted yourself, you "eschew the classical world", but the brain dynamics, the brain configuration, in its relevant dynamical degrees of freedom is precisely what I mean by the classical "Bohm point"! You say there is no Bohm point, and then you proceed to use it! You speak with forked tongue, Kimo Sabe. {Stapp} In quantum theory the physical state in not a classical world. [Sarfatti] Second of all, new experiments like trapping a single electron for many hours, or a single atomic ion, shows the reality of the Bohm point. {Stapp] All of these experiments are in complete accord with Copenhagen QM. It is a marvelous fact that all the ''qedanken" experiments with individual atoms etc., that the founders discussed and imagined when they were checking out the consistency of Copenhagen QM, never believing that they would some day be performed, have without exception, if performed, conformed exactly to the Copenhagen predictions. These new experiments give powerful confirmation to the Copenhagen concepts. Hence they are automatically in accord with my vN/W ontologicalization of the Copenhagen approach. [Sarfatti] Third, Vigier has several experiments that can only be understood by the reality of the extended Bohm point. I doubt you have read his recent papers? [Stapp] As I mentioned before, Vigier has proposed many experiments that would distinguish his modified Bohm theory from Copenhagen, but every one, if performed is, I believe, compatible with Copenhagen: no actual violation of Copenhagen has surfaced, to my knowledge. It would be a super major result it such a case were credibly found. [Jack] Fourth, when it comes to "parsimony" Bohm beats the competition IMHO. You do not have the Bohm point but instead you have this ad hoc mystical notion of R-collapse of potentia into actua. This is "excess metaphysical baggage" that to my mind is not at all parsimonious. [Stapp] Well, we must have increments in knowledge because that all we know about and can test. We must come up with a theory that connects these realities to one another. Orthodox theory is based on these essentials: just our experiences, and a mathematical structure that connects them. You have also a classical world. [Jack] Fifth, you have no way to describe a unique complex living mind-brain because you are stuck in the ensemble probability interpretation of orthodox quantum theory. [Stapp] In orthodox QM the quantum state represents the individual system, not an ensemble. Bohr and Heisenberg et.al, were adamant about that. [Stapp,prev] In the Bohm model the classical world was brought in to do the job that orthodox theory assigns to consciousness. [Sarfatti] Right, you mean that consciousness is required to explain "R-collapse" as Wigner first speculated. Wigner got this part wrong. What Wigner really should have meant was post-quantum "OR" (Penrose's "objective reduction") beyond orthodox quantum "R-collapse". It is the precisely the vast difference between "OR" and "R" that explains the difference between animate conscious matter and inanimate nonconscious matter. [Stapp] The only reduction that occurs in the vN/W orthodox theory [which is an ontologicalization of Copenhagen] is the reduction of the real objective state S that appears in that theory. It occurs in conjunction with the occurrence of an increment of knowledge, which is a real objective change in the universe. This increment in knowledge is associated with a body/brain of a real person with a real body/brain. The state S represents objective properties of a reality the includes the conscious experiences of every person. [Jack] Your orthodox approach, as Chris Nunn has said, is panpsychism. [Stapp] At the moment it has the opposite failing: the only consciousness is human consciousness. This approximation may be very useful. But it must eventually be expanded, as I discussed in my paper. [Stapp, prev] So bringing consciousness in at a later stage seems a reversal. And what are the properties of the back-action force that ensures that it will lead to a behaviour that is correctly coordinated to conscious experiences in the way demanded by the pragmatic predictions? [Sarfatti] What "pragmatic predictions"? [Stapp] The point of Bohm's model was to construct a quasi-classical (but nonlocal) realistic model that would account in a mechanical way for the predictions of quantum theory. Since the predictions of quantum theory are about correlations among our experiences, Bohm had, in principle, to bring in the human observers: their body/brains and their increments in knowledge. Of course, von Neumann had already done much of the job: once the correct statistical predictions about how, in an physical ensemble of similar experimental situations, the classical worlds would distribute themselves in the wave packets corresponding to different "pointer readings", was achieved the von Neumann analysis would transfer the result to our experiences, provided our experience are tied onto the classical world. It is, of course, absolutely essential to maintain that tie, if the predictions of quantum theory are to come out of Bohm analysis of the measurement problem. [Jack] The whole point of post-quantum theory is that the statistical predictions of orthodox quantum theory are not so much violated as irrelevant to any significant explanatory framework to enhance the common understanding of how consciousness as a purely natural physical process fits into the world picture of modern physics. ..... We are having a paradigm war and will argue until doomsday. [Stapp] In science predictions can be use to eliminate contenders. But if your theory has no predictions then you're safe. [Stapp, prev] And what is the connection of the behaviour of the whole system to conscious experiences? Why are the latter needed at all? [Sarfatti] Piece of cake - Einstein's principle of relativity that there are no absolute physical objects that touch without being touched. Now, Mr Everyman can dig my monologue and groove on it. This is Beat Physics. They cannot do so with your version. [Stapp] Your Beat friends may find it more groovy than scientists do. Classical physicists did not look upon conscious experiences as physical objects, and hence they could escape this stricture, in their view. Wigner argued that anything acted upon can act back, and the vN/W quantum theory rests on that premise. I have spelled out how the two way action can work, staying within the confines of orthodox QM, in a way that strictly maintains the statistical predictions of QM, and introduces no entities beyond those postulated in orthodox QM. [Stapp, prev] and unknown new forces with yet-to-be defined properties. [Sarfatti] This is a totally false characterization of Bohm's theory and my theory. What "unknown new forces with yet-to-be-defined properties"? That may be true of Dennett and Churchland's classical ontological regression, but it is not true of my more general theory which contains your theory as a limiting case. Get your facts straight here! [Stapp] I am referring to the back-action. You theory posits an action that depends on the location of the classical world W, and that affects the wave function. The mathematical details of this back action have not been revealed. Consequently, your theory is undefined precisely at the point where you are departing from Bohmian mechanics. This lack of definition is regarded by physicists as unsatisfactory, though others may not be bothered. This lacuna in your theory seems to be connected to your disdain for predictions.