May 24, 1999 Appendix to Schwartz's Paper in J. Consc. Studies The Implications of Psychological Treatment Effects on Cerebral Function for the Physics of Mind-Brain Interaction Henry P. Stapp and Jeffrey M. Schwartz The data emerging from the clinical and brain studies described above suggest that, in the case of OCD, there are two pertinent brain mechanisms that are distinguishable both in terms of neuro-dynamics and in terms of the conscious experiences that accompany them. These mechanisms can be characterized, on anatomical and perhaps evolutionary grounds, as a lower-level and a higher-level mechanism. The clinical treatment has, when successful, an activating effect on the higher-level mechanism, and a suppressive effect on the lower-level one. Certain conscious thoughts accompanying the lower-level process are experienced by the subject as intruders into his stream of consciousness: intruders that are not subject to conscious control in a manner commensurate with the rest of his thoughts. On the other hand, the conscious thoughts associated with higher-level process are experienced as integral parts of a stream of consciousness that is able under normal circumstances, with the application of sufficient willful effort, to exercise control over the course of both bodily and mental actions (e.g., motor responses and attentional focus). Thus these OCD studies exhibit, in sharp relief, two different aspects of the mind-brain connection, one being the effects of the subject's brain upon his thoughts, the other being the effects of his thoughts upon his brain: the OCD studies juxtapose, and relate, exemplars of these two opposite sides of the apparent mind-brain connection. The key question at issue, in this discussion of volition, is whether the mechanical picture suggested by intrusive OCD symptoms is, in some important sense, the full true picture of the causal structure of the mind-brain connection, or whether, on the other hand, our thoughts and volitions have effects that lie beyond what the brain itself is doing: do our thoughts and volitions themselves really enter into the causal structure in some way that is not fully reducible to mechanical brain processes alone; or is our deep-seated intuition that our thoughts and associated willful efforts influence our actions an illusion? This question can be posed at two levels: the pragmatic, and the ontological. At the level of pragmatic clinical practice it appears advantageous to postulate that the causal connection goes both ways: in the clinical treatment the mechanical origin of the intrusive thoughts was emphasized, in order to separate that aspect from the idea of "self", thereby weakening its power; yet the supra-mechanical power of thoughts and volitions was implicit in the injunctions to resist, by willful effort, those mechanically generated intrusions. Certainly, a wholesale abandonment of the notion that our thoughts and volitions have causal efficacy would seriously cripple the sort of communication between subject and therapist that this successful method of treatment depends upon. Yet recognition of the existence of strong mechanical-type effects is also important in pragmatic clinical practice. Thus, within an ideal pragmatic theory of the mind-brain connection, both aspects of the causal connection should be accommodated without contradiction. If one poses, on the other hand, the ontological question of what really exists then there is again a strong requirement of logical consistency: the entire ontological picture must hang together as a logically coherent whole that must also be compatible with the findings of other branches of science, and in particular with the principles of physics. Before the OCD studies reported above, there already was a major problem at this ontological level. According to the principles of classical physics, physical reality consists of nothing but a collection of tiny localized realities each causally connected only to its very close neighbors at earlier times. This is the concept that relativistic classical physics is based upon. At the ontological level there is, to the extent that relativistic classical physics is valid, no "emergence" of anything else: one may have good {\it practical} reasons for wishing to identify various complex structures, or certain approximate properties, and to give them names, but the only realities that are {\it needed}, dynamically, are the micro-realities defined by the basic physical principles. These microscopic realities and their micro-local connections to close neighbors are all that exist in the fundamental form of modern classical physics: any added elements constitute an epiphenomenal appendage that is causally gratuitous as far as the behaviour of the physical universe is concerned. A typical moment of conscious experience has a complexity that makes it nonidentical to any one of the basic atomic micro-realities of classical physics: insofar as conscious experience lies within the classical-physics ontology it can {\it only} be a collection of these ontologically distinct micro-entities; a collection that is in every detail reducible to, and nothing but, this collection, and that has no property that does not follow as a strict logical consequence of the explicitly posited physical properties. Yet the experiential properties of ``greenness" and ``redness" and ``sourness", for example, are not logically reducible, within the precepts of classical physical theory, to the spatio-temporal properties in terms of which the classical physical principles are formulated. Moreover, the existence of any {\it physical} reality that can grasp as a whole the macroscopic properties of large collections of the microscopic realities requires an augmentation to the ontology of precisely the kind that classical physics abolished: the very essence of classical physical theory was precisely that it {\it eliminated} from the physical world all graspings of macroscopic structures as wholes. The basic point of relativistic classical physics was exactly to reduce physical reality to a collection of local properties. Although it is certainly {\it logically} possible to re-insert now into the ontology some dynamically superfluous macro-entities, that option runs counter both to the core idea of classical physical theory, and also to Occam's razor, which is one of the pillars of good science. So the question at issue, at the ontological level, is whether, as demanded by the principles of classical physics, all conscious thoughts and volitions are, as regards their connection to brain process, able to do nothing to the physically describable brain that is not done already by that brain and its physical environment alone. Or can a person's conscious thoughts and volitions actually enter into the causal structure in a way concordant with how they seem --- subjectively --- to act, namely as a force that can focus our thoughts in a way that can oppose and even override, if powered by sufficient volitional effort, the mechanical aspects of brain process. In the context of this question the main point of this paper is that, whereas it may be reasonable to postulate that the ego-dystonic elements of an OCD sufferer's experiences --- in the form of obsessive thoughts and compulsive urges --- have an epiphenomenal character, postulating the existence of "epiphenomenal effort" is problematic. It may indeed be {\it logically possible} for the "feeling of intense effort" that accompanies the subject's successful overcoming of the lower-level process by the higher-level process to be just a {\it by-product} of the higher-level brain process of rallying the resources needed to overcome the power of the lower-level mechanical process, and hence an after-the-fact, or beside-the-fact, superfluity. But it makes no dynamical sense to have this feeling of intense effort be an epiphenomenal by-product of the needed rallying of resources, rather than a {\it cause} of this rallying. When the effort flags, and is in danger of failing, more support is needed if the higher-level process is to prevail. Some process that actually rallies support for a course of action that has been assigned great value by the high-level conscious processing would be highly advantageous to the human organism. The intense effort {\it seems} to do just this. It makes no sense for this feeling to exist if it is a mere passive signal that this needed rallying is already occurring, or has already occurred, rather than being what it seems to be, namely part of the process of making what needs to happen actually happen. A philosopher might object to this demand for "sensibleness." Yet surely it is far preferable, all else being equal, to embrace an ontology that makes sense, rather than one that does not. In a sensible picture of nature there would be no ``effort" that seems to be doing something that needs to be done physically, namely rallying needed resources, but that actually does nothing physical at all. Clearly, a vastly more reasonable alternative is one in which this palpable effort actually contributes to the bringing into being of that which is needed. Why should we believe, without good reason, that nature adopts to a senseless ontology, rather than a sensible one? If the sensible possibilities were to conflict with the principles of physics then one might be justified in rejecting them in favor of one that makes no sense. But exactly the opposite is true. The basic principles of physics, as they are now understood, are not the deterministic laws of classical physics. They are laws that determine only probabilities for events to occur: other processes are needed to complete the ontological structure, if some definite sequence of physical events is to be actualized. Moreover, the physical reality now appears to be more like evolving information than like evolving matter (Stapp, this issue). And this ``physical reality" is explicitly tied dynamically into our human experiences by the basic precepts of contemporary physics, as these precepts are actually practiced, and as they were enunciated by the founders. Consequently, these contemporary physical laws can accommodate, in a completely natural way, the property that "psychological effort" can focus the course of physical brain events in just the way that it seems to do. There is no compulsion from the basic principles of physics that requires any rejection of the sensible idea that mental effort can actually do what it seems to do: namely keep in focus a stream of consciousness that would otherwise become quickly defocused as a consequence of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and keep it focussed in a way that tends to actualize potentialities that are in accord with consciously selected ends (see Stapp, this issue). Mental effort can, within contemporary physical theory, have, via the effects of the willful focus of attention, large dynamical consequences that are not automatic consequences of physically describable brain mechanisms acting alone.