Pat Hayes posted the following note (26 Aug 1996 11:03:28): ******* Subject: Re: QM in Stapp&Sarfatti vs Hameroff and Penrose To: Multiple recipients of list PSYCHE-D ..... the argument that somehow it follows >> from classical physics that there can be no functional role for >> consciousness. Could anyone articulate this argument carefully, or give a reference to such an articulation? (Eg from which part exactly of classical physics is this remarkably unphysical-seeming result derived? Is it something to do with thermodynamics, or is it best understood in terms of electromagnetism? Etc...) Why would any such argument not also apply to almost anything with a functional role describable at a large enough scale that quantum effects could usefully be ignored, eg (say) a leaf, a carburettor or a brick wall? None of these structures can be predicted within classical physics (ie they cannot be derived from Newton's laws of gravitation, Maxwell's equations, etc.). Analogous arguments to Chalmer's dancing qualia can be given for anything that can be progressively dismantled (eg consider replacing each brick by a metal block and ask when exactly it ceases to be a brick wall), and analogous arguments to the zombie nonsense can be given for anything (eg consider something which is constituted exactly like a brick wall but is not, in fact, a brick wall: suppose for example it simply appears, spontaneously, in a long elliptical orbit around Jupiter. This is *logically* possible. It must follow then that the essence of brickwall-ness is somehow separate from the physical nature of the wall itself.) Pat Hayes ******* By classical physics is meant here the premise that: 1), there is a description of the physical world in terms of localizable quantities, namely the locations of all the particles in the world, and the values at all points in the world of all the local fields, such as the electromagnetic and gravitational fields; and 2), there are some laws of motion that are local in the sense that they determine the rates of change of any quantity localized at some point in terms of quantities localized in a open neighborhood of that point, where this neighborhood can be taken to be as small as desired; and 3), these laws determine in principle all the values of all these localizable quantities at all times, given the values of all these quantities at times earlier than some early specified initial time T_0. These localizable quantities are called the basic physical variables. Any quantity defined unambiguously in terms of these basic variables can be called a physical variable, and various mathematical properties of these physical properties can be deduced from such definitions and the laws of motion. For example, a thundercloud can be defined to be `angry' when its electrical potential relative to the earth or nearby clouds is higher than some specified amount, and the behaviour appropriate to an angry thundercloud, such as releasing thunderbolts, can be predicted on the basis of the definitions and the laws of motion. But can one deduce from these laws and definitions whether or not the cloud feels like you feel when you are angry? The answer is no! There is a logical disjunction between (1), the set of all assertions about physical behaviours that are strictly deducible from the mathematical laws of motion plus the mathematical definitions of physical properties (in terms of the basic physical quantities) and (2), the set of empirical facts about our experiences. The former set of assertions live in a world of mathematical abstractions: what lies in this set is determined by mathematical and logical principles alone. There is no logical principle there that entails anything about what the actually experientially felt realities are. These realities could be totally nonexistent without violating any of the mathematical properties. But if the empirical/experiential realities could be totally absent, without affecting the classical mathematical/physical/causal structure, then the former realities are not causally efficacious: they are epiphenomal. Nothing physical changes if they are left out. [On the other hand, quantum mechanics, adequately formulated, is based on experiential realities, which therefore cannot be simply left out without doing violence to the basic logical structure.] Hayes asks: ***** Why would any such argument not also apply to almost anything with a functional role describable at a large enough scale that quantum effects could usefully be ignored, eg (say) a leaf, a carburettor or a brick wall? None of these structures can be predicted within classical physics (ie they cannot be derived from Newton's laws of gravitation, Maxwell's equations, etc.). ***** Yes, it would apply: What the leaf and the carburettor and the brick wall are experiencing or feeling plays no causal role within the classical physics description of nature: the *physical* properties of these things completely determine their behaviour, with no effects from the analog, from the perspective of those items, of our empirically experienced reality. According to the principles of classical mechanics we can, in principle, deduce from the physical properties and laws how the carburettor will behave without knowing anything at all about how it is feeling. Henry P. Stapp [http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html]