From: SMTP%"PSYCHE-D@rfmh.org" 20-SEP-1996 03:59:13.92 To: STAPP CC: Subj: QM in Stapp&Sarfatti vs Penrose and Hammeroff Approved-By: PATRICKW@CS.MONASH.EDU.AU Approved-By: STAPP@THEORM.LBL.GOV Message-Id: <960918201700.22200f23@theorm.lbl.gov> Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 20:17:00 -0700 Reply-To: PSYCHE Discussion Forum Sender: PSYCHE Discussion Forum From: Henry Stapp Subject: QM in Stapp&Sarfatti vs Penrose and Hammeroff To: Multiple recipients of list PSYCHE-D Re: QM vs CM (Classical mechanics) The postings of Sept 15 and 16 suggest that convergence in these discussions may be possible if certain clarifications are made. The identification of the proponents of an essentially CM approach to the science of consciousness as "those that have absorbed the modern scientific paradigm", in contrast to scientists who believe that QM will play a key role, and who are likened to a "scientifically unsophisticated friend", is misleading, since the crucial point in this whole discussion is an aspect of the development, during this century, of the modern scientific paradigm that carried science beyond the 19th century classical mechanical conception of nature. This pertinent aspect of the modern scientific paradigm, which distinguishes it from the 19th century paradigm it replaced, pertains to the role of knowledge in science, and it hinges on an appreciation of different kinds of knowledge. The leaders in this development of the modern scientific paradigm include such scientifically sophisticated thinkers as Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, von Neumann, Wigner, and Einstein himself. Einstein started this development with his analysis of the idea of simultaneity. He considered what scientists *could know*, based upon readings of clocks and rulers, and convinced the physics community that it was not scientifically justified to take the conception of nature offered by classical mechanics as a faithful representation of the world itself. What we *can know* became recognized as the basis and subject matter of science. The map is not the territory: our scientific theories became recognized as mere maps that we ourselves construct, and that are subject to revision. Of course, Newton had said this long before, but the triumphs of classical mechanics had clouded the thinking of many scientists on this point. Einstein applied this kind of thinking to what was not immediately at hand, but was, rather, "far away" on some scale set by the velocity of light: Bohr and Heisenberg, et. al., applied it to things that were too small to be seen by the naked eye. Bruce Buchanan describes a "3 worlds" Popperian view that is, I think, very much in line with this "modern scientific paradigm". But he then goes on to say that: "This is part of the problem I see in the confidence shown by some physicists who feel that they have special access to reality." This is surely upside down: physicists are acutely aware, by virtue of the developments in physics during this century, of the tentative character of our contemporary physical theories, and the great difference between our theories and reality itself, whereas it is certain nonphysicists who seem to want to identify the 19th century classical conception of physical reality with reality itself. As Feynman [I take this from Stanley Klein's posting of Sept 15] said: Actually, we do not have all the rules now. (Every once and a while something like a castling is going on that we still not understand.) This is how quantum physicists view the current theoretical situation. And Bohr and Einstein both repeatedly emphasized the nonidentity of reality with our man-made theories about it. The postings of Sept15-16 bring up, once again, an analogy that is often used by CM monists to defend their position: the analogy of life to consciousness; of biology to the science of consciousness. Actually, two separate are issues have become conflated here. One is the issue of QM vs CM; the other is the issue of monism vs dualism. Both of these issues are, in the deeper sense, non-issues. Everyone agrees that we must, of course, in the final analysis, use QM, not CM. So the QM/CM issue lies at a different and non-fundamental level. The same goes for the monism/dualism issue: I think all parties to this debate agrees on that at some deep level all of nature must hang together. Thus some clarification is needed of William Robinson's assertion: " The point about automomy, or logical independence, or nonreducibility, however, seems exactly right as the key claim of dualists". I doubt that there are any active dualists who would claim *complete autonomy*. If classical mechanics were taken to be the gospel then one might be forced into such a posture. But the contemporary proponents of CM in these discussions take the other tack of either denying dualism, or of affirming only that sort of dualism that does not entail completely autonomous parts. On the other hand, if QM is accepted as the appropriate theoretical basis of contemporary science, and the key role in science of our knowledge is (thus) granted, then the experiential aspect of nature is certainly given an important explicit status. Yet in the QM framework consciousness is seen as being ultimately inseparable from the aspects of nature that are represented, however imperfectly, by the QM "laws". The idea of an absolutely disconnected autonomous consciousness miraculously running "in synch" with the physical universe is not what dualism means today. Neither Chalmers, nor Searle defends that idea, nor do QM "dualists". But nature can have different distinguishable aspects. So what are the actual points of contention? If all the participants of the debate agree that *ultimately* one must use QM, and that the experiential aspect of nature must, at the basic level, be inextricably intertwined with the aspect "represented" by the "material" aspect, then what, exactly, is the argument about? We must carefully define the issues. What, in particular, is the argument that draws an analogy between life and consciousness supposed to show? Of course, whatever it is supposed to show, it cannot *prove* anything, because of the weakness of arguments by analogy: opponents need only show that the supposedly analogous things differ in some relevant way. But Searle and others have noted that life and consciousness differ in the *most* relevant way: consciousness is subjective, and life, like everything covered by the (classical) physical sciences, is objective. All of the examples that can be drawn from advances in the physical sciences (prior to QM) are bad (i.e., invalid) analogies because they do not get to the point at issue, namely subjectivity/consciousness. This objection defeats the life/consciousness analogy as an argument for the contention, based on past performance, that objective theory will be able to encompass experience/subjectivity. But this defeat is subject to the proviso that it be granted in the first place that subjective things are somehow fundamentally different from objective things, and not subsumed in a complete account of the latter. Jim Balter contends that any such presumption begs the question, which is precisely whether subjective reality is fundamentally different, or, rather, on the other hand, would be fully explained by a full theory of the objective aspects of nature. Indeed, in the QM view the experiential (subjective)and material (objective) are intertwined so that any complete theory of one must encompass a complete theory of the other. So one arrives at a point of dispute only if one tries to reject the QM view, and to maintain, in this context of the science of consciousness, that CM is completely adequate. If one wishes, then, to postulate the adequacy of classical mechanics, in this context of a theory of consciousness, then the issue can be resolved by rational analysis. This possibility of an actual resolution of the issue by rational analysis is to be contrasted to the arguments by analogy, which cannot be convincing. (Note that those arguments were raised by CM monists to support their position that the subjective aspects of nature will be explained by the development of a complete CM account of the "objective" aspects of nature. But those "arguments by analogy" succeed only if one begs the question by asserting the nonrelevance of the objective/subjective distinction that is the very point at issue.) In the context of the modern scientific paradigm the key issue is the kind of knowledge that the theory in question represents. But classical mechanics is expressed exclusively in terms of particles and waves, which represent idealizations of things that can be known from afar by a desembodied viewer that can know nothing but the positions and velocities of "tiny distant `marbles' " and "waves on a distant pond". The knowledge that is represented within the descriptions allowed in classical mechanics consists of nothing but knowledge of this kind, and is quite independent of who the observer is and where he is located: only the knowledge experienced by some abstract "god" is included, and even his experience knowledge is severely circumscribed. Of course, one can hang upon this CM skeleton all sorts of extra flesh and clothing to one's heart content. But one cannot *deduce* from the principles of classical mechanics alone, and boundary conditions expressed in terms of the quantities recognized by that theory, the necessary presence, in any organism or device, of a flow of experience of the kind that constitutes one's own phenomenal life. This fact is a logical consequence of the fact that all that the principles of classical mechanics can supply, or add to any account of a system, is a further account of how the particles and waves will evolve in the future. This entails, in principle, an account of the havoc to be wreaked by a hurricane, and the behaviour of a chess-playing computer. But all of this further knowledge is knowledge of the same kind---namely knowledge of what can be "seen" by a disembodied observer that is located far away from any physical system of interest, and who can "see" nothing but all the individual particles and waves that make up that system, and thereby, of course, all the objective functional and behavioural activities of that system. But there is no principle in classical mechanics that adds to the objective description from the point of view of the distant disembodied observer any knowledge of the flow of experiences within some system that is being thus observed from afar: any addition of knowledge of this second kind would require some additional postulates that would take CM beyond CM as it is presently constituted, which is already dynamically complete. So the basic point here is that an examination of the actual structure of of the existing CM, in regard to the type of knowledge that it deals with, shows that an account of nature based exclusively upon the postulates of that theory will never be able to bring in an account of the flow of experience that constitute an embodied physical observer: the subjective aspects of nature are not encompassed within the austere framework of concepts created by the postulates of CM. Arguments by analogy do not undo this conclusion, for those arguments are based on premises that must be defended by examining the actual logical structure of the systems being referred to, which in this case is the class of systems that are supposed to be faithfully described within the framework provided by CM. The circularity of arguments based on analogy must be broken by referring in the end to the structure of the particular systems being considered. CM is a well defined logical structure that can, and in this case, *must* itself be examined to provide the basis for the assertion that the theory does not bring in the subjective/experiential aspects of nature. QM is completely different from CM in regard to the subjective element. It was precisely this incorporation of our knowledge into the fundamental structure of the theory that was the radical innovation of Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli , and Co. that Einstein so fiercely resisted, but was unable to overturn. The Bohr/Heisenberg/von-Neumann/Wigner form of quantum theory provides a rationally coherent framework that, unlike CM, integrates the subjective aspect of nature into its basic structure. It may seem that I have spent an inordinate amount of time on this one single "argument by analogy". But I think it essential that this one case be laid completely bare, both because of the number of times it is cited, and also so that other similar arguments can dealt with in like manner. Henry P. Stapp http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html