The Sarfatti Lectures on the Physics of Consciousness

Lecture 1

A Commentary on

"Answers to Shimony's Questions"

LBL-36559, Dec 14,1994 by

Henry Pierce Stapp

Stapp, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, writes:
"Professor (Abner) Shimony (Boston University) ended his recent review (1) of my book Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics with eight queries that were "intended to evoke clarifications from Stapp". His questions, followed by my answers, are: (i) SHIMONY Does the reduction of the wave packet, as understood by Stapp, entail a non-linear or stochastic modification of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation? If so, what is the detailed form that he envisages? Would the modification have any implications at the microlevel, where the Schroedinger equation has been tested? (i*) STAPP For a relativistic formulation I use the Heisenberg picture. Then the analog of the Schroedinger equation is the set of Heisenberg equations for the operators. These equations are not modified in any way: jumps change only the state, not the operators. "

(i**) SARFATTI Note carefully Stapp's words "not modified in any way: jumps change only the state, not the operators." Here we have a criterion for a nonlinear generalization of quantum mechanics to "alive" organizations of matter that use Godel "strange loops" of self-measurements. The modification of the nonlinear operators of the macroscopic quantum brain, in freely-willed intentional quantum jumps of consciousness that violate orthodox theory, is what we call adaptive behavior, learning and memory.

(i*) STAPP (cont) "There is a sequence of random jumps..."

(i**) SARFATTI Actually Stapp's July 1994 Physical Review A paper appears to contradict his remark here in which there is a violation of the statistical predictions of orthodox quantum mechanics in the conscious brain in the future entangled with an unstable nuclear decay in the past in an Aharonov multiple-time state.

(i*) STAPP (cont) "Where classical ideas would lead to several top-level attractors in the brain, quantum dynamics will necessarily lead to a superposition of the quantum analogs of these attractors."

(i**) SARFATTI (cont) The term "attractors" is from the classical mechanics of chaos. The attractors are fractals in the higher dimensional phase space of the complex system. Bohm and Hiley use this idea of the chaotic classical attractor in their objective nonlocal theory of quantum measurement.

(i*) STAPP (cont) "My hypothesis is that each quantum jump projects onto a subspace that can be characterized as the quantum analog of one of these top-level attractors."

(i**) SARFATTI (cont) This explains how it is that you can hold several contradictory thoughts in your mind simultaneously. The logic of the mind is non-Boolean quantum logic not the classical logic of our present-day computers. Nano-scale computers using single delocalized pi-orbital electrons, also the individual bound electrons straddling the alpha-beta boundary of the microtubule dimer, and the single protons in hydrogen bonds, as "transistors" will use quantum logic. There is now some evidence that the so-called "junk DNA" in the nuclei of our cells may be doing "linguistic" quantum computing.

(i*) STAPP (cont) "Micro-processes are largely unaffected by these jumps, because the projection operators are specified in terms of the collective variables that characterize the top-level process: each jump merely selects a macroscopically characterized branch, leaving its microstructure largely intact."

(i**) SARFATTI (cont) This is an important remark that indicates that mesoscopic complexes of quantum connected assemblies of many pi electrons and hydrogen bonds across many dimers in microtubules act as giant quantum systems. But these systems should measure themeselves and break free of the constraints of orthodox quantum mechanics with its random quantum jumping. There is no free will if the quantum jumps are random. Perhaps Stapp is trying to say that the quantum jumps of the top-level nonlocally entangled aggregates, represented by the collective variables, are nonrandom even though the jumps of their parts appear locally random, as in the Aspect experiment.

(ii) SHIMONY "Is a Schroedinger cat physically possible at the level of a biologically important macromolecule -- e.g., the superposition of two configuration states of an inhibitor protein which corresponds to switching "on" and "off"? If so, would the superposition be disruptive of the biological functioning of the cell unless it were rapidly reduced? And if reduction occurs, what experimental and theoretical estimates can be given of the speed of reduction? A similar question can be posed concerning the firing or nonfiring of a neuron.

(ii*) STAPP Micro-processing is virtually unaffected, for the reasons just stated. Even without any collapses at the molecular level a superposition of two states of an inhibitor protein causes no problem because these states correspond to different branches of the wave function that, for all practical purposes, will not interfere with each other, because they are correlated to very different states of their immediate environment.

(iii) SHIMONY Aside from the desideratum of mirroring the unity of consciousness by a holistic brain state, what physical evidence is there for such a brain state? After all, there are many good scenarios of chemical cybernetics of the cell (see Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity) which use quantum mechanical holism only for explaining the steric properties of individual protein, RNA, and DNA molecules, but dispense with holism above the molecular level. Might not the integration of the brain also rest partly upon quantum mechanical holism and partly upon cybernetically correlated product states of neurons?"

(ii**) SARFATTI What does Shimony mean by "cybernetically correlated"?

(iii*) STAPP (cont) "Following the dictum `Desist from needless proliferation of entities', I introduce only those violations of the Schroedinger equations (jumps) that are needed to explain the structure of human experience: middle- level collapses are excluded because they either yield no empirical consequences that go beyond the purely quantum- theoretical predictions or produce violations of those predictions.- Scientific theories should parsimonious: I do not adhere to the phiolosophy that asserts that if a low- level event cannot be empirically proved to be absent then it must be assumed to be present.

(iv) SHIMONY Is it necessarily the case that the actualization of a distinct metastable configuration of a macroscopic system entails an entangled state? According to N.F. Mott's famous analysis, each cloud chamber track is a product state of ionized and unionized molecules, and there would be an entangled state of the contents of the chamber only if no wave packet reduction occurred, leaving a superposition of very many different track configurations.

(iv*) STAPP It is entanglement before the collapse that leads to the need for nonlocality. This necessary occurrence of nonlocal influences in any (non-Everett-type) ontological theory makes the introduction of ontological quantum jumps-which automatically induce nonlocal influences-a reasonable possibility. Each such jump actualizes as a unit the values selected by a nonlocal projection operator Pn,: it actualizes together values pertaining fields at spacelike separated points, in spite of the fact that these values are logically independent quantities within the general framework of quantum field theory.

(v) SHIMONY Isn't the two-aspect theory of the mind-brain relation a postulate over and above the quantum mechanical description of the brain, rather than a derivation from this description? After all, the usual treatment of a holistic state of a many-body system consists only in the establishment of correlations among the observables of the individual bodies composing the system, and there is nothing mental about correlations among ordinary physical observables unless further structure is postulated.

(v*) STAPP The dual character of reality is an intrinsic characteristic of nature within the quantum framework, as interpreted ontologically according to Heisenberg: there is the quantum-propensity field, and there are the actual events that these propensities are propensities for. The dual character of mind/brain is also a given: there are the inner thoughts and feelings felt by the individual mind/brain itself: and there are the outer aspects that are parts of a shared world. These two dualities are similar: both the quantum propensities and the outer aspects of the mind/brain can be represented as deterministically evolving structures in spacetime (i.e., by the matter-like characteristic of nature); and both the quantum jumps and the inner aspects of mind/brain implement decisions between alternative possibilities. In view of the similarity of these two dualities I hypothesize a concordant ontology. Since all matter-like properties can be parsimoniously represented by quantum propensities, what is left besides mind for these propensities to refer to?. And should not mind have such a logically necessary place in the basic dynamical process?"

(v**) SARFATTI Stapp quotes Heisenberg who is generally associated with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, though there are minor differences within that camp. Stapp, an expert on the Copenhagen view, is quite correct in asserting the following association of "concordant" ontological dualities:

QM Duality <-> Brain/Mind Duality

wave function <-> brain (e.g., neural firing patterns)

quantum jump (collapse) <-> mind (e.g., inner thoughts)

On the other hand, the Bohm ontology suggests the opposite! In Bohm's view the actual hidden variables are localized source particles and locally acting gorce fields. There are also the ontologically real wave functions and wave functionals of these source particles and force fields respectively. In the relativistic limit, with particle creation and destruction, there are fundamentally only wave functionals of both source and force fields. Consistent with Whitehead's pan-elementalism and Sir James Jeans's "mind stuff" it is the nonlocal but deterministically evolving wave functional which is a precursor to the "mental". The local classical fields are matter-like. This is very different from Stapp's model! I extend Bohm's idea to jump beyond orthodox quantum mechanics. An alive system measures itself continuously. If you want to think in terms of the Copenhagen picture, the jump changes the operator. There is no jump in the Bohm picture. The jump is replaced by that branch of the the wave functional that is actually occupied by the hidden variable configuration. In my model, the subjective qualia of inner thought and feeling is the adaptive change in the "Heisenberg operator" induced by the self-measuring process or "strange loop". This results in a violation of the statistical patterns of the orthodox theory. Indeed, Stapp appears to contradict himself in that his December 1994 paper is not consistent with his July 1994 paper in Physical Review A. This Bohmian view is actually closer to Whitehead's view as described below by Shimony. In short, the association I make is:

QM Duality <-> Brain/Mind Duality

wave function <-> mind-stuff

hidden variables <-> brain (e.g., neural firing patterns)

(vi) SHIMONY "If the two-aspect postulate is made (to which I am not averse), should it not be done in a general way, so as to apply also to nervous systems much less complex than those of human beings, or even to systems commonly considered to be inorganic? Were the postulate assumed only for organisms endowed with high level consciousness, there would be a danger of anthropocentrism, or at least of a natural philosophy tailored to the character of later arrivals in the evolution of the biosphere. Generalizing the dual-aspect postulate would lead to a position like that of A.N. Whitehead's Process and Reality and Adventures of Ideas (Part III). Stapp acknowledges an affinity to Whitehead's doctrine of creative acts (p. 79), but he does not highlight Whitehead's idea that a kind of mentality is the ultimate stuff of all actual entities, including those at the level of elementary particles. How far does Stapp agree with Whitehead's panmentalism, and if there is a cutoff in agreement, where is it and what is its rationale?

(vi*) STAPP To hypothesize collapses other than the ones I postulate is to bring unnecessary elements into the theory: other jumps have, at present, no empirical support or basis. They can be brought in later, if they are needed to fit some empirical data. But first we should develop a theory that adequately explains human thoughts, without introducing superfluous entities that have no apparent affect on the form or content of human experience (2). This postulated form of the theory is the one best suited to the present empirical state of science: it is not something written in stone. Its great virtue is that the quantum events, which are otherwise virtually outside the reach of empirical science, become the very basis of the connection of the theory to empirical phenomena: they become the counterparts within the theory of precisely the human experiences that it is the job of human science to explain. Although my ideas do have an affinity to Whitehead's (see 3), I take all jumps to be consciousness-related brain events because this postulate converts a flabby theoretical structure into a framework that can be the basis of a coherent and tight-knit science in which human thoughts have a rational place."

(vi**) SARFATTI Note carefully Stapp's words "I take all jumps to be consciousness-related brain events". There are really two "Stapps" in the same body. Perhaps, there is something to David Albert's "Many Minds" interpretation of quantum mechanics after all! :-) It is clear that the quantum mind-model picture one comes up with is strongly dependent on which interpretation one uses. The Copenhagen view leads to an apparently very different solution than does the Bohmian view. Somehow, Stapp's "top level" structures correspond to what I mean by self-measuring violations of the conventional statistical patterns. Perhaps, Stapp is consistent after all? That is, the microscopic observables obey orthodox theory but the collective top-level observables do not because they ARE changed by the jumps. There may also be a way to describe this in Bohm's theory where the hidden variables occupy a particular attractor? Or must it be a coherent subspace, or superposition of several classical attractors? That would depend upon which of a set of noncommuting top-level observables gets to measure itself! These top-level collective observables are like competing "egos" or "I"s or "selves".

(vii) SHIMONY "If Stapp does endorse Whitehead's pan- mentalism for the purpose of explaining the evolutionary continuity from primitivephysical entities to high level organisms, how does he propose to solve certain problems that confront Whitehead: What evidence is there for protomentality other than its utility for the Great Chain of Being? And what is the meaning of terms like "feeling" when applied to entities utterly remote from human mentality?

(vii*) STAPP I do not follow Whitehead's pan-mentalism precisely because there is no empirical evidence for it: it lies outside science.

(viii) SHIMONY How is the choice as contrasted with mere chance outcome among the terms in a superposition of brain states to be explained in terms of "enduring complex macroscopic form," if every term in the superposition already satisfies this description? I continue to be baffled by the apparent phenomenon of free will, which seems to be intermediate between deterministic behavior and sheer stochasticity.

(viii*) STAPP I stay with contemporary quantum theory and accept, at least tentatively, the randomness of the quantum choice. Some empirical evidence indicating a failure of this assumption is needed if we are to go beyond this position, yet remain within science. Of course, the `physical person', represented by his evolving brain-body, greatly influences the flow of his thoughts by influencing, though his deterministically evolving wave function, the propensities for the various possibilities. But quantum theory entails that something else also enters:the non-mechanical and nonlocally implemented choices between these quantum mechanically generated weighted possibilities."

(viii**) SARFATT when Stapp writes "influences the flow of his thoughts by influencing, though his deterministically evolving wave function, the propensities for the various possibilities" he seems to be making a closer connection of the wave function to inner thoughts more along the lines that I have suggested here and elsewhere. What Stapp is really saying in this Dec 94 paper is hard to fathom. It's as if two conflicting strains of thought are coexisting in some coherent subspace of his mind - which perhaps demonstrates his theory in a stangely looping self- referential way. Oh well, tomorrow is another day! :-)

References

1 Abner Shimony, Amer. Journ. Phys. 62,956 (1994)

2.Henry P. Stapp, The Integration of Mind Into Physics in Fundamental Problems in Quantum Theory, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (1995)

3. Henry P. Stapp, Nouvo Cimento 29, 270 (1975); Found.Phys., 1(1979); Einstein Time and Process Time, in Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time, SUNY Press (1985)

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