Part 4 of Stapp's Lecture on The Physics of Consciousness

5. Final Remarks

It will be objected that the argument given above is too philosophical; that the simple empirical fact of the matter is that brains are made out of neurons and other cells that are well described by classical physics, and hence that there is simply no need to bring in quantum mechanics.

The same argument could he made for electrical devices by an electrical engineer, who could argue that wires and generators and antennae etc. can be well described by classical physics. But this would strip him of an adequate theoretical understanding of the properties of the materials that he is dealing with: e.g., with a coherent and adequate theory of the properties of transistors and conducting media, etc. Of course, one can do a vast amount of electrical engineering without paying any attention to its quantum theoretical underpinnings. Yet the frontier developments in engineering today lean heavily on our quantum theoretical understanding of the way electrons behave in different sorts of environments.

In an even much more important way the processes that make brains work the way they do depend upon the intricate physical and chemical properties of the materials out of which they are made: brain processes depend in an exquisite way on atomic and molecular processes that can be adequately understood only through quantum theory. Of course, it would seem easy to assert that small-scale processes will be described quantum mechanically, and large-scale processes will be described classically. But large-scale processes are built up in some sense from small-scale processes, so there is a problem in showing how to reconcile the large- scale classical behavior with the small-scale quantum behavior. There's the rub! For quantum mechanics at the small scale simply does not lead to classical mechanics at the large scale. That is exactly the problem that has perplexed quantum physicists from the very beginning. One can introduce, by hand, some arbitrary dividing line between small scale and large scale, and decree that, in our preferred theory, the quantum laws will hold for small things and the classical laws will hold for large things. But the separation is completely ad hoc: there is no natural way to make this division between small and large in the brain, which is a tight-knit physical system of interacting levels, and there is no empirical evidence that supports the notion that any such separation exists at any level below that at which consciousness appears: all phenomena so far investigated can be understood by assuming that quantum theory holds universally below the level where consciousness enters.

Bohr resolved this problem of reconciling the quantum and classical aspect of nature by exploiting the fact that the only thing that is known to be classical is our description of our perceptions of physical objects. Von Neumann and Wigner cast this key insight into dynamical form by proposing that the quantum/classical divide be made not on the basis of size, but rather on the basis of the qualitative differences in those aspects of nature that we call mind and matter. The main thrust of ref. 5 is to show, in greater detail, how this idea can lead, on the basis of a completely quantum mechanical treatment of our brains, to a satisfactory understanding of why our perceptions of brains, and of all other physical objects, can he described in classical terms, even though the brains with which these perceptions are associated are described in completely quantum mechanical terms. Any alternative theoretical description of the mind/brain system that is consistent and coherent must likewise provide a resolution to the basic theoretical problem of reconciling the underlying quantum- mechanical character of our brains with the classical character of our perceptions of them.

Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, considered as conceivable descriptions of nature, are structurally very different. According to classical mechanics, the world is to be conceived of as a simple aggregate of logically independent local entities, each of which interacts only with its very close neighbors. By virtue of these interactions large objects and systems can be formed, and we can identify various `functional entities' such as pistons and drive shafts, and vortices and waves. But the precepts of classical physics tell us that whereas these functional units can be identified by us, and can be helpful in our attempts to comprehend the behavior of systems, these units do not thereby acquire any special or added ontological character: they continue to be simple aggregates of local entities. No extra quality of beingness is appended to them by virtue of the fact that they have some special functional quality in some context, or by virtue of the fact that they define a spacetime region in which certain quantities such as `energy density' are greater than in surrounding regions. All such `functional entities' are, according to the principles of classical physics, to be regarded as simply consequences of particular configurations of the local entities: their functional properties are just `consequences' of the local dynamics; functional properties do not generate, or cause to come into existence, any extra quality or kind of beingness not inherent in the concept of a simple aggregate of logically independent local entities. There is no extra quality of `beingness as a whole' or `coming into beingness as a whole' within the framework of classical physics. There is, therefore, no place within the conceptual framework provided by classical physics for the idea that certain patterns of neuronal activity that cover large parts of the brain, and that have important functional properties, have any special or added quality of beingness that goes beyond their beingness as a simple aggregate of local entities. Yet an experienced thought is experienced as a whole thing.

Sarfatti Note: Good! That's what I think too. So here Stapp seems to be saying that our "experienced thought" is a macroscopic quantum eigenfunction of some top-level collective brain observable. He posits that the moment of our experience is triggered by a collapse of a coherent superposition of such eigenfunctions, into that particular eigenfunction.

If we add Aharonov's and Vaidman's "multiple time states" to Stapp's single-time state, then we have memory, and even precognitive remote-viewing explained in an elegant manner.

In Bohm's picture, in contrast to Stapp's, the actual tiny particles and locally-acting force fields of the brain settle into the fractal chaotic attractor, in their dynamical phase space, that the top-level nonlocal eigenfunction of the entire brain observable represents.

The eigenfunction of our thought experience is in the Hilbert space of the brain observable. All of these spaces objectively exist in the transcendent quantum reality connected to, but quite literally beyond spacetime, as described rigorously in the mathematics of fiber bundles. We are all Platonists around here! So there seems to be an accord between Stapp's idealistic Hegelian- Heisenbergian view and Bohm's Marxist-materialist view that I am more comfortable with. ( Note, I am not a Karl Marxist politically or economically. I am a Groucho Marxist! :-))

The further necessary feature that Stapp does not emphasize enough here is that the top-level brain observables must modify themselves (i.e., the Godelian strange loop) by their "infernal quantum jumping" (Schrodinger's angry words to Bohr). This is where Murray Gell-Mann's 'complexity' and "self-adaptivity' comes in. The simple observables of single particles (e.g., 'quarks') in most physics experiments do not have this adaptive property which is the essential signature of living matter (e.g., 'jaguars'). This is not to say we will not be able to construct quantum automata at the nanotech level (e.g., Cmdr Data, and the holographic 'Doctor' in Star Trek Voyager) and below (femtotech) that will be as conscious as we are.

From the point of view of classical physics this requires either some `knower' that is not part of what is described within classical physics, but that can `know' as one thing that which is represented within classical physics as a simple aggregation of simple local entities; or it requires some addition to the theory that would confer upon certain functional entities some new quality not specified or represented within classical mechanics. This new quality would be a quality whereby an aggregate of simple independent local entities that acts as a whole (functional) entity, by virtue of the various local interactions described in the theory, becomes a whole (experiential) entity. There is nothing within classical physics that provides for two such levels or qualities of existence or beingness, one pertaining to persisting local entities that evolve according to local mathematical laws, and one pertaining to sudden comings-into-beingness, at a different level or quality of existence, of entities that are bonded wholes whose components are the local entities of the lower- level reality. Yet this is exactly what is provided by quantum mechanics, which thereby provides a logical framework that is perfectly suited to describe the two intertwined aspects of the mind/brain system.

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