Replies to Sue Pocket, John McCrone and Michael Schmitz
Stuart Hameroff
Michael Schmitz
here on PSYCHE-D. As Patrick Wilken who moderates PSYCHE-B is on the road,
I'm following his suggestion and posting here
Stuart Hameroff
> You might say - why must we go all the way to the Planck scale to find
> qualia? Because they are fundamental.
Sue Pocket
I think this is a misunderstanding of the word fundamental. In my
view a fundamental feature of the universe doesn't necessarily have
to be very small. The word fundamental just means irreducible, or
not able to be explained in terms of anything simpler.
Stuart
Please give an example. Dave Chalmers uses this argument, but I don't see
how it could work. He even says that an emergent phenomenon can be
fundamental, but
that makes no sense to me. By definition, an emergent phenomenon depends on
factors elsewhere in a hierarchical arrangement. As an analogy, think of a
very large number which is a product of prime numbers. Which would be
fundamental - the product, or the primes?
> You might say--but how is this testable? The Planck scale is not
> accesssible technologically as yet. We are currently about 6 orders of
> magnitude away. But it should be accessible eventually, and there may be
> other ways of testing the hypothesis through quantum approaches. For
> example it should be possible to extract Planck scale geometric patterns
> for known qualia, and expose conscious (naive) observers to them inducing
> the corresponding subjective qualia.
Sue
Well, it is already is possible to extract much larger scale
electromagnetic patterns that correlate with conscious sensations.
In fact I have a book coming out by the end of the year (plug plug)
which has around 400 references to that fact. In it I hypothesise
that a fundamental feature of the universe is that these almost brain-
sized em patterns are sensations. I also predict from this
hypothesis that if we can measure the patterns accurately enough
and then generate them artificially, naive observers who stick their
heads into the resulting macroscopic (or mesoscopic, as Walter
Freeman would have it) electromagnetic fields will experience the
corresponding subjective qualia.
Stuart
It sounds interesting. Congratulations!
But how can 'almost brain size em patterns' be fundamental? They are made
up of
(?) brain electromagnetic activity, component dipoles, electrons, etc.,
constrained by the dielectric strength and other properties of brain
tissue. I recognize you are talking about a field, but its not a
unified, indivisible field like in quantum states (e.g. Bose-Einstein
condensations).
But you say 'a fundamental feature of the universe is that these patterns
are sensations'.
What about other electromagnetic patterns? What is it about brain em
patterns which make them
sensate? Mesoscopic? But how small can a conscious em pattern be? What is
you cutoff/threshold, and why?
A paramecium em pattern?
I think Ben Libet has a model like this - a conscious em field.
Sue
So perhaps we're not so far apart as I had thought.
Stuart
You live in New Zealand, right?
But seriously, we are both 'funda-mentalists'.
Sue
It's just that you
insist that the relevant patterns must be at the Planck scale, for
reasons that are not entirely clear to me. I think they're much
larger - and therefore much more accessible technologically.
Stuart
To me fundamental means the basic level of reality.
I dont think you can say "OK, these particular em fields are conscious, but
others are not"
without a rationale. If you say "its the particular em field accompanying
the particular dynamics
and structure of the brain", then you arent much better off than if you
just said
"its the particular dynamics and structure of the brain".
[Stuart Hameroff previously]
>What about the hard problem?
> In the Orch OR model qualia are related to the essence of the
> sensory stimulus, and at their deepest levels are particular
> patterns in fundamental spacetime geometry at the Planck scale.
> The redness of a rose is a particular arrangement at the Planck
> scale. The sound of an oboe is a different particular type of
> pattern in fundamental spacetime geometry at the Planck scale.
> Orch OR within those specific neurons recreates the same
> patterns at the fundamental level in the brain. The sound of an
> oboe is specific Planck scale patterns in auditory cortex,
> the redness of a rose is different particular Planck scale
> patterns in visual cortex.
John McCrone
So you are saying that there is a red rose out there creating a
particular Planck-scale dent in space-time and I will have a red rose
qualia whenever the same shaped dent occurs in my brain?
Stuart
The red rose and the particular dent in Planck scale spacetime are the same
thing.
Mass (and everything else) is curvature in fundamental spacetime geometry.
The corresponding pattern (rather complex for just a 'dent') in your brain
is isomorphic to the
external pattern.
John
But how does the 3-D shape of this rose get to be transmitted to the
depths of my brain? Ambient light bounces off the rose and through my
eyeballs, hitting the flat mapping surface of my retinas. This
subsequently gets turned back into a 3-D qualia by a lot of brain work -
work that includes fleshing out the experience with stored memories
about the "normal" shape of roses as well as the processing of available
sensory cues to create a feeling of rounded space. So you believe that
the brain takes crudely sampled input, subjects it to a hierarchy of
processing, mixes it with a lot of stored knowledge, shakes down an
interpretation of what probably caused the initial retinal disturbance -
then projects a Plank-scale replica of all this on some handy mesh of
microtubules?
Stuart
Basically. Except the Planck scale representation isnt exactly on the
microtubules, but on/of
the spacetime underlying microtubules (which are equivalent, as I said
earlier).
But that's a very nice description of a good conventional explanation for
qualia if you left out the last
half-sentence. - then projects....
But you may as well leave it in.
But an image of a rose with associations, meaning, qualia etc is complex. I
think
qualia are more fundamental than that. I see it kind of like a painter
using a pallette of primitive paint colors, then selecting and arranging
them in a certain way for a complex scene.
The processes including memory you describe can add different aspects of
the whole scene.
John
Doesn't this mean, at the very least, that the brain's Planck-scale
representation of the rose is going to be an interpreted recreation of
the real thing, not the external Plank-scale disturbance transplanted in
some fashion? That is unless your microtubules simply resonate with
outer reality in some direct manner (and the brain goes through all its
known information processing hoops for no particular reason).
Stuart
Or the brain evolved to facilitate this resonance.
I think about simple organisms early in evolution sampling the environment
by internalizing
it (I think Nick Humphrey and Harry Hunt argue this).
Spacetime at the Planck scale is non-local, so any of your possibilities
are possible.
By the way, Roger Penrose has a new book about spacetime geometry coming out.
John
The story seems even worse with the redness of the rose - after all
Stuart, remind me, do retinas see colours or wavelengths? If you admit
that the rose only has "wavelengthness" as a physical property then why
should replaying the Planck-scale geometry of this wavelength in the
brain cause something else - the sensation of redness? Indeed spectral
absorbence is surely the real property "in" your external rose-shaped
dent in Plank-scale space-time - and so the thing that would also have
to be recreated in the brain's microtubules to give a red rose qualia?
Or does the brain manage to recreate both the absorbence and reflectance
aspects of the Plank-scale real world events?
Stuart
How photons derive from spacetime is certainly beyond my physics
(and probably anyone's physics, but I'd be glad to
hear otherwise, and hope it will be fleshed out in Roger's book).
The evanescent photons involved in the quantum foam approaches are
macroscopic, but regardless
I'd have to just say that a particular photon of particular wavelength is
an 'emergent' phenomenon
of a particular process at the Planck scale. So when the photon is
absorbed, the Planck scale process comes along for the ride.
John
Or maybe you want to argue that redness really is an inherent physical
property of matter and so it is even likely, in some pan-psychic
fashion, that "red" wavelengths bouncing off "red roses" actually
experience themselves as being red - they are qualia unto themselves?
Stuart
No. I dont believe that. Do you?
John
And that for some unknown reason, both we and these "red" wavelengths
experience our qualia in the particular format we know as "colour",
rather than in some perhaps more naturalistic fashion, like a
"vibrational tingle"? If perception is a direct replication of
space-time geometries, why doesn't a red rose give us a kind of slow
eyeball buzzing and a blue rose give us a fast eyeball buzzing? Colour
becomes even more mysterious when you consider the alternative
instantiations of the qualia.
Stuart
Colour is the qualia - each colour is one paint on the pallette.
John
Anyway, it should be apparent from the above that Orch OR suffers the
usual hard problem of why any physical process should have a subjective
aspect. Even if our microtubules do make precise recreations of physical
reality, why should we then light up in a state of qualia-experiencing?
Orch OR remain mutes on the "why" even if you believe it answers the
"how".
Stuart
Here's 'why' (hypothetically).
Embedded in the Planck scale geometry are multitudes of 'qualia' patterns
which are 'proto-conscious'.
They have been there (perhaps dynamically evolving) since the Big Bang.
They are proto-conscious because when incorporated into an OR collapse,
they become conscious.
Only OR collapse (and only OR collapse, 'Orch OR')does the trick, because
it is a self-organizing process in this very level of Planck scale
geometry. OR involves a separation (superposition) and reannealing of
spacetime itself. The superposition, separated phase is proto-conscious.
When OR collapse occurs, particular patterns of qualia are chosen.
Experience happens.
John
So Orch OR is based on an implausible mechanism (one that demands new
physics and new biology even to get off the ground as a theory). And
when granted this mechanism, it still does not offer a way of bridging
the explanatory gap. In fact Orch OR leaves you far worse placed than
the mainstream information processing approach which can at least
explain something about why our awareness is the way it is (heavily
interpreted, subject to illusions, variable of focus, intentional and
oriented, culturally and verbally extended, etc). And by stressing that
consciousness is a construction, the information processing approach
also explains why something physical (wavelength) can be experienced in
terms of something else (colour) that no longer has a clear or direct
connection with brute physical space-time geometry (on any scale). Orch
OR only succeeds in making the mysterious even more mysterious than it
need be.
Stuart
1) "Orch OR is implausible physically and biologically" - why?
Physically - true, Roger's OR is just a theory, but the collapse of the
wave function problem, and the disparity between quantum mechanics and
relativity demand a new physics.
His works. Biologically - when I proposed in the 70s and 80s that
microtubules processed information
classically, I was thought to be nuts (many still think that). However now
there is clear experimental evidence for signaling in microtubules. e.g.
Ingber's lab at Harvard, Albrecht-Buehler at Northwestern etc. As far as
quantum computing in microtubules, technological experts cant explain high
temperature superconductivity, and resort to the same explanations we use
for biological quantum coherence.
2) "And when granted this mechanism, it still does not offer a way of bridging
the explanatory gap."
I diagree, of course, if one embraces a pan-protopsychist approach in
which proto-conscious qualia
exist at the Planck scale
3) Constructivism. Everything you say applies to the Orch OR model
Have your NCC. Just add what's happening at the cytoskeletal/quantum levels.
Michael Schmitz
I'd like to expand on some of the points relevant to my recent
criticisms of Stuart Hameroff, in the hope of making myself better
understood:
1) The relation between QM and C
It seems to me the following positions are the most interesting in this
context:
a) There is a QMCC
b) QMCC + identity theory
c) C or proto-c properties will be incorporated into QM
I would strongly expect a) to be true. Given the emergentist outlook I'm
trying to defend, the difference between c and non-c processes should be
reflected on all underlying levels, down to the lowest levels of
microphysics. There is no telling a priori though, how unified, unique
or interesting the QM correlate of c might turn out to be from the point
of view of QM itself. It might turn out to be a very complex condition
which, from the point of view of QM, has no very special features. I
emphasize this because I think that the big danger inherent in the hard
problem argument and similar arguments is that they tend to create a
vague feeling that c must be somehow 'fundamental' - where
'fundamental' tends to be understood in terms of the physics
fundamentalism John Symons describes - through arguments at the
conceptual level, even though this is something that cannot be
established at that level.
Stuart
As I said in my reply to Sue I think fundamental must mean at the
fundamental level of reality.
But I agree that quantum effects occurring at the chemical level in the
brain, for example, are not
unified, nor have anything directly to do with consciousness. To be useful
we want quantum processes which can do quantum computing, are unified and
extend and control macroscopic (or mesoscopic) brain regions, and can
access protoconscious qualia. Nancy Woolf and I are working on a 4 level
brain model incorporating Orch OR.
Michael
Now what is really your position, Stuart? You say clearly that you think
"proto-c qualia" are on the same level as spin or charge, and thus you
seem to advocate c), that is the incorporation of proto-c qualia into
QM. However, that doesn't take care of c itself. When you then insist
that you are a monist and that c "is a specific type of physical
process", does this mean that you subscribe to an identity claim with
regard to c, or is c also to be part of a future QM?
But what is really the difference between b) and c)? This may not be at
all obvious, since if c is identical with its QMC, isn't it ipso facto
part of the realm of QM? Well, for one thing, according to the identity
theory, "c" might refer to something identical with something that some
expression in the language of QM refers to, without thereby becoming
part of the conceptual repertoire of QM.
Stuart
The proposed OR process occurs at the edge, or surface between the quantum
world, and the classical world. Its an organized set of ripples in the very
makeup of reality.
That's consciousness.
So its neither part of the realm of QM, nor of the classical realm, but a
process on the border.
I'm skipping to the end of Michael's post because some of the issues were
discussed above. If not, please let me know.
Michael
What then about the QM approach to c? Let me close by emphasizing that
everything I've said here is strictly neutral with regard to any
scientific claim made by Stuart Hameroff, like for example that
microtubules are somehow crucial for c. Also, I strongly agree with
Stuart that the difference between c and not c ought to be reflected at
the level of QM. It seems to me to be reasonable to expect a QMCC to be
found sometime or other. The search for the QMCC is not as such in
conflict with the search for the NCC (even though of course there will
tend to be real disagreements between the people who follow these
different approaches), but rather supplements it.
Stuart
Right. But it depends on what is implied by NCC. I've understood NCC
(neural correlate
of consciousness) to be those neurons/neural activity supproting, or
underlying consciousness, whatever that neural activity might be (incuding
Orch OR in MTs). Others read it as the neural level, or membrane events
exclusively.
Michael
However, I would
expect that for most purposes integrating psychology with neuroscience
rather than QM will be more useful because it may just be practically
impossible to collect and explain the relevant data in all their breadth
through QM resources alone. Generally, it will be more fruitful to link
up with the 'neighboring' science, and I still think that for psychology
that's neuroscience.
Stuart
How about a triangle? Cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and physics.
Michael
That's where the deep disagreement lies. I can't
see that there is a plausible scenario for the incorporation of c or
proto-c into QM,
Stuart
Put proto-c in QM, put c at the (OR) edge between QM and the classical world.
Michael
or that the hard problem argument shows that c is in
the requisite sense 'fundamental'.
Stuart
'c', meaning a complex scene, thought or other conscious entity, would be a
collection of
fundamental qualia (spacetime patterns) like a painting from a pallette of
primitive paint colors.
Thanks for the interesting discussion
cheers
Stuart
********************************************************************
Stuart Hameroff M.D.
Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology
Associate Director, Center for Consciousness Studies
The University of Arizona
hame...@u.arizona.edu
http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff
Consultant, Starlab
http://www.starlab.org
********************************************************************
Sue Pockett
I'm sure there are many shades of meaning to the word
"fundamental". I'm using it simply in the sense that there are some
features of the universe which have the property, at least at this
stage of our understanding, that when your kid asks "why?" about
them, you have to say "well, that's just how it is" or, if you prefer
"because God made it that way".
I don't think it's a particularly good argument for the relevance of
quantum level phenomena to say
(a) consciousness must be a fundamental feature of the universe
(b) fundamental features of the universe have to be quantum-level
features
(c) therefore consciousness must be a quantum-level feature -
which is basically what you're doing. Both (a) and (b) are arguable,
I think.
> But you say 'a fundamental feature of the universe is that these patterns
> are sensations'.
> What about other electromagnetic patterns? What is it about brain em
> patterns which make them
> sensate? Mesoscopic? But how small can a conscious em pattern be? What is
> you cutoff/threshold, and why?
> A paramecium em pattern?
Good questions all - and experimentally accessible ones (unlike
the sort that arise from the quantum-level formulation, I might add)!
I'm itching to get into doing the expts....
> I think Ben Libet has a model like this - a conscious em field.
Almost, but not quite. Libet specifically says that his proposed
conscious field is a new and as-yet-undescribed one, different from
the em field. The reference for that is J. Consc. Studies 1:119
(1994). The implication of his hypothesis is that biological brains
are absolutely required as generators of this new field - that there's
some undefined specialness about matter in the brain as compared
to other sorts of matter, so that only brains can generate
conscious fields. I don't think that's right. My hypothesis proposes
that the right sort of em patterns will be conscious no matter what
generates them.
> I dont think you can say "OK, these particular em fields are conscious, but
> others are not"
> without a rationale. If you say "its the particular em field accompanying
> the particular dynamics
> and structure of the brain", then you arent much better off than if you
> just said
> "its the particular dynamics and structure of the brain".
You're considerably better off. If what I'm saying is right, it will be
possible to generate consciousness in the complete absence of
biological brains.
Brian Flanagan
should like to add a few notes.
Sue Pocket and John McCrone wrote in response to a thread on
PSYCHE-B, Michael Schmitz here on PSYCHE-D.
Stuart Hameroff
> You might say - why must we go all the way to the Planck scale to
find
* qualia? Because they are fundamental.
Bj: Well, space-time is somehow fundamental, and yet it exists on
large scales.
Sue Pocket
I think this is a misunderstanding of the word fundamental. In my
view a fundamental feature of the universe doesn't necessarily have
to be very small. The word fundamental just means irreducible, or
not able to be explained in terms of anything simpler.
Bj: Together with Leibniz, Maxwell, Wittgenstein, & Russell, I would
put forward the primary & secondary qualia as examples of elemental
entities.
For the sake of argument, let us take these qualia as the elements of
a formal theory T, of a very general nature, such as we find employed
in Godel. Say the mind/brain can be modeled by such a theory. Now
look what happens: The model will not be able to define its
elements-if it could, the elements would not be elements.
But in our model the elements are qualia, and so for the model the
qualia are, in a precise, logical sense, irreducible. Just as for us,
as sentient beings, the various qualia are irreducible. And so,
perhaps, here is an example of the facts of our experience finding a
kind of explanation in the dictates of logic.
And also a partial solution to the 'hard problem'; since all we know
through experience depends on patterns of sense-data (Einstein), and
these patterns are not reducible to anything simpler. (Patterns or
'figure' being among the traditional primary qualia. (Galileo, et
al.)
Stuart
Please give an example. Dave Chalmers uses this argument, but I don't
see
how it could work. He even says that an emergent phenomenon can be
fundamental, but that makes no sense to me. By definition, an
emergent phenomenon
depends on factors elsewhere in a hierarchical arrangement. As an
analogy, think of a very large number which is a product of prime
numbers. Which would be
fundamental - the product, or the primes?
Bj: I don't see how Chalmers' position would work, either, as stated.
The choice of examples from number theory is arguably unfortunate,
however, raising many another difficult issue--chief among them,
perhaps, the notion that one number is more 'fundamental' than
another.
> You might say--but how is this testable? The Planck scale is not
* accesssible technologically as yet.
*
bj: How do you deal with Planck energies?
Stuart: For example it should be possible to extract Planck scale
geometric
patterns> for known qualia, and expose conscious (naive) observers to
them inducing > the corresponding subjective qualia.
Bj: But we do this on a routine basis with photons. Are photons
somehow more fundamental on the Planck scale of description?
Sue: Well, it is already is possible to extract much larger scale
electromagnetic patterns that correlate with conscious sensations.
Bj: I have been arguing something like this for twenty years. Here is
an interim report to the SPIE/IEEE:
http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9911&L=quantum-mind&F=&S=&P=1539
Stuart: But you say 'a fundamental feature of the universe is that
these patterns are sensations'. What about other electromagnetic
patterns? What is it about brain em patterns which make them sensate?
Bj: Well, they're in the right place at the right time, and
(quantum!) mechanically co-vary with perceptions. The other part of
the answer might be that the NNs of our brains support EM processes
of sufficient complexity as to enable them to describe themselves in
a Godelian, self-referential manner.
[Stuart Hameroff previously]
>What about the hard problem?
> In the Orch OR model qualia are related to the essence of the
> sensory stimulus, and at their deepest levels are particular
* patterns in fundamental spacetime geometry
bj: I would sharpen this assertion, and put the secondary qualia
forward as candidates to fill the vacancies at the foundations of
quantum theory, such as the so-called hidden variables, and/or the
additional spatial dimensions of string/M-theory, or Kaluza-Klein
theories generally.
> The redness of a rose is a particular arrangement at the Planck
> scale. The sound of an oboe is a different particular type of
> pattern in fundamental spacetime geometry at the Planck scale.
> Orch OR within those specific neurons recreates the same
> patterns at the fundamental level in the brain. The sound of an
> oboe is specific Planck scale patterns in auditory cortex,
> the redness of a rose is different particular Planck scale
ÿ patterns in visual cortex.
My reservations about Plack-scale arguments aside, I would argue,
with Feigl, Russell, and Lockwood, that some such relation must be
true, especially soin a mind/brain identity theory.
John McCrone
So you are saying that there is a red rose out there creating a
[snip] dent in space-time and I will have a red rose
qualia whenever the same shaped dent occurs in my brain?
Bj: I would reply that red corresponds to a degree of curvature in
one of the additional spatial dimensions of string/M-theory,
corresponding to the direction of the ‘complete’ photonic vector
space.
Stuart
The red rose and the particular dent in Planck scale spacetime are
the same thing. Mass (and everything else) is curvature in
fundamental spacetime geometry. The corresponding pattern (rather
complex for just a 'dent') in your Brain is isomorphic to theexternal
pattern.
Bj: I basically agree.
John
But how does the 3-D shape of this rose get to be transmitted to the
depths of my brain? Ambient light bounces off the rose and through my
eyeballs, hitting the flat mapping surface of my retinas. This
subsequently gets turned back into a 3-D qualia by a lot of brain
work - work that includes fleshing out the experience with stored
memories about the "normal" shape of roses as well as the processing
of available sensory cues to create a feeling of rounded space. So
you believe that the brain takes crudely sampled input, subjects it
to a hierarchy of processing, mixes it with a lot of stored
knowledge, shakes down an interpretation of what probably caused the
initial retinal disturbance - then projects a [snip!] replica of all
this on some handy mesh of microtubules?
Bj: On the contemporary scientific view, all of the foregoing
processes are just quantum field processes. (Dyson)
John
Doesn't this mean, at the very least, that the brain's Planck-scale
representation of the rose is going to be an interpreted recreation
of the real thing, not the external Plank-scale disturbance
transplanted
in some fashion? That is unless your microtubules simply resonate
with
outer reality in some direct manner (and the brain goes through all
its known information processing hoops for no particular reason).
Bj: The foregoing can, I believe, be handled by the mathematics of
matrices and vectors. Now, it is worth noting that both NNs and QM
can both be described with matrix operators acting upon input vectors
to yield output vectors. And perhaps this is why: NNs are structured
as they are so as to mediate the underlying QM processes. (Umezawa)
Stuart
Or the brain evolved to facilitate this resonance.
I think about simple organisms early in evolution sampling the
environment
by internalizing it
bj: Again, I basically agree.
John
The story seems even worse with the redness of the rose - after all
Stuart, remind me, do retinas see colours or wavelengths? If you
admit that the rose only has "wavelengthness" as a physical property
then why should replaying the [snip] geometry of this wavelength in
the brain cause something else - the sensation of redness?
Bj: Perhaps just ‘because’ the redness is an invariant property of
photons of that wavelength. But since both photons and colors behave
line vectors, and since these vectors regularly co-vary, perhaps it
would be simpler and more illuminating to compare vectors with
vectors.
John: Indeed spectral absorbance is surely the real property "in"
your external rose-shaped dent in [snip] space-time
bj: But "spectral absorbance" is a complicated theoretical construct,
whereas color is immediate and irreducible.
Stuart
How photons derive from spacetime is certainly beyond my physics (and
probably anyone's physics,
Bj: Well, photons and all other particles are generally regarded as
geometric/group theoretic structure upon space-time. In much of
contemporary physics, the photon e.g., is regarded as a model of the
‘U(1)’ group, because its phase space is thought to be that of the
circle. (Now, this takes us deep into gauge theory, and that is
probably out of place at this juncture. Let me just note, however,
that I am persuaded that color might just be ‘hidden’ gauge
information, on the observation that color seems to act like a
Noether-style, ‘conserved current’.)
John
(a) Or maybe you want to argue that redness really is an inherent
physical property of matter and so it is even likely, in some
pan-psychic
fashion, that "red" wavelengths bouncing off "red roses"
(b) actually experience themselves as being red - they are qualia
unto themselves?
Bj: How does (b) follow from (a)?
John
And that for some unknown reason, both we and these "red" wavelengths
experience our qualia in the particular format we know as "colour",
rather than in some perhaps more naturalistic fashion, like a
"vibrational tingle"?
Bj: What seems more "naturalistic" has been highly conditioned by
centuries of scientific doctrine, the fundamental principle of which
is just this division of qualia into primary & secondary. (Hume)
John
So Orch OR is based on an implausible mechanism (one that demands new
physics and new biology even to get off the ground as a theory).
Bj: This is far from implausible. No lesser a figure than Gell-Mann
has now reversed himself on Copenhagen, saying that Bohr & Heisenberg
"brainwashed" a generation of physicists into thinking that QM had
been finished 60 years ago. Such a pronouncement, issuing forth from
one of the elder statesmen of mainstream physics, signals nothing
less than a sea change in traditional attitudes on this subject.
http://www.prometheus.demon.co.uk/02/02kumar.htm
I don’t believe in "collapse" as usually "understood", but rather in
a smoothly evolving wave function in a ‘completed’ nonlocal vector
space. Where the vector space has been completed in EPR’s sense by
the addition of those ‘elements of reality’ we call secondary qualia.
Michael Schmitz
1) The relation between QM and C
It seems to me the following positions are the most interesting
a) There is a QMCC
b) QMCC + identity theory
c) C or proto-c properties will be incorporated into QM
I would strongly expect a) to be true. Given the emergentist outlook
I'm trying to defend, the difference between c and non-c processes
should
be reflected on all underlying levels, down to the lowest levels of
microphysics.
Bj: I would argue that there is no fundamental difference, but only
that C-processes arise when QM processes become sufficiently complex
as to describe themselves—as in our brains.
Schmitz: There is no telling a priori though, how unified, unique or
interesting the QM correlate of c might turn out to be from the point
of view of QM itself.
Bj: Appeals to the a priori are often famously mistaken in science.
Then, too, there is no monolithic "point of view of QM".
Schmitz: It might turn out to be a very complex conditionwhich, from
the point of view of QM, has no very special features. I emphasize
this because I think that the big danger inherent in the hard
problem argument and similar arguments is that they tend to create a
vague feeling that c must be somehow 'fundamental' – where
'fundamental' tends to be understood in terms of the physics
fundamentalism
bj: As I indicated above, I believe the ‘elements’ of C—the
qualia--are fundamental, and also ‘irreducible’ in a logical (and
group theoretic) sense.
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