ESSAY SUBMISSION: Physicalism_is_Incompatible_with_Quantum_Mechanics

[Brian Wachter]

"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we say about nature."

--Niels Bohr

"We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

--Werner Heisenberg

With these pronouncements, two of the titans of quantum origins drew a "thou shall not pass" line separating quantum mechanics philosophically from the physicalist realm, which they associated with classical physics.

Unlike many physicists today, the founders took at face value the evidence pointing toward mind as the ultimate reality—that it is those who observe quantum outcomes who bring those outcomes into being in, say, the famed double-slit experiment. It has been argued that this experiment does not required a "conscious" observer to render the light in the form of particles rather than waves. But let's not forget there is always a conscious observer at the end of the chain of detection, even if a particular detector is not conscious.

[Bernardo]

Hi Brian, this is good, but it's too short to be considered an essay.

[Brian Wachter]

Thanks for the compliment, Bernardo, but this is merely the 100-300 word starter per your submission guidelines, which state after I receive feedback on my initial post, I am to prepare and post the 1000-3000 word essay for consideration. How should I proceed?

--Brian Wachter

[Bernardo]

It's difficult to say, as the starter hardly gives a hint to where you are going with it, or what key point you want to make. The point you do make (about an observer always being at the end) is one even I already made on SciAm (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/coming-to-grips-with-the-implications-of-quantum-mechanics/) in the context of a broader discussion. In and of itself, it isn't sufficient for an essay. I would discourage you from going down the QM path, unless you have some background in quantum physics (the general points that can be made from a lay perspective have already been made ad nauseum). All this said, if you want to try, sure thing! I will read it with care.

[Brian Wachter]

 Wow. Bernardo that stings because I've spent a lot of my time over the last five years researching and writing about QM from an expert layman's point of view. Here are some subtopics I'm interested it that don't get enough attention, in my opinion:

*The discoverers of QM were more aware than today's mathematical physicists of the mind-body monism that is inevitable in QM. It is for this reason stalwarts like Henry Stapp face an unhealthy level of dissent today among their peers.

*The basic fact that QM renders the world measurable (and thus manipulable) will help bring about a new technological transformation of society.

*Entanglement falsifies spacetime.

[Dana Lomas]

Whether it passes the essay test or not, I'd be interested in reading more, if you can make it comprehensible to this arithmo-phobe  :)

[Bernardo]

Hi Brian,

It shouldn't sting as it wasn't meant as an assessment of yourself; I don't know you or your background, so my comment was general. I might as well have said it in a separate thread without alluding to you at all.

I am still not sure about where you want to take it, especially based on the latest quotes you offered; just being honest so to avoid future disappointment. I don't want to get into quantum mysticism or new age in the blog.

Cheers, Bernardo.

[Santeri Satama]

torstai 10. lokakuuta 2019 15.54.03 UTC+3 Brian Wachter kirjoitti:

*The basic fact that QM renders the world measurable (and thus manipulable) will help bring about a new technological transformation of society.
 

This is not necessarily a basic fact but more likely a very complex argument, which can be highly problematic even more so philosophically than physically. And as such highly interesting topic worth trying to tackle. A challenge of the highest order. I would like to hear more about this, in any form.   

[Brian Wachter]

'Nuff said about the ubiquity of amateur QM.

Bernardo, I could use a bit of guidance here. I am new to your work and, because your thinking seems so natural to me (for example, casting analytical psychology in a prominent role in your explanation of existence), I feel that I am sitting on an embarrassment of riches vis a vis your ontology. You have made academically and even generally accessible that which nonetheless feels almost inexplicable to some: the truism that the mind exceeds the capacity and strictures of the brain and is, in fact, the base layer of reality. You are right; I am no physicist and perhaps I grant myself airs for achieving alone some things better educated or more in-tune thinkers have already figured out.

Maybe you could choose an essay topic for me from the following, sans guarantees and fulsomeness--in other words, to help me surpass my typical modus operandi, which is that I'm great at grasping interesting explanations but not so hot on originating or bringing them to full fruition:

1. The archetypes of the collective unconscious are derived from TWE.

2. Unconsciousness must proceed from consciousness—and not the other way around—because consciousness is more fundamental than its negative case.

3. Much of the archetypal material within the consciousness of man is biological in origin, and therefore bereft of the human values fundamental to the ontology of, say, Henry Stapp.

Thanks for your consideration.

--Brian Wachter

[Bernardo]

Hi Brian,

I like 1 and 2!

Cheers, Bernardo.

[Sci Patel]

Brian - you can always make your thoughts on QM into a thread. As an amateur myself I am always curious how people parse the nature of reality from QM.

-Saj

[Jason Barr]

This is a bold claim, and a false one. Physicalism is certainly compatible with Quantum Mechanics...In fact Bohmian Mechanics and the Many-Worlds Interpretation are real physical ontologies. 

The question then becomes, which interpretation is the simplest and least problematic? This is where I think Idealism wins, but it is not because QM is incompatible with Physicalism (it certainly is not).

[Sci Patel]

But Bohm didn't want to stop at mechanics, he wanted to get into quantum non-mechanics...MWI is worse than saying ghosts collapse the wave function..so if you think Ghost Collapse is a real theory only then is MWI a real theory...

[Brian Wachter]

OK, so what is physical that can collapse the wave function? In what Henry Stapp calls the "orthodox" von Neumann QM ontology, only consciousness can do the trick. If you can demonstrate the physicality of consciousness, you win. Otherwise the Schrodinger equation is left needing assistance. Admittedly it gets that assistance from MWI, but as promising as MWI is, it has not yet defeated von Neumann or the many other mainline theorists who subscribe to conscious collapse.