Online research in philosophy

The basic difficulties and challenges of Quantum Mind program are analyzed. The conclusion is that the recent form of quantum theory is not enough to overcome the challenges posed by the philosophical problems of quantum physics and quantum mind theories, and the puzzles of quantum biology and quantum neuroscience. Certain anomalies of recent day biology giving hints about how quantum theory should be generalized serve as an introduction to the summary of the aspects of quantum TGD especially relevant to the notion of Quantum Mind. These include the notions of many-sheeted space-time and field (magnetic) body, zero energy ontology, the identification dark matter as a hierarchy of phases with large value of Planck constant, and p-adic physics proposed to define physical correlates for cognition and intentionality. Especially relevant is the number theoretic generalization of Shannon entropy: this entropy is well defined for rational or even algebraic entanglement probabilities and its minimum as a function of the prime defining p-adic norm appearing in the definition of the entropy is negative. Therefore the notion of negentropic entanglement makes sense in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds and is negative: this motivates the proposal that living matter resides in this intersection. TGD inspired theory of consciousness is introduced as a generalization of quantum measurement theory. The notions of quantum jump and self defining the generalization of the notion of observer are introduced and it is argued that the notion of self reduces to that for quantum jump. Negentropy Maximization Principle reproduces standard quantum measurement theory for ordinary entanglement but respects negentropic entanglement so that the outcome of state function reduction is not random for negentropic entanglement. The new view about the relationship of experienced time and geometric time combined with zero energy ontology is claimed to solve the basic philosophical difficulties of quantum measurement theory and consciousness theory. The identification of the quantum correlates of sensory qualia and Boolean cognition, emotions, cognition and intentionality and self-referentiality of consciousness is discussed.

It is usually assumed that the quantum state is sufficient for deducing all probabilities for a system. This may be true when there is a single observer, but it is not true in a universe large enough that there are many copies of an observer. Then the probability of an observation cannot be deduced simply from the quantum state (say as the expectation value of the projection operator for the observation, as in traditional quantum theory). One needs additional rules to get the probabilities. What these rules are is not logically deducible from the quantum state, so the quantum state itself is insufficient for deducing observational probabilities.

A perspective on Everett's relative state formulation is proposed, leading to a simple relational quantum mechanics. There are inevitably a large number of different versions of the world in which a specific observer could exist, and in the universe of the unitary wave function they are all existing and coincident. If these different versions of the world are superposed, the effective physical environment in the functional frame of reference of this observer would be highly indeterminate, since every possible variation of the world is included; only where observed by the observer is this world determinate, as in Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics. Although the identity of the observer as a physical body does not fit this concept, it applies inevitably to the functional identity of an observer as depicted by Everett, the state of the memory defining the record of observations. In this relativised quantum mechanics the collapse dynamics applies only to the functional frame of reference of the observer and raises no incompatibility with the linear dynamics.

Entanglement has been called the most important new feature of the quantum world. It is expressed in the quantum formalism by the joint measurement formula. We prove the formula for projection valued observables from a plausible assumption, which for spacelike separated measurements is an expression of relativistic causality. The state reduction formula is simply a way to express the joint measurement formula after one measurement has been made, and its result known.

As shown in The Quantum Mechanical Frame of Reference, Everett's formulation inherently defines idiosyncratic effective physical environments for each version of the functional identity of the observer, defined solely by observations, in the manner of Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics. This accounts for determinate measurement records, and completes his resolution of the measurement problem. The remaining task is to make everyday sense of Everett's concept. He defines the functional identity as the record of sensory observations and machine configuration, which seems merely an epiphenomenon of the body-mind of the observer. This functional identity is intensely familiar to each observer. It is simply the subjective reality, the known world, here the 'world hologram'. In Everett's formulation, the cut in the von Neumann chain is implicitly made at the level of conscious sensory awareness. Thus, not only is the effective physical environment defined solely by the record of observations, the self-identity synthesised from observations defines the sole determinacy of the body-mind of the observer. Everett's formulation is not addressing obscure issues of brain state, but the determinant of the effective physical reality of the observer, including the body-mind. Although highly counter-intuitive, it is nonetheless empirically coherent. On the 'inside view', as defined by Tegmark, Everett's relative state corresponds, directly and precisely, to human experience.

There are two versions of the putative connection between consciousness and the measurement problem of quantum mechanics : consciousness as the cause of state vector reduction, and state vector reduction as the physical basis of consciousness. In this article, these controversial ideas are neither accepted uncritically, nor rejected from the outset in the name of some prejudice about objective knowledge. Instead, their origin is sought in our most cherished (but disputable) beliefs about the place of mind and consciousness in the world. It is first pointed out that these common beliefs about mind and consciousness arise from reification of situated first-person experience. Then, situatedness is shown to be a constitutive part of any exhaustive treatment of quantum measurements. It turns out that the alleged connection between consciousness and the measurement problem is a symptom of (i) the ineliminability of our being situated from the end-product of science, and (ii) our difficulty to express correctly this being situated.

This paper is concerned with the description of the process of measurement within the context of a quantum theory of the physical world. It is noted that quantum mechanics permits a quasi-classical description (classical in the limited sense implied by the correspondence principle of Bohr) of those macroscopic phenomena in terms of which the observer forms his perceptions. Thus, the process of measurement in quantum mechanics can be understood on the quasi-classical level by transcribing from the strictly classical observables of Newtonian physics to their quasi-classical counterparts the known rules for the measurement of the former. The remaining physical problem is the delineation of the circumstances in which the correlation of a peculiarly quantum mechanical observable A with a classically measurable observable B can result in a significant measurement of A. This is undertaken within the context of quantum theory. The resulting clarification of the process of measurement has important implications relative to the philosophic interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The measurement problem of quantum theory is discussed, and the difficulty of trying to solve it within the confines of a local, Lorentz-invariant physics is emphasised. This leads to the obvious suggestion to seek a solution beyond physics, in particular, by introducing the concept of consciousness. The resulting dualistic model, in the natural form suggested by quantum theory, is shown to differ in several respects from the classical model of Descartes, and to suggest solutions to some of the long-standing problems concerning the relation of consciousness to the physical world.

I survey some of the connections between the metaphysics of the relation between mind and matter, and quantum theory’s measurement problem. After discussing the metaphysics, especially the correct formulation of physicalism, I argue that two state-reduction approaches to quantum theory’s measurement problem hold some surprises for philosophers’ discussions of physicalism. Though both approaches are compatible with physicalism, they involve a very different conception of the physical, and of how the physical underpins the mental, from what most philosophers expect. And one approach exemplifies a a problem in the definition of physicalism which the metaphysical literature has discussed only in the abstract. A version of the paper has appeared in Consciousness and Human Identity, ed. John Cornwell, OUP 1998.

For nearly six decades, the conscious observer has played a central and essential rôle in quantum measurement theory. I outline some difficulties which the traditional account of measurement presents for material theories of mind before introducing a new development which promises to exorcise the ghost of consciousness from physics and relieve the cognitive scientist of the burden of explaining why certain material structures reduce wavefunctions by virtue of being conscious while others do not. The interactive decoherence of complex quantum systems reveals that the oddities and complexities of linear superposition and state vector reduction are irrelevant to computational aspects of the philosophy of mind and that many conclusions in related fields are ill founded.