Anthony Freeman (Editor of the Journal of Conscious Studies) has written a new book "Consciousness: A Guide to the Debates." In it he has a section on "Consciousness and Quantum Science" that gives a very nice summary of my approach. He has kindly consented to allow me to post that section on this website. No quotation from it should be given without his permission. --------------------------- "Extracted from "Consciousness: A Guide to the Debates" by Anthony Freeman, to be published by ABC-Clio (2003)." anthony@imprint.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Consciousness and Quantum Science We have already seen what happens in a typical experiment in quantum physics. When an observation is recorded-say on a phosphor screen or photographic plate-quantum entities (like photons or electrons) will appear as particles in precise positions. But their observed distribution is predicted by Schroedinger's wave function, and in appropriate conditions they exhibit Airy's wave-associated ring pattern. This suggests that while unobserved they were behaving as waves-which can spread out in more than one direction at once-but once they are observed, they have just a single position, a characteristic of a particle. The act of observation "collapses the wave function" and an actual state precipitates, as it were, out of the cloud of previously possible states. This is what scandalized Einstein: that the chance event of an observation should not merely uncover but actually create the reality of the universe. But the question arises: what is so special about a device such as a light-sensitive plate, that its interception of a quantum entity should count as an observation and so "create" actuality in this way? The person who pushed this question to the limit was John von Neumann (1903-1957), one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century and the mathematical genius behind the modern computer. He asked us to imagine what has become known as "von Neumann's chain," i.e. a whole series of steps from the moment a quantum entity-such as a photon from an experimenter's light source-sets out on its way, to the point when its eventual position on the light-sensitive screen is noted in the experimenter's notebook. Where, he asks, in that whole chain of events, is the vital step that counts as the observation that collapses the wave function and turns potentiality into actuality? Is it when the photon does or doesn't go through the mirror? Is it when it hits the screen? Is it when the experimenter looks at the screen? Or writes down the position? What is the unique moment? Von Neumann's own answer was that every stage simply involved atoms and molecules interacting with each other-the light source, the photon itself, the half-reflecting mirror, the light-sensitive screen, the retina of the experimenter's eyes, his hands writing with his pencil in his notebook-all of this was simply molecules interacting. Except for one unique step. That, said von Neumann, was the point in the chain when the physical signal reaching the experimenter's brain became a conscious experience in the experimenter's mind. Von Neumann thus concluded that, if there was indeed a collapse of the wave function-by which we mean a point at which the quantum wave of possibility became an actual fact in the world of classical objects-then that collapse had to be identified with the moment of conscious observation. The mere moment of a photon striking a screen and causing a blip could not be the vital reality-creating moment, because without a conscious observer to interpret it, that blip was not an observation or a measurement, but just another meaningless collision of subatomic particles. Only the moment of conscious observation could qualify as the "magic" moment. And if that turned out to be true, then a revolution had indeed occurred in science. Von Neumann, and those physicists such as Eugene Wigner (1902-1995) and Henry Stapp, who followed his lead, drew the inference that there is no logical end to the chain of events in a quantum experiment until the point of recognition of a measurement in a conscious observer's mind. He therefore amended the standard Copenhagen interpretation-which says, remember, that the quantum world can only be understood in relation to the classical world of measuring instruments-to say that not just any recorded measurement but only conscious observation could precipitate physical actuality out of quantum possibility. There had long been philosophers (called idealists) who claimed that mind was prior to matter, that the physical world was somehow the creation of consciousness. But that was mere speculation. Here you had the unbelievable spectacle of physicists of all people, hard-nosed scientists whose whole life and work turned on the objective study of the physical world, coming up with their own suggestion that maybe the physical world was not so objective after all. This is the fundamental reason for the importance of quantum physics to consciousness studies. The name most often associated with these ideas today is that of Henry Stapp, at the University of California, Berkeley. Like many others, he finds the core of the mind-brain problem in the gulf between, on the one hand, the intuitive sense that our thoughts cause our bodily actions, and, on the other, our theory of mind and matter-inherited from classical physics-that make any real causal effect of our thoughts on our bodily actions unthinkable and impossible. That classical theory was based on the notion that only matter can affect the activity of matter. The physical world was taken to consist in a vast number of tiny components, each of which would change or stay the same entirely according to the influence of its immediate neighbors. There were no causal connections other than those attributable to these local interactions. To be sure, these microscopic particles accumulate and are perceived by us to be large objects, such as rods or pistons, or large systems, such as oceans or hurricanes. And these large objects and systems can be considered to exert causal influences on surrounding objects and systems. But, according to the principles of classical physics, these influences are completely reducible to local mechanical interactions between microscopic neighbors. This is the essence of physicalist reductionism, and there is no room in this scheme for any entity that can actually grasp large complex structures-such as human bodies-as whole units, and guide our physical actions on that basis, in the way that our thoughts appear to do. However, as we have seen, quantum mechanics constitutes a radical conceptual departure from that classical ideal, because the thinking human observer is brought into the actual dynamic development of the world. In Stapp's view, the role of the conscious human observer in quantum dynamics provides the basis within contemporary physical theory for the actual control of actions by thoughts. This is a kind of influence that is not reducible to matter alone, and for which there was no place in classical physics. In 1990 Stapp wrote an article, later published in his book, Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics (1993), in which he took the widely canvassed but rather vague notion that quantum theory and consciousness were somehow linked, and nailed it down to a specific quantum interpretation of the mind-brain relation. In this description he adopts the generally accepted view among neuroscientists that a person's body in its environment is somehow represented within the brain by certain patterns of neural activity, known as the body-world schema. There are also patterns of brain activity associated with every conscious thought (see the chapter on the neural correlates of consciousness). Each time a particular pattern is activated it changes the physical structure slightly, so that next time the brain is stimulated in a similar way, that same pattern is more likely to be activated again than a different pattern that has not occurred before. This facilitates the recall of earlier thoughts and experiences and contributes to memory and a sense of personal continuity (see chapter on memory). Stapp treats the activity of an alert brain as essentially a search process: the brain, conditioned by earlier experience, searches for a satisfactory response to each new situation that the organism faces. By a "response" he means a carefully tuned pattern of firings of some collection of neurons. This pattern he calls a "template for action", or an executive-level template, and it is based on the brain's current body-world schema. A "satisfactory response" will be one where the executive-level template initiates an action that improves the organism's well-being. Stapp suggests that there are two kinds of templated actions: one he calls "attentions," the other "intentions." An attention, or attentional event, is backward-directed and updates the schema in the light of recent changes to the body or its environment; it is clearly important that the body-world schema, on which all templates for action rely, should be as accurate and up-to-date as possible. An intentional event is future-oriented and it causes one particular body-world schema to be selected from a range of possible ones to become the actual one. In Stapp's terminology, an intention actualizes a body-world schema. It is important to be clear that this does not in itself constitute a bodily action in the environment. An actualized schema is an image within the brain, and its production is a brain process confined within the brain. But it is an image within the brain of a particular intended state of the body-world, and its selection from all the possible intended states is the precursor to the bodily action in the environment that will bring about that state. We are now at the point to which the last few paragraphs have been leading. I have said that an intention, that is an intentional event, is the selection of one outcome from among a range of possibilities; this sounds very like the description in quantum theory of what happens when the wave function collapses, and it is Stapp's belief that each actualized body-world schema is indeed the outcome of what he calls a phenomenal quantum event. This, in his view, is the key to the causal interaction between thoughts and actions. Let's run over the causal links again, tracing them backwards from the final action: the body's ultimate action in its environment is caused in a straightforward automatic physical way by the brain's actualized body-world schema; the actualized body-world schema in its turn is caused in a straightforward automatic physical way by the brain's intentional event; the intentional event in its own turn is caused in a straightforward automatic physical way by the "template for action"; and it is that executive-level template for action where Stapp postulates the collapse of the wave function occurs, selecting one response to some new situation faced by the organism from among the many possibilities. Remember that the wave function does not represent actuality itself, but only probabilities or "objective tendencies" for the next actual event. So the collapse of the wave function is necessary to bring about an actual situation that corresponds with human experience. But what causes the wave function to collapse in the way it does? This is the crucial question, because whatever causes that, according to the causal chain just outline, causes the ultimate bodily action in the environment. On the standard Copenhagen view of the collapse, one of the alternative possibilities generated by the wave equation is selected and made actual, and that selection is down to chance. But Stapp is no happier with the idea of chance governing everything than Einstein was. He concedes that the chance element was acceptable for Bohr and company, because they made no claim to describe in any detail what was "really happening." It was enough for them that the mathematics worked. But he himself is made of sterner stuff and wants to make an assault on a description of reality itself, especially the reality underlying our experience of mental causation. This follows from his desire to understand how thoughts control actions. He turned to quantum theory in the first place because classical physics fails to provide an answer to this question. Now he does not regard Copenhagen's "pure chance" as a satisfactory answer either. This way of speaking, he says, is merely a mask for ignorance of the true cause. So he looks instead to von Neumann's version of the quantum story, which does offer a candidate for the cause of the collapse of the wave function: conscious observation. There is however an important difference between the original context of von Neumann's proposal and the way the idea is applied by Stapp. Von Neumann's imagined "chain" consisted of a large system, including the quantum entity to be measured, a device to measure some property, a human observer's eye, and finally a human brain. In that context the observer's consciousness determined the outcome of the earlier distant experiment on the atomic system. But Stapp focuses on the mind-brain system itself, and the outcome determined by the person's conscious observation is not the position of some distant photon, but the selection of a particular template for action in the person's own brain, for instance the intention to raise an arm. He postulates that the critical "observation" is the conscious event that is experienced as the decision to raise one's arm, and that the physical brain event (neural correlate) that corresponds to it is none other than the collapse of the wave function, the same collapse that excludes all the other superposed possibilities to bring about this particular template for action, "raise the arm." That is, he is saying that a conscious event - the occurrence of the psychological decision "raise the arm" - is represented in the physical description of nature by the same neural event - the collapse of the wave function - that sets off the straightforward automatic physical chain of events that results in the raising of the arm. This is in line with what seems, intuitively, to be the role of consciousness, but Stapp is not home and dry yet. It is one thing to propose a correlation between the psychological decision to act and the brain event that initiates that action; it is quite another to show a real causal connection. To see how Stapp does this, we need to take a step back and look carefully at how experience fits into his quantum model of the mind-brain that we have been considering. Everyone agrees that much-probably most-of the brain's activity is automatic and non-conscious. In Stapp's proposal this ongoing automatic activity is punctuated by a series of conscious events, each of which actualizes a template for action. By means of the automatic spread of neural activity that it initiates, this newly created executive-level template automatically controls three kinds of process: motor action, the collection of new information (including monitoring the ongoing processes it has initiated), and-most significantly for our purposes-the formation of the next template for action. Classical physics was deterministic and said there would be only one possible "next template" leading to a single possible outcome. Quantum physics says there will be many superposed possible "next templates" each with its own superposed possible outcome, but universal human experience says that there is only ever a single outcome, and that such outcomes are always classically describable. It was in order to bring the quantum process into accord with this human experience that the Copenhagen school stipulated that only one of the many possibilities would be actualized (by the chance event of the collapse of the wave function), and that only the actualized possibility was capable of being experienced. Stapp says that it was the "great and essential move" of the Copenhagen theorists to realize that their theory was not really about the hidden subatomic world of possibilities at all, but about the actual experienced world, the observable and classical aspect of nature. Von Neumann and Wigner tightened up still further the connection of the actual to experience, by proposing that no quantum possibility could be actualized except by being experienced (i.e. the wave function could only be collapsed by the act of conscious observation). Stapp builds on both these traditions, emphasizing the surprising facts that even the classical aspect of nature does not come from the physical side but from the experiential side, and that the experiential aspect of the actualization events is the cause of their classical character. This is not to deny the physical side of nature, but to understand it in a new way. Being physical no longer means being "material," but being a structure in space and time that somehow holds ("encodes") knowledge or information created by earlier events. Although it contrasts with the old view that equated "physical" with so-called "dead matter," this approach is not totally novel, and Stapp sees it as essentially orthodox quantum theory. He accepts and builds on the Copenhagen view that the "state" specified by quantum theory represents knowledge, and acknowledges Werner Heisenberg, a leading figure in the Copenhagen school, as the source of his idea that this space-time structure is active, in the sense that its encoded information creates tendencies for future events to occur. These are themselves experiential-type events, so they create more knowledge or information that is, in turn, encoded in the physical structure in the way specified by the quantum equations. This dynamic understanding of what it means to be physical is the key to the question of causation. We began with the "interaction problem," the inherited idea that matter can only be influenced by other neighboring matter, and therefore thoughts cannot cause physical actions. By abandoning this picture of nature, in which the physical is implicitly equated with the material, in favor of one where the physical is understood as an active structure balancing the experiential aspects of nature, Stapp removes the interaction problem at a stroke. It enables him to say both that large-scale classical things like human-bodies-in-action derive their essential character from the fact that they are experienced, and also that this is not in spite of their being physical, but is rather an aspect of what it means for them to be physical. So when he says that conscious thoughts cause bodily actions, he is not claiming that something non-material is influencing matter; he is giving an example of natural dynamic events unfolding in a world that is coherently and inherently both physical and experiential. ====================================================================== From Anthony@imprint.co.uk Tue Aug 20 12:37:09 2002 Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:55:20 +0100 From: Anthony Freeman To: hpstapp@lbl.gov Subject: Re: Not JCS - personal request In message , stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov writes >I have inserted a few proposed changes, but do not >feel in any way obliged to accept them. I shall be >happy to post whatever you decide to settle upon. >The differences are not large: I mainly wanted to >make it clear that "Stapp's proposed space-time >structure" is essentially what orthodox quantum >theory is saying, not some wild idiosyncratic >idea of mine. Dear Henry, Thank you for the care you have taken over this. I have made yet a further slight modification to the sentence you changed, chiefly to split an unwieldy sentence and to explain who Heisenberg is. (Amazingly I find that my introduction to QM earlier in the chapter manages not to name him!) My original sentence: In contrast to the traditional understanding, which equates "physical" with so-called "dead matter," Stapp's proposed space-time structure is active, in the sense that its encoded information creates tendencies for future events to occur. Your rewrite: In contrast to the traditional understanding, which equates "physical" with so-called "dead matter," Stapp's approach identifies the physical aspect of nature with the state specified by quantum theory, and accepts the Copenhagen view that this state represents knowledge, and also Heisenberg's idea that this space-time structure is active, in the sense that its encoded information creates tendencies for future events to occur. My final version: Although it contrasts with the old view that equated "physical" with so-called "dead matter," this approach is not totally novel, and Stapp sees it as essentially orthodox quantum theory. He accepts and builds on the Copenhagen view that the "state" specified by quantum theory represents knowledge, and acknowledges Werner Heisenberg, a leading figure in the Copenhagen school, as the source of his idea that this space-time structure is active, in the sense that its encoded information creates tendencies for future events to occur. Here is the full final paragraph incorporating this final amendment: This is not to deny the physical side of nature, but to understand it in a new way. Being physical no longer means being "material," but being a structure in space and time that somehow holds ("encodes") knowledge or information created by earlier events. Although it contrasts with the old view that equated "physical" with so-called "dead matter," this approach is not totally novel, and Stapp sees it as essentially orthodox quantum theory. He accepts and builds on the Copenhagen view that the "state" specified by quantum theory represents knowledge, and acknowledges Werner Heisenberg, a leading figure in the Copenhagen school, as the source of his idea that this space-time structure is active, in the sense that its encoded information creates tendencies for future events to occur. These are themselves experiential-type events, so they create more knowledge or information that is, in turn, encoded in the physical structure in the way specified by the quantum equations. This dynamic understanding of what it means to be physical is the key to the question of causation. We began with the "interaction problem," the inherited idea that matter can only be influenced by other neighboring matter, and therefore thoughts cannot cause physical actions. By abandoning this picture of nature, in which the physical is implicitly equated with the material, in favor of one where the physical is understood as an active structure balancing the experiential aspects of nature, Stapp removes the interaction problem at a stroke. It enables him to say both that large-scale classical things like human-bodies-in-action derive their essential character from the fact that they are experienced, and also that this is not in spite of their being physical, but is rather an aspect of what it means for them to be physical. So when he says that conscious thoughts cause bodily actions, he is not claiming that something non-material is influencing matter; he is giving an example of natural dynamic events unfolding in a world that is coherently and inherently both physical and experiential. Please go ahead and post this on your website, with the introduction as drafted in your email. Thanks again, Anthony. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony Freeman (Managing Editor, Journal of Consciousness Studies) Imprint Academic, The Old Post Office, Robin's Nest, Chapel Lane Brampford Speke, Exeter EX5 5HE, UK Tel. +44 (0)1392 841600 Fax. +44 (0)1392 841478 Email: anthony@imprint.co.uk ====================================================================== From Mszlazak@aol.com Fri Aug 23 16:24:33 2002 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 18:38:44 EDT From: Mszlazak@aol.com To: hpstapp@lbl.gov Subject: Re: Freemans version of yours seems confusing! Hello Dr. Stapp: It appears that you do not have an accurate understanding of my position. Your phrase "because it's so restricted to the consciousness of physicists doing physics experiments" reveals a significant misapprehension. One reason that I switched from Copenhagen QT to von Neumann QT was to obtain an ontology that could be generalized in a way that was not restricted to human observers, and that was therefore objective and could be applied to the evolution of species. No, no Dr. Stapp, I have a good feel for your version, it's Freeman's exposition that's the problem. He does say things at the end that imply what's said below but other part's either sound dualistic and others like some mixed up cryto-materialism. His expositions initially sounds nice in terms of writing style and all, but on more scrutiny becomes incoherent or can be read that way. My theory is based squarely on physics, and is therefore dualistic in the sense that it has a mathematically represented state of the physical universe (which is the state specified by relativistic quantum field theory) and has also experiential realities (whic are "feelings", with all thoughts, ideas, and knowings understood to be `feelings' with different qualitative characteristics.) The theory is similar to Whitehead's in that there are "events", and each event has both physical and experiential aspects. The physical aspects are specified by physics (the physical state is specified as in relativistic quantum field theory), and the experiential aspects are feelings of one kind our another. Neither aspect is reducible to the other, but they are dynamically related to each other by von Neumann's equations. I don't believe Whitehead's process panpsychist view is considered to be dual-aspect theory. The stuff I've recently read on this says no to dual aspect, at least that's what one Whiteheadian is saying. The quantum state is "quintessential", in the sense that it has five essential features: (1) It is `physical' in the sense that it is a mathematical structure imbedded in space-time, and evolves according to rules. (2) It is `informational' in the sense that it is an encoding within the mathematical structure imbedded in space time of the information injected into it by the sequence of Process I projection operators P and (I-P) leading up to it. OK, as a point of clarification. Do any of these infomational processes exist outside (our concept of) space (geometrical relations based on extension and the like)? If time isn't different from spacial concepts then the same question applies to time. If time is different then what is time? (3) It represents `our knowledge' in the sense that it encodes the `knowings' injected into it by the sequence of projection operators P and (I-P) leading up to it. (4) It creates `tendencies' for events to occur. (5) It is `influenced' in its evolution by the mental effort of agents. All these feature arise from von Neumann's equations, and from orthodox assumptions about the connection of the evolving quantum state vector to "our knowledge" and "tendencies for events to occur." This solution is both Whiteheadian and dualistic. It might be classified as a "Non-materialistic Dualism." But the physical and experietial aspects of the quantum state are so intertwined as to make it also a "Neutral Monism" in the sense that the basic stuff is neither idealistic nor materialistic, but are just the elements of contemporary physical theory, which inextricably mix the experiential aspects of nature with a mathematical structure imbedded in spacetime. Traditional "Neutral Monisims" (Russell), do not bring in the physical description forged by scientists, whereas this ontology is just a slight elaboration of the scientific description. Freeman does not imply that the brain is a "material entity." On the other hand, the brain is a "physical entity." And due to "environmental decoherence effects" it does tend to effectively decompose into a conglogeration of "quasi-classical" states, each of which is a slightly smeared out classical state that tends to spread out into a collection of such states. So a classical-language description of the state of the brain is not inappropriate: one must only remember that the classical picture is only approximately correct, and that multiple quasi-classical options grow out of each quasi-classical component, when no "events" are occurring. Believe me brain is not understood this way at all. It's understood as a classical entity by many if not all neuroscientists, neurologists and neurosurgeons. I've got Kendell and Schwartz's book on neuroscience as well as many neurological differential diagnosis books and it's all "sand and sparks in flux." Freeman's words are a nice summary of my more detailed description given in the Chapter "A quantum theory of the mind/brain interface", which is Chapter 6 of my book Mind, Matter, and QuantumMechanics.                                                                                                                            (Available also on my website) I think it's nicely written but I also think it's confusing. Anyway, your the original so I always refer to your works not Freeman's Best. Mark Szlazak. From stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Mon Aug 26 08:51:05 2002 Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 08:50:22 -0700 (PDT) From: stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Reply-To: hpstapp@lbl.gov To: Mszlazak@aol.com Subject: Re: Freemans version of yours seems confusing! On Sun, 25 Aug 2002 Mszlazak@aol.com wrote: > HPS > > > My theory is based squarely on physics, and is therefore dualistic in the > > > > sense that it has a mathematically represented state of the physical > > > universe (which is the state specified by relativistic quantum field > > > theory) and has also experiential realities (which are "feelings", > > > with all thoughts, ideas, and knowings understood to be > > > `feelings' with different qualitative characteristics.) > > > > > > The theory is similar to Whitehead's in that there are "events", and each > > > event has both physical and experiential aspects. The physical > > > aspects are specified by physics (the physical state is specified as in > > > relativistic quantum field theory), and the experiential aspects are > > > feelings of one kind our another. Neither aspect is reducible to the > > > other, but they are dynamically related to each other by von Neumann's > > > equations. > > > > > MS > > I don't believe Whitehead's process panpsychist view is considered to be > > dual-aspect theory. The stuff I've recently read on this says no to dual > > aspect, at least that's what one Whiteheadian is saying. > > > HPS > Well, Whitehead does talk about "the extensive continuum," which is his > way of bringing in the spatial continuum. So he is certainly trying to lay > a foundation for the approximate validity of the descriptions provided by > science. It is probably true that he wants to base spacetime on some > deeper reality, and his approach is therefore more "monistic" than mine. > I think some evential move in that direction would be nice, but am trying > to build on contemporary science, and therefore take the state vector of > quantum field, imbedded in an existing spacetime to be basic rather than > derived in any way that I try to describe from something profoundly > deeper. > > MS > I think dual-aspect is a "substance" view where mind-like and matter-like > properties are aspects of this underlying something and they are both always > present. In Whitehead these are phases of the same underlying process > "subjective" -> "objective" -> "subjective" ... I guess they want to emphasis > this time related / process related view form what traditionally dual-aspect > is taken to be. Does that sound right? > HPS It seems to me that "dual aspect" is by definition a view in which one reality has two aspects: it is not a dual substance point of view. My view is a "process" view in which the full process involves two intertwined sub-processes, a `subjective one' consisting of `feelings' and an objective one specified by a quantum state that evolves via a unitary transformation punctuated by abrupt feeling-related Process I events. HPS > > > > The quantum state is "quintessential", in the sense that it has five > > > > essential features: > > > > (1) It is `physical' in the sense that it is a mathematical structure > > > > imbedded in space-time, and evolves according to rules. > > > > (2) It is `informational' in the sense that it is an encoding within > > > > the mathematical structure imbedded in space time of the information > > > > injected into it by the sequence of Process I projection operators P > > > > and (I-P) leading up to it. MS > > > > > > OK, as a point of clarification. Do any of these infomational processes > > exist > > > outside (our concept of) space (geometrical relations based on extension > > and > > > the like)? If time isn't different from spacial concepts then the same > > > question applies to time. If time is different then what is time? > > > > > The 'informational' structure that I am talking about here is exactly what > > is encoded in the evolving-in-time quantum state, and can be decoded. > > Time is room for (the dimension that allows for) change. > > HPS > > > > (3) It represents `our knowledge' in the sense that it encodes the > > > > `knowings' injected into it by the sequence of projection > > > > operators P and (I-P) leading up to it. > > > > (4) It creates `tendencies' for events to occur. > > > > (5) It is `influenced' in its evolution by the mental effort of agents. > > > > > > > > All these feature arise from von Neumann's equations, and from orthodox > > > > assumptions about the connection of the evolving quantum state vector > > to > > > > "our knowledge" and "tendencies for events to occur." > > > > > > > MS > So, projection operators are a theory of "information" or a theory of the > "transformation of information" into the (quasi) classical realm. If > "information" is another term for meaning, feelings, or even qualia, then I > just don't "see" how von Neuman's process nudges the probability weighting of > these possibilities one way or the other. > HPS I have repeatedly stressed that my theory does NOT nudge the quantum probabilities at all, but uses the standard quantum probability rules in conjunction with von Neumann's Process I to achieve, via a Quantum Zeno Effect, an influence of feelings on the evolution of the quantum state. HPS > Mark