[DonQuichotte (OP)]

As for the case of the split -brain phenomena : i can only speculate about that , in the sense that the disconnection of the 2 hemispheres might result  in those disconnected 2 different forms of corresponding consciousness ,almost in the same fashion in the case of myopia , for example, or in that of double sight : it's the mind that sees ,not the eyes ,or the brain .

Interesting; so you're speculating that one supposedly immaterial consciousness splitting into two is 'almost the same' as shortsightedness (nearsightedness), or double vision - which are both due to physical (mechanical) misalignments? Really?  [] [)]

If 'it's the mind that sees ,not the eyes ,or the brain' how come damage to the eyes and brain causes visual impairment or blindness corresponding to the damage?

Beware of appearances , they are deceptive :
What makes you conclude from all that that the mind is in the brain then ?
Let's assume ,just for this discussion sake , that brain activity produces consciousness or is consciousness : if A causes B : does that mean that A=B or that B is in A ?
Causation is not even explanation either : you still have to prove how A causes B  exactly  .
You cannot just jump to saying A is B or that B is in A : how can you "justify " such an insane absurd and illogic jump then,without any medium or other bridge that links B to A  ?
Science has not been able so far to tell us anything at all regarding how qualitative subjective conscious states  experiences can be "related " to the activity of the brain : there is no empirical evidence whatsover "linking " the one to the other ,as there is no faslifiable scientific theory of consciousness out there yet : why do you think and behave as if there is one then ?.
Brain damage , diseases , genetic inheritance ...factors and phenomena such as spli brain, alzheimer .....are just circumstancial , no conclusive , evidence for  the materialist "fact " or rather for the a-priori held materialist belief assumption that the brain is the mind or that the mind is in the brain .
It's the mind that sees , not the eyes or  the brain : the latter are just physical mediums for the non-physical consciousness : it's consciousness that gives subjective qualitative abstract olfactory visual feeling ...and other forms to the sensory "inputs " that "hit " the brain : when scientific progress and technology will be advanced enough , blind people might be cured from their blindness through surgery : the latter does not mean that it is the eye that sees .
Otherwise , try to tell me how sight through the eyes to the brain ,via light , "creates" faces , images , landscapes , abstract ideas and the like then ?if the mind is not the one that sees, and therefore it is the mind or consciousness that gives subjective qualitative forms to the external stimuli that hits the brain  through the senses .

In short :
If i knew the answers to those question of yours , i wouldn't be here , would i ?

You have no idea at all, do you? All this variety of evidence we've posted that is entirely consistent with, and generally supportive of, consciousness being a process of the brain; seemingly none of it consistent with or plausibly explicable by the immaterial consciousness hypothesis, and much of it apparently contradicting that hypothesis - can you not put  2 and 2 together [?]

Truly is it said, 'none are so blind as those who will not see' 

[/quote]


See above .
All i know is that you cannot conclude from all that that the mind is in the brain ,or that the mind is just brain activity , see above .

Your  materialist mind is blind , not your eyes .
If only , you could see through your mind , not just through your eyes , as you should be doing .
It's through your own materialist mind that you do 'change " what you see , as to make it fit into your materialist  a-priori held  world view .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha

Come on Don.....Surprise me with your evidence. It would be the first you've offered!!!!!!

You wouldn't be able to recognize it as such , even if it would hit you in the eye,as you have been showing all along  .
Why don't you tell me why , on earth , do you happen to believe in those mutually exclusive world views ? for starters then .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

It took only 48 hrs to declare this thread clinically dead ...

If only that were really true. I think we should bury it quickly so it doesn't resurrect.

Haha , funny and interesting religious symbolism Freudian slip of the tongue you uttered there :
Should we bury the truth or facts ? burn books or heretics ?
You can't burn or bury kill ideas , you know .haha
Ideas that cannot be the product of brain activity .
You were born too late for that , you were born in the "wrong" century : you should have been born under the supremacy of the medieval church .
What are you afraid of then ?
I think that the inherent intrinsic inquisition "property quality " of christianity has never left you , i guess .
Inquisitions are doomed to fail , remember , either the religious or the secular ones, and are self-refuting and self-defeating also .............

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

As promised , i will be behaving like Sint-Claus haha ,as to be delivering and offering you, guys , some christmas ' gifts , regarding the phony false materialism , and hence regarding the fact that the mind is not in the brain .................
If you think that science requires materialism, "just wait and see ", as Chalmers used to say ...

Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha

Yeah right  []   - just like last time  [)]

Just wait and see then .
Only time will tell ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

It's really absurd and total non-sense to even try to assume that the mind is in the brain, or that the mind is just brain activity,despite all appearances (Remember that appearances are deceptive and illusionary ) : the mind or consciousness, the soul, the self or whatever cannot rise  from  , let alone be the product of brain activity...

In other words, ignore all the evidence (it's just 'appearances'), and just believe the bare, unsupported assertion. The 'it's obvious / absurd / nonsensical' claim is known as the 'Commonsense Fallacy', and, as previously explained, belief held despite all evidence to the contrary, is known as delusion.

No, it's exactly the other way around :  there is no empirical evidence whatsoever "linking " brain activity to subjective conscious states experiences : you cannot logically ,let alone empirically , conclude from the apparent effects of alzheimer , brain damage, split-brain phenomena ....that the mind is in the brain ,or that the mind is just brain activity : see above .

You're the one trying to make the apparent circumstancial, no conclusive ,evidence , fit into your own a-priori held materialist belief assumptions regarding the nature of reality , and hence regarding that of consciousness .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Be prepared ,both mentally and psychologically spiritually , for the surprises i will be offering you all, for ...christmas ,or for a bit later ...haha

Love is in the air .............

The only surprise I ever expect to receive from you Don..... is for you to produce evidence. Now,.............that would be a complete surprise!!

Look who's talking : amazing :
Read my tons of posted material and other on the subject here  , if you can at least .
You wouldn't be able to recognize evidence , even if it would hit you in the eye , as you have been showing all along , also by failing to realise how paradoxical and absurd you have been all along , by believing in 2 mutually exclusive world views ...
pfff...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Not to mention the fact that you have been applying classical physics to the atomic and molecular brain activity , paradoxically enough .
Not to mention the fact that the mind , or emotions feelings , psyche , beliefs, the human will  ...can have causal effects on the brain activity ,and hence on that of the body as well .
I think that the mind or consciounsness do have causal effects on the brain and body at the very micro quantum level ...

[alancalverd]

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.

[Ethos_]

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.

A word to the wise is sufficient. But were Don is concerned???

And BTW; DON...., I never once detailed what that faith centered around. But now for the record:

I believe in what I can measure with repeatable results, it's called science. Something you have yet to learn Don.

What I can't measure with repeatable results, I may still wonder about the whys and wherefors until new evidence surfaces.

But what I don't do is come to a SCIENCE forum vomiting up spooky and ill defined trash like the author of this thread.

I thank folks like alancalverd for also knowing the difference between science and everyday what ifs.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Despised Dualism:


Scientists in different fields are free, to some extent, to use concepts
that appear to work for them, without regard to other scientific disciplines.
However, many of the greatest advances in science have come
from unifying the treatments of neighboring realms of phenomena. We
are now engaged a great scientific endeavor to rationally connect the
neurophysiological and psychological aspects of the conscious brain.
The problem is to understand, explain, or describe the connections
between two realms that are conceived of – and are described in –
two very different ways. What seems pertinent is that basic physics
was forced by the character of empirical phenomena to an incredibly
successful way to link these same two realms. It seems reasonable to
at least try to apply the solution discovered by physicists to the parallel
problem in neuropsychology. Why should there be such scorn in
brain science for this natural and reasonable idea of bringing mind
into neuropsychology in the same way that it was brought into physics
in connection with the relationship between the empirically described
and physically described aspects of scientific practice?
Contemporary physics is essentially psychophysical, hence dualistic.
Dualism is seen as a bˆete noire by many philosophers. Hence the
quantum approach tends to be peremptorily rejected because it belongs
to this despised category. But why are dualistic theories held in
such contempt? There is an historical reason.

............

Historical Background:

I shall begin with a brief summary, abstracted from Nahmias (2002), of
the principal developments in psychology during the twentieth century.
In 1898 the introspectionist E.B. Titchener delineated the proper
study of psychology as the conscious mind, defined as “nothing more
than the whole sum of mental processes experienced in a single lifetime”.
And: “We must always remember that, within the sphere of 12.3 Squaring with Contemporary Neuroscience.

Flawed Argument:

Daniel Dennett (1991) gives a reason. His book Consciousness Explained
has a chapter entitled Why Dualism Is Forlorn, which begins
with the words:
The idea of mind as distinct [. . . ] from the brain, composed
not of ordinary matter but of some other special kind of stuff
is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today. [. . . ] The
prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for is materialism:
there is one sort of stuff, namely matter – the physical
stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology – and the mind is
somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the
mind is the brain.
Dennett then asks: “What, then, is so wrong with dualism? Why is it
in such disfavor?” He answers:
A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the
trajectory of a particle is an acceleration requiring the expenditure
of energy [. . . ] this principle of conservation of energy [. . . ]
is apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between
standard physics and dualism has been endlessly discussed since
Descartes’ own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable
flaw in dualism.
This argument depends on identifying ‘standard physics’ with classical
physics. The argument collapses when one goes over to contemporary
physics, in which, due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, trajectories
of particles are replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which
conscious choices can influence physically described activity without
violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum physics.
Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann
form entails, an interactive dualism that is fully in accord with all the
laws of physics. Any perception merely reduces the possibilities.
........Squaring with Contemporary Neuroscience:
How does the quantum conception of mind–brain dynamics square
with contemporary neuroscience?
Steven Pinker is an able reporter on contemporary neuroscience. In
the lead article The Mystery of Consciousness in the January 29, 2007

Mind & Body Special Issue of Time Magazine he notes that while
certain mysteries remain, neuroscientist agree on one thing: “Francis
Crick called it ‘the astonishing hypothesis’ – the idea that our
thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological
activity in the tissues of the brain.”
Of course, the phrase ‘physiological activity’ needs to be replaced
by ‘psychophysiological activity’ since this activity is being explicitly
asserted to have psychological or experiential content. Later Pinker
says that: “Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events
distributed across the brain.” These events should evidently be labeled
psychophysical events, since being located in the brain is a physical
attribute, while being the components of consciousness entails that
these events have psychological aspects.
These psychophysiological or psychophysical characterizations fit
quantum theory perfectly. According to von Neumann’s formulation
each of the quantum events in the brain has both a psychological aspect
and a physical aspect. The physical aspect is the jump of the
quantum state of the brain to that part of itself that is compatible
with the increment in knowledge specified by its psychologically described
aspect. It is this tight linkage between the psychologically and
physically described aspects of the events that keeps a person’s brain
in alignment with his or her experiences. These repeated reductions
are both possible and needed because the indeterminacy present at
the microscopic/ionic level, keeps generating at the macroscopic level
a profusion of brain states corresponding to mutually incompatible
observations. These dynamically needed interventions, whose causal
origin is left unspecified by the physical theory, provide a natural vehicle
for mental causation.
This all depends on accepting the utility of the quantum mechanical
program of building science’s conception of nature on the notion of
a sequence of macroscopically localized psychophysical events, rather
than on the notion of mindless matter.
Pinker refers to ‘The Hard Problem’. He says:
The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience
arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because
no one knows what a solution would look like or even is a genuine
scientific problem in the first place. And not surprisingly
everyone agrees that the hard problem (if it is a problem) is a
mystery.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Of course this ‘hard’ problem is – and will remain – a mystery insofar
as one’s thinking is imprisoned within the fundamentally invalid
conceptual framework postulated by classical physics, which has no
rational place for consciousness. Within that framework the problem
is seen to be “explaining how subjective experience arises from neural
computation”, since all that is given is mindless matter. But the mystery
immediately dissolves when one passes over to quantum theory,
which was formulated from the outset as a theory of the interplay between
physical descriptions and conscious thoughts, and which comes
with an elaborate and highly tested machinery for relating these two
kinds of elements.
Some quantum physicists want to justify basing neuroscience on
classical physics by suggesting that once the neural activity reaches
a classically describable level, say at the firing of a neuron (i.e., the
triggering of an action potential), one may assume that the quantum
jump from ‘potential’ to ‘actual’ has occurred, and hence that one
can deal simply with the actualities of neuron firings, and ignore their
quantum underpinnings.
That approach would be a misuse of the quantum mechanical use of
the concepts of classical mechanics. The founders of quantum mechanics
were very clear about the use, in the theory of observations, of the
concepts of classical mechanics. Those concepts were needed and used
in order “to communicate to others what we have done and what we
have learned”. The use of the classical concepts is appropriate in that
context because those pertinent experiences are actually describable
in terms of the classical concepts, not because something was mysteriously
supposed to actually happen merely when things became big
enough for classical ideas to make sense. That criterion was too vague
and ambiguous to be used to construct a satisfactory physical theory.
The boundary between the large and the small could be shifted at will,
within limits, but actuality cannot be shifted in this way.
When one is describing one’s perceptions of devices lying outside
one’s body the experience itself is well described in terms of classical
ideas about where the parts of the device are and how they are moving.
But one’s subjective phenomenal experience is not geometrically similar
to the pattern of neural firings that constitute the neural correlate
of that experience.
If one assumes that the reduction events in the subject’s brains are
tied fundamentally to classicality per se, rather than to increments
in the subject’s knowledge, then one loses the essential connection
between physical description and subjective experience that quantum
theory is designed to provide This quasi-classical approach of accepting
quantum mechanics at the microscopic level, but tying the reduction
events occurring in the subject’s brain to some objective condition
of classicality, rather than to the subject’s experiences, has the great
virtue – relative to the approach of simply accepting a fully classical
conception of the brain – of not just ignoring a hundred years of development
in physics. However, in the context of solving the problem of
the mind–brain connection, it inherits the fatal deficiency of the classical
approach: the conceptual framework does not involve mind. There
is, as in the classical approach, no intrinsic conceptual place for, or dynamical
need for, our conscious experiences. There is within the given
structure no entailment either of any reason for conscious experiences
to exist at all, or of any principle that governs how these experiences
are tied to brain activity. “The Hard Problem of explaining how subjective
experience arises from neural computation” remains, as Pinker
said “a mystery”. Moreover, the quasi-classical approach inherits also
the principal difficulty of all the quantum theories that accept reductions,
but reject the orthodox principle of placing the reduction events
at the boundary between the physically described and psychologically
defined aspects of our scientific understanding of nature. Where, within
such an approach that does not involve consciousness, can one find either
any reason for any reduction to occur at all, or any objective
principle that specifies where, between one single atom and the more
than 1024 atoms in the brain, do the collapses occur. Orthodox quantum
theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’
together in a practically useful way, and provides, simultaneously, a
way for the universe to acquire meaning.
theory is designed to provide This quasi-classical approach of accepting
quantum mechanics at the microscopic level, but tying the reduction
events occurring in the subject’s brain to some objective condition
of classicality, rather than to the subject’s experiences, has the great
virtue – relative to the approach of simply accepting a fully classical
conception of the brain – of not just ignoring a hundred years of development
in physics. However, in the context of solving the problem of
the mind–brain connection, it inherits the fatal deficiency of the classical
approach: the conceptual framework does not involve mind. There
is, as in the classical approach, no intrinsic conceptual place for, or dynamical
need for, our conscious experiences. There is within the given
structure no entailment either of any reason for conscious experiences
to exist at all, or of any principle that governs how these experiences
are tied to brain activity. “The Hard Problem of explaining how subjective
experience arises from neural computation” remains, as Pinker
said “a mystery”. Moreover, the quasi-classical approach inherits also
the principal difficulty of all the quantum theories that accept reductions,
but reject the orthodox principle of placing the reduction events
at the boundary between the physically described and psychologically
defined aspects of our scientific understanding of nature. Where, within
such an approach that does not involve consciousness, can one find either
any reason for any reduction to occur at all, or any objective
principle that specifies where, between one single atom and the more
than 1024 atoms in the brain, do the collapses occur. Orthodox quantum
theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’
together in a practically useful way, and provides, simultaneously, a
way for the universe to acquire meaning.

Source : Henry P. Stapp
MINDFUL
UNIVERSE
Quantum Mechanics
and the Participating Observer

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Impact of Quantum Mechanics
on Human Values:

Philosophers have tried doggedly for three centuries to understand the
role of mind in the workings of a brain conceived to function according
to principles of classical physics. We now know no such brain exists:
no brain, body, or anything else in the real world is composed of those
tiny bits of matter that Newton imagined the universe to be made of.
Hence it is hardly surprising that those philosophical endeavors were
beset by enormous difficulties, which led to such positions as that of
the ‘eliminative materialists’, who hold that our conscious thoughts
must be eliminated from our scientific understanding of nature; or of
the ‘epiphenomenalists’, who admit that human experiences do exist,
but claim that they play no role in how we behave; or of the ‘identity
theorists’, who claim that each conscious feeling is exactly the same
thing as a motion of particles that nineteenth century science thought
our brains, and everything else in the universe, were made of, but
that twentieth century science has found not to exist, at least as they
were formerly conceived. The tremendous difficulty in reconciling consciousness,
as we know it, with the older physics is dramatized by the
fact that for many years the mere mention of ‘consciousness’ was considered
evidence of backwardness and bad taste in most of academia,
including, incredibly, even psychology and the philosophy of mind.
What you are, and will become, depends largely upon your values.
Values arise from self-image: from what you believe yourself to
be. Generally one is led by training, teaching, propaganda, or other
forms of indoctrination, to expand one’s conception of the self: one is
encouraged to perceive oneself as an integral part of some social unit
such as family, ethnic or religious group, or nation, and to enlarge
one’s self-interest to include the interests of this unit. If this training
is successful your enlarged conception of yourself as good parent, or
good son or daughter, or good Christian, Muslim, Jew, or whatever,
will cause you to give weight to the welfare of the unit as you would
your own. In fact, if well conditioned you may give more weight to the
interests of the group than to the well-being of your bodily self.

In the present context it is not relevant whether this human tendency
to enlarge one’s self-image is a consequence of natural malleability,
instinctual tendency, spiritual insight, or something else. What is
important is that we human beings do in fact have the capacity to
expand our image of ‘self’, and that this enlarged concept can become
the basis of a drive so powerful that it becomes the dominant determinant
of human conduct, overwhelming every other factor, including
even the instinct for bodily survival.
But where reason is honored, belief must be reconciled with empirical
evidence. If you seek evidence for your beliefs about what you
are, and how you fit into Nature, then science claims jurisdiction, or
at least relevance. Physics presents itself as the basic science, and it
is to physics that you are told to turn. Thus a radical shift in the
physics-based conception of man from that of an isolated mechanical
automaton to that of an integral participant in a non-local holistic process
that gives form and meaning to the evolving universe is a seismic
event of potentially momentous proportions.
The quantum concept of man, being based on objective science
equally available to all, rather than arising from special personal circumstances,
has the potential to undergird a universal system of basic
values suitable to all people, without regard to the accidents of their
origins. With the diffusion of this quantum understanding of human
beings, science may fulfill itself by adding to the material benefits it
has already provided a philosophical insight of perhaps even greater
ultimate value.
This issue of the connection of science to values can be put into
perspective by seeing it in the context of a thumb-nail sketch of history
that stresses the role of science. For this purpose let human intellectual
history be divided into five periods: traditional, modern, transitional,
post-modern, and contemporary.
During the ‘traditional’ era our understanding of ourselves and our
relationship to Nature was based on ‘ancient traditions’ handed down
from generation to generation: ‘Traditions’ were the chief source of
wisdom about our connection to Nature. The ‘modern’ era began in
the seventeenth century with the rise of what is still called ‘modern
science’. That approach was based on the ideas of Bacon, Descartes,
Galileo and Newton, and it provided a new source of knowledge that
came to be regarded by many thinkers as more reliable than tradition.
The basic idea of ‘modern’ science was ‘materialism’: the idea that
the physical world is composed basically of tiny bits of matter whose
contact interactions with adjacent bits completely control everything

that is now happening, and that ever will happen. According to these
laws, as they existed in the late nineteenth century, a person’s conscious
thoughts and efforts can make no difference at all to what
his body/brain does: whatever you do was deemed to be completely
fixed by local interactions between tiny mechanical elements, with your
thoughts, ideas, feelings, and efforts, being simply locally determined
high-level consequences or re-expressions of the low-level mechanical
process, and hence basically just elements of a reorganized way of describing
the effects of the absolutely and totally controlling microscopic
material causes.
This materialist conception of reality began to crumble at the beginning
of the twentieth century with Max Planck’s discovery of the
quantum of action. Planck announced to his son that he had, on that
day, made a discovery as important as Newton’s. That assessment was
certainly correct: the ramifications of Planck’s discovery were eventually
to cause Newton’s materialist conception of physical reality to
come crashing down. Planck’s discovery marks the beginning of the
‘transitional’ period.
A second important transitional development soon followed. In 1905
Einstein announced his special theory of relativity. This theory denied
the validity of our intuitive idea of the instant of time ‘now’, and
promulgated the thesis that even the most basic quantities of physics,
such as the length of a steel rod, and the temporal order of two events,
had no objective ‘true values’, but were well defined only ‘relative’ to
some observer’s point of view.
Planck’s discovery led by the mid-1920s to a complete breakdown,
at the fundamental level, of the classical material conception of nature.
A new basic physical theory, developed principally by Werner Heisenberg,
Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Max Born, brought ‘the observer’
explicitly into physics. The earlier idea that the physical world
is composed of tiny particles (and electromagnetic and gravitational
fields) was abandoned in favor of a theory of natural phenomena in
which the consciousness of the human observer is ascribed an essential
role. This successor to classical physical theory is called Copenhagen
quantum theory.
This turning away by science itself from the tenets of the objective
materialist philosophy gave impetus to, and lent support to, postmodernism.
That view, which emerged during the second half of the
twentieth century, promulgated, in essence, the idea that all ‘truths’
were relative to one’s point of view, and were mere artifacts of some
particular social group’s struggle for power over competing groups.
...............16 Impact of Quantum Mechanics on Human Values
Thus each social movement was entitled to its own ‘truth’, which was
viewed simply as a socially created pawn in the power game.
The connection of post-modern thought to science is that both
Copenhagen quantum theory and relativity theory had retreated from
the idea of observer-independent objective truth. Science in the first
quarter of the twentieth century had not only eliminated materialism
as a possible foundation for objective truth, but seemed to have discredited
the very idea of objective truth in science. But if the community
of scientists has renounced the idea of objective truth in favor of
the pragmatic idea that ‘what is true for us is what works for us’, then
every group becomes licensed to do the same, and the hope evaporates
that science might provide objective criteria for resolving contentious
social issues.
This philosophical shift has had profound social and intellectual
ramifications. But the physicists who initiated this mischief were generally
too interested in practical developments in their own field to get
involved in these philosophical issues. Thus they failed to broadcast
an important fact: already by mid-century, a further development in
physics had occurred that provides an effective antidote to both the
‘materialism’ of the modern era, and the ‘relativism’ and ‘social constructionism’
of the post-modern period. In particular, John von Neumann
developed, during the early thirties, a form of quantum theory
that brought the physical and mental aspects of nature back together
as two aspects of a rationally coherent whole. This theory was elevated,
during the forties – by the work of Tomonaga and Schwinger –
to a form compatible with the physical requirements of the theory of
relativity.
Von Neumann’s theory, unlike the transitional ones, provides a
framework for integrating into one coherent idea of reality the empirical
data residing in subjective experience with the basic mathematical
structure of theoretical physics. Von Neumann’s formulation
of quantum theory is the starting point of all efforts by physicists to
go beyond the pragmatically satisfactory but ontologically incomplete
Copenhagen form of quantum theory.
Von Neumann capitalized upon the key Copenhagen move of bringing
human choices into the theory of physical reality. But, whereas the
Copenhagen approach excluded the bodies and brains of the human
observers from the physical world that they sought to describe, von
Neumann demanded logical cohesion and mathematical precision, and
was willing to follow where this rational approach led. Being a mathematician,
fortified by the rigor and precision of his thought, he seemed

less intimidated than his physicist brethren by the sharp contrast between
the nature of the world called for by the new mathematics and
the nature of the world that the genius of Isaac Newton had concocted.
A common core feature of the orthodox (Copenhagen and von Neumann)
quantum theory is the incorporation of efficacious conscious
human choices into the structure of basic physical theory. How this is
done, and how the conception of the human person is thereby radically
altered, has been spelled out in lay terms in this book, and is something
every well informed person who values the findings of science
ought to know about. The conception of self is the basis of values and
thence of behavior, and it controls the entire fabric of one’s life. It is
irrational, from a scientific perspective, to cling today to false and inadequate
nineteenth century concepts about your basic nature, while
ignoring the profound impact upon these concepts of the twentieth
century revolution in science.
It is curious that some physicists want to improve upon orthodox
quantum theory by excluding ‘the observer’, who, by virtue of his subjective
nature, must, in their opinion, be excluded from science. That
stance is maintained in direct opposition to what would seem to be
the most profound advance in physics in three hundred years, namely
the overcoming of the most glaring failure of classical physics, its inability
to accommodate us, its creators. The most salient philosophical
feature of quantum theory is that the mathematics has a causal gap
that, by virtue of its intrinsic form, provides a perfect place for Homo
sapiens as we know and experience ourselves.
Conclusions :

How can our world of billions of thinkers ever come into general concordance
on fundamental issues? How do you, yourself, form opinions
on such issues? Do you simply accept the message of some ‘authority’,
such as a church, a state, or a social or political group? All of
these entities promote concepts about how you as an individual fit
into the reality that supports your being. And each has an agenda of
its own, and hence its own internal biases. But where can you find an
unvarnished truth about your nature, and your place in Nature?
Science rests, in the end, on an authority that lies beyond the pettiness
of human ambition. It rests, finally, on stubborn facts. The
founders of quantum theory certainly had no desire to bring down
the grand structure of classical physics of which they were the inheritors,
beneficiaries, and torch bearers. It was stubborn facts that forced
their hand, and made them reluctantly abandon the two-hundred-yearold
classical ideal of a mechanical universe, and turn to what perhaps
should have been seen from the start as a more reasonable endeavor:
the creation an understanding of nature that includes in a rationally
coherent way the thoughts by which we know and influence the world
around us. The labors of scientists endeavoring merely to understand
our inanimate environment produced, from its own internal logic, a rationally
coherent framework into which we ourselves fit neatly. What
was falsified by twentieth-century science was not the core traditions
and intuitions that have sustained societies and civilizations since the
dawn of mankind, but rather an historical aberration, an impoverished
world view within which philosophers of the past few centuries have
tried relentlessly but fruitlessly to find ourselves. The falseness of that
deviation of science must be made known, and heralded, because human
beings are not likely to endure in a society ruled by a conception
of themselves that denies the essence of their being.

Source : Henry .P.Stapp , Mindful Universe

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.

A word to the wise is sufficient. But were Don is concerned???

And BTW; DON...., I never once detailed what that faith centered around. But now for the record:

I believe in what I can measure with repeatable results, it's called science. Something you have yet to learn Don.

What I can't measure with repeatable results, I may still wonder about the whys and wherefors until new evidence surfaces.

But what I don't do is come to a SCIENCE forum vomiting up spooky and ill defined trash like the author of this thread.

I thank folks like alancalverd for also knowing the difference between science and everyday what ifs.

Despite your denials , you said previously that you were a man of faith from which i did conclude that you did believe in one  or another form of religion, the latter that's incompatible with the materialist mainstream "all is matter ,including the mind -scientific world view " =2 mutually exclusive world views thus .
Not to mention the fact that you do confuse science proper with materialism , the latter that's just a false conception of nature , an Eurocentric  ideology , a world view , a philosophy that goes back all the way to the 19th century , outdated superseded 19th century materialism that was built on the fundamentally incorrect Newton's classical physics .
Not to mention the fact that i have been supporting my claims via tons of posted material on the subject .

In short :
You just talk non-sense ,just out of ignorance : you're just using empty and irrelevant rhetorics ....

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

alancalverd :

You just called your friend Ethos ...a psychopath , without even realising that fact .

Two unsubstantiated assumptions and an offensive untruth based on a complete failure to understand (or a deliberate intention to misconstrue) simple logic. Not quite a world record for 13 words, but a strong contender.

But , to believe in 2 mutually exclusive world views , that's a bizzare something that cannot be "achieved " but by guys like ...Ethos here . haha

It's the very essence of faith and many other perversions. Remarkably common among congregations and psychopaths.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Try to read the above , folks : i will be posting more relevant stuff that will be refuting the false outdated superseded mainstream materialist 'scientific world view " ...
I hope that you will have enough scientific vision courage and honesty to be able to stomach swallow digest or deal with all those facts ,you cannot dismiss deny or ignore as such  any longer .
Good luck .

[dlorde]

You still haven't grasped the nature of discussion forums, have you? If you're going to quote fringe opinion in support of your point, you should be able to explain how it's relevant, and summarise or point to the key propositions. Your current approach is lazy, careless, and intellectually bankrupt.

However, the breach of copyright is interesting; although slightly mangled by clumsy copy-n-paste, those excerpts actually expose Stapp as a misleading and unreliable source. I wasn't expecting that.

He has revised the history of quantum mechanics and in particular, the Copenhagen Interpretation, to make his own hypothesis appear to have a firmer foundation than it otherwise would. 

He says, "quantum theory, ... was formulated from the outset as a theory of the interplay between physical descriptions and conscious thoughts", and talks of "the essential connection between physical description and subjective experience that quantum theory is designed to provide", and "Orthodox quantum theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’ together", and "The earlier idea ... was abandoned in favor of a theory of natural phenomena in which the consciousness of the human observer is ascribed an essential role. This successor to classical physical theory is called Copenhagen quantum theory."

This is all simply false. Quantum theory was formulated as a model to explain observations of the quantisation of energy and the wave-like properties of matter. The Copenhagen interpretation is one attempt to reconcile experimental observation with the mathematics of quantum theory in terms of the collapse of the wave function.

There are many interpretations that address the nature of that collapse, the idea that consciousness is causal is just one -minority- view (as I mentioned in an earlier post). As Werner Heisenberg said, "... the Copenhagen interpretation is often confused with the idea that consciousness causes collapse, it defines an "observer" merely as that which collapses the wave function". I've mentioned previously that this observer can be any interacting particle. And suggesting that conscious collapse is 'orthodox' quantum theory is like saying the orthodox view in zoology is that Big Foot is really out there.

That an experienced quantum physicist would distort the truth in this way is surprising - is it deliberate? is his attachment to his hypothesis distorting his view of reality?  The fact that he was 79 when he published 'Mindful Universe' might be significant...

These errors only heighten my distrust of his work, and I see no reason to revise my previously expressed opinion of it.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

You still haven't grasped the nature of discussion forums, have you? If you're going to quote fringe opinion in support of your point, you should be able to explain how it's relevant, and summarise or point to the key propositions. Your current approach is lazy, careless, and intellectually bankrupt.

However, the breach of copyright is interesting; although slightly mangled by clumsy copy-n-paste, those excerpts actually expose Stapp as a misleading and unreliable source. I wasn't expecting that.

He has revised the history of quantum mechanics and in particular, the Copenhagen Interpretation, to make his own hypothesis appear to have a firmer foundation than it otherwise would. 

He says, "quantum theory, ... was formulated from the outset as a theory of the interplay between physical descriptions and conscious thoughts", and talks of "the essential connection between physical description and subjective experience that quantum theory is designed to provide", and "Orthodox quantum theory ties these two problems of ‘consciousness’ and ‘collapse’ together", and "The earlier idea ... was abandoned in favor of a theory of natural phenomena in which the consciousness of the human observer is ascribed an essential role. This successor to classical physical theory is called Copenhagen quantum theory."

This is all simply false. Quantum theory was formulated as a model to explain observations of the quantisation of energy and the wave-like properties of matter. The Copenhagen interpretation is one attempt to reconcile experimental observation with the mathematics of quantum theory in terms of the collapse of the wave function.

There are many interpretations that address the nature of that collapse, the idea that consciousness is causal is just one -minority- view (as I mentioned in an earlier post). As Werner Heisenberg said, "... the Copenhagen interpretation is often confused with the idea that consciousness causes collapse, it defines an "observer" merely as that which collapses the wave function". I've mentioned previously that this observer can be any interacting particle. And suggesting that conscious collapse is 'orthodox' quantum theory is like saying the orthodox view in zoology is that Big Foot is really out there.

That an experienced quantum physicist would distort the truth in this way is surprising - is it deliberate? is his attachment to his hypothesis distorting his view of reality?  The fact that he was 79 when he published 'Mindful Universe' might be significant...

These errors only heighten my distrust of his work, and I see no reason to revise my previously expressed opinion of it.

You can't look at  the world  but through this  false orthodox  outdated and superseded materialist key hole of yours ,via this materialist orthodox quantum theory : the above displayed statements of yours through your materialist mind are evidence enough for the fact that the observer does affect the observed , through one's own a -priori held beliefs , psych ....and hence consciousness does also have causal effect on matter , including  at the micro quantum level :
You cannot deny the fact that consciousness has  causal effects on matter ,and hence on brain and body , as you do experience that fact every single day of your own life , and the fact that the observer does affect the observed ,as you cannot deny the fact that classical physics cannot be applied to the micro quantum level of course , and hence cannot be applied to the atomic and molecular brain activity via the so -called upward causation that allegedly gives rise to consciousness at the macro level  .
The man must be senile , since he dares to 'sing outside of the mainstream materialist phony orchestra " ,as Nagel was some sort of fame freak , as you said earlier about the latter , so, i see no point in talking to you about all this any further , since you are not willing to view things from non-materialist perspectives, materialism you still do continue confusing with science ,while the latter does not either require materialism  nor needs to be materialist  .
What a waste of time indeed .
And you did have the nerve to accuse me earlier of being biased ( None in fact can be more biased or none can be more guilty of confirmation bias than materialists who cannot but try to confirm their mainstream "scientific world view " = their a-priori held false materialist conception of nature .)  ,to the point where i allegedly stick to my a -priori held beliefs ,even in the face of evidence : That's exactly the other way around : you were just projecting thus :
You're the one trying to distort evidence as to squeeze it into your own a-priori held materialist false belief .
Not to mention the fact that i saw no attempts from you , whatsoever , to try to address all that overwhelming evidence contained in my tons of posted material on the subject ,regarding the undeniable and obvious falsehood of materialism  which has been superseded by even modern physics  itself , ironically enough , materialism  that was built on the fundamentally incorrect classical physics' ruins .
P.S.: The aim of posting all those excerpts is to provide you, guys, with qualified views on the subject through prominent scientists , thinkers ....= what's wrong about that then ?
And i did tell you that i have been stealing food for the mind for you ,guys , as starving superseded materialists ,so, cut the crap about that copywright thing ....you can't use as some sort of leverage or 'argument " the latter or your silly accusations regarding the sanity or motives of those scientists and thinkers from whose works i have been posting excerpts  .
pfff...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

How can one take these superseded materialists seriously , when they keep on denying the undeniable fact that consciousness or the mind do have causal effects on matter , brain and body (an undeniable  fact they do experience every single day of their own lives , ironically paradoxically enough ) , and hence at the micro quantum level , just because their false outdated and superseded classical physics' materialism does , per definition, exclude any causal effect of the mind on matter : a total form of insane materialist lunacy-delusion  : denying the undeniable ,just because it does not fit into their own a -priori held materialist beliefs : that's called dogma in fact= sticking to one's own stubborn irrational false beliefs , even in the very face of evidence  ....Amazing .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

It's very convenient to call any non-orthodox  scientist ,  philosopher ....senile , a fame freak or worse , just because they happen to challenge the materialist false mainstream 'scientific world view " : why not send them to the "goulag " , burn them at the stake ............: self-refuting and self-defeating forms of materialist ...inquisitions .pfff...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

The stubborn facts or evidence will force the reluctant denying absurd surreal hands of materialists into accepting them as such  eventually  , otherwise materialist would be , as they have been all along in fact , anti-scientific , in the same fashion stubborn facts or evidence  did in relation to classical physics (on which fundamentally incorrect ruins the 19th century outdated superseded and false materialism was built , ironically paradoxically enough .) through  quantum theory .......