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I could easily be mistaken in my understanding of the statement above. But Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck, so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. If this violates the conservation of energy, doesn’t the theory fall apart? The first two are long articles, but if you have nothing to do New Years Day, they might be worth a look. The final article by Victor Stenger is shorter, and is a criticism of quantum consciousness in general, and also looks at the history of attempts to reinstate a holistic, aether-like conception of universe in which consciousness, mankind in particular, reigns supreme. He adheres tightly to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, and says flat out “Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement.”http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Cambridge.pdfhttp://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdfhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-myth-of-quantum-consc_b_788798.html
Thank goodness for that! Astronomical observation suggests that quantum mechanics has been going on for a lot longer than philosophy,
... Matthew Donald of Cambridge... says “My theory is dualistic in the sense that there are physical laws and there are observers, but there are no mental computations without observable physical structure. My theory is epiphenomenalistic in the sense that a mind does not direct a pattern of observed physical events, rather it has to make sense of such a pattern as it unfolds. Ultimately, however, my theory should probably be considered as idealistic because, in its final form, the central structures in the theory are mental structures. Physics just supplies the probabilities by which those mental structures change. Mental structures give meaning to their realities by understanding themselves in terms of observable physical structures and observed physical events.”
Although his theory is in some respects even more abstract than Stapp’s, I find it a bit easier to swallow because he seems to avoid Stapp’s problematic conscious agency (or at least a completely independent, acausal one) Stapp's conscious agency is according to Donald basically another form of the homunculus, of which he is quite critical.
Donald raises another issue regarding the conservation of energy, which seems to be important and I would appreciate it if anyone else could comment on it.
Donald says: ”... Stapp states that his theory 'makes consciousness causally effective, yet it is fully compatible with all known laws of physics, including the law of conservation of energy.' Stapp does not justify this statement. In general, energy is not conserved in individual quantum jumps. Average total energy may be conserved if the projections involved commute with the global Hamiltonian. Leaving aside the commutation question, however, this would require that 'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities. In Stapp (1995),Stapp admits that, 'No attempt is made here to show that the quantum statistical laws will hold for the aspects of the brain’s internal dynamics controlled by conscious thoughts'." I could easily be mistaken in my understanding of the statement above. But Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck, so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. If this violates the conservation of energy, doesn’t the theory fall apart?
The final article by Victor Stenger is shorter, and is a criticism of quantum consciousness in general, and also looks at the history of attempts to reinstate a holistic, aether-like conception of universe in which consciousness, mankind in particular, reigns supreme. He adheres tightly to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, and says flat out “Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement.”http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Cambridge.pdfhttp://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdfhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-myth-of-quantum-consc_b_788798.html
I searched this mainly because, while reading Stapp's article, it occurred to me that microtubules are part of the cytoskeleton of all kinds of cells, not just neurons. They are abundant in cilia and flagella and the centrioles that divide chromosomes in cell division. Are there superimposed kidney states as well as brain states? Calcium channels are wide spread in physiology, for example in the sarcoplasmic reticulum of muscle cells during muscle contraction, in the pacemaker cells of heart muscle, etc. So I wanted to see what biologists other than Hameroff thought of the microtubule thing.
Another question that bothered me: I also don’t see how all of this works in a big wet sloppy biological system. I don’t know what constitutes a “detector” in quantum mechanics. The slits in the double slit experiment and the detector collapse the wave function. But what happens if the particle “bumps” into anything on its journey? Does the wave function collapse?
How are the quantum events isolated from anything else in the brain that might register some effect?
Doesn’t any interaction with the macroscopic environment cause decoherence? (This was actually one of the weaknesses mentioned by Stapp himself, but not really well answered.)
... I have a hard time conceiving of quantum brain states, or the choice process, as not somehow engaging large numbers of particles and cellular structures spread out across the brain, if the information stored in the brain is in anyway important to that choice. I don't know how consciousness "recognizes" the information that correlates to the brain state it wants to select, if that makes any sense.
http://mind.ucsd.edu/papers/penrose/penrosehtml/penrose-text.html
Happy New Year.
Below are three links to articles about quantum consciousness.The first one is written by Stapp himself in The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness. I believe Don will enjoy this article, and it even includes several digs at materialism. I don’t think Don has already posted this, but I was away for a while. What’s interesting about this article is that in the attempt, I think, to steal the thunder of any critics, Stapp also points out some weaknesses of his theory, but I don’t feel he does a very good job at refuting these possible criticisms. (In fact, when I first read the article, I mistakenly thought it was written by someone else defending Stapp, and wondered if the author left out some key ideas that Stapp himself would have included!) The second article is by Matthew Donald of Cambridge. He begins by saying “For many years, Henry Stapp and I have been working separately and independently on mind-centered interpretations of quantum theory. In this review, I discuss his work and contrast it with my own. There is much that we agree on, both in the broad problems we have addressed and in some of the specific details of our analyses of neural physics, but ultimately we disagree fundamentally in our views on mind, matter, and quantum mechanics.” So it provides a slightly different view on the topic. He says “My theory is dualistic in the sense that there are physical laws and there are observers, but there are no mental computations without observable physical structure. My theory is epiphenomenalistic in the sense that a mind does not direct a pattern of observed physical events, rather it has to make sense of such a pattern as it unfolds. Ultimately, however, my theory should probably be considered as idealistic because, in its final form, the central structures in the theory are mental structures. Physics just supplies the probabilities by which those mental structures change. Mental structures give meaning to their realities by understanding themselves in terms of observable physical structures and observed physical events.” Although his theory is in some respects even more abstract than Stapp’s, I find it a bit easier to swallow because he seems to avoid Stapp’s problematic conscious agency (or at least a completely independent, acausal one) Stapp's conscious agency is according to Donald basically another form of the homunculus, of which he is quite critical. Donald raises another issue regarding the conservation of energy, which seems to be important and I would appreciate it if anyone else could comment on it. At the end of page six, Donald says: ”In Stapp (1993 §1.10), Stapp states that his theory 'makes consciousness causally effective, yet it is fully compatible with all known laws of physics, including the law of conservation of energy.' Stapp does not justify this statement. In general, energy is not conserved in individual quantum jumps. Average total energy may be conserved if the projections involved commute with the global Hamiltonian. Leaving aside the commutation question, however, this would require that 'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities. In Stapp (1995),Stapp admits that, 'No attempt is made here to show that the quantum statistical laws will hold for the aspects of the brain’s internal dynamics controlled by conscious thoughts'." I could easily be mistaken in my understanding of the statement above. But Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck, so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. If this violates the conservation of energy, doesn’t the theory fall apart? The first two are long articles, but if you have nothing to do New Years Day, they might be worth a look. The final article by Victor Stenger is shorter, and is a criticism of quantum consciousness in general, and also looks at the history of attempts to reinstate a holistic, aether-like conception of universe in which consciousness, mankind in particular, reigns supreme. He adheres tightly to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, and says flat out “Nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement.”http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Cambridge.pdfhttp://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mjd1014/stapp.pdfhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-myth-of-quantum-consc_b_788798.html
Concerning the conservation of energy "argument " : that's the same 'argument " raised by Dennett in page 61, i did post = from calssical physics' point of view= wrong .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 02/01/2014 17:17:36Concerning the conservation of energy "argument " : that's the same 'argument " raised by Dennett in page 61, i did post = from calssical physics' point of view= wrong .Physicist Matthew Donald's objection is not based on classical physics. He says, if I understand him correctly, that energy would only be conserved if 'causal effectiveness' produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities." But the whole point of the theory is changing those probabilities by an act of will. Why is he wrong?
I might be convinced to read Stapp on the subject if someone can provide a one-line quote: what is Stapp's definition of consciousness?