The Hard Problem is usually framed as, \u201cwhat processes in the brain create the subjective impression of a \u2018self\u2019?\u201d A popular topic today is whether computers might perform the same processes, so that they will become conscious.<\/p>\n
Some philosophers have reinterpreted the Hard Problem to ask a more approachable question: Why are some of the brain\u2019s processes accompanied by subjective awareness and others take place off-stage? Others have proposed that consciousness is in a different realm from physical matter, and thus a resolution of the Hard Problem is not a logical possibility. This is Cartesian dualism, and it is part of the perspective I am bringing to the table here.<\/p>\n
I believe there is another approach that offers a full resolution and does not lead to a logical cul-de-sac. Furthermore, it is embraced by people who know some physics: Bernardo Kastrup, Amit Goswami, Vandana Shiva, Josh Mitteldorf. Last month I wrote about Henry Stapp, a Berkeley physics prof who studied with Pauli and von Neumann. Many science historians quote\u00a0 the luminary fathers of quantum mechanics as advocates for this view \u2014 Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, John von Neumann and, in a later day, Wigner and Bohm.<\/p>\n
A considerable virtue of this approach is that it transports the Hard Problem into a realm where there is real empirical support, and potential for a further experimental program.<\/p>\n
We should invert the question: How does consciousness create the brain? The hypothesis is that consciousness is a fundamental reality, more fundamental than space, time, and matter. (Consciousness is, after all, what we know most directly.) We can explore the possibility that consciousness created the physical world as a playground for itself, and created life and then brains to explore that playground from many different perspectives.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n There are four findings from mainstream science that lend support to this paradigm:<\/p>\n Here in Part 1, I will explain #1 and #2. Next week, in Part 2, I will present #3 and #4, and then propose some experiments that might support or falsify this paradigm.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.\u201d \u2014 Eugene Wigner, Nobel Laureate in physics<\/p>\n \u201cI regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.\u201d \u2014 Max Planck, another Nobel physicist<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s formulation of quantum mechanics was based on a wave function as the primary reality. The dynamics of the world is explained as evolution of the wave function, and Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation describes how the wave function changes from moment to moment. Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation and his wave function were appreciated and accepted for many months based on the fact that they correctly predicted the spectrum of the hydrogen atom. But what did the wave function mean? How did it relate to anything that can be measured in the laboratory?<\/p>\n It was Max Born who proposed the answer that is still accepted today. He said that the wave function can be evaluated at a particular point, or for a particular configuration, and the square of the wave function then tells you the probability of observing that position or that configuration. Where the wave function is large, the probability of finding the particle is high. \u201cFinding the particle\u201d is a\u00a0measurement<\/a>, and the word means what you think it means, but it also has a special significance in quantum theory.<\/p>\n As long as a system is not being measured, it continues to hum along in a way described by Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation. But at the moment a measurement is made, the wave function \u201ccollapses\u201d. Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation ceases to be applicable, and instead the system\u2019s new wave function is described with all the probability stacked up in one place\u2014after all, you can no longer speak of probabilities when you know 100% what was the result of the measurement.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s so special about a measurement? How can we tell definitively when the world is governed by Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation and when it abruptly changes its state? Whatever the measuring apparatus is, isn\u2019t it made of physical matter? So it has its own Schr\u00f6dinger equation and its own probability function. If we think in this way, the system and the measuring apparatus can be regarded as one system, and that system has its own big wave function. That big wave function doesn\u2019t collapse, just because we name its operation a \u201cmeasurement\u201d.<\/p>\n Quantum physics needs this \u201cwave function collapse\u201d so that it can bridge the gap between the abstraction of a \u201cwave function\u201d which is its supposed ground-level physical reality, and the observations that are the subject of both common experience and experimental science.<\/p>\n But whatever collapses the wave function cannot be part of the world that is described by the Schr\u00f6dinger equation, which is to say that it cannot be physical. This is what led Schr\u00f6dinger and Heisenberg and von Neumann to think it logical to identify wave function collapse as a mental event, outside of space, time and matter.<\/p>\n Many physicists don\u2019t like the idea that there is a mental reality separate from physical reality, and they have found many ways to weasel out of this conclusion; Some involve \u201cdecoherence\u201d. They say a measurement is a kind of interaction with so many random particles that you no longer have a wave function any more. Others say that quantum mechanics requires a classical world, an old style world of Newtonian physics. It is the transition from the quantum realm to the classical that constitutes a \u201cmeasurement.\u201d A third view is the \u201cmany worlds\u201d interpretation, in which the word \u201cmany\u201d is a hyper-astronomical understatement. They say that every time anything interacts with anything else, the world splits in two, so there are unimaginably many universes, where every possible combination of things that can happen are all given a chance to play out.<\/p>\n Along with many (but not most) physicists, I believe it is mind that collapses the wave function. John von Neumann was the earliest and most prominent supporter of this view, and he wrote about it quite explicitly in his\u00a0classic quantum text<\/a>. He was one of the brilliant minds of the second generation of quantum physicists in mid twentieth century. His logic was simple. If it\u2019s just physics, no matter whether it\u2019s coherent or incoherent, known or unknown, random or tightly controlled \u2014 so long as it\u2019s physical matter, it is governed by Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation. So if the wave function is known to change abruptly during a \u201cmeasurement\u201d in a way that is\u00a0not<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0governed by the Schr\u00f6dinger equation, why then the \u201cmeasurement\u201d must involve something outside of physical matter. The obvious \u201csomething\u201d is us \u2014 the conscious mind of the observer. Von Neumann\u2019s idea was that a \u201cmeasurement\u201d involves a conscious being learning something new. Collapse of the wave function is essentially an interaction between mind and matter.<\/p>\n Von Neumann was the first to formulate this idea in terms of the new quantum theory, but the notion that this spark of awareness inside each of us is something outside and separate from physical matter goes all the way back to Pythagoras and to Plato. In the 17th century, Descartes wrote about a world of matter and a world of spirit (res extensa<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/a>res cognitans<\/a><\/em>). In the 18th century, Leibniz spoke of\u00a0monads<\/a>, which are not reality but perspectives from which reality is viewed. At the end of the 19th century,\u00a0William James<\/a>\u00a0wrote of consciousness as having an enduring existence apart from matter, and the brain as a kind of transponder that connects an individual consciousness to a body made of matter, and the nervous system that controls it.<\/p>\n So we credit von Neumann with taking an ancient idea and giving it a sound foundation in terms of 20th century physics.<\/p>\n According to classical quantum mechanics of Schr\u00f6dinger and Heisenberg and even von Neumann, the wave function tells you all that can be known about a situation. No better guess can be made than the probability computed as the square of the wave function.<\/p>\n In the 1970s,\u00a0Robert Jahn<\/a>\u00a0was Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. He designed rocket engines, and headed a prestigious and highly productive laboratory. In his training and in his belief system, there was no need for a\u00a0res cognitans<\/em>\u00a0with a separate existence apart from the physical world.<\/p>\n The first crack in his paradigm came when one of his students turned in her own findings from a project on telepathy. Crucially, Dr Jahn believed that experience and empirical data were the last word in science, and he was open to considering the students\u2019 data even when they contradicted the very foundations of the science that he had relied on successfully through decades of engineering.<\/p>\n Robert Jahn was curious enough to replicate the student\u2019s experiment with his own strict controls, and after seeing the positive results with his own eyes, he embarked on a 28-year investigation into the paranormal. The\u00a0PEAR lab<\/a>\u00a0was a joint project of Jahn with Roger Nelson, and\u00a0Brenda Dunne<\/a>, who moved to Princeton from University of Chicago, where she was already engaged in parapsychological research.<\/p>\n Jahn designed the protocols with bulletproof methodology and Jahn performed the statistical analysis in the most conservative interpretation. Dunne ran the laboratory from day to day, creating a warm and welcoming environment that encouraged experimental subjects to relax and believe that they had psychic powers. Her intuitions provided the crucial soft support to Jahn\u2019s rigorous scientific controls.<\/p>\n The flagship experiment of the PEAR lab looked for direct effect of mental intention on quantum probabilities. A device turned quantum noise into numbers that could be displayed on a screen, and experimental subjects were asked simply to make the numbers go higher or lower. Over 28 years, over many billions of quantum measurements, about one bit in 10,000 was flipped by the power of human intention, without contact or any physical connection to the apparatus. The probability of this being a chance fluke got lower as data accumulated with each passing year. By the end, the statistical significance was on the order of 0.000001, roughly the threshold for announcing the discovery of the Higgs Boson at the CERN laboratory.<\/p>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4eb7bed0-0c97-4284-b6da-ef03eb5f81e3_1400x788.jpeg\" "\\"How")
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1 \u2014 The Measurement Problem<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n2 \u2014 Direct effect of mind on quantum probabilities<\/h2>\n
![\"Quantum](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F60261cbf-ebc7-427c-a722-a0bb13cae159_1300x600.gif\" "\\"Quantum")
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