| Subject: Re: "Consciousness
and Quantum Physics"
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 17:01:04 +0200 From: Dimi Chakalov <dimi@chakalov.net> To: Dick J Bierman <d.j.bierman@uva.nl> Dear Dick, > I am confused. It escapes me what this has to do with
my
It is supposed to be a detailed (if you choose to follow the links) explanation of my hypothesis of 'global mode of spacetime' and my catchword (see below). Hence we have three (not two) major theoretical perspectives on the relation between Quantum Physics and Consciousness. To be specific, you wrote: "Of course we don't perceive the world as composed of superpositioned states." I believe we do perceive the world as composed of superpositioned states, only this kind of perception is UNspeakable, and its physical basis might be the putative global mode of spacetime. If we deny the existence of the latter, see again the mess at http://www.God-does-not-play-dice.net/Tresser.html#collapse Do you see the implications for your empirical work on Consciousness and Quantum Physics? Best, Dimi
Note: To explain the absence of any "collapse" of the wave function, consider a simple case of mental rotation. Imagine a cube made of some white plastic material, with 3 cm rib, painted blue, which you cut into 27 little cubes, 1 cm each, and ask yourself the question: how many little cubes have 3 painted sides, 2, 1, and zero? After you've "rotated" the cube and counted the sides, may I ask the following questions: Did you "collapse" the poor cube, and did your subjective self change at all? All this refers to brain states. We don't tolerate any ghosts, psi-fields, witches, bio-energo-quantum fields, vampires, psychons, whatever. Dead matter makes quantum jumps; the living-and-quantum matter is smarter. Smarter -- because it lives in the so-called global mode of spacetime. To explain the latter, let's go back to quantum physics. Karl Svozil posted yesterday the fifth version of his "Simultaneous Bell measurements", quant-ph/0206076 v5 [Ref. 1], but he fail short of posing the question of the nature of quantum reality. Surely the notion of 'classical realism' does not tally to the quantum realm, as noticed by Schrödinger in 1935. I had the chance to talk with Karl Svozil five years ago, and my impression was that he understood the argument for the UNspeakable quantum state [Ref. 2] and its global mode of spacetime. Where do these nonunique four-partite states [Ref. 1] come from? If not actualized, where do they go? If actualized by measurement, how do they enter Minkowski spacetime? Only through the apex of the cone, right? That's the only possible link of the time parameter read by an inanimate clock and the global mode of spacetime. Any other suggestions? There is, actually, a very intriguing idea of Itamar Pitowsky and Meir Hemmo that the uncollapsed quantum state "might be written in a genuine relativistic form" [Ref. 3]. It will be extremely interesting to see it in black and white. Watch this space!
D. Chakalov
John S. Bell
[Ref. 1] K. Svozil, Simultaneous Bell measurements, quant-ph/0206076 v5, February 28, 2005. "(T)he EPR argument is based on the unambiguous existence of (counterfactual) "elements of physical reality." "Theoretically, this means that we
have to find four-partite states with the uniqueness property [9] such
that knowledge of a property of one particle entails the certainty that,
if this property were measured on the other three particles as well, the
outcome of the measurement would be a unique function of the outcome of
the measurement actually performed. More than that, such a uniqueness property
must hold for all the observables associated with the four measurement
directions a, a_1, b, and b_1, respectively. No such state has ever been
proposed.
"Both of these four-partite states are nonunique in all directions, for detection of, say, state "-" on the first particle leaves open the possibility to find the third and fourth particles either in states "+" or in "-" for |Psi_2,4,s1>. Likewise, the proposition ‘The first particle has spin state "-".’ does not fix a single term of |Psi_2,4,s2> in Eq. (2), but rather leaves open empirical verifications or falsifications of either one of the two possibilities ‘The second (third, fourth) particle has spin state "-".’ ‘The second (third, fourth) particle has spin state "+".’ at random. "This ambivalence gets worse as the
number of particles increases.
"As far as the uniqueness property
is concerned, it is straightforward to
[Ref. 2] Max Tegmark, John Archibald Wheeler, 100 Years of the Quantum, quant-ph/0101077 v1. "Our quantum card in Figure 1 would
really be in two places at once. Moreover, a person looking at the card
would enter a superposition of two different mental states, each perceiving
one of the two outcomes! If you had bet money on the queen coming face
up, you would end up in a superposition of smiling
and frowning.
[Ref. 3] Meir
Hemmo, Itamar Pitowsky, Probability and Nonlocality in Many Minds
Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 54, 225-243 (2003);
quant-ph/0112077 v3
===== Subject: The concept of a conscious
observation
Dear Dick, I read with great interest your recent article "Does Consciousness Collapse the Wave Function", physics/0312115 [Ref. 1]. You wrote: "So far the concept of a conscious observation has not been worked out in detail." Perhaps you may wish to see http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Beauregard.html#note Regarding the work by your colleagues [Refs. 2 and 3], please see Ulric Neisser's cognitive cycle, http://members.aon.at/chakalov/white_paper.html#brain Bottom line is the cognitive binding in the brain, http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Bushara.html In case you're interested in QM and the measurement (macro-objectification) problem, see http://members.aon.at/chakalov/faq.html#QM I'm sure you know what I can say about your recent work [Ref. 1], http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Vecchi.html We've been in email contact for many years. My proposal can be downloaded at http://members.aon.at/chakalov/rolex-awards-applications-1443.pdf I will be happy to learn your critical opinion. Comments and suggestions from your colleagues are welcome too. Regards, Dimi
http://members.aon.at/chakalov/faq.html Pritie amzanig huh?
References [Ref. 1] Dick Bierman, Does Consciousness
Collapse the Wave Function, physics/0312115, Thu, 18 Dec 2003 20:59:06
GMT,
"According to the radical proposition under consideration,
a reduction of this superposition occurs only when an observer ‘looks’
at one of the two indicators of the emission. Either observation of the
visual or the audio representation would collapse the wave packet.
"Before drawing far reaching conclusions we should first
check if there are no more mundane explanations for the current findings.
"Although this figure satisfies the criterion of 5% which
is generally accepted as the significance criterion, it is not enough to
unequivocally accept the hypothesis that consciousness collapses the state
vector. Strong claims need strong evidence.
"So far the concept of a conscious observation has not
been worked out in detail. In Libet's work, which we used to estimate the
delay between perceptual input and the conscious experience thereof, the
conscious observation is by definition an observation which is stored in
memory. However there is suggestive evidence, for instance from 'change
blindness' experiments, that there is another form of 'faster' conscious
experience directly related to perceptual input (Landman et al, 2003).
This experience is not stored in memory. In further work it might be necessary
to discriminate between these and possibly other forms of conscious experience."
[Ref. 2] Victor A.F. Lamme, Why visual attention and awareness are different, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(1), 12 (2003), Fig. 5. "Either way, feedforward activation (green dots), both
of selected (i.e. attended) and non-selected inputs, is unconscious, even
though it might trigger or modify behavior."
[Ref. 3] Rufin VanRullen and Christof Koch, Is perception discrete or continuous? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 207-213 (2003). "All these studies point to a fundamental aspect of brain
activity: the importance of ongoing (or so-called ‘spontaneous’) activity
for neuronal processing. Once ongoing activity is taken into account, the
apparent variability of neuronal response, classically attributed to high
neuronal noise, is greatly reduced. Thus, if not only evoked neuronal firing
is considered, but also ongoing, potentially subthreshold
"It seems surprising that such a fundamental question
as whether conscious perception occurs in discrete
batches or continuously has not been definitely answered one way or
another."
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