Dear Dr. Lopez-Corredoira,

I would like to make a few comments to your recent quant-ph/0208104, "Quantum mechanics and free will: counter-arguments" [Ref. 1], which might be published in the Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions.

1. You are arguing broadly against all dualistic views on mind-matter problem, but somehow forgot to mention the solution proposed by Leibnitz, as we know from Philosophy 101,

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/PHI.html#Leibnitz
 

2. There is not even a hint in your paper [Ref. 1] about the solution put forward by Pauli and Jung fifty years ago,

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/PHI.html#Pauli
 

3. Regarding your excursion in the field of neurophysiology (your latest reference is from 1994), may I suggest to log on BioMedNet,

http://www.bmn.com

and search for "neurophysiology of understanding". See also

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Vecchi.html
 

4. Regarding the measurement problem in QM, you wrote that "the central element in the measurement is not the consciousness but the distinction between the measured system and the measuring apparatus" [Ref. 1]. Please note that the problem is not yet solved,

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Adler.html#NB
 

5. You make some quite sharp statements such as "Absurd!" [Ref. 1].

Please recall that we do not know nearly 95 per cent of the stuff in the universe,

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Wald.html#4

and hence can not make any final statements. See a recent review by Leonard Susskind and collaborators [Ref. 2].
 

6. In general, you take the stand of epiphenomenalism [Ref. 1], which is very common to AI community [Ref. 3] and physicists who have never studied the human brain [Ref. 4]. Let me remind you Murphy's Law #15: "Complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand wrong answers."

I believe that a hypothetical conductor governing the brain must exist,

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/readme1st.html#brain_catastrophe

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/PHI.html#brain

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/intro.html

We haven't found it yet,

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Straumann.html

You can read this email at

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Martin.html
 

Your sincerely,

Dimiter G. Chakalov
http://members.aon.at/chakalov
--
Dead matter makes quantum jumps; the living-and-quantum matter is smarter.
 

References

[Ref. 1] M. Lopez-Corredoira. Quantum mechanics and free will: counter-arguments. Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:38:31 GMT,
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0208104

"Indeed, Bohr's interpretation, as well as that of most of present-day leading specialists in quantum physics, is that the central element in the measurement is not the consciousness but the distinction between the measured system and the measuring apparatus.
...

"Neither classical nor quantum physics has anything to say about a hypothetical conductor (mind) governing the brain.
...

"Physicists have nothing to say about the mind but neurologist do. Nowadays, most neurologists insist that the idea of a soul or an autonomous mind is a myth. They adopt a materialistic philosophy in which the mind can be explained in terms of neurological processes (Crick 1994).
...

"Did He take a holiday after our appearance? Absurd!"
 

[Ref. 2] Lisa Dyson, Matthew Kleban, Leonard Susskind. Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant. Thu, 15 Aug 2002 18:38:09 GMT,
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0208013

"Far from providing a solution to the problem, we will be led to a disturbing crisis."
...

"What then are the alternatives? We may reject the interpretation of de Sitter space based on complementarity. For example, an evolution of the causal patch based on standard Hamiltonian quantum mechanics may be wrong. What would replace it is a complete mystery.
...

"It is also possible that we are missing some important feature that picks out, or weights disproportionally, the recurrences which go through a conventional evolution, beginning with an inflationary era. However, we have no idea what this feature would be."
 

[Ref. 3] John Eastmond. The Doomsday Argument, Consciousness and Many Worlds. Thu, 15 Aug 2002 16:13:06 GMT,
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0208038

"Thus, without loss of generality, we can assume that our observer is a classical computer that, by virtue of executing a particular program, generates a sequence of conscious moments. It should be noted that, strictly, we are taking an "epiphenomenal" philosophical stance in that we assume that the computer's conscious awareness is a continuously generated by-product that does not interfere with its deterministic operation."
 

[Ref. 4] S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, 1988, pp. 163-164.