**Already Whitehead, James, and Quantum Theory**

*Whitehead's Process Ontology as a Framework for a Heisenberg/James/von
Neumann Conception of Nature and of Human Nature*

(Talk given at the Conference "Mind and Matter Research: Frontiers and
Directions"

Wildbad Kreuth, Germany, July 2006

Convened by Harald Atmanspacher )

*"Nature and Nature's Laws lay hid at night, God said 'Let there be
Newton', and all was light!"* Alexander Pope

*"In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real
essence of phenomena, but only to track down as far as possible
relations between the multifold aspects of our experience."* Niels Bohr

**INTRODUCTION**

What is the proper task of science? Is it to illuminate the nature of
reality itself, as Alexander Pope proclaimed was achieved by already
Isaac Newton? Or should the purpose of science be curtailed in the way
recommended by Niels Bohr?

Bohr asserted that "...the formalism does not allow pictorial
representation along accustomed lines, but aims directly at establishing
relations between observations obtained under well-defined conditions."
(Bohr 1958, p.71) However, the impossibility of representing reality
along *accustomed* lines does not automatically preclude every kind of
conceptualization. Perhaps an *uncustomary* idea will work. Even
Newton's mechanical conception was not customary when he proposed it.
Hence if advances in science reveal an incompatibility of the empirical
evidence with customary pictorial representations then perhaps the
construction of a new vision of reality is needed, rather than the
immediate donning of blinders.

To operate most effectively in the physical world we need an adequate
conception of ourselves operating within that world and upon it. Optimal
functioning is impaired if we come armed only with blind computational
rules, severed from any rationally coherent conception of ourselves
applying these rules..

There is, of course, no guarantee that our species can come up with an
adequate conceptualization of our conscious selves acting in and upon
the world. And even if such an idea were discovered, there is no
assurance that it is unique. However, neither the fear of failure nor
the specter of non-uniqueness constitutes a sufficient reason to refrain
from at least trying to find some satisfactory understanding of our
mindful selves imbedded in a reality that sustains and surrounds us.

Due undoubtedly, at least in part, to the impact of Bohr' philosophy,
most quantum physicists have been reluctant even to try to construct an
ontology compatible with the validity of the massively validated
pragmatic quantum rules. However, because of this reticence we are faced
today with the spectacle of our society being built increasingly upon a
mechanistic Newtonian-physics-based conception of reality that is *known
to be* *fundamentally false*. Specifically*, the quintessential role of
our conscious choices* *in contemporary physical theory and practice,*
is being systematically ignored and even denied. Influential
philosophers, pretending to speak for science, claim, on the basis of a
fundamentally false scientific theory, that the (empirically manifest)
*influence of our conscious efforts upon our bodily actions*, which
constitutes both the rational and the intuitive basis of our functioning
in this world, is an illusion. As a consequence of this widely
disseminated misinformation the "well informed" officials,
administrators, legislators, judges, and educators who actually guide
the course of societal development tend to alter the structure of our
lives in ways predicated on an outdated notion of "nature and nature's
laws".

Bohr's pragmatic quantum philosophy emphasizes the *active* role that we
human beings play in the development of our scientific knowledge. But
this orientation tends to lead to an anthropocentric conception of
reality. An escape from that parochialism is provided by the ideas of
the eminent philosopher, physicist, and logician Alfred North Whitehead.
He created a conception of natural process that captures the essential
innovations wrought by quantum theory in a way that allows our human
involvement, as explicitly specified by quantum theory, to be understood
within a non-anthropocentric conception of nature.

Whitehead, acting as both physicist and philosopher, struggled to
reconcile the disclosures of early twentieth century physics with the
insights and arguments of the giants of Western philosophy, including,
most prominently, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume,
Kant, and William James.

I shall describe here a conception of reality that expresses, primarily,
the ontological ideas of Werner Heisenberg, the principal founder of
quantum theory, expressed within of the ontologically construed
Tomonaga-Schwinger formulation of relativistic quantum field theory.
This ontology is in total accord with *certain* *of the key ideas* of
Whitehead.

It will enhance the clarity of this quantum ontology to quote
Whitehead's clear enunciations of those key ideas. On the other hand, I
make no claim to encompass *all* of the pronouncements of Whitehead, who
wrote long before the work of Tomonaga and Schwinger. Indeed, I shall
always take the quantum theoretical findings as preeminent, and will use
only those assertions of Whitehead that mesh neatly with the
ontologically construed quantum formalism, as it was carefully described
by John von Neumann, and was later brought into accord with the precepts
of the special theory of relativity by the work of Tomonaga (1946) and
Schwinger (1962)

The core issue for both Whiteheadian Process and Quantum Process is the
emergence of the *discrete* from the *continuous*. This problem is
illustrated by the decay of a radioactive isotope located at the center
of a spherical array of a finite set of detectors, arranged so that they
cover the entire spherical surface. The quantum state of the positron
emitted from the radioactive decay will be a continuous spherical wave,
which will spread out continuously from the center and eventually reach
the spherical array of detectors. But only one of these detectors will
fire. The total space of possibilities has been partitioned into a
discrete set of subsets, and the prior continuum is suddenly reduced to
some particular one of the elements of the chosen partition.

But what fixes, or determines, the partitioning of the continuous whole
into the discrete set of subsets?

The orthodox answer is this: it is an *intentional* *action of an
experimenter* that determines the partitioning!

Yet if the experimenter himself is made wholly out of physical particles
and fields then his quantum representation by a wave function must also
be a continuous function. But how can a smeared out continuum of
classically conceivable possibilities be partitioned into a set of
discrete components by an agent who is himself a continuous smear of
possibilities. How can the definite fixed boundaries between the
discrete elements of the partition emerge from a continuous quantum
smear.

The founders of quantum theory could not figure out how such a discrete
partitioning of the world could come out of the quantum physical
laws\-\--nor has anyone since. Accordingly, Von Neumann (1934), in his
rigorization of the mathematics of quantum theory, calls this
partitioning action an "intervention": it is an *intervention* into the
continuous deterministic Schroedinger-equation-controlled evolution of
the physically described aspects of the universe. Every quantum mystery
is packed into the structure of this intervention.

This "discreteness" problem is resolved in orthodox quantum theory, *and
in actual scientific practice,* by what Heisenberg and Bohr call "a
choice on the part of the experimenter". Von Neumann calls *the
manifestation in the physical world* of this conscious choice by the
name "Process 1". I shall call by the name "Process Zero, the conscious
correlate of the physically described Process 1. \[In some earlier works
I have called this conscious correlate of the Process 1 physical action
by the name Process 4, but Process Zero is the more appropriate name.\]

The plan of Part I of this work is to:

1\. Specify by using Whitehead's own words *what I take* to be his key
ideas.

2\. Put them coherently together to form a space-time picture of
Whiteheadian process.

3\. Describe the basic structure of ontologically conceived
Tomonaga-Schwinger relativistic quantum field.

4\. Put these elements coherently together to form a space-time picture
of quantum process.

5\. Note the identity of these two space-time pictures.

6\. Note some further identities, and propose a unified
non-anthropocentric Whitehead/Quantum ontology.

This ontology is not completely specified. Yet it is far more structured
than a general pan-psychism. It specifies distinctive conditions
pertaining to space, time, causation, the notion of the "now", the
physically and psychologically described aspects of nature, and the role
of conscious agents. The ontology imbeds the empirically validated
anthropocentric concepts of contemporary orthodox pragmatic quantum
theory in a non-anthropocentric conception of reality.

In the second part of this work I shall explain how quantum theory can
account in a natural way for the influences of conscious volitional
effort upon brain\-\--hence bodily\-\--activity.

**PART I: A Non-Anthropocentric Whitehead/Quantum Ontology**

**Key Elements of Whitehead's Process Ontology**

I shall now state what I take to be Whitehead's key principles, as
expressed in Whitehead's own words \[1934\]

Whitehead's first principle is that the world is built out of actual
entities/occasions!

*" 'Actual entities'\-\--also termed 'actual occasions', are the final
real things of which the world is made."* (PR, p.18)

*"The final facts are, all alike, actual entities, and these actual
entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent."* (PR,
p.18

Whitehead accepts James's claim about the droplike (atomic/indivisible)
character of experience.

*"Either your experience is of no content, of no change, or it is of a
perceptible amount of content or change. Your acquaintance with reality
grows literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually and on
reflection you can divide them into components, but as immediately given
they come totally or not at all."* (James, 1890,Vol 1, p. 68)

Whitehead builds also upon James's claim that "The thought is itself the
thinker"

*"If the passing thought be the directly verifiable existent, which no
school has hitherto doubted it to be, then that thought is itself the
thinker, and psychology need not look beyond.* (ibid, p.401)

Thus the "actual entities" are the "drops of experience" themselves, not
the conscious thinkers that know them. Your *awareness* of your "self"
must be an aspect of your thoughts, and there is *no need for*,
additionally, a persisting conscious "self" standing behind your
thoughts. Your stream of consciousness consists of "ideas clinging
together" and James poses the central question: *"whence do they get
their fantastic laws of clinging?"* (ibid, p.3)

Whitehead draws a basic distinction between the two kinds of realities
upon which his ontology is based: "Continuous Potentialities" versus
"Atomic Actualities":

"*Continuity* *concerns what is potential, whereas actuality is
incurably discrete."*

**(**PR**,** p. 61)

Another Whiteheadian precept is that actual entities decide things!

*"Actual entities ... make real what was antecedently merely
potential."* (PR, p.72)

*"every decision is referred to one or more actual entities...Actuality
is decision amid potentiality."* (PR. p. 43).

*"Actual entities are the only reasons. "* (PR, p.24)

One of Whitehead's key ideas is that each (Temporal) actual entity is
associated with a region of space.

*"every actual entity in the temporal world is to be credited with a
spatial volume for its perspective standpoint\..."* (PR, p.68)

A closely associated idea is that these regions "atomize" space-time

*"The actual entities atomize the extensive continuum. This
\[space-time\] continuum is in itself merely potentiality for
division."* (PR, p.67)

*"The contemporary world is in fact divided and atomic, being a
multiplicity of definite actual entities. These contemporary actual
entities are divided from each other, and are not themselves divisible
into other contemporary actual entities"* (PR, p. 62)

The central idea in Whitehead's philosophy is his notion of *process*

**"***The many become one, and are increased by one."* (PR p.21)

Thus in Whiteheadian process the world of fixed and settled facts grows
via a sequence actual occasions. The past actualities are the causal and
structural inputs for the next actual occasion, which specifies a new
space-time standpoint (region) from which the potentialities created by
the past actualities will be prehended (grasped) by the current
occasion. This basic autogenetic process creates the new actual entity,
which, upon becoming actual, contributes to the potentialities for the
succeeding actual occasions.

Nature's process assigns a separate space-time region to each actual
entity, and this process fills up, step-by-step, the space-time region
lying in the *past* of the advancing sequence of space-like surface
"now", as indicated by this diagram.

**Time Open Future Potential Continuous**

**NOW**

**Fixed Past Actual Atomized**

This conception of a growing actual space-time region, filled with (the
standpoints of)

the growing set of past actual occasions, and advancing into the
strictly potential open

future, constitutes a certain resolution to a famous debate between
Newton and Leibniz about the nature of space. Newton's conception,
described in the Scholium to his main work, "Principia Mathematica" was
essentially a *receptacle* conception, in which space is an empty
container into which physical objects can be placed.

Leibniz's argued for the relational view that space is nought but
relations among actually existing entities: Empty space is a nonsensical
idea.

In Whitehead's ontology *actual* space-time is filled by actual atomic
(indivisible) entities: it is not empty. But there is also a
yet-to-be-filled space-time, which, however, is a mere potentiality..

This Whiteheadian idea the growing "Past" can be contrasted with the
corresponding idea in Non-Relativistic Quantum Physics.

In non-relativistic quantum physics the growing "past" lies behind an
advancing (into the future) sequence of *constant-time instants "now",*
as illustrated below.

**Time**

**Open Future Open Future**

**n+3 NOW**

**n+2**

**n+1**

**n**

**Fixed Past**

In non-relativistic quantum theory (NRQT) the fixed past advances into
the open future in layer-cake fashion, one temporal layer at a time.
Each quantum reduction event occurs at some particular time NOW, but
over all of space. In von Neumann's nonrelativistic quantum theory this
event produces the quantum state ψ(t) of the universe at the instant
labeled by the time t.

This non-relativistic space-time structure is replaced in
Tomonaga-Schwinger relativistic quantum field theory (RQFT) by a very
different kind of structure.

**From Von Neumann NRQT to Tomonaga-Schwinger RQFT.**

The NR quantum state Ψ(t) is replaced by Ψ(σ). Here *t* specifies a
continuous three-dimensional surface in the four-dimensional space-time
continuum, *with all spatial points lying at the same time t.* But σ
specifies a continuous three-dimensional surface in the four-dimensional
space-time continuum, *with every point on that surface spacelike-like-
separated from every other point.*

**Time Open Future Potential Continuous**

**NOW**

**Fixed Past Actual Atomized**

The bottom wavy line represents some initial surface σ, an initial NOW.
This surface pushes forward continuously, first though the space-time
region labelled 1. This unitary evolution, via the relativistic
generalization of the Schroedinger equation, leaves undisturbed the
aspects of the state associated with the rest of the initial surface σ.

Then a new quantum "reduction" event occurs. It acts directly only on
the new part of the surface, the part represented by the top boundary of
region 1. But this direct change causes indirect changes along the rest
of the surface σ, due to quantum entanglement. This indirect change
accounts for the "nonlocality" effects in EPR (Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky)
type experiments.

The evolutionary process then advances the surface NOW next through
region 2, then through region 3, etc.. After each successive advance
into the future, a quantum reduction event occurs. It is associated with
a certain "projection" operator that acts directly only on the new part
of the current surface NOW, but indirectly (via entanglement) on the
entire surface NOW, at least in principle.

**Similarities between Whitehead's ontology and ontologically construed
RQFT**.

Notice the identity, as regards the space-time development indicated in
the relevant diagrams, of the RQFT and the Whitehead ontologies..

But there are further correspondences, the first of which concerns the
matching of the Whiteheadian connections between "Objective Potentia"
and "Subjective Knowledge" with those of the quantum ontology.

Heisenberg: "*The probability function combines objective and subjective
elements. It contains* *statements about possibilities or better
tendencies ("potentia" in Aristotelian philosophy) and these are
completely objective,...and it contains statements about our knowledge
of the system, which of course are subjective in so far as they may be
different for different* observers." (!958 ,p.53)

The Transition from "Potentiality" to "Actuality" in Quantum Mechanics.

Heisenberg: *"the transition from the 'possible' to the 'actual' takes
place during the act of observation."*

Heisenberg: *"The observation itself changes the probability function
discontinuously; it selects of all possible events the actual one that
has taken place. Since through the observation our knowledge of the
system has changed discontinuously, its mathematical representation has
also undergone the discontinuous change and we may speak of a 'quantum
jump' "* (!958, p.54)

**Compatibility with Einstein's (Special) Theory of Relativity**

**Time Open Future Potential Continuous**

**NOW**

**Fixed Past Actual Atomized**

Within Tomonaga-Schwinger RQFT all predictions are independent of the
sequential ordering of space-like separated events: e.g., switching the
sequential orderings of the occasions labeled 1 and 2 changes no
prediction of the theory.

Furthermore, no "signal" (controlled message) can be transmitted faster
than the speed of light.

Quantum theory is a theory of predictions, and the *predictions* of RQFT
conform to the demands of Einstein's (special) theory of relativity: the
predictions do not depend upon which one of any two space-like separated
events occurs first in the sequential unfolding of actuality.
Furthermore, by virtue of the detailed structure of the quantum rules,
the indirect effect, via entanglement, of a quantum event occurring in
one region upon predictions/potentialities pertaining to a faraway
(space-like separated) region cannot be used to transmit a "signal" (a
controllable message) faster than the speed of light.

**The Psycho-Physical Building Blocks of Reality**

In the Whiteheadian ontologicalization of quantum theory, each quantum
reduction event is identified with a Whiteheadian actual
entity/occasion.

Each Whiteheadian actual occasion/entity has a "mental pole" and a
"physical pole".

There are two kinds of actual occasions. Each actual occasion of the
first kind is an intentional probing action that partitions a continuum
into a collection of discrete experiencible possibilities. Each actual
occasion of the second kind selects (actualizes) one of these discrete
possibilities, and obliterates the rest.

**The Whitehead/Quantum Ontology**

Objective/absolute actuality consist of a sequence of psycho-physical
quantum reduction events, identified as Whiteheadian actual
entities/occasions.

These happenings combine to create a growing "past" of fixed and settled
"facts".

Each "fact" is specified by an actual occasion/entity that has a
physical aspect (pole) and a physical aspect (pole), and a region in
space-time from which it views reality. I take the physical pole or
aspect of the actual occasion to consist of a physical input and a
physical output. The physical input is precisely the aspect of the
physical state of the universe that is localized along the part of the
contemporary spacelike surface σ that constitutes the front of the
standpoint region associated with the actual occasion. The physical
output is reduced state ψ(σ) on this space-like surface σ.

The mental pole consists of an input and an output. The mental inputs
and outputs have the ontological character of thoughts, ideas, or
feelings, and they play an essential dynamical role in unifying,
evaluating, and selecting discrete classically conceivable activities
from among the continuous range of *potentialities* offered by the
operation of the physically describable laws.

The paradigmatic example of an actual occasion is an event whose mental
pole is experienced by a human being as an addition to his or her stream
of conscious events, and whose output physical pole is the neural
correlate of that experiential event. Such events are "high-grade"
actual occasions. But the Whitehead/Quantum ontology postulates that
simpler organisms will have fundamentally similar but lower-grade actual
occasions, and that there can be actual occasions associated with any
physical systems that possess a physical structure that will support
physically effective mental interventions of the kind described above.
Thus the Whitehead/Quantum ontology is essentially an ontologicalization
of the structure of orthodox relativistic quantum field theory, stripped
of its anthropocentric trappings. It identifies the essential physical
and psychological aspects of contemporary orthodox relativistic quantum
field theory, and lets them be essential features of a general
non-anthropocentric ontology.

Filling in the technical details of this ontology is the long-term task
of science, which is still in its infancy. A lot of important structure
is provided by the general precepts of this ontology described above,
but this skeletal outline needs, of course, much fleshing out.

**Part II: Jamesian Volition in Quantum Theory**

*How our conscious thoughts can affect our physical actions.*

Contemporary science divides our descriptions of the totality of all
things into two categories: descriptions in physical terms; and
descriptions in psychological terms.

Physical properties consist basically of mathematically described
properties localized at points or tiny regions of space-time. More
generally they are the properties dealt with by physicists in physics
courses, or by scientists in the other physical sciences that are
non-problematically reducible to the basic physical properties, whereas,
according to William James, the psychological properties consist of
"thoughts, ideas, and feelings". These psychological elements are
collected into separate "streams of conscious experiences", each
associated, in orthodox psychology, with the subjective inner life of an
individual human person.

**Continuity and Causation in Classical Physics**

Classical physics postulates a continuous process satisfying "causal
closure of the physical". This principle asserts that the physical
description, by itself, provides for a causally complete deterministic
account. The complete physical description over all of space during any
interval of time determines the physical properties over all of
space-time. No effects of mind or consciousness on the physically
described properties need be considered or acknowledged.

This property of classical physics\-\--the causal closure of the
physical\-\--leads to a puzzle expressed by William James as the
observation that consciousness seems to be

> *"an organ, superadded to the other organs which maintain the animal
> in its struggle for existence; and the presumption of course is that
> it helps him in some way in this struggle, just as they do. But it
> cannot help him without being in some way efficacious and influencing
> the course of his bodily history."* (ibid. p. 138)

James goes on to an extensive analysis of the entry of consciousness
into our lives, and ends up by saying:

*"The conclusion that it is useful is, after all this, quite
justifiable. But if it is useful it must be so through its causal
efficaciousness, and the automaton theory must succumb to common
sense."* (ibid. p.144)

**Orthodox Quantum Theory is not Causally Complete: It Has Two Kinds of
Causal Gap.**

In quantum theory there are two kinds of decisions that are *not
determined by the known laws of quantum theory*, yet are needed to make
the theory work!

Gap \# 1

Bohr: "In the great drama of life we are both *actors* and spectators."
\[My highlight\]

Bohr: "free choice of experimental arrangements for which the
mathematical structure of the quantum mechanical formalism offers the
appropriate latitude." (Bohr, 1958, p. 73)

Conscious choices made human agents determine the experimental
conditions, which affect subsequent physical properties. Von Neumann
calls the physical correlates of these conscious choices by the name
"Process 1" *interventions*. These physical actions *intervene* in the
orderly continuous (Schroedinger-equation-controlled) evolution of the
physical state of the universe.

The decisions of the first kind are identified as the "*Free choices*"
made by conscious agents. These are the Process Zero *conscious choices*
that in actual scientific practice determine the physically described
partition, specified by a Process 1 action, of the continuous quantum
mechanically described physical world into discrete experiencible
components. These decisions are choices to act in a particular way, with
an intent to elicit a conceived experiential feedback. *These choices
are made in actual practice by human agents. They are not determined
within orthodox theory either statistically or in any other way*: *This
indeterminateness constitutes the first kind of causal gap!*

Gap #2

Dirac: "Nature's choice of the *outcome* of the experiment."

The intended feedback/outcome may or may not actually occur. However,
the quantum state of the universe just prior to the agent's choice
determines the *probability* for the intended feedback to occur. But it
does not determine whether or not that feedback will actually occur.
This indeterminateness constitutes the second kind of causal gap.

**Significance**

The mainstream neuroscience "materialist" assumption is that "any effect
of mind is causally reducible to the physically describable aspects of
nature". This presumption is in no way a consequence of basic physical
principles: it is neither demanded nor supported by contemporary
orthodox physical theory According to twentieth century physics,
consciousness can *intervene* in brain dynamics in an essential and
non-eliminable way, and thereby select and actualize physical actions
that without this intervention would remain pure quantum potentialities.

It is, however, one thing to notice that the shift from classical
mechanics to quantum mechanics involves in an essential way the
injection of conscious choices into the causal physical structure of the
theory, and to observe that this opens a theoretical door to *possible*
effects of minds upon brains, but it is quite another thing to spell out
in detail how such an effect could actually occur.

**Filling the First Causal Gap.**

**A Simple Example**

Suppose the idea "I shall now raise my arm" pops into your stream of
consciousness, and this experience is colored by a strong feeling of
*the positive value* *to you* of that contemplated action's actually
occurring. It is concordant with normal experience to presume that this
experience will often have a successor in which the core idea "I shall
now raise my arm" is colored now with a feeling of making an "effort to
raise now my arm". The felt connection between "effort" and the
"intensity of experience" makes it natural to suppose that the intensity
of the effort is correlated to the rapidity at which the experiential
events are occurring: that increased effort will be correlated to an
increased rapidity of the sequence of actual occasions associated with
the idea of raising the arm.

The timings of the actual occasions are not specified by the known
quantum mechanical rules. This opens the door to the possibility that
psychologically describable elements, not reducible to physically
described properties, are entering into the causal structure. But even
if that were true, the issue would arise: How can the conscious effort
influence what physically happens. How can a *conscious* *effort* to
raise the arm "cause" in some sense, the physical arm to rise?

What is the neural correlate of the experience of "making an effort to
raise the arm"?. Presumably, it is a pattern of neurological activity
that if sustained over a sufficiently long time will tend to cause, via
the neural machinery, the arm to rise. This correlation will have become
established through trial and error learning involving the comparison of
effortful intentional actions to their experiential feedbacks. I call
such a pattern of neurological activity by the name "template for
action".

Let us suppose, in accord with the earlier remark, that the experience
of "effort to raise the arm" causes an immediate (within a few
milliseconds) repetition of that experience, and that this causes
another immediate repetition, and so on. This rapid sequence of
actualizations of the associated "template for action" will tend\-\--by
virtue of the well known quantum Zeno effect\-\--to hold that template
for action in place for longer than would otherwise be the case. This
persisting excitation of the template for action will, by virtue of its
defining property, tend to cause your arm to rise.

This effect is in exact accord with the observations of William
James(1892, p.227):

> I have spoken as if our attention were wholly determined by neural
> conditions. I believe that the array of things we can attend to is so
> determined. No object can catch our attention except by the neural
> machinery. But the amount of the attention which an object receives
> after it has caught our attention is another question. It often takes
> effort to keep mind upon it. We feel that we can make more or less of
> the effort as we choose. If this feeling be not deceptive, if our
> effort be a spiritual force, and an indeterminate one, then of course
> it contributes coequally with the cerebral conditions to the result.
> Though it introduce no new idea, it will deepen and prolong the stay
> in consciousness of innumerable ideas hich else would fade more
> quickly away. The delay thus gained might not be more than a second in
> duration\-\--but that second may be critical; for in the rising and
> falling considerations in the mind, where two associated systems of
> them are nearly in equilibrium it is often a matter of but a second
> more or less of attention at the outset, whether one system shall gain
> force to occupy the field and develop itself and exclude the other, or
> be excluded itself by the other. When developed it may make us act,
> and that act may seal our doom. When we come to the chapter on the
> Will we shall see that the whole drama of the voluntary life hinges on
> the attention, slightly more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas
> may receive. \...

In the chapter on Will, in the section entitled "Volitional effort is
effort of attention" James (1892. p.417) writes;

> The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most
> \`voluntary,\' is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast
> before the mind. \... Effort of attention is thus the essential
> phenomenon of will.

and

> Consent to the idea\'s undivided presence, this is effort\'s sole
> achievement."\..."Everywhere, then, the function of effort is the
> same: to keep affirming and adopting the thought which, if left to
> itself, would slip away.

**Empirical Support**

Empirical support for this explanation of the way in which our
consciousness affects our brains can be found in Stapp (2001) and
Schwartz, Stapp, and Beauregard (2005).

But beyond the detailed experimental findings described in those works
there is the practical benefit of having a conception of nature, and our
role in nature, that is a harmony with our intuitive feeling that our
intentional thoughts can influence our physical actions, or with the
more scientifically well informed idea that conscious intentional
efforts can evoke associated brain activities in ways that can, through
learning or training, be correlated to experiential feedbacks. The vast
literature on biofeedback, and the mounting evidence from
nerve-activated prosthetics, attest to the utility of this conception of
the mind-brain connection.

Insofar as one grants that a conscious experience is not simply an
aspect of the activity of a brain that is completely expressible in
terms of the physical concepts of (classical or quantum) physics, but
instead has qualities that cannot be expressed in terms of, or reduce
to, the quantitative properties that occur in the physical description
of the world used by physicists, then one's ontology should specify
whether or not these further properties, which are felt, and which are
parceled into streams of consciousness, are needed to fix the flow of
physically described events, or whether, as in classical physics, the
physically describable flow of events is completely determined in terms
of the physically describable aspects alone.

In that latter case one has difficulty explaining the success of
nerve-activated prosthetics.

Suppose one were to build a computer model of that situation, with
consciousness represented by a higher module that can integrate and
evaluate brain data, and make selections, but that has no causal effect
on the physical machinery that implements or obeys the physical laws
that by themselves determine all physical effects. One would then have
to understand how this module *could be trained* to come into good
alignment with the causal processes upon which it has no causal effect.
There is certainly no automatic uniform concordance between the mental
and physical descriptions, as the numerous examples of mismatches cited
by proponents in mechanistic or materialistic conceptions of reality
attest. But if there is no automatic concordance between conscious
thoughts, ideas, and feelings and physical actions then how can the
empirically occurring correspondences come into being through practice,
if the mental module cannot act upon the physical ones?

Why, I must ask, would anyone ever want to postulate the existence of
such an unnatural and awkward, and perhaps *impossible to comprehend,*
reality, when its only virtue is to conform to ancient laws that are now
known to be false, and to be moreover inapplicable *in principle* to the
causally important motions of the ions in nerve terminals, when
empirically validated laws of physics that are completely applicable to
warm, wet, and noisy brains provide a way of understanding a causal
influence of mental effort upon brain activities that can render
perfectly natural and understandable the empirically manifest phenomena
of effortful guided learning.

**Comments.**

1\. Every aspect of the preceding analysis is in strict accord with the
orthodox laws of quantum physics. No rule has been stretched or altered.
An existing causal gap in the theory has merely been filled in a natural
way, by exploiting effects explicitly assigned by the theory to
conscious free choices, and then applying the known causal laws.

2\. The quantum Zeno effect is itself a decoherence effect, and it is
not diminished by environmental decoherence. *Thus the usual argument
against using quantum mechanics to explain the influence of conscious
thought upon brain activity is nullified.* Environmental decoherence
does reduce pure quantum states to "a mixtures", to a smear of
quasi-classical states, but this does not resolve the problem of the
discreteness of our experiences

3\. The fundamental reason why the effect of conscious thought upon
bodily action is explainable within quantum mechanics, but not within
classical physics, is that orthodox quantum theory *itself* introduces,
as a key innovation (with respect to classical physics), the needed
causal efficacy of our conscious choices. The logically needed Process 1
physical choices have no causal roots in the physically described aspect
of reality specified by the theory, but they are strongly correlated
with sufficient reasons and other motivations describable in
psychological terms. This configuration of causal connections suggests
that the consciousness is the cause, and the correlated Process 1
physically described action is the effect. This is the point of view
that ties quantum theory most naturally and directly both to common
sense and to our deepest intuitions, as well as to actual scientific
practice, where the experimenter chooses on the basis of reasons and
goals which of the options will be pursued. In this connection, Bohr
speaks pertinently of "the free choice of experimental arrangement for
which the mathematical structure of the quantum mechanical formalism
offers the appropriate latitude".(Bohr, 1958,p, 73) What motive could
possibly induce any rational philosopher or scientist interested in the
connection between mind and matter to close his or her .mind to this
hugely pertinent development of physics, and cling instead to
fundamentally false and puzzling nineteenth century materialism.

**References.**

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Heisenberg, W. (1958) *Physics and Philosophy*. New York: Harper,

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Tomonaga, S. 1946 On a relativistically invariant formulation of the
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Von Neumann, J. (1955/1932) *Mathematical Foundations of Quantum
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