**A13. Consciousness and the Anthropic Questions**

By the anthropic questions I mean the following three queries:

1\. Why are the laws of nature so well tuned to support the biological
structures we find here on earth, including our own human bodies and
brains?

2\. Why, given the fact that the physically described structure of my
body and brain has the structure that it has, are certain activities of
that physically described system accompanied by my stream of conscious
experiences, which include pervasive impressions that elements of this
stream of experience causally affect the way my body behaves? .

3\. Are idea-like qualities primordial?

These questions may lack answers that human minds can comprehend, or
that our scientific investigations can find firm evidence to support.
Still, these questions are being asked, within scientific contexts, and
a science-based world view may be incomplete without some rationally
coherent responses to them.

It is evident, I believe, that such basic questions must be addressed
within the framework of *basic* physical theory, namely quantum theory,
not the conceptually different theory obtained by making the classical
approximation to it. For quantum theory is critically involved with the
stability of matter that underlies our bodily existence, with the
properties of organic molecules, such as DNA, that underlies life, and
with the failure of mechanical determinism that brings consciousness
crucially into conventional quantum dynamics. The classical
approximation rationally supports neither stability, life, nor
consciousness.

The original Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory was designed to
deal specifically with scientific practices in which experimenters first
set up experiments of their choosing, and then test predictions of the
theory. The predictions pertain to observed correlations between the
empirically described initial conditions that these experimenters have
set up, and the empirically described feedbacks that they then observe.
This format carries over to situations in everyday life pertaining to
correlations between how we choose to act and the feedback we are then
likely to experience.

This pragmatic formulation works beautifully in some important domains
of human interest, but does not carry over to issues such as the origin
and development of the physical universe, of life, or of consciousness.
Yet scientists ponder these further issues and try to create theories
that can account for the available scientifically acquired evidence.

The focus of this book has been primarily on the dynamics of human
brain-minds *as they exist today*. However, the appearance of the
interview by Atmanspacher in the Journal of Conscious Studies prompted a
flurry of questions. posted on jcs-online. These questions and my
replies to them lay the foundation for some responses to the anthropic
questions. I shall retain here the order in which the questions were
posed online, because the weaving back and forth between different
threads creates in the end a richer tapestry that better conveys the
whole.

\[Jonathan Edwards\] I fail to follow Stapp\'s suggestion that the
\'free choice\' of setting up an experiment is somehow outside the scope
of a physical account. True, the events in a brain freely choosing are
too complex to analyze, but that does not put them outside physics. This
is no evidence that physics is not causally closed.

HPS: Edwards says that he fails \"to follow my suggestion that the
\'free choice\' of a setting up of an experiments is somehow outside the
scope of a physical account\". What I claimed was that this choice is
outside the scope of conventional or orthodox quantum theory. The
conventional quantum theory that is used in actual scientific practice
requires an intervention from outside the system of the atomic
constituents that are described in the mathematical language of quantum
physics. Bohr calls this intervention a \"free choice\" on the part of
the experimenter, and von Neumann calls it Process 1. The *effects* of
such interventions enter importantly into the dynamics of the quantum
mechanically/mathematically described physical system, and into the
structure of our subsequent conscious experiences. But that theory
provides no explanation or causal description of how these causally
effective choices come to be what they turn out to be. And the omission
arises from more than just the fact that brain processes \"are too
complex to analyze\". If one considers the experiment discussed by
Einstein where a pen is drawing a line on a moving scroll, with a
\"blip\" being caused by the firing of a detector of a slow radioactive
decay, then the deterministic Schroedinger equation, applied to the
whole system, would yield a smear of times for the registered decay,
and, likewise, a corresponding smear of the location of the blip. And if
an observer is watching the device, and his body and brain and its
environment (all of which are made up of atoms, molecules, and other
physically describable constituents) are incorporated into the quantum
mathematical description, with no intervention from outside, then the
system described by the quantum state of the brain of the observer
becomes a smeared out mixture of quasi-classical brain states that
correspond to different possible times for the detection to occur.
Conventional quantum theory provides no purely physical description of
how this smear of brain states gets reduced to one compatible with
experience, which identifies a fairly well defined time of registration.
Conventional theory, as defined either by actual scientific practice or
by the words of the founders of the theory, has, therefore, a *causal
gap* in the purely physical description, and this gap is not simply a
matter of the quantum-mechanically described physical workings of the
brain being \"too complex to analyze\". There is a matter of principle
involved in understanding how a brain state in which the recognition of
the blip is smeared out over hours turns into a brain state that
corresponds to the registration occurring at some particular moment.

The point is that in conventional quantum theory the quantum
mathematical description becomes a description merely of possibilities
or potentialities, not, in general, of an evolving experiential reality
itself. Yet this quantum state is precisely the quantum theoretical
generalization of the classical-physics description of physical reality
itself. So where did the \"physical reality\" itself go? What is the
rational basis of the claim that the physical description is causally
closed when the classical physics description, from which the notion of
the causal closure of the physical arose, dissolves into mere
potentialities, and the only realities\-\--as opposed to
potentialities\-\--that are to be found in the phenomenally validated
conventional quantum theory are described in psychological rather than
physical terms?

\[Edwards\] Stapp\'s quantum-Whiteheadian \'events\' seem one minute to
belong to observers as whole brains, at other times to local neural
events and sometimes events outside brains, while baulking at
panpsychism because \'observers\' have to be large enough to be
\'classical\'.

HPS: Edwards complains that I associated the collapse \"events\"
sometimes with the whole brain of the observer, sometimes with neural
events, and sometimes with events outside the brain. I do not associate
the collapse events with events at the individual neural level: I
discussed nerve terminal dynamics only to show that the classical
approximation fails in principle: i.e., to show that one must *at least
in principle* treat the brain as a quantum system. The collapse events
in conventional quantum physics are, in fact, *psychophysical*: each one
has both a psychologically described aspect, corresponding to an
increase in knowledge, and also an associated reduction of the
(physically described) wave packet (quantum state) to one compatible
with the gain in knowledge. This is how the theory works in actual
scientific practice. This arrangement ties the psychological
descriptions of the events, which specify gains in knowledge and
commitments to actions, to the effects of such inputs on potentialities
for future human experiences, which are the only realities\-\--as
opposed to potentialities\-\--that enter into the empirically justified
conventional quantum theoretical description.

I do not use 'classical' as a condition on the physical aspects of the
psychophysical events. And these events always occur "*in* a brain", in
the sense that its physical aspect is represented in terms of
"projection operators" acting on the physically described state of some
physical system, which can be called, generically, a 'brain". I am
simply retaining and applying von Neumann's quantum dynamical rules and
the mind-brain connections that they imply.

\[Edwards\] A further problem is that Stapp gives no neurobiological
example of what sort of \'events\' he is implicating.

HPS: Regarding the nature of the neurobiological \"events\" that are
associated with our human intentional choices, I note that these events
are expected by most (or at least many) scientists working on this
problem to be the coming into being of widespread synchronous cortical
activities in the beta or gamma frequency range. These neural activities
are good candidates for the "templates for action" that are the neural
(brain) correlated of our conscious intentions. This matter is currently
under intense empirical and theoretical scrutiny.

\[Edwards\] Stapp seems to view the alternative as epiphenomenalism, but
as far as I can see the real alternative is that consciousness fits into
current physics as an aspect of a causal chain in a way yet to be
understood which happens to have nothing to do with the collapse of a
wave function belonging to some particle that has hit a measuring devise
somewhere in a physics lab - which always seemed a rather odd idea
anyway to me.

HPS: But is the "current physics" quantum physics or classical physics?
If it is classical physics then since the concepts of "conscious
thoughts, ideas, and feelings" do not enter into the causal chain
described in classical physics, which in principle is dynamically
deterministically complete, these experiential realities are not part of
the classically described causal chain: they are properly and correctly
called "epiphenomenal" insofar as that classical physics description of
the causal dynamics holds. If by "current physics" one means a physics
described in physics text books and taught in physics courses at our
universities, then, if it is not classical physics, "current physics"
presumably means quantum physics. If one is talking about mind-brain
connections then one is talking about the physics of the brain. The
pertinent events are events in the brain, not primarily events of
particles hitting measuring devices in the lab, although such an event
may lead by a physical causal chain to an effect in the brain, including
the physical event in the brain that corresponds to the recognition that
the detector reacted. Von Neumann followed the causal chain from the
particle-detector event to the brain event that corresponds to conscious
recognition. That *latter* event is the quantum event of primary
interest, if one is interested in the mind-brain connection.

In current contemporary orthodox quantum theory the collapse events are
closely connected to human experience: it is precisely this close
connection that makes the theory practically useful. In view of the
psychophysical direction that the hugely successful advance from
classical physics to quantum physics took it is reasonable and rational
to retain the theoretical interlocking of physically described and
psychologically described aspects that constitute the radical new core
element of the new theory.

Science must deal, of course, with relationships between *descriptions*.
The dynamical laws of classical physics specify no direct dynamical
connection between these two kinds of descriptions upon which science is
based, Quantum theory, on the other hand, incorporates explicitly and
nontrivially into its dynamical laws connections between these two kinds
of description.

\[Edwards\] I find it hard to identify exactly what Stapp is proposing
but the impression that comes across is that it is a form of dualism far
more extreme than Descartes. Descartes tried to fit the mind into
naturalism. In contrast, Stapp proposes a Deus ex Machina ghost in the
machine; overtly supernatural in a way that is certainly pre-Darwinian
and probably pre-enlightenment - i.e. medieval. This ghost is a
religious object that has to be taken on faith because the very theory
that is used to propose it denies the possibility of testing its
existence.

HPS: Edwards suggests that bringing conscious realities into the
description of nature in the way I describe (which is exactly the way
prescribed by conventional quantum theory) is \"overtly supernatural\".
But conventional quantum theory is highly naturalistic, and is closely
tied to empirical phenomena. There is nothing supernatural about the
conscious realities that populate our streams of conscious experiences,
and nothing non-naturalistic about bringing these realities into
physical theory in the mathematically specified, testable, and highly
tested way specified by conventional quantum theory. That theory, as it
stands today, is ontologically and dynamically incomplete, because it
does not explain or describe how our specific choices about how we act
come to be what they turn out to be. Recognizing this incompleteness is
an act far different from postulating a \"ghost\" that \"is a religious
object that has to be taken on faith\". Our actual conscious intentional
acts are not ghosts. They have theoretically explained and empirically
measured consequences. Emphasizing the fact that these realities enter
conventional quantum theory as causally effective inputs whose causal
origins are \"yet to be understood\" is not an act of religious faith:
it is the assertion of a basic fact about the current state of physical
theory.

\[Edwards\] The idea that suggesting that QM is supported by ghostly
puppeteers \'choosing\' what will happen in our bodies can help us to be
ethical seems as crazy as creationism.

HPS: The suggestion is that replacing the classical-physics conception
of oneself as causally equivalent to a mindless mechanical automaton
stalking through a mindless clockwork universe by the quantum conception
of oneself\-\--as an integral aspect of nature's process that allows
components of one's stream of consciousness such as reasons and values
to influence the activities of one's brain and body\-\--provides a
foundation for ethical theory based on trans-cultural contemporary
science rather than on culture-dependent and often antagonistic
religious faiths. Causally efficacious mind is a prerequisite of ethical
theory, and quantum theory allows it to be supplied by science rather
than by a religious faith or doctrine that stands apart from and
explicitly contradicts science, insofar as science is identified with
classical physics. Yet there are, with respect to the role of our minds,
commonalities in the various religious viewpoints that are completely in
line with *contemporary* science.

\[Joseph Polanik\] Dr. Stapp, You\'ve described your theory as a Quantum
Interactive Dualism. I am wondering whether you are proposing a dualism
as Chalmers counts or a dualism as Descartes is commonly thought to have
counted. Chalmers, as I understand it, assumes that there is only one
\'stuff\' matter/energy; but, that this \'stuff\' has two sets of
properties -- the physical properties familiar to scientists and the
experiential properties associated with phenomenal awareness. Descartes,
on the other hand, had two fundamental substances matter/energy and mind
stuff. He is usually thought to have two sets of properties; but, some
argue that he had three sets of properties: physical properties, mental
properties and the experiential properties associated with sensory
awareness that came about because of the union of body and mind/soul. In
any event, there is no reasonable way to define \'dualism\' so that
Chalmers and Descartes are in the same camp. Thus, the question that
arises is: Is your dualism a Chalmers-style

dualism, a Descartes-style dualism or something else?

HPS: I start from the structure of conventional quantum mechanics; the
quantum mechanics used by physicists in their scientific practice. It
uses two kinds of descriptions. One kind of description is used to
\"comunicate to others what we have done and what we have learnt\"
(Bohr, 1962, p.3). It is basically a description of the thoughts, ideas,
and feelings that populate our streams of conscious experiences. It is a
description of psychological qualities. The other kind of description is
the quantum mathematical description in terms mathematically
characterized properties assigned to space-time points. I call these the
physically described properties. They are the mathematical properties
upon which theoretical physics is based.

Each of these two properties has a certain persisting \"essence\",
though neither is a \"substance\" in the normal/usual everyday sense of
the word. The physically described properties represent
\"potentialities\" for psycho-physical events to occur. These events are
the most \"real\" things represented in the conceptual structure. Each
is supposed to have both a psychologically described aspect, and a
physically described aspect. The latter is expressed as a \"reduction\"
of the prior set of potentialities to a new set compatible with the gain
in knowledge described in the psychologically described aspect.

The one underlying \"stuff\" is an evolving state of \"information\",
which is characterized as a structure having different aspects of which
can act upon each other to influence the development of the whole.
Certain parts \"interpret\" other parts, and the whole changes as a
result of that interaction.

Having described the structure of conventional practically validated
physical theory, I leave to you the task of applying the appropriate
labels from the philosophical literature.

The key point is the theory deals with the *descriptions* themselves,
not with what the descriptions are descriptions of. So it is sufficient
to say that nature is a process that has aspects that we can and do
describe in different ways, and that scientific theories describe
proposed ways of linking the descriptions that we use "to communicate to
others what we have done and what we have learnt" (Bohr, 1963, p.3) to
mathematically described aspects of the process we call nature..

Chris Nunn raises a pertinent point: Can the proposed
attention-controlled rate of process 1 probings be rapid enough to
activate a quantum Zeno effect that is adequate to the task of holding
the template of action in place? Chris suggests that the rate of
probings ought not be more than about 100 hertz, which would be far less
than what would be needed to hold in place a macroscopic template for
action.

But, of course, we do not feel or experience the separate probings
directly: we feel/experience only the conscious effort and the
correlated phenomenal events..

A typical classically describable and observable electromagnetic field,
say of fixed frequency and energy, has two very different frequencies
associated with it: the classical frequency that is directly observed,
and the quantum frequency determined by its energy. The 100 hertz
mentioned by Chris is the classical frequency, but there is also the
typically much greater quantum frequency.

In the model I am describing the directly experienced aspects, the
intent and the experienced correlated feedback, have a time scale of at
least tens of milliseconds: the time scale of the classical frequencies.
But reduction events are naturally associated with the quantum scale: it
is enough to reduce a single particle in a macroscopic state in order to
reduce the whole. (This fact is used in the spontaneous collapse models
of Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber) And in the empirical tests of the
quantum Zeno effects, although the choice made by the experimenter and
the outcome observed are at the macroscopic scale, the reduction occurs
at the atomic level, and on the atomic time scale.

Mondor questions, in connection with the phrase "free choice", the
concept of "free",

First, regarding my use of the word \"free\" in \"free choice\", I have
repeatedly emphasized that this word refers here specifically to the
fact the causes of these choices are not specified by conventional
(Copenhagen or von Neumann) quantum mechanics. The word is not meant to
suggest that these choices have no causes at all.

I believe that nothing happens without a sufficient reason of some sort,
and my basic endeavor, in fact, is to try to achieve some deeper
understanding the nature of these reasons.

Polanik hits the mark when he emphasizes that the physically described
brain (governed by von Neumann process 2) is not self-collapsing, and
hence that something beyond quantum mechanically described physical
brain, evolving in accordance with the quantum mechanical counterpart of
the classical laws of motion, is involved in the selection of the
particular experience that actually occurs from the mixture of
potentialities generated by this mechanical process

Von Neumann\'s discussion of the movable boundary between the part of
the world described in physical terms and the part described in
psychological terms stresses \"psycho-physical parallelism\": the fact
that certain systems have aspects that are described in the mathematical
language of QM, and also aspects described in the language of
communication among observing and acting agents. In classical physics
the part described in physical terms when expanded to include the entire
physical universe is causally closed\-\--it is deterministically
complete. But the core feature of quantum theory is that this causal
closure does not occur within this more accurate theory. The whole is
not fully causally described in either one of these two languages alone.

When Lofting says that we must \"step out of the QM box and into the
GENERAL box of how our neurology processes data\" he seems to be
assuming, unjustifiably, that the causal structure is describable in
physical terms alone. The structure of quantum theory opens the door to
the possibility that all causes and reasons need not be purely
mechanical. Thoughts and intentions are themselves actual realities, and
as such they ought to be able have, in their own right, real actual
consequences. Quantum theory allows this.

Feynman, mentioned by Edwards, asserted that he did not understand
quantum mechanics, and doubted that anyone else did. The problem is
basically the mismatch between the known basic purely physically
described laws and our conscious experiences. QM tells us that when we
try to descend to the microscopic roots of the \"physical substrate\"
the physically described properties dissolve into potentialities for the
occurrences of experiences. The suggestion by Edwards that Bohr,
Heisenberg, Pauli, Wigner, and von Neumann were introducing \"fairies\"
into basic physical theory, by introducing our experiences importantly
into basic dynamics, is unhelpful: the entry of causally efficacious
consciousness coherently into physics ought not be treated lightly. Nor
does the emphasis on the fact that we do not yet know how our choices of
how we act come into being entail or suggest that the causes, whatever
they are, are unnatural.

Nunn correctly observers that the theory entails a person\'s capacity to
choose to sustain a desired macroscopic brain activity without that
person\'s knowing the physically described details of what his choice is
actually doing.

Trial and error learning allows the person to correlate his mental
effort to experienced feedback without his knowing how the conscious
effort produces that conscious feedback. The mechanism that I am
proposing merely requires that when a conscious event occurs that
features a conscious intention to act in some way, coupled with an
"evaluation-based" feeling of effort, there will be a tendency for the
*same action* as before, whatever it was, to occur repetitively with a
frequency controlled by the intensity of the feeling of effort. This
allows the agent to choose to sustain positively valued actions without
knowing the actual physical structure of the collapse events that his or
her efforts are causing. This theory accommodates nicely and naturally
the experience, for example, of learning to use a prosthetic limb, by
activating through effortful trial and error learning a
conscious-effort/conscious-feedback loop never used either by the
individual or any of his ancestors.

Nunn asserts that \"It\'s not obvious that this provides any better
grounding for a naturalistic concept of free will than classical
mechanistic accounts of brain function.\" But the quantum account gives
a rational and naturalistic account of the \"manifest\" causal
connection between mind and brain, by explaining it as a real
understandable causal connection; based directly on the known laws of
physics pertaining to the psycho-physical connection, whereas the
classical mechanistic account says that every physical connection can be
explained without mentioning consciousness. But how in this completely
novel situation of learning to use a prosthetic limb does consciousness
itself enter in a way that gives the illusion that it is playing a
crucial causal role in the physical process when it is really doing
nothing at all. Is not a naturalistic actually-causal account of the
apparently-causal connection between mind and brain, and an account that
is rooted squarely in contemporary physical theory, \"obviously\" better
than a theory rooted in a falsified theory that leaves mind out of the
physical proceedings, but then brings it in ad hoc, deceptively
pretending to do what it seems to do. Quantum theory \*needs\* something
to fill a specific causal gap, and provides the means for mind to fill
it. whereas (false) classical theory has no need for mind and provides
no means for it to do anything, and no physical foundation into which
our experiential realities naturally fit.

\[Mondor\] Dr. Stapp, thank you for your response.

I see now that your use of the term \"free choice\" has little or
nothing to do with the traditional meaning(s) of \"free will\" in
philosophical literature.

I am pleased to know that your theory does not require the existence of
free will.

HPS: Yes, I certainly do not subscribe to the notion that our conscious
choices have no causes or reasons whatever. But a commitment to the idea
that each conscious choice has some reason to be what it turns out to be
certainly does not mean that this reason can be specified completely in
term of the localized physical variables of classical physics, or their
direct quantum counterparts.

\[Mondor\] May I also assume it does not require consciousness, since it
may be that the \"free choice\" comes from unconscious mental activity
preceding conscious awareness of it?

HPS: I repeatedly use the words \"orthodox\", \"Copenhagen\", or
\"Conventional\" to emphasize the fact that I am describing the quantum
theory that is used in actual scientific practice, and validated
empirically.

As Wigner (\"Remarks on the Mind-body Question\"; cf. Wheeler and Zurek
p. 169) said: \"it was not possible to formulate the laws of Quantum
Mechanics without reference to the consciousness.\" Also Heisenberg:
\"The laws of nature that we formulate mathematically in quantum theory
deal no longer with the particles themselves but with our knowledge of
the elementary particles.\" ... \"no longer the behaviour of the
elementary particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior\"

Some physicists (eg. Bohm, and Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber\-\--and
Philip Pearle) have tried to eliminate consciousness but all have failed
to accommodate within their frameworks the fully relativistic QM with
particle production. Others have tried the many-worlds approach, which
many have noted ought really be called the \"one-world, many-minds\"
theory because it tries to tie theory to data (which is
experiential/empirical) by trying to understand why the experienced
world is so tremendously different from the world governed by the
currently known laws that make no reference to consciousness, by
assuming (without specifying how) the one quantum state is experienced
in myriads of different ways that hang together in myriads of separate
streams of consciousness that manifest the statistical regularities
specified by the quantum laws. To even begin to face the problems one
must bring in the concept of consciousness. Then there is the question
of whether the laws that generate these fantastic regularities in our
streams of consciousness can be formulated or expressed without
referring to consciousness.

So I would say that you cannot say that my theory (or orthodox, or
Copenhagen, or conventional quantum theory, or any other quantum theory
does not require consciousness. The huge disparity between the structure
of human experience and the structures generated by the purely
physically described quantum laws makes the discussion of the
relationship between conscious experiences and physically described laws
the primary issue in the use and understanding of quantum theory.

\[Polanik\] \"enduring insight: the distinction between a property and
that which has or exhibits that property.\"

HPS: Conscious experiences belong to streams of conscious experiences,
and these streams are part of nature\'s process. This process has
aspects that are described in psychological language: in terms of
thoughts, ideas, or feelings which have various qualities that have been
given names by persons. Each person constitutes an aspect of nature\'s
process that possesses a stream of consciousness. One can properly say,
therefore, that a stream of conscious thoughts has psychologically
described properties. What \"has\" a psychologically described property
is primarily a conscious experience; secondarily the stream of conscious
experiences to which the experience belongs; and thirdly, the person (an
aspect of nature\'s process) that \"has\" this stream of consciousness.

\[Polanik\] \"The next question is: If there is experience occurring;
then to what is that experience occurring?\"

HPS: \"To what?\" I guess the correct question is \"In what?\", and the
answer is \"In a stream of consciousness!\"

\[Polanik\] \"\...it follows that there is something real to which
experiences

occur.\"

HPS: The idea that there is some physical structure "to which
experiences occur" goes far beyond what science says. Nor does science
tell us that there is some immaterial entity "to which experiences
occur\". Each experience occurs in a stream of conscious, which is an
aspect of nature\'s psycho-physical process. It appears \"to\" a
\"person\" only by virtue of the fact that a person is, *in reality*,
according to this theory, a stream of psychophysical events, and each
experience\-\--of the kind we are considering\-\--belongs to some such
stream. The verbal statement that an experience "occurs to" the stream
to which it belongs, suggests an ontological separation that the theory
does not entail or embrace.

\[Mondor\] \"But in 1952 David Bohm published an interpretation of QM
that\...was completely deterministic.\"

HPS: But, in spite of massive intense effort, this result (a completely
deterministic model) has not been able to be carried over to our premier
theory, quantum electrodynamics, where particle creation and
annihilation becomes important. And Bohm himself, when trying to
generalize his model to include consciousness, was led to an infinite
tower of guiding fields each being guided by a higher one. \[Bohm 1990:
A new theory of the relationship between mind and matter, Philosophical
Psychology 3, 371-286\] Logical closure was thereby lost.

\[Edwards\] \"When I say von Neumann believed in fairies I do not do so
lightly. Fairies are supernatural beings the existence of which we can
neither observe nor infer. Abstract Egos seem to be that.\"

HPS: The account I have given above about the place of consciousness in
nature, and in physics, is essentially my understanding of von Neumann.
I find no fairies there. The term \"abstract ego\" highlights the fact
the process 1 choices must be fixed by causes that go beyond what the
physically described process 2 can do. Insofar as the choice of the
process 1 event is causally understandable in terms of the existing
features of the theory, this choice should be determined in terms of the
physically described and psychologically described aspects of the
postulated streams of psychophysical events, together with the
physically described potentialities. The theory makes to reference to
any disembodied streams of consciousness, and entails no evident need
for any such systems to exist or to influence the flow of the embodied
streams of psychophysical events that the contemporary theory
recognizes.

\[Edwards\] So Henry Stapp\'s comments are just about observing. It is
the choosing process which seems to me supernatural because it seems to
obey laws that have nothing to do with known physics and as far as I can
see is unverifiable\..... not conscious realities, but non physical
chooser: that for me is the ghost!

HPS: I follow Wm. James\'s dictum: \"The thought itself is the
thinker\". I introduce no ghosts. No new kind of entity need be doing
the choosing. The process that determines the choice could depend
irreducibly only upon the psychologically and physically described
aspects of the existing contemporary theory. We do not currently know
the nature of the "dark energy" that is pushing all parts of the
universe apart. But that does not mean that fairies are doing the job.

\[Mondor\] Through a fortunate and fortuitous connection I am able to
forward Dr. Basil Hiley\'s reply to some of Dr. Stapp\'s remarks.

\[Basil Hiley\]

Sent: 07 November 2006 14:00

Subject: Reply to Henry Stapp\'s Comments on QM and consciousness

I find it very difficult to enter into a discussion that has been going
on between two other parties. One misses the main thrust of the argument
and often raises different points that may not be central to the
discussion. However I will comment on the paragraph:

As Wigner (\"Remarks on the Mind-body Question\"; cf. Wheeler and Zurek
p. 169) said: \"it was not possible to formulate the laws of Quantum
Mechanics without reference to the consciousness.\" Also Heisenberg:
\"The laws of nature that we formulate mathematically

in quantum theory deal no longer with the particles themselves but with
our knowledge of the elementary particles.\" \"no longer the behavior of
the elementary particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior\"

These quotes are certainly correct and even though Wigner and Heisenberg
were outstanding physicists (incidentally I did have the privilege of
discussing some of these issues with both these men) these are merely
opinions.

HPS: As descriptions of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory
that is used in actual scientific practice these are more than just
opinions. The mathematical formalism of quantum theory is construed,
within that interpretation, as merely a procedure for making predictions
about relationships between perceptions, and that is the justification
given by Wigner for his assertion. \[See Wigner in the cited reference\]

I, of course, am following \[as did Wigner\] von Neumann's extension in
which the conscious events become the psychologically described aspects
of psychophysical events whose physically described aspects are brain
events. The events are now regarded as ontologically real mind-brain
events, with von Neumann's dynamical rules still in place to ensure the
retention of the crucial predictive power of the theory.

On the other hand, I acknowledged and stressed that there are opposing
viewpoints, including prominently, the one of David Bohm.

\[Hiley\] They are opinions that have always troubled me. I find it
difficult to reconcile them with the historic origins of quantum
mechanics. Remember it all started from our inability to explain the
distribution blackbody radiation and the stability of matter in terms of
classical physics. Without the stability of matter there would be no
life forms in which consciousness could be exhibited (not even Hoyl\'s
Black Cloud). To use consciousness to formulate the laws of quantum
mechanics seems circular, unless of course you assume some kind of
universal consciousness lying at the centre of being as is proposed by
certain forms of Hinduism.

HPS: Three different issues must be distinguished here. One is the
question of how human consciousness enters into the dynamics of human
brains as they exist today. This is the immediate subject of von
Neumann's application of empirically validated quantum theory to
mind-brain dynamics. The second issue of what caused the laws of nature
to be what they are, with their incredible suitability for
life\-\--including stability and, more impressively, the fact that they
support the fantastic properties of DNA. This is a very interesting
question? Are there, as string theory is supposed to entail, some 10 to
the 500th power possible worlds which could all exist, so that some of
them could accidentally have all of the properties that exist in our
universe? If so, then that is why stable matter and life as we know it
exists in our universe: the highly improbable becomes highly probable
just because the number of instances to consider is effectively
infinite. The third issue is how did the nature and involvement of
consciousness evolve or change over the course of the development in our
universe of our human brains, and other similar structures. More
generally, what is the general feature of nature that causes or allows
consciousness to exist in association with certain kinds of physical
systems.

Within this general framework Hiley's claim that "To use consciousness
to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics seems circular, unless..."
merely emphasizes that consciousness does in fact enter nature's
processes a way that allows it to be successfully used in this way. The
fact that conscious does enter causally into the successful theory does
not justify the effort to try to remove it from the dynamics because
leaving it in seems to gives too much significance. The von Neumann
approach builds upon the successful incorporation of consciousness into
the dynamics, rather than retreating in fear from this hugely important
advance.

\[Hiley\] Most physicists would expect to account for the stability of
matter in a way that is independent of consciousness and certainly of
human consciousness.

HPS: Stability is associated with process 2. If process 2 does not
produce stability, and consciousness occurs only in stable systems, then
process 1 will not occur in universes such that process 2 fails to
entail the stability of matter. Consciousness depends on stability, not
the reverse.

\[Hiley\] "HPS: 'Some physicists (eg. Bohm, and Ghirardi, Rimini, and
Weber\-\--and Philip Pearle) have tried to eliminate consciousness but
all have failed to accommodate relativistic QM with particle
production.' " is just not correct. You can do it. The mathematics gets
very messy but you can do it. The Dirac field has proved difficult but
some of the results of the work by Lasenby and some of my more recent
work shows that this is now possible but much is left to be done.

HPS: The admission that \"much is left to be done\" is worrisome. One
ought to achieve a *deterministic* version of quantum electrodynamics,
which is the theory that covers brain dynamics, and this involves the
Dirac field.

A more complete statement of my position on Bohmian Mechanics can be
found in my book \"Mindful Universe\" p.78. I say there, among other
things:

\"Over and beyond these problems with consciousness there is the
technical problem that a Bohm-type deterministic model apparently cannot
be made to accommodate particle creation and annihilation, which is an
important feature of the actual world in which we live. Completing the
dynamically incomplete physical \[Process 2\] description provided by
quantum theory by adding a classically conceived deterministically
specified physical world, instead of choices made by agents and by
nature, has never been achieved, except in an idealized non-relativistic
world in which there is no creation and annihilation of particles.\"

The key qualifiers are \'deterministic\' and \'deterministically
specified\'.

One of the most dedicated \"pro Bohmian model\" groups is the Munich
group of D. Duerr et.al. In their paper
http://arxiv.org/quant-ph/0208072 they conclude that determinism cannot
be maintained: the inclusion of particle creation and annihilation leads
to stochastic elements. I know of no published paper that claims to be
able to carry the Bohmian model deterministically over to our basic
quantum theory: quantum electrodynamics.

\[Hiley\] All of this, of course, is about providing an ontology based
interpretation without invoking consciousness and without invoking
references to \'our knowledge\'. However it still leaves open the
intriguing question of the relationship between mind and matter. There
are those who feel quantum theory has nothing to offer in discussions on
this subject. Here I whole heartedly agree with Henry Stapp. You will
not come to understand this relationship without the lessons coming from
quantum theory. Where we have differences, they involve a discussion of
what are the precise lessons we should carry over.

Basil.

If Basil agrees that consciousness involves quantum aspects then does he
believe that this consciousness must be an idle spectator having no role
in our lives. If Bohmian-type *determinism* fails then consciousness
could enter causally in much the way I have proposed, since particle
creation and annihilation is pervasive in the quantum electrodynamical
description of brain dynamics.

If one accepts, as the answer to the first anthropic question, that
there must be a practically infinite collection of universes with
differing laws, and that we are in one that supports the stability of
matter, DNA, and the other physical prerequisites for biology, there
then arises the deeper question of how the laws governing the creation
of this huge multitude of universes\-\--with their differing
laws\-\--came into being, and why was there even a *potentiality for
consciousness* as we know it to come into being when the physically
described conditions are just right?

The fact that there is even a potentiality for consciousness to arise
when the physical conditions are right means that the nature of reality
cannot be fundamentally the sort of reality conceived in classical
physics, consisting wholly of totally mindless objects and fields, with
no seed of, or hint of, or toe hold for, consciousness. And quantum
mechanics informs us that that even the purely physically described
aspects of nature are not adequately conceptualized in terms of the
qualities assigned to rocks by classical physics. In quantum theory the
purely physically described aspects are mere *potentialities* for real
events to occur. Objective potentiality is more like an idea than a
persisting physical or material substance, and it is treated in the
theory as an idea of what might happen.

Objective reality, according to conventional quantum mechanics, is
suffused with idea-like qualities, both at the level of physically
described \"objective potentialities\" and at the level of the
psychophysical happenings. The net effect of the process described by
the quantum dynamics is to re-create events similar to ones that had in
the past, under similar circumstances, created structures that preserved
and extended order. Heisenberg spoke of the \"central order\" and Pauli
spoke of an \"anima mundi\" whose existence seemed to them to lie beyond
the regularities explained by quantum theory. I think anyone conversant
with quantum theory (in the form created by the founders) will see that
it rest on idea-like underpinnings, even though certain macroscopic
\"solid\" structures, made out of these elementary constituents, can
exhibit the stability that is needed to preserve and extend order.

The direction of the advance from classical physics to quantum physics
supports the notions that idea-like qualities are primordial aspects of
a natural process that tends to create and extend order, and that the
idea-like aspects of the evolving universe enter into the recognition
and promotion of that order.