**Physicalism, Neurobiology, and Free Will**

**1. Introduction.**

The central problem in philosophy of mind is the mind-body problem: the
problem of reconciling our science-based understandings of the causal
structure of the physically described world, including our bodies and
brains, with the apparent capacity of our conscious thoughts and efforts
to cause our bodies to move in consciously intended ways.

The contention of the present work is that the difficulties that
philosophers of mind are encountering in coming to a satisfactory
resolution of this problem arise from a faulty understanding and
application of a relevant part of contemporary science, namely quantum
mechanics. Philosophy of mind is a vast field, so to make my task
manageable I shall limit my remarks to the opinions and arguments
presented in two recent books, John Searle's *Freedom and Neurobiology:
Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power^1^*, and Jaegwon
Kim's *Physicalism, or Something Near Enough^2^*.

**2. Searle's Approach.**

John Searle begins Section 1 of his book with the assertion: "There is
exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy...As a
preliminary succinct formulation we could put it in these terms: How do
we fit in? He explains that: "We now have a reasonable well-established
conception of the basic structure of the universe." "We understand that
the universe consists entirely of particles (or whatever entities the
ultimately true physics arrives at), and these exist in fields of force
and are typically organized into systems." He observes that: "On our
earth, carbon-based systems made of molecules that also contain a lot of
hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen have provided the substrate of human,
animal and plant evolution", and says that:: "These and other such facts
about the basic structure of the universe, I will call, for short, the
'basic facts' ." The most important sets of basic facts, for our present
purposes, are given by the atomic theory of matter and the evolutionary
theory of biology."

These statements identify the foundation and orientation of Searle's
approach: We human beings are biological systems made of atoms and
molecules, and our complete understanding of ourselves should therefore
emerge from an analysis of our understandings of our biological
structures, which rest in turn on the atomic theory of matter.

Searle notes that his approach rests also on an important difference
between what is possible in philosophy today and what was feasible in
the past. He notes that "For three centuries after Descartes, the
epistemological questions, especially the skeptical questions, formed
the center of philosophical interest. (p.26)" That quest can now be
ended because "We simply know too much. We have a prodigious amount of
knowledge that is known with objectivity, certainty, and universality.
... They are known with certainty, in the sense that the evidence is now
so great that it is irrational to doubt them."(p. 27)" Searle thus
escapes the search-for-certainty dead end by accepting the
above-mentioned "basic facts".

Searle observes that we have, however, in addition to the 'basic facts'
also a conception of ourselves as conscious, intentionalistic, rational,
...free will possessing agents," and he identifies the question to be
addressed by his book\--which is also the topic of this article\--as:
"How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful,
meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that
consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute
physical particles.(p.5)"

Two key problems facing this endeavor are "consciousness" and "free
will". Searle claims to have solved the *philosophical* problem of
consciousness by asserting that "Conscious states are entirely caused by
neuronal processes in the brain, and are realized in the brain." The
residual problems of consciousness are thereby relegated to
neurobiology: "How exactly does the brain cause conscious experiences,
and how are those experiences realized in the brain." (p.6)

**3. Free Will.**

The free-will problem is "How can there exist genuinely free actions in
a world where all events, at least at the macro level, apparently have
causally sufficient antecedent conditions? Every event at that level
appears to be determined by causes that preceded it. Why should acts
performed during apparent human consciousness of freedom be an
exception? It is true that there is an indeterminacy in nature at the
quantum level, but that indeterminacy is pure randomness and randomness
is not by itself sufficient to give free will." (p. 10-11)

Searle admits that for the problem of free will "we are nowhere remotely
near having a solution." (p.11)

Why is solving the problem of free will so important?

The useful practical purpose of philosophy is to arrive at a coherent
understanding of how we fit in, in order that we may conduct our lives
in accordance with principles not beset with contradictions. Searle
makes a convincing case (p.11) that we must, in order to function
rationally in this world, believe that we are sometimes free to choose
our actions. To deny this would create a self-contradiction. But without
resolving the problem of free will, philosophy loses its rational
coherence, and men will turn to other sources for the foundations of
their beliefs.

The importance of arriving at a solution of the free-will problem is
highlighted also by recent controlled studies that show that
experimental subjects conditioned by arguments that promote the thesis
that we have no free will, that free will is an illusion, that mind is
epiphenomenal, are more likely to cheat and lie than subjects
conditioned by arguments defending the thesis that the freedom that we
feel is bona fide. Hence, again, achieving a solution of the free-will
problem has important consequences in our lives.. This motivates our
taking a closer look at Searle's arguments and the difficulties that
they create for solving the free-will problem.

Searle, following his neurobiological approach, must explain how free
will can be converted to a problem in neurobiology. He considers two
hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: The neurobiological state of the brain is causally
sufficient to determine the behavior of the brain, hence the body. In
this case, the *feeling of freedom to choose* some of our action is an
illusion! Consciousness lacks causal efficacy. It is purely
epiphenomenal. Searle emphasizes that this idea\-\--that nature has
provided us with this fantastic feature, consciousness, that seems to
play an essential role in the successful conduct of our lives, but that
actually does nothing\-\--is "unattractive". He emphasizes the great
biological cost of producing the machinery needed to create
consciousness. The suggestion that the output of this costly biological
process has no physical effect is hard to square with evolutionary
theory.

Hypothesis 2: The neurobiological state of the brain is causally
*in*sufficient to determine the behavior of the brain, and this causal
gap allows our conscious choices to influence our conduct in the way
that they seem to do, namely on the basis of *choices based on*
*reasons*. He argues that "reasons" can fulfill the role of sufficient
conditions only by way of influencing our deliberating, choosing, and
physically efficacious conscious "selves".

The demand that neurobiological state of the brain is causally
insufficient to determine the behavior of the brain entails the failure
of one of the chief properties of classical physical theories; the
causal closure of the physically described aspects of nature. Searle
says: "It is tempting, indeed irresistible, to think that the
explanation of the conscious experience of free will must be a
manifestation of quantum indeterminism at the level of conscious,
rational decision making. Previously I never could see the point of
introducing quantum mechanics into the discussion of consciousness. But
here is at least a strict argument requiring the introduction of quantum
indeterminism.

Premise 1. All indeterminism in nature is quantum indeterminism.

Premise 2. Consciousness is a feature of nature the manifests
indeterminism.

Conclusion: Consciousness manifests quantum indeterminism.

....This \[conclusion\] is important for contemporary research. The
standard lines of research...make no appeal to quantum mechanics. If
Hypothesis 2 is true these cannot succeed, at least not for volitional
consciousness." (p.75)

He goes on: "If quantum indeterminism amounts to randomness then quantum
indeterminism by itself seems useless in explaining the problem of free
will because free actions are not random." The point here is that we
need an explanation not only of the *failure* of physical determinism,
but an explanation also of the filling of that causal gap by our "free"
choices based on *reasons*.

Summarizing, he says: "Once we sorted out the issues we found two
possibilities, Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2. Neither is very appealing.
If we had to bet, the odds would surely favor Hypothesis 1, because it
is simpler and fits with our overall view of biology. But it gives
results that are literally incredible." (One cannot actively believe
that one cannot make choices.) But "Hypothesis 2 is a mess, because it
gives us three mysteries for one. We thought free will was a mystery,
but consciousness and quantum mechanics were two separate and distinct
mysteries. Now we have the result that in order to solve the first we
have to solve the second and invoke one of the most mysterious aspects
of the third to solve the first two."

**4. The Three Mysteries.**

But who could think that these three "mysteries" were separate and
distinct?

With regard to the connection between free will and mind, William James
asserted, near the beginning of *The Principles of Psychology^3^*,

> "*The pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their
> attainment are thus the mark and criterion of the presence of
> mentality* in a phenomenon". (James, p.8)
>
> "*No actions but such as are done for an end, and show a choice of
> means, can be called indubitable expressions of Mind*". (James, p.10)

Thus, for James, mind is fundamentally tied to *the choice of a means to
an end.* On the other hand, the solution that Searle offered long ago to
the mind-brain problem did not touch on free will. It said simply:
"Conscious states are entirely caused by neuronal processes in the
brain, and are realized in the brain." He notes, as mentioned above,
that this *philosophical* solution relegates to neurobiology the
residual questions: "How exactly does the brain cause conscious
experiences?" "How are those experiences realized in the brain." And he
admits that contemporary mainstream neurobiology is nowhere near solving
these residual questions. Indeed, insofar as neurobiology bases itself
purely on classical mechanics, it lacks any logical or theoretical basis
to link the empirically observed correlations between conscious
experiences and brain behavior to any notion of how this classically
conceived physically described brain could *cause to occur events having
the knowingness and feelingness that characterize our conscious
experiences*. There is nothing in the classical conception of physically
described matter that could *cause* (even) a complex classically
conceived high-level systems property to embellish itself, or endow
itself, with *an experience of knowing or feeling*. Such a causal
capacity is not in the inventory of properties assigned to physically
described systems by classical physics. The physically described aspects
of systems, as conceived of in classical physics\-\--*unlike the
physically described aspects of systems as conceived of in quantum
mechanics*\-\--have been stripped of any necessary causal connection to
knowings or feelings. Thus, insofar as the neurobiology that Searle
contemplates is based fundamentally on the classical physics of the
seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, it is not true that the 'basic
facts' entail a neurobiological solution of the mind-body problem of the
kind that Searle asserts. There is a logical gap! A true 'basic fact' is
that this classical conception of the physical is inadequate to explain
the atomic properties upon which actual neurobiological structures are
based. Because Searle has not incorporated the logical and causal
structure of quantum mechanics into his conception of neurobiology, his
claim to have solved even the purely philosophical part of the mind-body
problem is not rationally justified: there is no rational reason to
believe that a solution along classical lines is possible in a
fundamentally non-classical universe, particularly since the orthodox
quantum successor to classical physics involves the necessary
introduction into the basic dynamics of actions by agents, actions that
are not specified by the micro-physical laws, but that apparently arise
from "free choices of means to attain intended ends."

This flaw is implicit in his open-ended introductory proviso, i.e. "(or
whatever entities the ultimately true physics arrives at)." His
arguments tacitly assume that these entities will be like "quarks" or
other "mindless" entities, not like the mindful elements of our streams
of consciousness. Yet Searle's 'basic facts' include atomic theory,
which was radically transformed during the twentieth century. Searle
uses the new theory, quantum theory, in his analysis of free will.
However, the opening words of Bohr's 1934 book *Atomic Theory and the
Description of Nature^4^* are: "The task of science is both to extend
the range of our experience and reduce it to order." This idea is
restated many times in many ways, for example as: "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. (p.18)" Werner Heisenberg's famous expression
of this point was:

> "The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles
> has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality
> concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that
> represents no longer the behavior of the particles but rather our
> knowledge of this behavior" (Heisenberg^5^ , p.100)

These statements emphasize that the basic ontological realities of
quantum theory are not physical particles, but rather increments in
knowledge. They are conscious experiences occurring in streams of
conscious experience. The "physical description" of earlier (classical)
physical theories is *transformed* in quantum mechanics to a
mathematical structure that represents not material particles but rather
"potentia" (objective tendencies) for new knowledge-increasing events to
occur in our streams of consciousness. Each such event is accompanied by
a change in the mathematically described "potentia" for future events.
This change renders the potentialities for future experiences consistent
with the increased knowledge. The theory is therefore useful and
testable because it directly predicts *relationships between our
experiences\-\--between our conscious acts of knowing.*

Searle introduces, in connection with his analysis of free will, the
indeterminacy aspect of quantum mechanics but not the other profoundly
relevant features just mentioned. On page 11 he says "It is true that
there is an indeterminacy in nature at the quantum level, but that
indeterminacy is pure randomness and randomness is not by itself
sufficient to give free will."

While it is absolutely true that randomness is different from, and
insufficient for, free will, which involves reason-based choices of
means to attain intended ends, it is *absolutely untrue* that quantum
indeterminism is pure randomness. Bohr says:

> To my mind there is no alternative than to admit that, in this field
> of experience, we are dealing with individual phenomena and that our
> possibilities of handling the measuring instruments allow us only to
> make a choice between the different complementary types of phenomena
> that we want to study. (Bohr^6^, p.51)
>
> The freedom of experimentation, ... is fully retained and corresponds
> to the free choice of experimental arrangement for which the
> mathematical structure of the quantum mechanical formalism offers the
> appropriate latitude^6^. (Bohr^6^, p. 71)

This "appropriate latitude" "offered by the mathematical structure of
the quantum mechanical formalism" is a key aspect of the indeterminism
of quantum mechanics, but it is quite different from another aspect
which is the "randomness". The quantum mechanical approach rests on a
postulated connection between two aspects of the scientific description
of phenomena. One aspect is described in terms of the mathematical
structure of the quantum mechanical formalism. The other aspect is
described in terms of

appearances:

> ...we must recognize above all that, even when the phenomena transcend
> the scope of classical physics, the account of the experimental
> arrangements must be given in plain language, suitably supplemented by
> technical physical terminology. This is a simple logical demand, since
> the very word "experiment" refers to a situation where we can tell
> others what we have done and what we have learned. (Bohr^6^, p.72)

Von Neumann^7^ formulated quantum mechanics in a mathematically and
logically rigorous way. He formalized the *physically described
counterpart* the "free" choice of experimental arrangement\-\--described
in terms of appearances\-\--as a "process 1" action. A key feature of
this choice, and hence of its process 1 physical counterpart, is that it
is "free" in the specific sense that the quantum laws and rules place no
conditions, *statistical or otherwise*, upon it! This choice is free of
any known theoretical constraint! It is indeterminate. The randomness
comes in, logically, only *after* this process 1 physical action. The
process 1 action specifies some particular *partition* of the prior
physical state into a countable set of distinct (physically different)
possibilities. Orthodox quantum theory then asserts that some single one
of the specified-by-process-1 distinct possibilities will occur,
randomly. The "randomness" condition asserts that the occurrences will
be in accord with statistical weights that are specified by the quantum
mechanical formalism.

Von Neumann's work allows our bodies and brains to be described in term
of the quantum mechanical formalism. This makes the two descriptions
occurring in quantum mechanics identifiable with the two descriptions
occurring in the mind-body problem.

What these features of quantum mechanics imply is that Searle's basic
idea that the "basic facts" entail "a universe that consists entirely of
mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles" is
grossly at odds with a universe containing ourselves in the way
specified by quantum mechanics. The reduction to "brute physical
particles" is a feature that emerges only in the classical
approximation.

Searle concludes (p.71) that "It seems to me that there are three
conditions, in ascending order of difficulty, and an account of brain
function in accord with Hypothesis 2 would have to explain how the brain
meets these conditions."

1.  Consciousness, as caused by neuronal processes and realized in
    neuronal systems, functions causally in moving the body.

2.  The brain causes and sustains the existence of a conscious self that
    is able to make rational decisions and carry them out in actions.

3.  The brain is such that the conscious self is able to make and carry
    out decisions in the gap, where neither decision nor action is
    determined in advance by causally sufficient conditions, yet both
    are rationally explained by the reasons the agent is acting on.

As regards condition 1, he claims that he has already explained how this
is possible, by analogy with the Roger Sperry's example of how the
"solidity' (a high-level property) allows the motion of the whole wheel
to cause its molecules to move in a coordinated way, controlled from
top-down by high-level collective properties. But he had already noted
that: "any analogy goes only so far. The analogy solidity is to
molecular behavior as consciousness is to neuronal behavior" fails
because in that argument "we take the wheel to be entirely
deterministic" and also "ontologically reducible to the behavior of the
micro-elements", whereas neither of these conditions carry over to the
Hypothesis 2 case. Hence the basis of his earlier claim to have solved
the consciousness (mind-body) problem disintegrates in the Hypothesis 2
case.

As regards condition 2, the quantum ontological foundation is no longer
a classically conceived brain. The quantum mechanically conceived brain
specifies potentialities/probabilities for certain psycho-physical
events to occur *under the condition that certain associated
reason-based psychologically described choices are made*. The
psychophysical events are the basic entities. The psychological
description and the physical description specify two aspects (sides) of
a single event-like entity. The conscious self is a stream of conscious
events that are the psychologically described aspects of a sequence of
psychophysical events whose physical aspects are a sequence of physical
events in a single brain.. Mental process is to be understood in terms
of this richer ontological base, rather than the impoverished purely
physical part that survives contraction to the classical approximation.

The way that condition 3 is satisfied is an essentially technical matter
involving some of the details of the quantum mathematical formalism. The
essential structure is described in http://arXiv/abs/0803:1625 and 1633.
These references contain a modest amount of simple mathematics.

I turn next to a discussion of Kim's book.

**5. Physicalism.**

The widely held philosophical position called "physicalism" has been
described and defended in a recent book by Jaegwon Kim^2^. The
physicalist position claims that the world is basically purely physical.
However, "physical" is interpreted in a way predicated, in effect, upon
certain properties of classical physics that are contradicted by the
precepts of orthodox quantum physics. Kim's arguments reveal two horns
of a dilemma that the physicalist is forced to face as a consequence of
accepting this classical notion of "physical". Kim admits that neither
of the two options, "epiphenomenalism" or "reduction", is very
palatable, but he finds a compromise that he deems acceptable.

The central aim of the present article is to show that the physicalist's
dilemma dissolves when one shifts from the classical notion of the
physical to its quantum mechanical successor. Understanding this shift
involves distinguishing the classical notion of the mind-brain
connection from its quantum extension.

To make clear the essential features of the quantum mechanical
conception of the mind-brain connection, I shall describe here a model
that is a specific realization of a theory I have described in more
general terms before^8-11^. Being specific reduces generality, but
having a concrete model can be helpful in revealing the general lay of
the land. Also, the specific features added here resolve in a natural
way the puzzle of how our descriptions of our observations can be
couched in the language of classical physics when our brains are
operating, fundamentally, in accordance with the principles of quantum
theory. The specific model also shows how the thoroughly quantum
mechanical (quantum Zeno) effect, which underlies the power of a
person's conscious thoughts to influence in useful ways the physically
described processes occurring in that person's brain, is not appreciably
disrupted either by "environmental decoherence" effects or by thermal
effects arising from the "hotness" of the brain.

In order to communicate to the broad spectrum of scientists and
philosophers interested in the connection between mind and brain, I will
review in the following section the historical and conceptual background
of the needed quantum mechanical ideas, and then describe an approach to
the mind-body problem that is based fundamentally on quantum theory, but
that adds several specific new ideas about the form of the mind-brain
connection.

**6. Quantum Mechanics and Physicalism.**

Rather than just plunging ahead and using the concepts and equations of
quantum mechanics, and thereby making this work unintelligible to many
people that I want to reach, I am going to provide first an historical
and conceptual review of the extremely profound changes in the
philosophical and technical foundations that were wrought by the
transition from classical physics to quantum physics. One key technical
change was the shift from the *numbers* used in classical mechanics to
describe properties of physical systems to the associated *operators* or
*matrices* used to describe related actions. This technical shift
emerged, unsought, from a seismic conceptual shift. Following the path
blazed by Einstein's success in creating special relativity, Heisenberg
changed course. Faced with a quarter century of failures to construct a
successful atomic theory based upon the notion of some presumed-to-exist
space-time structure of the atom, Heisenberg attempted to build a theory
based upon our observations and measurements, rather than upon
conjectured microscopic space-time structures that could be *postulated*
to exist, but that were never directly observed or measured. This shift
in orientation led to grave issues concerning exactly what constituted
an "observation" or "measurement". Those issues were resolved by
shifting from an ontological perspective\-\--which tries to describe
what really exists objectively "out there"\-\-- to a practical or
pragmatic perspective, which regards a physical theory as a useful
collective conceptual human endeavor that aims to provide us with
reliable expectations about our future experiences, for each of the
alternative possible courses of action between which we are (seemingly)
free to choose. As a collective endeavor, and in that sense as an
objective theory, quantum mechanics is built on *descriptions* that
allow us to communicate to others what we have done and what we have
learned. Heisenberg strongly emphasized that this change in perspective
converts the quantum mechanics, in a very real sense, into a theory
about "our knowledge": the relationships between experiential elements
in our streams of consciousness become the core realities of a
conceptual construction that aims to allow us to form, on the basis of
what we already know, useful expectations about our future experiences,
under the various alternative possible conditions between which we seem
able to freely choose.

The paradoxical aspect of claiming the "physical state of a system" to
be a representation of "our knowledge" is starkly exhibited by
"Schroedinger's cat", whose quantum state is, according to this
pragmatic approach, not determined until someone looks. Bohr escapes
this dilemma by saying that the current quantum principles are
insufficient to cover biological matter, but that approach leaves
quantum mechanics fundamentally incomplete, and, in particular,
inapplicable to the physical processes occurring in our brains.

In an effort to do better, von Neumann^7^ showed how to preserve the
rules and precepts of quantum mechanics all the way up to the interface
with "experience", thereby preserving the general character of quantum
mechanics as a theory that aims to provide reliable expectations about
future experiences on the basis of present knowledge. Von Neumann's work
brings into sharp focus the central problem of interest here, which is
the connection between the properties specified in the quantum
mechanical description of a person's brain and the experiential
realities that populate that person's stream of consciousness. Bohr was
undoubtedly right in saying that the orthodox precepts would be
insufficient to cover this case. Additional ideas are needed, and the
purpose of this article is to provide them.

The switch from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics preserves the
idea that a physical system has a physically describable state. But the
character of that state is changed drastically. Previously the physical
state was conceived to have a well defined meaning independently of any
"observation". Now the physically described state has essentially the
character of a "potentia" (an "objective tendency") for the occurrence
of each one of a continuum of alternative possible "events". Each of
these alternative possible events has both an experientially described
aspect and also a physically described aspect: each possible "event" is
a psycho-physical happening. The experientially described aspect of an
event is an element in a person's stream of consciousness, and the
physically described aspect is a *reduction* of the set of objective
tendencies represented by the prior state of that person's body-brain to
the *part* of that prior state that is compatible with the increased
knowledge supplied by the new element in that person's stream of
consciousness. Thus the changing psychologically described state of that
person's knowledge is correlated to the changing physically described
state of the person's body-brain, and the changing physically described
state entails, via the fundamental quantum probability formula, a
changing set of weighted possibilities for future psycho-physical
events.

The practical usefulness of quantum theory flows from this lawful
connection between a person's increasing knowledge and the changing
physical state of his body-brain. The latter is linked to the
surrounding physical world by the dynamical laws of quantum physics.
This linkage allows a person to "observe" the world about him by means
of the lawful relationship between the events in his stream of conscious
experiences and the changing state of his body-brain.

It is worth noting that the physically described aspect of the theory
has lost its character of being a "substance", both in the philosophical
sense that it is no longer *self-sufficient,* being intrinsically and
dynamically linked to the mental, and also in the colloquial sense of no
longer being *material*. It is *stripped of materiality* by its
character of being merely a potentiality or possibility for a future
event. This shift in its basic character renders the physical aspect
somewhat idea-like, even though it is conceived to represent objectively
real tendencies.

The key "utility" property of the theory\-\--namely the property of
being useful\-\--makes no sense, of course, unless we have, in some
sense, some freedom to choose. An examination of the structure of
quantum mechanics reveals that the theory has both a logical place for,
and a logical need for, choices that are made in practice by the human
actor/observers, but that are *not determined by the quantum physical
state of the entire world, or by any part of it*. Bohr calls this choice
"the free choice of experimental arrangement for which the quantum
mechanical formalism offers the appropriate latitude." (Bohr^6^, p.73).
This "free" choice plays a fundamental role in von Neumann's rigorous
formulation of quantum mechanics, and he gives the physical aspect of
this probing action the name "process 1" (von Neumann, p. 351, 418,
421). This process 1 action is not determined, even statistically, by
the physically described aspects of the theory.

The fact that this choice made by the human observer/agent is not
determined by the physical state of the universe means that *the
principle of the causal closure of the physical domain is not maintained
in contemporary basic physical theory.* It means also that Kim's
formulation of *mind-body supervenience is not entailed by contemporary
physical theory*. That formulation asserts that "what happens in our
mental life is wholly dependent on, and determined by, what happens with
our bodily processes ." (p. 14) Kim indicates that supervenience is a
common element of all *physicalist theories.* But since supervenience is
not required by basic (i.e., quantum) physics, the easy way out of the
difficulties that have been plaguing physicalists for half a century,
and that continue to do so, is simply to recognize that the precepts of
classical physics, which are the scientific source of the notions of the
causal closure of the physical, and of supervenience, do not hold in
real brains, whose activities are influenced heavily by quantum
processes that require (process 1) inputs that are not specified by the
(known) physical laws (even statistically).

Before turning to the details of the quantum mechanical treatment of the
relationship between mind and brain I shall make a few comments on Kim's
attempted resolution of the difficulties confronting the classical
physicalist approach. The essential problem is the mind-body problem.
Kim divides this problem into two parts, the problem of mental causation
and the problem of consciousness. The problem of mental causation is:
"How can the mind exert its causal powers in a world that is
fundamentally physical?" (Kim, p.7) The problem of consciousness is:
"How can there be such a thing as consciousness in a physical world, a
world consisting ultimately of nothing but bits of matter distributed
over space-time in accordance with the laws of physics." (Kim, p. 7)

From a modern physics perspective the way to resolve these problems is
immediately obvious: Simply recognize that the assumption that the laws
of physics pertain to "bits of matter distributed over space-time in
accordance with the laws of physics" is false. Indeed, that idea has,
for most of the twentieth century, been asserted by orthodox physicists
to be false, along with the assumption that the world is physical in the
classical sense. Quantum mechanics builds upon the obvious real
existence of our streams of conscious experiences, and provides also, as
we shall see, a natural explanation of their causal power to influence
physical properties. Thus the difficulties that have beset physicalists
for decades, and have led to incessant controversies and reformulations,
stem, according to the perspective achieved by twentieth century
physics, directly from the fact that the physicalist assumptions not
only do not follow from basic precepts of physics, but instead, directly
contradict them. The premises of classical physicalists have been
incredibly out of step with the physics of their day.

Kim tries in his chapter 3 to squash the notion that the difficulties
with physicalism can be avoided by accepting some form of dualism. But
the dualism that he considers is a Cartesian dualism populated on the
mind side with mysterious disconnected "souls". However, the
experientially described realities that occur in quantum theory are the
core realities of science. They are the ideas that we are able
communicate to others pertaining to what we have done and what we have
learned. These descriptions are essentially descriptions of (parts of)
the accessible contents of the streams of consciousness of real living
observer-agents. In orthodox quantum mechanics these descriptions are
descriptions of mental idea-like aspects of real actual events each of
which has also a physically described aspect that expresses in the realm
of potentialities for future psycho-physical events the conditions
entailed by the increment in knowledge represented by mental aspect.
Criticizing dualism in the soul-based form advanced by Descartes during
the seventeenth century instead of the dualism inherent in the
dual-aspect form employed in contemporary science is an indication that
philosophers of mind have isolated themselves in a hermetically sealed
world, created by considering only what other philosophers of mind have
said, or are saying, with no opening to the breezes that bring word of
the highly pertinent revolutionary change that had occurred in basic
science during the 1920s.

Kim's main argument leads to the conclusion that a physicalist must, for
each conscious experience, choose between two options: either that
experience is causally powerless, or it must be *defined to be* the
causally efficacious brain activity that possesses its causal power. Kim
himself admits that neither option is very palatable. The idea that our
beliefs, desires, and perceptions, including our pains, have no effects
upon our actions is regarded by Kim as unacceptable. Thus he opts for
what he claims to be the only alternative available to the rational
physicalist, namely that each such efficacious experience must be
(defined to be) a causally efficacious brain activity that causes its
effects: "If anything is to exercise causal power in the physical domain
it must be an element in the physical domain or be reducible to it."
(Kim, p, 170-171) "Only physically reducible mental properties can be
causally efficacious." (Kim, p. 174)

That a conscious experience can be defined to be a physical activity,
described in the mathematical language of physics, is certainly a hard
pill to swallow. Fortunately, it is not true in quantum theory, where
the physically described state represents merely an "objective tendency'
for a psych-physical event to occur. However, the mind-brain identity
that Kim describes does have a less-problematic *analog* in quantum
theory. Each actual event has two sides: an experience; and a reduction
of the prior state of the body-brain to one that incorporates into the
physically described world a causal aspect conceptually represented in
the intentional aspect of the experience. This is the essential core of
the orthodox von Neumann/Heisenberg quantum position. It will be
elaborated upon in section 7 below.

Kim's solution has another apparent defect: different aspects of a
person's apparently highly integrated stream of consciousness have
fundamentally different statuses, in regard to their connections to that
person's brain. Beliefs, desires and percepts are defined to be
(causally efficacious) brain activities, whereas colors and other
"qualia" are not brain activities and are not causally efficacious. But
how can your desire for a beautiful painting be simply a brain activity,
whereas the particular colors that combine to excite this desire are
epiphenomenal qualities having no effects on your brain?

These problems come to a head in the effort to deal with "dualism".
Kim's chapter 3 is supposed to rule out dualism. But the dualism that he
mainly addresses is a stark Cartesian (substance) dualism involving
"souls" existing "outside physical space". These are a far cry from the
mental aspects of psychophysical events, which have physical aspects
that have definite locations in physical space. Kim says "My target will
be the interactionist dualism of Descartes." In footnote 3 on page 71 he
suggests that such "dual-aspect" theories are "only variants property
dualism." He says later that "What has become increasingly evident over
the past thirty years is that mental causation poses insuperable
difficulties for all forms of mind-body dualism\-\--for property dualism
no less than substance dualism. ...but I believe that if we have learned
anything from the three decades of debate, it is that unless we bring
the supposed mental causes fully into the physical world there is no
hope of vindicating their status as causes, and that the reality of
mental causation requires reduction of mentality to physical processes,
or of minds to brains." (p.156). He gives on the preceding page a
supposed way of "generating the problem of mental causation for property
dualism" without assuming "the causal closure of the physical". But his
argument includes an assumption "Given that your finger twitching, a
physical event, has a full physical cause." This is indeed less than
full causal closure of the physical, but in the quantum mechanical
explanation of the way that mind causes bodily action the twitching does
not have "a fully physical cause." There needs to be a process 1 action
mediating the connection between the psychologically described cause, a
pain in this case, and any physical action caused by the pain, and the
process 1 action has no

known or necessary fully physical cause. The quantum account is
described in sections 7 and 8.

Searle also has a problem with dualism. He says: "I am rejecting ...any
form of dualism. Dualism is usually defined as the view that we live in
two distinct realms, ...the mental and the physical. The problem with
dualism is that it amounts to giving up on the central enterprise of
philosophy. ...It might turn out, for example, that after our bodies are
destroyed, our souls or conscious states will float about in a
disembodied fashion. But it would be giving up on the philosophical (not
to mention scientific) enterprise of trying to explain what we know to
be real phenomena if we say that they defy explanation because they
inhabit a separate realm." (p. 19).

But is dualism (in any form) usually the view that we live in two
distinct realms?

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Ted Honderich, ed.) defines:

Dualism: The theory that mind and matter are two distinct things. (p.
206)

The Blackwell "A Companion to Philosophy of Mind" says:

...the dualist answer is that each person's mind is at least not
identical with his body, so these are two different things. (p. 256)

Quantum mechanics allows the physical and mental aspects of a
psychophysical events to be non-identical, while not saying that real
phenomena defy explanation because they inhabit different realms. Rather
it explains how mental intentions can, by virtue of the quantum
mechanical laws, have physically described effects.

Philosophers of mind seem to reaching problematic conclusions. These
difficulties appear to be arising from the acceptance of a
known-to-be-false understanding of the basic nature of the world, and of
our causal role within it.

In the following sections I shall explain how these difficulties are
resolved by accepting the essentially orthodox quantum mechanical view
of things.

7\. **Quantum Mechanics: The Rules of the Game.**

7.1 The basic formula.

Quantum mechanics is a superstructure erected upon a basic formula. This
formula specifies the probability that a probing action that is
describable in everyday language, refined by the concepts of classical
physical theory, will produce a *pre-specified* possible experienced
outcome that is described in the same kind of terms. First a *preparing*
action must be performed. Its outcome is represented by a (quantum)
state of the prepared system. Then a probing action is chosen and
performed. The elementary probing actions are actions that either
produce a pre-specified outcome 'Yes', or that fail to produce that
pre-specified outcome.

To achieve generality I shall adopt the density matrix formulation
described by von Neumann. In this formulation the physical state of a
system is represented by a matrix that is called the density matrix. It
is traditionally represented by the symbol *ρ*. A measurement or
observation on such a system is effected by means of a probing action,
which is represented by a matrix, traditionally designated by the symbol
*P*, or by a *P* with a subscript, that satisfies *PP=P*. Such a
matrix/operator is called a *projection operator*. The quantum game is
like "twenty questions": the observer-agent "freely poses" a question
with an observable answer 'Yes' or 'No', This question, and the probing
action corresponding to it, are represented in the formalism by some
projection operator *P*. Nature then returns an answer 'Yes' or 'No'.
The probability that the answer is 'Yes' is given by the basic
probability equation of quantum mechanics:

*\<P\> = Trace Pρ/Trace ρ.*

This basic probability formula and its workings constitute the
foundation of the quantum mechanical conception of the connection
between the aspects of our scientific understanding of nature described
in the language that we use to describe the pertinent perceptual and
felt contents of our streams of conscious experiences and the aspects
described in the mathematical language of physics. \[For a detailed
explanation of the mathematical meaning and workings of the above
probability formula see

http://arXiv.org/abs/0803.1625\]

7.2 Classical Description.

"...we must recognize above all that, even when phenomena transcend the
scope of classical physical theories, the account of the experimental
arrangement and the recording of observations must be given in plain
language, suitably supplemented by technical physical terminology. This
is a clear logical demand, since the very word "experiment" refers to a
situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have
learned." (Bohr^6^, p. 72)

"...it is imperative to realize that in every account of physical
experience one must describe both experimental conditions and
observations by the same means of communication as the one used in
classical physics." (Bohr^6^, p. 88)

This demand that we *must use* the known-to-be-fundamentally-false
concepts of classical physical theories as a fundamental part of quantum
mechanics has often been cited as the logical incongruity that lies at
the root of the difficulties in arriving at a rationally coherent
understanding of quantum mechanics: of an understanding that goes beyond
merely understanding how to use it in practice. So I focus next on the
problem of reconciling the quantum and classical concepts, within the
context of a theory of the mind-brain connection.

7.3 Quasi-Classical States of the Electromagnetic Field

There is one part of quantum theory in which a particularly tight and
beautiful connection is maintained between classical mechanics and
quantum mechanics. This is the simple harmonic operator (SHO). With a
proper choice of units the energy (or Hamiltonian) of the system has the
simple quadratic form E = H= ½ (p^2^ + q ^2^), where q and p are the
coordinate and momentum *variables* in the classical case, and are the
corresponding *operators* in the quantum case. In the classical case the
trajectory of the "particle" is a circle in q-p space of radius r =
(2E)^1/2^. The angular velocity is constant and independent of E, and in
these special units is ω = 1: one radian per unit of time. The
lowest-energy classical state is represented by a point at rest at the
"origin" q = p = 0.

The lowest-energy quantum state is the state\-\--i.e., projection
operator P\-\--corresponding to a Gaussian wave function that in
coordinate space is

ψ(q) = C exp(─ (½)q^2^) and in momentum space is

ψ(p) = C exp(─ (½ )p^2^), where C is 2^1/4^. If this ground state is
shifted in q-p space by a displacement (Q, P) one obtains a
state\-\--i.e., a projection operator P\-\--labeled by \[Q,P\], which
has the following important property: if one allows this quantum state
to evolve in accordance with the quantum mechanical equations of motion
then it will evolve into the set of states labeled by \[Q(t), P(t)\],
where the (center) point (Q(t), P(t)) moves on a circular trajectory
that is identical to the one followed by the classical point particle.

If one puts a macroscopic amount of energy E into this quantum state
then it becomes "essentially the same as" the corresponding classical
state. Thus if the energy E in this one degree of freedom is the energy
per degree of freedom at body temperature then the quantum state,
instead of being confined to an *exact* *point* (Q(t), P(t)) lying on a
circle of (huge) radius r = 10^15^ in q-p space, will be effectively
confined, due to the Gaussian fall-off of the wave functions, to a disc
of unit radius centered at that point (Q(t), P(t)). Given two such
states, \[Q,P\], and \[Q',P'\], their overlap, defined by the Trace of
the product of these two projection operators, is exp(─ (½ )d^2^), where
d is the distance between their center points. On this 10^15^ scale the
unit size of the quantum state becomes effectively zero. And if the
energy of this classical SHO state is large on the thermal scale then
its motion, as defined by the time evolution of the projection operator
\[Q(t), P(t)\] = P~\[P(t),Q(t)\]~, will be virtually independent of the
effects of both environmental decoherence, which arises from subtle
quantum-phase effects, and thermal noise, for reasons essentially the
same as the reasons for the negligibility these effects on the
classically describable motion of the pendulum on a grandfather clock.

Notice that the quantum state \[Q, P\] is completely specified by the
corresponding classical state (Q, P): the quantum mechanical spreading
around this point is not only very tiny on the classical scale; it is
also completely fixed: the width of the Gaussian wave packet associated
with our

Hamiltonian is fixed, and independent of both the energy and phase of
the SHO.

We are interested here in brain dynamics. Everyone admits that at the
most basic dynamical level the brain must be treated as a quantum
system: the classical laws fail at the atomic level. This dynamics rests
upon myriads of microscopic processes, including flows of ions into
nerve terminals. These atomic-scale processes must in principle be
treated quantum mechanically. But the effect of accepting the quantum
description at the microscopic level is to inject quantum
uncertainties/indeterminacies at this level. Yet introducing even small
uncertainties/indeterminacies at microscopic levels into these nonlinear
systems possessing lots of releasable stored chemical energy has a
strong tendency\-\--the butterfly effect\-\--to produce very large
macroscopic effects later on. Massive parallel processing at various
stages may have a tendency to reduce these indeterminacies, but it is
pure wishful thinking to believe that these indeterminacies can be
completely eliminated in all cases, thereby producing brains that are
completely deterministic at the macroscopic level. *Some* of the
microscopic quantum indeterminacy *must* at least occasionally make its
way up to the macroscopic level.

According to the precepts of orthodox quantum mechanics, these
macroscopic quantum uncertainties are resolved by means of process 1
interventions, *whose forms are not specified by the quantum state of
the universe, or any part thereof*. What happens in actual practice is
determined by conscious choices "for which the quantum mechanical
formalism offers the appropriate latitude". No way has yet been
discovered by quantum theorists to circumvent this need for some sort of
intervention that is not determined by the orthodox physical laws of
quantum physics. In particular, environmental decoherence effects
certainly do not, by themselves, resolve this problem of reconciling the
quantum indeterminacy, which irrepressibly bubbles up from the
microscopic levels of brain dynamics, with the essentially classical
character of our descriptions of our experiences of "what we have done
and what we have learned".

The huge importance of the existence and properties of the
quasi-classical quantum states of SHOs is this: If the projection
operators P associated with our experiences are projection operators of
the kind that instantiate these quasi-classical states then we can
rationally reconcile the demand that the dynamics of our brains be
fundamentally quantum mechanical with the demand that our descriptions
of our experiences of "what we have done and what we have learned" be
essentially classical. This arrangement would be a natural upshot of the
fact that our experiences correspond to the actualization of strictly
quantum states that are both specified by classical states, and that
also closely mimic the properties of their classical counterparts,
*apart from the fact that they represent only potentialities*, and hence
will be subject, just like Schroedinger' macroscopic cat, to the actions
of the projection operators associated with our probing actions. This
quantum aspect entails that, by virtue of the quantum Zeno effect, which
follows from the basic quantum formula that connects our conceptually
described observations to physically described quantum jumps, we can
understand *dynamically* how our conscious choices can affect our
subsequent thoughts and actions: we can rationally explain, by using the
basic principles of orthodox contemporary physics, the causal efficacy
of our conscious thoughts in the physical world, and thereby dissolve
the physicalists' dilemma.

I shall now describe in more detail how this works.

**8. The Mind-Brain Connection.**

The general features of this quantum approach to the mind-brain problem
have been described in several prior publications^2-5,8-11^ . In this
section I will present a specific model based on the general ideas
described in those publications.

Mounting empirical evidence^12,13^ suggests that our conscious
experiences are connected to brain states in which measurable components
of the electromagnetic field located in spatially well separated parts
of the brain are oscillating with the same frequency, and in phase
synchronization. The model being proposed here assumes, accordingly,
that the brain correlate of each conscious experience is an EM
(electromagnetic) excitation of this kind. More specifically, each
process 1 probing action is represented quantum mechanically in terms of
a projection operator that is the quasi-classical counterpart of such an
oscillating component of a classical EM field.

The central idea of this quantum approach to the mind-brain problem is
that each process 1 intervention is the physical aspect of a
psycho-physical event whose psychologically described aspect is the
conscious experience of intending to do, or choosing to do, some
physical or mental action. The physical aspect of the 'Yes' answer to
this probing event is the actualization, by means of a quantum reduction
event, of a pattern of brain activity called a "template for action". A
*template for action* for some action X is a pattern of physical (brain)
activity which if held in place for a sufficiently long time will tend
to cause the action X to occur. The psycho-physical linkage between the
conscious intent and the linked template for action is supposed to be
established by trial and error learning.

A prerequisite for trial and error learning of this kind is that mental
effort be causally efficacious in the physically described world. Only
if conscious choices and efforts have consequences in the physically
described world can an appropriate correlation connecting the two be
mechanically established by trial and error learning. With no such
connection the conscious intention could become completely opposed to
the correlated physical action, with no way to activate a corrective
physical measure.

The feature of quantum mechanics that allows a person's conscious
choices to influence that person's physically described brain process in
the needed way is the so-called "Quantum Zeno Effect". This quantum
effect entails that if a sequence of very similar process 1 probing
actions occur in sufficiently rapid succession then the affected
component of the physical state will be forced, with high probability,
to be, at the particular sequence of times t~i~ at which the probing
actions are made, exactly the sequence of states specified by the
sequence of projection operators P~h~(t~i~) that specify the 'Yes'
outcomes of the sequence of process 1 actions. That is, the affected
component of the brain state\-\--for example some template for
action\-\--will be forced, with high probability, *to evolve in lock
step with* *a sequence of 'Yes' outcomes of a sequence of "freely
chosen" process 1 actions, where "freely chosen" means that* *these
process 1 actions are not determined, via any known law, by the
physically described state of the universe!* This coercion of a
physically described aspect of a brain process to evolve in lock step
with the 'Yes' answers to a sequence of process 1 probing actions that
are free of any known physically described coercion, but that seem to us
to be freely chosen by our mental processes, is what will presently be
demonstrated. It allows physically un-coerced conscious choices to
affect a physically described process that will, by virtue of the basic
probability formula, have experiential consequences.

The repetition rate (attention density!) in the sequence of process 1
actions is assumed to be controlled by conscious effort. In particular,
in the model being described here, where the projection operators
P(*t*~i~) are projection operators \[Q(*t*~i~), P(*t*~i~)\] that are
quasi-classical states of SHOs, the size of the intervals (*t*~i+1~ ─
*t*~i~) \-\-- being a feature of the sequence of "freely chosen" process
1 probing action \-\-- is taken to be under the immediate control of the
psychological aspect of the probing action.

I describe the quantum properties of the EM field in the formulation of
relativistic quantum field theory developed by Tomonaga^14^ and
Schwinger^15^ , which generalizes the idea of the Schroedinger equation
to the case of the electromagnetic field. One can imagine space to be
cut up into very tiny regions, in each of which the values of the six
numbers that define the electric and magnetic fields in that region are
defined. In case the field in that region is executing simple harmonic
oscillations we can imagine that each of the six values is moving in a
potential well that produces the motion of a SHO. If the process 1
action is specified by a 'Yes' state that is a coordinated synchronous
oscillation of the EM field in many regions, {R~1~ , R~2~ , R~3~ , ...}
then this state, if represented quantum mechanically, consists of some
quasi-classical state \[Q~1~, P~1~ \] in R~1~ , *and* some
quasi-classical state \[Q~2,~ P~2~\] in R~2~, *and* some quasi-classical
\[Q~3\ ,~ P~3~ \] in R~3~ , etc.. The state P of this combination is the
*product* of these \[Q~i~ , P~i~\]s, each of which acts in its own SHO
space, and acts like the unit operator (i.e., unity or 'one') in all the
other spaces. This product of P~n~ s, all evaluated at time t~i,~ is the
P~h~(*t*~i~ ) that is the brain aspect of the 'Yes' answer to the
process 1 query that occurs at time t~i~ . The *quantum* frequency of
the state represented by this P~h~(*t*~i~ ) is the sum of the *quantum*
frequencies of the individual regions, and is the total number of quanta
in the full set of SHOs. However, the period of the periodic motion of
the classical EM field remains 2π, in the chosen units, independently of
how many regions are involved, or how highly excited the states of the
SHOs in the various regions become. This smaller frequency is the only
one that the classical state knows about: it is the frequency that
characterizes the features of brain dynamics observed in EEG and MEG
measurements.

The sequence of P~h~(t~i~)s that is honed into observer/agent's
structure by trial and error learning is a sequence of P~h~(t~i~)s that
occurs when the SHO template for action is held in place by effort.
Learning is achieved by effort, which increases attention density, and
holds the template for action in place. Thus if H~0~ is the Hamiltonian
that maintains this SHO motion then for the honed sequence

P~h~(*t*~i+1~) = exp (─ iH~0~ (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~)) P~h~(t~i~) exp
(iH~0~(*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~)).

But in the new situation there may be disturbing physical influences
that tend to cause a deviation from the learned SHO motion. Suppose that
on the time scale of (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~ ) the disturbance is small, so
that the perturbed evolution starting from P~h~(t~i~) can be expressed
in the form

P(*t*~i+1~) = exp (─iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~)) exp (─ iH~0~ (*t*~i+1~ ─
*t*~i~)) P~h~(t~i~)

exp (iH~0~(*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~)) exp ( iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~))

= exp (─iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~))) P~h~(*t*~i+1~) exp ( iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~
─ *t*~i~))

where H~i~ is bounded.

According to the basic probability formula, the probability that this
state P(*t*~i+1~) will be found, if measured/observed, to be in the
state P~h~(*t*~i+1~) at time *t*~i+1~ is (using Trace P~h~(*t*~i~) = 1)

Trace P~h~(*t*~i+1~) exp (─iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~))) P~h~(*t*~i+1~)
exp ( iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~)).

Inserting the leading and first order terms \[ 1± iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~ ─
*t*~i~)\] in the power series expansion of exp ( ± iH~i~ (*t*~i+1~ ─
*t*~i~)) and using PP= P, and the fact that

Trace AB = Trace BA, for all A and B, one finds that the term linear in

(*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~) vanishes identically.

The vanishing of the term linear in (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~ ) is the basis of
the quantum Zeno effect. If one considers some finite time interval and
divides it into small intervals (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~ ) and looks at a
product of factors (1 + c(*t*~i+1~ ─*t*~i~ )^n^ ), then if n is bigger
than one the product will tend to unity (one) as the size of the
intervals (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~ ) tend to zero. But this means that the
basic probability formula of quantum mechanics requires that, as the
step sizes (*t*~i+1~ ─ *t*~i~) tend to zero, the evolving state of the
system being probed by the sequence of probing action will have a
probability that tends to one (unity) *to evolve in lock step with the
set of 'Yes' answer to the sequence of probing actions*, provided the
initial answer was 'Yes'. But the forms of the projection operators
P~h~(*t*~i~) and the timings of the probing actions are not determined
by the laws of orthodox quantum theory: they are "freely chosen". Hence
orthodox quantum theory accommodates in natural way the capacity of a
person's conscious intentional choices to influence the processes
occurring in his or her physically described brain, and to influence
them in a way that will tend to produce intended consequences.

The point of his derivation is that it is expressed in terms of brain
states that are macroscopic, and that correspond to classically
describable states of the electromagnetic field measured by EEG and MEG
procedures. Even though these states contain huge amounts of energy,
nevertheless, if we accept the principle that the underlying brain
dynamics must in principle be treated quantum mechanically, and,
accordingly, replace these classical states by their quasi-classical
counterparts, which represent potentialities that are related to
experience only via the basic equation, then the principles of orthodox
von Neumann quantum mechanics provide a rationally coherent way of
understanding the mind-brain connection in a way that escapes the horns
of the physicalists' dilemma: it gives each person's intentional
conscious choices the power to causally effect the course of events in
his or her quantum mechanically described brain, and to influence it in
a way that serves these intentions.

A further development of the mathematical details can be found in
reference 12.

**Acknowledgement.**

I thank Ed Kelly for useful suggestions pertaining to the form of this
paper.

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