Subject: [q-mind] Reply to Stapp on experiential qualities--Brian Flanagan
From: Brian Flanagan


 [Stapp, previous]
 My approach is to recognize, among other things, that quantum
theory probably gives only a partial description of the causal
connections between our experiences. I show how a certain looseness
in the vN/W theory allows there to be another causal strand that is
entangled with the physical, but is not causally determined by
physical. It acts through conscious experiences that  "supervene" on
the physical, but that are not causally determined by the physical.

[Flanagan]
Thus admitting another dualism of the "conscious" and the
"physical". I have severe misgivings about this approach, which
seems to lean rather heavily on a vague notion of "supervention".

[Stapp]
My approach is pragmatic, not dualistic. The primary realities
are increments in knowledge. These have relationships some of which are
represented in our theories. 

               WE construct theories.
Democritas had a theory according to which there was a physical world
consisting of tiny atoms moving through a void. Isaac Newton had a similar
theory. In some theories these atoms have little hooks, which allow them to 
be linked together. James Clerk Maxwell added fields onto Newton's theory.
Neils Bohr dreamed up a cute theory according to which atoms are like 
miniature solar systems, with electrons normally moving in 
quantized orbits, but making occasional "jumps" from one orbit to another.

All of these materialistic-type theories are now known to be false: they
provide no adequate basis for understanding the structure of our experience.

Quantum theory is the newest contender. It accomodate all of the empirical 
evidence accepted by the scientific community. 

It differs from the materialistic theories in three essential
respects. 

First, it is not designed to be a description of a reality
that exists independently of human observers. Rather it is designed to be 
a computaional procedure that allows us to form expectations about our future 
experiences---as we describe them to ourselves and to our colleagues in a 
suitable language---on the on the basis of knowledge gleaned from previous 
similarly described experiences. 

Second, it is an incomplete description, in the sense
that there is a random element whose origin and mode of acting is not
specified, 

Third, the ontological character of the "object" described
by the theory is, on the basis of how it behaves, more like "knowledge"
than like the matter of the materialistic theories: it makes sudden "jumps"
that extend over all of space when an increment in knowledge occurs.
Thus the theory not about matter, as matter was conceived of in, say, 
the classical physical theory stemming from the works of Newton 
and Maxwell.
  
Supervenience is not vague. When I say that, in my theory, "mind
supervenes on brain" I mean precisely that, in this theory, no two 
possible courses of conscious experiential events in a person's mental life 
can differ without there being a difference in the course of evolution 
of the state S_b of the brain of that person. This means that the flow of 
one's conscious experiences cannot wander about freely: it is closely 
linked to a corresponding flow of his brain events.

However, this supervenience property does not entail that mind is causally
determined by brain: there could be (and in my theory there is) a causal
link that runs from mind to brain.

  [Stapp, previous](To Jack)
 Your logic is different from the one I employ: I say, in line with
the pragmatic approach, that IF an experience occurs, THEN the wave
function (i.e., state) of the universe, which represents knowledge,
reduces to the part compatible with the new added bit of knowledge.

[Flanagan]
And before there was anyone around to experience the universe?

[Stapp]
Quantum theory, as originally conceived (Solvay 1927), was about
"our knowledge": it is a theory created by human beings to serve
human needs. The vonNeuman/Wigner interpretation moves in the direction
of a knowledged-based ontology, with increments of knowledge connected 
together in a causal structure, and with these increments of knowledge
being associated with "physical systems"---human brains---that are 
represented within the theoretical description. In order to attain
a satisfactory ontology the special role of human beings and human-type
"conscious experiences" must be eliminated. But until we find some
way of relating such extensions of the theory to empirical data
all efforts to pass from the pragmatic stance to the fully-ontological 
stance will be speculative.


[Stapp, previous]
 It appears to me that your theory suffers from the deficiency that
Dave Chalmers claimed for the theory developed in MM&QM.

 He said that one could simply keep the physical evolution of the
wave function exactly as in my theory, but leave out consciousness,
and that the physical evolution would be unchanged: the experiential
aspect seems to be a logically disconnected piece, not a rationally
integral part of a logically unified structure. I claimed that the
increments in knowledge were the realities, and the reductions of
the wave function were representation of the effects of the changing
reality, as specified in the Copenhagen interpretation, and that the
experiential aspect could therefore not be stripped away without
eliminating the reality itself. Still, it was disconcertingly true,
in the theory as developed in my book, that the physical part DID
SEEM TO BE ABLE to stand alone: the experiential aspect did not seem
to be dynamically necessary.

[Flanagan]
Which qualities do you hold to be experiential? Say you have an
organism which discriminates between experiential qualities and acts
upon those discriminations. How then does the organism's dynamic
stand alone from the experiential?

[Stapp]
We construct theories. Our theories of nature reside in our
experiences. But the essential feature of  materialist-type
theories was that they postulate a world that exists prior to human
experience. In classical physical theory this world is completely
specified by geometric quantities: space-time locations are either
occupied or are not occupied; or, from the idea of multiple occupancy,
one obtains the field-theory idea of *numbers* being assigned to
locations in space-time. The mathematical structure of quantum theory 
can be expressed in similar ways: it can be expressed either by numbers
assigned to locations in a collection---ranging over all values of N--- of 
3N-dimentional "configuration" spaces; or by assigning generalized numbers
(i.e., operator) to space-time locations. But this imagined "physical
structure" though it exists in our imagination, is imagined to exist
prior to all human experience, and also outside human bodies. In 
classical physical theory this geometric description is imagined to extend, 
in accordance with the general laws that hold outside human bodies,
also into human bodies. In quantum theory, in the vN/W formulation
that I am using, the "physical" description that holds outside human
bodies is again assummed to extend into human body/brains. But
because that physical structure represents "knowledge", and processes in
our brains are linked to increments in knowledge, the
dynamical laws acting in our brains do reflect the effects of the
increments of knowledge associated with our brains. 

However, Chalmers, adopting a materialist perspective, suggests that the 
geometrically described "physical system" could evolve in a way that is 
causally determined solely by the geometrical description itself---plus
random quantum variables---without needing to bring our conscious 
experiences, or increments in knowledge, into the dynamical equations that 
govern the  evolution of the mind/brain/body system. Insofar as that is true,
namely that we COULD formulate the dynamical laws completely in geometric
terms,  our conscious experiences COULD, without violating any logical 
or dynamical contraint in the theory, be ontologically distinct from those 
postulated geometrical properties; they COULD, logically and dynamically,
without violating any principle in the theory, be *concomitants* of 
certain geometrically described patterns of brain/body activity that are not
ontologically the same as those patterns. 

But then the experiential aspects could stripped away from the 
geometrical/physical structure without disrupting the dynamics, or changing 
the geometrical/physical description. But in that case our thoughts COULD NOT 
BE causally efficacious: they WOULD BE epiphenomenal.
 
It seems to me that my theory as far as it was developed MM&QM, and also
Jack's theory, is, on account of this, unsatisfactory.

[Stapp, previous]
 My present theory does make experience, per se, dynamically
 necessary: one cannot strip it away without stopping the dynamical
development.

 But it seems to me, Jack, that in YOUR theory the experiential qualities
per se, are not dynamically or logically or dynamically necessary,
in the sense that Chalmers is talking about. It seems that conscious
experiences are just grafted onto a physical dynamical system that
could function in exactly the same way if one left the *explicitly
experiential* aspect out  but simply allowed all of the
geometrically describable features to evolve in the way you specify, 
without bringing in any non-geometric concepts in conjunction with the
collapses of the wave function.

[Stapp]
In the previous version of the above paragraph I inadvertently eliminated, 
in editing, the key word YOUR, which I have here re-inserted. 

[Flanagan]
I'm not sure I understand; "experience, per se" is "dynamically
 necessary", 

[Stapp]
In my present theory, experience per se is dynamically necessary by virtue 
of the control OF the Heisenberg choices BY the volitional-attentional 
aspect of conscious experience, coupled with the effects upon the 
dynamics---via quantum Zeno-type effects---of the Heisenberg choices.

[flanagan]
but "experiential qualities per se, are not dynamically
or logically or dynamically necessary"? 

[Stapp]
In Jack's theory [and my MM&QM version] experiential qualities, although
proclaimed to be basic, can in principle be eliminated, because the dynamics
is governed by equations expressible in geometric terms. This was explained 
above.

[Flanagan]
Also, how are "geometrically
describable features" not explicitly experiential? 

[Stapp]
I am arguing here that Jack's theory is epiphenomenal, in spite
of his intentions and rhetoric. This is because his "back-reaction" is
specified---as far as I can determine   

##[In spite of my requests, he has 
not actually written down the basic equation of his theory, which is the
equation that controls the action of the world line back upon the wave 
function]##   

from his words like "advanced potential", "Feynman-Wheeler" 
etc.,---by geometric features such as those represented in Bohmian
mechanics. Those are features of a theoretical image of a "physical
world" that is imagined to have existed prior to human beings, and
to exist now outside of human bodies. Although the theory itself exists 
within human experience, the theory is imagined to be "about" some geometric
properties that can exist apart from any human experience: the  theory 
is imagined to be "about" a geometric structure that is not intrinsically 
or explicitly experiential. 

[Stapp, previous]
 My whole position has steadfastly been that Quantum Theory
 allows our thoughts to be efficacious, whereas classical physics
 renders them removable and epiphenomenal. The point is that I make
experiences the basic reality, whereas you, Jack,  start from Bohm.

[flanagan]
All this would
seem to amount to a quantum epiphenomenalism.

[Stapp]
Yes, for Jack's theory, but not for mine..


[Stapp, previous]
. . . it seems impossible to ascribe to a purely geometric structure
any necessarily experiential quality.

[Flanagan]
Where in experience can you find a purely geometric structure? Is
the latter not abstracted from experience? 

[Stapp]
Exactly! Then we build upon that abstraction a theoretical idea of a 
geometric reality that, at least outside all brain-like systems, exists 
independently of anyone's experience,


[Stapp, previous]
But if the quality is not present by logical or mathematical
necessity then it can be stripped away, leaving all the geometric
features intact, or so it would seem.

[Flanagan]
Qualities are present empirically; it is arguably one of the tasks
of science to find a mathematical scheme adequate to their
description.

[Stapp]
Precisely. The materialist approach to this task is first to erect 
upon the conceptual abstraction of a  geometric structure devoid of 
intrinsic experiential qualities, a theoretical idea of nature as a geometric  
structure.  Having cast experience out of the theoretical structure one 
them tries to recover exaclty that which has been eliminated.
  
Quantum theory, on the other hand, builds on our experiences, rather than 
upon an impoverished abstraction from which has been eliminated the very thing
we are trying find.

[Stapp, previous]
 An experiential quality IS actually experienced quality: it is not
 something else.

[Flanagan]
Right. A = A, which seems like a good place to start when
constructing a geometry.

[Stapp, previous]
That does not mean that our recollections of it
 are infallible. But an experience IS that felt experience. In
science we
 try to describe mathematically certain relationships between  our
 experiences, as we describe these experiences to ourselves and to
others in appropriate languages.

[Flanagan]
I believe we are in close agreement, here.

[Stapp, previous]
This is the pragmatic conception of science that was adopted by the
founders of quantum theory for dealing with physics in a way that
encompassed in a uniform and coherent way all the results of
classical and quantum theory.

[Flanagan]
The persistent arguments about "collapse" would seem to argue that
their way of dealing with QM was neither uniform nor coherent. 

[Stapp]
I do not think any physicist---who has thought much about it---
would deny that that pragmatic rules of quantum theory do allow
one to recover all the validated predictions of classical and quantum 
theory. The "arguments" arise from desires to do more, namely to imbed these 
rules in a framework that conforms to classical prejudices at the macroscopic
level not only experientially, which is all that quantum theory gives,
but also independently of experience.


[Flanagan]
And I
believe William James would have argued that one could pursue an
ontological or epistemological approach to these issues, as one
liked, the proof being in the pudding. 

[Stapp]
The pragmatic approach is indeed to employ, and work toward improving,
what works best in experience. But after seventy years of fruitless efforts
in trying to create an understanding of quantum theory more in line with 
classical (materialist) prejudices, I suspect that James might opine, 
in keeping with his commitment to radical empiricism, that it was time to
try building directly upon the knowledge-based framework of the most 
successful theory we now posses, rather than trying to hang desparately 
onto the materialistic ideas intrinsic to a theory that is known 
to be certainly wrong empirically and  grossly wrong conceptually.


[Flanagan]
As for myself, given the
intimate relations of ontology and epistemology, I'm not sure it
makes much sense to prefer one over the other--an adequate ontology
ought to account for the facts of epistemology, whereas any
epistemology would seem to presume that there is *something* that is
known, that "something" being the object of the associated ontology.

[Stapp]
The vN/W quantum theory is the optimal foundation, because:

1. It is based on a structure erected on space-time that can be 
   construed ontologically. 

2. It contains all the geometrical and mathematical structure needed 
   to account for all the appearances of the physical world. 

3. Yet is directly, explicitly, and intrinsically  about knowledge,
   hence is gives epistemology.

4. It can, staying completely within the bounds set by the general principles
   of quantum theory, evade the Chalmers argument, and make conscious 
   experience causally efficacious, yet not controlled by the geometrical 
   properties, and not controlled by whimsy or by the random elements in 
   quantum theory.