From:	THEORM::STAPP        18-SEP-1997 14:43:51.71
To:	@KLEINDIS.DIS
CC:	STAPP
Subj:	Reply to Aaron's Queries

Reply to Aaron's Queries of Sept 18.

This is a reply to Aaron's two communications. One of them asked for
a precis of my new paper; the other asked for comments on his abstract 
for Tucson3.

I thought the abstract very good, and look forward to seeing the detailed
working out of the ideas mentioned. I did take notice of the claim:

" Other reasons for bringing in quantum mechanics are usually not based on
proper design considerations. (Often more on confused, wishful thinking
about "freedom", "self", etc.)
...
A baby zombie designed with the right architecture could eventually
develop the ability to wonder about the link between its qualia and its
body. Just like baby humans."

In a recent referee's report I said:

" Penrose's noncomputability, even if it were bona fide,
would not help with free will. Rather it would stand in the way. For 
a choice is not made by me {\it unless it is determined} by all 
that I am. So a breakdown of determinism in the fixing of my actions
would preclude my acting on the basis of {\it my own} free will."

That I had to make this comment supports Aaron's  "(Often more on confused, 
wishful thinking about "freedom", "self", etc.)". But one of the points
of my recent paper was precisely to stress that in a rational ontological
formulation there should be in principle a causal structure, even if is not
yet totally understood, and even if it is not "mechanistic" in the classical
physics sense of  being governed by microscopically expressible laws of motion.
So this charge about "confused wishful thinking about `freedom' " does not, I
think, apply to me, or to my theory. Indeed, another key point in my recent 
paper was to show how, in the deterministic framework that I was proposing, 
our thoughts themselves could be causally efficacious without upsetting 
the statistical predictions of quantum theory.

Aaron's second claim mentioned above was:
"A baby zombie designed with the right architecture could eventually
develop the ability to wonder about the link between its qualia and its
body. Just like baby humans."
  
The word "could" makes this claim ambiguous: maybe it is no claim at all, in 
which case I have no objection to it.

But the words "wonder" and "qualia" would seem to suggest that the adult
zombie could have "experiences": i.e., that experiences could occur in 
association with the processing that the adult zombie's "body" is 
performing.

The tie in of this sentence to the earlier one about the inadequacy
of the "other reasons for bringing in quantum theory" suggests that
these experiences could be present in association with the objectively
describable processing being carried out by the adult zombie's body even if
that body were completely describable in terms of the idea of classical physics
that the physical world is made up of physical substances of the kinds
specified in classical physics.

Of course, we cannot know for sure whether or not experiential elements
would be present in such a world, for that world is not the sort of world in
which we actually live. But I think it is clear that one cannot actually 
deduce from the principles of classical mechanics, and any boundary 
conditions at all, that experiences must necessarily occur in conjunction 
with the processing activities of the adult zombie: we cannot deduce that 
there must be experiences of "wonderings" and "qualia" in the way that we 
can deduce the presence, under appropriate boundary conditions, of physical 
structures that would qualify as being "tornadoes", or "digital computers".

Since the classical principles are known to be fundamentally false, it is
reasonable to look at the question of the presence of experience from the
standpoint of the principles of quantum mechanics, which, as far as we now 
know, are correct. 

This is an altogether feasible and reasonable thing to do. That is because 
orthodox quantum theory is built specifically upon experiential realities.
So one can examine within the framework of that physical theory that does
seem to be in accord with the world in which we live, the conditions
for the occurrence of experiences. And what one finds is that experience would
be absent from a world that conformed to principles of classical mechanics:
classical mechanics is obtain from an approximation to quantum mechanics
in which the nonunitary/nonlocal parts of the quantum processing is
suppressed, and this is specifically the part of the quantum processing
that is associated with our conscious experiences. This is another key
point that is explained in my new paper. 

So, as regards Aaron's claim that:
" Other reasons for bringing in quantum mechanics are usually not based on
proper design considerations. (Often more on confused, wishful thinking
about "freedom", "self", etc.)",
I would agree that these "other reasons for bring in quantum mechanics"
do not rest on design considerations of the kind Aaron is talking about.
But there are other good reasons. Insofar as his design considerations can be
implemented in physical structures that conform to the ideas about the nature
of `the physical' promulgated by classical physics it appears from an analysis
of the relationship of the fundamentally false ideas of classical physics to 
the apparently valid quantum conception of nature in which it is embedded
that there should be no experiences associated with the classically implemented
process, no matter how `circular' its causality is. Experience becomes possible
only to the extent that classical concepts fail.

A principle focus of my new paper is precisely on that point.

I have, in this comment on Aaron's proposed abstract, already given some
elements of the precis of my new paper that Aaron requested.
Aaron asked specifically for the new things in this paper.

The chief new thing is a new perspective: the objective of to build a rational,
minimalistic, naturalistic ontology that will undergrid the orthodox
quantum theory, which is pragmatic/epistemological rather than ontological.
This already puts me on a certain track: I must create an ontology
that contains the experiences that the orthodox quantum theory is built
upon. So experiences are built in from the outset, rather than
having to `emerge' from a structure that does not seem to contain or entail
them. So I am creating an idealistic ontology. 

The usual difficulty with idealistic ontologies is the looseness 
of their connection to our scientific knowledge. But here I am building 
squarely, and minimalistically, upon our basic scientific theory. Because
our basic theory is explicitly built upon experiences rather than matter
I do not have any problem in principle with tying the idealistic ontology
to physical science. This physical science, quantum theorm, already itself 
ties mind to matter because it explains quantitatively all of the properties 
of the structure of our experiences that we usually ascribe to the material 
aspects of nature, and it does this without giving to nature any substantive 
qualities of the kind that classical mechanics ascribes to nature. 
The stuff of nature is not matter, but experiences and the accumulated 
knowledge they build. But this knowledge has mathematical properties
that suffice to ensure the mathematical regularities that were ascribed in
classical mechanics to matter.

In section 2 I answer Pat's challenge that quantum theory is not built
on experiences and knowledge by documenting that the orthodox (Copenhagen)
interpretation certainly was. Then in response to his retort that many
physicists do not accept that orthodox view I say (beginning of section 4)

"There have been many attempt by physicists to `get mind back out of
physics': i.e., to reverse the contamination of physics brought in by
Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli and company in 1927. I believe
those decontamination efforts have failed, even though I myself
have worked hard to achieve it. So I am taking here the other tack,
and trying to build a coherent ontology around the orthodox ideas." 

I do not detail in this paper my reasons for believing that they have failed.
I have spelled out reasons elsewhere. It is a fact that the alternative 
proposals have not received general approval.

In section 3 I spell out my answer to Pat's suggestion that "causality"
has been discredited by Hume, and provide the reader with a more-detailed-
than-usual description of the failure of certain classical relativistic
ideas of the local character of causal connections.

A principle objective of the paper is to focus attention on the two very
different types of process that enter into the full quantum dynamics:
the (trivial) unitary/local evolution that is associated with the 
Schroedinger-equation-directed unitary evolution, which is not associated
with experience, and the (nontrivial) nonunitary/nonlocal changes
that are associated with experiences. I emphasize that the latter changes,
though abrupt and unanalyzed in the orthodox theory, should be generated
by some process in an  ontological description, and show how quantum theory
naturally generates two different times (mathematical time and process time)
for the two different kinds of evolution, and explain why the unitary/local
evolution in mathematical time can be regarded as merely a change generated
by changing one's mode of description of the state, rather than any actual
change in the reality itself. This meshes with the fact that there is no 
experience associated with that sort of change: nothing is actually changing or
happening. These things just fall out of the mathematics: they are not forced
or contrived. 

I emphasize the need for a `process of nature' to generate the
nonunitary/nonlocal/nontrivial part of the evolution by assigning a continuous
interval (i< T < (i+1)) in process time to each component of this process.
 
So in summary, I am proposing, and providing the foundations of, an
experience-based ontology that is based squarely on our basic physical
theory, and am detailing the contrasts and connections to classical
mechanics, and am explaining why, from the encompassing quantum perspective, 
experiences should not occur in processes describable in terms of processes 
implemented in classically describable physical systems.

So my new paper is, essentially, a detailed reply to Aaron's seeming
claim that there are no " Other reasons for bringing in quantum mechanics"
other than bad reasons. 

Henry