On Mon, 9 Oct 2006, Anthony Freeman wrote:

> This was posted by Jo Edwards today on jcs-onine
> 
>  ------- Forwarded message follows -------
> -----Original message-----
> Subject:    [jcs-online] Stapp and Atmanspacher
> To:         jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
> From:       Jonathan Edwards <jo.edwards@ucl.ac.uk>
> Reply-To:   jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
> Date:       Sun, 8 Oct 2006 18:44:27 +0100
> Message-ID: <56D9FD87-83C8-4FC3-A1C1-C69A15314781@ucl.ac.uk>
> 
> The interview of Henry Stapp by Harald Atmanspacher in current JCS is
> enjoyable, but fuels my concern that approaches that claim to draw on
> 'conventional quantum theory' include the slipping in of highly
> tendentious metaphysical footwork, thereby making them totally
> incompatible with other approaches equally 'based on conventional
> QM'. Thus Stapp's account is very different from the picture that
> Atmanspacher himself presents in his review of Pauli's ideas. Is
> Atmanspacher being polite in his interview with Stapp or am I missing
> something?
> 
> 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
> analyse, but that does not put them outside physics. This is no
> evidence that physics is not causally closed. The suggestion seems to
> fit precisely with Spinoza's jibe that men only talk of free will
> because they have no knowledge of what causes their actions. In his
> article on Pauli and in his interview questions, Atmanspacher
> suggests that the consensus on QM is probably that mental processes
> have nothing to do with 'wave function collapse' (von Neumann type
> 1). Moreover, 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'. This seems the sort of filawsofy Feynman would have
> dismissed out of hand.
> 
> Further problems are that Stapp gives no neurobiological example of
> what sort of 'events' he is implicating and most worryingly, he
> admits that QM seems to deny any possibility of showing that his view
> is right, rather than the alternative. Stapp seems to view the
> alternative as epiphenomenalism, but as far as I can see the real
> alternative is that consciousness fits in to  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.
> 
> 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. He divided 'solid stuff' from things like light which
> took up no space. He put thought in with light because the appearance
> of a thought does not seem to displace the solid stuff of the brain
> (or have mass). Although his conclusions went awry, his basic dualism
> is entirely consistent with QM (contrary to Stapp's retort)- being,
> in simple terms, the Fermi/Bose duality. This sort of duality within
> naturalism is essential for many reasons;  in this issue Hinzen gives
> an interesting new one. 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. 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.
> 
> Stapp's arguments seem to draw on what he suggests is common
> intuition; that we 'consciously choose'. However, as Neil Levy rather
> neatly pointed out in JCS a while back this is a neurological
> oxymoron. To be conscious is to have an input. To choose is to have
> an output. You cannot have an input about an output until the output
> has already happened. Neurology does not have a way round this, and
> nor should it. For most intelligent adults I know (with Spinoza) it
> is not our intuition that we consciously choose. We realise that we
> are, if not automata, something a bit more unpredictable - it feels
> that way. We have no idea how our brains come to choose the things
> they tell us they have chosen most of the time, but we suspect it is
> partly how they are built and partly our life history.
> 
> It is frustrating that those with a QM background interested in
> consciousness give us such widely disparate views of what is
> presented as an orthodoxy. Maybe we would make more progress if
> somebody could explain to us how to sort this out (actually I thought
> Harald had).
> 
> Jo Edwards
> 
> 
> -----End of original message from Jonathan Edwards-----
> 
> 

From hpstapp@lbl.gov Wed Oct 11 11:07:22 2006
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:07:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Anthony Freeman <Anthony@imprint.co.uk>, Harald Atmanspacher <haa@igpp.de>
Subject: Reply to Jo Edwards about Stapp-Altmanspacher Interview (fwd)

Jo 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 call 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
the theory provides no explanation or causal description of how these
causally effective choices come to be what they turn out to be. And the
problem is more than just the fact that brain processes "are too complex to
analyse". 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 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 (which are all 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 experientable 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 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 mathematical description, 
which represents gains in knowledge and the effects of such gains on
potentialities for future human experiences, to the phenomenal realities
that are the only realities---as opposed to potentialities---that enter 
into the conventional empirically justified quantum theoretical description.

As regards the nature of the neurobiological "events" that are associated
with our human intentional choices, 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 currently presumed to be the
templates for action. But the matter is under intense empirical and
theoretical scrutiny.

Edwards believes that "consciousness fits into current physics as an aspect
of a causal chain in a way yet to be understood that has nothing to do with
the collapse". But in current contemporary orthodox quantum theory the
collapses are in fact closely connected to consciousness: it is precisely
this close connection that makes the theory practically useful. Edwards'
claim that consciousness is "an aspect of a causal chain" that is "yet to be
understood" is completely correct. But his further claim that consciousness
has nothing to do with the collapse is not supported by the way that
conventional quantum theory actually works to tie phenomenal reality to
physical description. In view of the direction that the advance from
classical physics to quantum physics took it is not unreasonable to
conjecture that a successful ontology will involve an interlocking of
physically described and psychologically described aspects of nature.
Science must deal, of course, with descriptions and their relationships.

Edwards suggests that the Cartesian dichotomy is between fermions (matter)
and bosons (mind). Then the interaction between mind and matter becomes
identifiable as the physical interactions between bosons and fermions. But
in conventional quantum mechanics bosons and fermions are both
treated as parts of the physically described  world, and the core problem is
precisely that the evolution of this physically described world via the
Schroedinger equation is not the whole story: it does not give the collapses
that are needed to bring the physical description into concordance with the
phenomenally described realities.

Edwards suggests that bringing conscious realities into the description of
nature in the way I suggest (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 testable way
specified by conventional quantum theory. That theory, as it stands today,
is ontologically and dynamically incomplete, because it does not explain or
describe, even in principle, how our specific choices about how we probe
nature come to be what they turn out to be. Pointing to this incompleteness
is an act far different from postulating a "ghost" that "is a religious
object that has to be taken on faith". Our conscious experiences are not
ghosts, and 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 found my position unclear. But my interview with Atmanspacker was,
of course, not a  systematic presentation. For a more detailed description
see on my website (http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html)
the entry "Quantum Interactive Dualism: an Alternative to Materialism",
where I make it clear that the intended idea is constructed from earlier
ideas, thereby allowing the "input" intention to come before the "output"
result, thus evading Edwards' final objection.

Henry P. Stapp

From hpstapp@lbl.gov Wed Oct 18 08:30:54 2006
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:30:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [jcs-online] Question for Dr. Stapp Concerning Quantum Interactive Dualism

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Joseph Polanik wrote:

> 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?
> 
> Thank you in advance for clarifying this point.
> 
> 
> Joseph Polanik
> 

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; 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 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.

Henry P. Stapp

From hpstapp@lbl.gov Wed Oct 18 09:29:17 2006
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:29:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Harald Atmanspacher <haa@igpp.de>
Subject: Re: [jcs-online] Chris Nunn & Stapp/Atmsanspacher dialogue

Chris Nunn raises a very 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 rate of probings directly:
we feel/experience only the effort and the correlated effects.
Also, 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 oucome observed are at the
macroscopic scale, the reduction occurs at the atomic level, and on the
atomic time scale.

So although the macroscopic brain time scate (10's of milliseconds)
is appropriate for the directly experienced aspects, it is not necessarily
the appropriate time scale for the actual reduction events, or for the rate
at which they can occur. The quantum scale should be more appropriate
for them.

Henry P. Stapp

From hpstapp@lbl.gov Wed Oct 25 14:14:47 2006
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:14:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [jcs-online] Mondor, Polanik, Lofting, Edwards, Nunn & the Stapp/Atmsanspacher dialogue

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 understanding the nature
of these causes or reasons.

Polanik hits the mark when he emphasizes that the physically described brain
(governed by vN process 2) is not self-collapsing, and hence that something
outside the quantum mechanically described physical brain is involved in the
selection of some particular thought from the mixture of potentialities
generated by the physical/mathematical locally
mechanistically described process 2.

Von Neumann's discussion of the three parts I, II, and III
(mentioned by Polanik) seems to me to be stressing "psycho-physical
parallelism": the fact that certain systems can have aspects that are
described in the mathematical language of QM, and also aspects described
in the language of communication among the observing and acting agents.
The whole is not adequately described in either one of these two
languages alone. Nor need the causal relationshps be fully describable in
one of these language alone. So when Lofting (Oct 20) says the we must "step
out of the QM box and into the GENERAL box of how our neurology
processes data" he seems to be assuming that the causal structure is
describable in physical terms alone. I see the main message of quantum
theory as an alert to the rational 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 real actual consequences.
Quantum theory opens the door to this possibility by
converting the deterministic mechanical structure of classical physical
theory into a mathematically described structure of potentialities for
observable events to occur. And the quantum rules that specify the content
or structure of these events are treated in actual scientific practice
as entering from outside those aspects of nature that are described in
purely physical terms; i.e., from outside the aspects that are the quantum
counterparts of the physical properties of classical physical theory.

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
occurence of experiencable events. The suggestion that Bohr, Heisenberg,
Pauli, Wigner, and von Neumann were introducing "fairies" into
basic physical theory, by introducing our experiences importantly
into basic scientific theory, is unhelpful: the entry of causally
efficaious consciousness coherently into physics ought not be treated
lightly.

Nunn (Oct 20) 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 (probing) action produces an experience that
contains an experienced high positive valuation, the
required choice is merely to repeat very quickly the *same action* as
before, whatever it was. This allows the agent to choose to
sustain positively valued actions without knowing the actual physical
structure of the collapse events their efforts are causing. This theory
accommodates nicely and naturally the experience of, for example,
learning to use a prosthetic limb, by activating through effortful trail 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 conceptof free will than classical mechanistic accounts of 
brain function." But the quantum account gives a completely rational account
of the "manifest"  causal connection between mind and brain, by explaining
it as a real understandable causal connection; whereas the classical
mechanistic account says that every physical connection can be explained
without mentioning consciousness. But how in this completely novel situation
does consciousness 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 it naturally fits.

Henry P. Stapp

From hpstapp@lbl.gov Tue Oct 31 09:11:45 2006
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:11:45 -0800 (PST)
From: 5BHenry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [jcs-online] Mondor, Polanik, Lofting, Edwards, Nunn & the Stapp/Atmsanspacher dialogue

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Ray Mondor wrote:

> 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.

Yes, I certainly do not subscibe 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.

> 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?
> 

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 relativistic
QM with particle production. Others have tried the many-worlds approach,
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 somehow 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 specifiyiong how) the one quantum
state is experienced in myriads of different ways that hang together
in mysiads 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 refering to consciousness.

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

Henry P. Stapp

From hpstapp@lbl.gov Tue Oct 31 14:51:14 2006
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:51:13 -0800 (PST)
From: Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Stapp/Atmanspacher and To what is conscious presented?

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

HPS: Conscious experiences belong to stream's of conscious experiences, and
these streams are part of nature's proceess.
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
tertially the person (an aspect of nature's process) the "has" this stream
of consciousness.

Polanik: "The next question is: If there is experience occuring; then
to what is that experience occuring?"

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: This may be harking back to "I assume that the presentee
is whatever entity in the brain experiences consciousness." (See
Hameroff, Oct 29) The idea the something in the brain "experiences
conscious" goes far beyond what science says. Nor does science tell us
that some immaterial entity "experiences consciousness". Experiences occur
in streams of conscious, which are aspects of nature's psycho-physical
process, and "to" a "person" by appearing in that person's stream of
consciousness. Each human person is an aspect of nature's process with
both physically described and psychologically described aspects. The
physically described aspects specify *potentialities* (objective
tndencies, in Heisenberg's words) for certain psychophysical events to
occur. Von Neumann has spelled out the currently known rules for the known
(to science) connection between the physically and psychologically
described aspects of nature's process.

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 has not
been able to be carried over to the domain of special relativity,
where particle creation becomes important. And when, trying to generalize 
his ideas, Bohm 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 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 that reality contains psychologically described aspects that
are tighly tied to the physically described aspects of brains, but are
not fixed by specifying the prior physically described (quantum) state
of the universe. The quantum state of the universe fixes only the
potentialities for (collapse/reduction) events that---and this is the
key to the pragmatic success of quantum theory---are closely connected
to increments in human knowledge. The events have psychologically described
aspects, which are what we observe/experience, or, more precisely, *are* the
empirical data They are not superhatural or unobservable, but are rather a
core part of the quantum mechanical
description, and the only part of nature unequivocally known to be real. But
nature's overall process needs a (sub)process that partitions
the continuum of potentialities into some set experiencable parts.
At least that is how conventional (Copenhagen/vN) QM works in real
scientific practice. In that theory there is a psychologically described
aspect that is an integral part of the whole dynamical structure, and that
continues to be essential (in connection with process 1) when the brain is
made part of the aspect of nature that is described on quantum physical
terms.

Henry P. Stapp

From hpstapp@lbl.gov Mon Nov  6 15:20:11 2006
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 15:20:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [jcs-online] Re: Stapp/Atmanspacher and To what is conscious presented?

On Sun, 5 Nov 2006, Philip Benjamin wrote:

> From Philip Benjamin, medinuclear@hotmail.com Re: [jcs-online] the
> Stapp/Atmsanspacher dialogue  Nov 1, 06
> 
> [Henry Stapp] Tuesday, October 31, 2006 Reply to Ray Mondor
> 
> ** 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** .
> 
> [Philip Benjamin]
> How can any equation, including the Schrodinger, be a definition of
> anything?

HPS: The Schroedinger equation is a equation of motion: it defines
how the mathematically specified quantum state evolves over the course
of time. It gives the way this state is changing over an infinitesimal
interval of time in terms of properties of the state that can be defined at
the *instant* of time that preceeds the infititesimal interval
that follows it. Combined with some rules about how to connect this
mathematically defined evolving state to our conscious experiences the
Schroedinger equation defines the empirically validated predictions of
quantum theory.

> [Henry Stapp] continues
> 
> ....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.... The huge disparity between the structure of
> human experience and the structures generated by the purely physically
> described quantum laws.....
> 
> [Philip Benjamin]
> 
> This is where the quantum mystics put the cart before the horse. [not
> Henry
> Stapp, a solid brilliant realist]. The normally experienced world is the
> REAL objective physical world, the Gibraltar Rock. It is the Quantum
> Mathematical Probability World which is the MAYA world of Abstraction that
> can NEVER exist outside the quantum mathematical descriptive world of
> finite
> human minds. Alice can see this Wonderland only through quantum goggles.
> 
> [Jonathan Edwards]  jo.edwards@ucl.ac.uk  Saturday, October 28, 2006
> 
> All we need is wave function progression punctuated by
> creation/annihilation
> of bosons - what physicists deal with day to day, as I understand it....
> all
> you need is a dual aspect ontology, fermions (matter) and (sentient)
> bosons.
> ....
> 
> [Jonathan Edwards] 10-13-06
> 
> 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: Orthodox QM requires (experimental) choices, and these choices are not
specified in terms of the physically described variables by any known laws.
Since all seem to agree that experiences themselves are realities,
how can one rationally dismiss the possibility that the choices depend
causally/functionally upon these realities. I follow Wm. James's dictum:
"The thought itself is the thinker" I introduce no ghosts, but recognize
that science is based on things we can describe, and our descriptions of our
conscious experiences CAN, and in orthodox quantum theory DO, enter into the
calculations of our predictions about the phenomenal realities.
In the claasical approximation all causation is reduced to physical
causation (causation that is completely expressed in terms of purely
physically described variables), but there is no reason to insist that,
or believe that, this restiction must hold within the more general
quantum theory.

5B> [Joseph Polanik ]  Mon, 16 Oct 2006,
> 
> What is Quantum Interactive Dualism?  Is it Chalmers, one 'stuff'
> matter/energy; with two sets of properties -- the physical & experiential
> properties or Descartes two fundamental substances, matter/energy and mind
> stuff? Some argue that he had three sets of properties:. physical
> properties, mental properties and  experiential properties of sensory
> awareness from the union of body and mind/soul.
> 
> [Henry Stapp] 10-19-20
> 
> It uses two kinds of descriptions: One is psychological description (Bohr,
> 1962, p.3). The other is the quantum description in terms of mathematical
> properties assigned to space-time points..which represent "potentialities"
> for psycho-physical events to occur. These events are the
> most "real" things ... The one underlying "stuff" is an evolving state of
> "information", which is characterized as a structure, 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.
> 
> 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 and psychologically described properties constitute
> QM
> Interactive Dualism.
> 
> [Philip Benjamin]
> 
> So there are in fact four Things to consider: 1. Physical properties   2.
> Psychological properties 3. Information 4. A persisting essence. Henry
> Stapp
> states: **None of these is a substance in the normal/usual everyday sense
> of
> the term **. What could be this extra ordinary substance? Could it have
> mass, charge, spin? How is this essence PERSISTING , since there is
> constant
> and complete recycling of matter in the cells (electrons, protons,
> neutrons), some within minutes, especially in the brain? Should not these
> same four stuff do the same *tricks* in rocks or plants or animals as in
> humans, particularly since genetically they are all very close (except the
> rocks)?
> 
HPS: If one thinks in process terms terms then there is one process,
which has aspects that we can speak about. And we can construct useful
theories that relate those aspects that we can speak about.

> [Henry Stapp]
> 
> 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 experientable (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?
> 
> [Philip Benjamin]
> 
> Let me paraphrase this, to see if I understood it correctly. Classical
> physics can describe physical reality.

HPS: This is not a para phrasing! Classical physics described what classical
physics postulated to be physical reality. But conventional quantum physics
claims that the classical conceptualization was profoundly incorrect at the
basic level, even
though it is useful as a way of speaking about the structure of our
perceptions. According to conventional quantum theory the classical
description gets replaced by a quantum mathematical description that,
ontologically speaking, is a description of *potentialities* for the
occurrence of percetpual events that are described "in everydasy
language supplemented by the terminology of classical physical theory."

> Classical physics comes under quantum
> theoretical generalization. So physical reality cannot disappear from the
> quantum state of possibilities or potentialities. It must be one of those
> potentialities. This position is accepted as a quantum mystery.
> 

The deterministic classical laws result from an approximation: the
approximation of setting the physically non-zero value of Planck's
artificially to zero. The old "physically reality" turns into a
"potentiality" for "an experiencible event" to occur. I do not think that
the fact that classical physics fails, and needs to be improved,
fundamentally, is a bona fide mystery: there never was a solid reason for it
to be right in the first place. Once one grants that the prime realities of
a scientific theory are our  conscious experiences. I do not think that the
proposition the conscious realities are real can be denied. And if they are
real it would be a mystery if they had no
effects.

> Equating events with essence is a category mistake.

HPS: Yes, I think the whole line of approach that is based on substances
rather than process is unhelpful, and I avoid using that terminology.
The useful focus is on relationships between the psychologically
describable aspects of the world process and a mathematical model. 
> 
> Is there a gratuitous intrusion into quantum physics of personal
> mysticism,
> fortified by Eastern peer-camaraderie? [Once in the early 50~Rs, I stood
> as a
> tourist in the same place where Carl Jung, was on record as an apprentice
> and practitioner of sorcery for 18 months. Jung was a much senior and very
> influential contemporary of many young Quantum theorists of his day,
> especially Heisenberg].

HPS: Jung's connection to Pauli, later on, is well documented. But Bohr went
out of his way to disassociate quantum theory with mysticism of any
kind by emphasizing its deep and secure root in empirical/experimental
practice. Quantum theory is the simplest, and only known, way to make
verifiable predictions about a certain large class of phenomena. Human
person's enter the theory in the way that they do in actual scientific
practice, as agents that set up conditions and observe/perceive outcomes.
These person's are not ghosts, or mystical figments.
And their conscious choices are highly efficacious. The fact that in the
classical approximation every physically efficacious cause is physically
describable does not entail that the causal basis must be restricted
in this way when the uncertainties mandated by the uncertainty principle
become important. Properties that hold in an approximation often do not hold
in general.

> Best regards
> 
> Philip Benjamin
> medinuclear@hotmail.com
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > From: "Henry P. Stapp" <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
> > Reply-To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
> > To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [jcs-online] Re: Stapp/Atmanspacher and To what is conscious
> > presented?
> > Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:51:13 -0800 (PST)
> > > Polanik: "enduring insight: the distinction between a property and
> > > that
> > which has or exhibits that property."
> > 
> > HPS: Conscious experiences belong to stream's of conscious
> > experiences, and these streams are part of nature's proceess.
> > 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
> > tertially the person (an aspect of nature's process) the "has" this
> > stream
> > of consciousness.
> > 
> > Polanik: "The next question is: If there is experience occuring; then
> > to what is that experience occuring?"
> > 
> > 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: This may be harking back to "I assume that the presentee
> > is whatever entity in the brain experiences consciousness." (See
> > Hameroff, Oct 29) The idea the something in the brain "experiences
> > conscious" goes far beyond what science says. Nor does science tell us
> > that some immaterial entity "experiences consciousness". Experiences
> > occur
> > in streams of conscious, which are aspects of nature's psycho-physical
> > process, and "to" a "person" by appearing in that person's stream of
> > consciousness. Each human person is an aspect of nature's process with
> > both physically described and psychologically described aspects. The
> > physically described aspects specify *potentialities* (objective
> > tndencies, in Heisenberg's words) for certain psychophysical events to
> > occur. Von Neumann has spelled out the currently known rules for the
> > known
> > (to science) connection between the physically and psychologically
> > described aspects of nature's process.
> > 
> > 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 has not
> > been able to be carried over to the domain of special relativity,
> > where particle creation becomes important. [cf. Pearle,
> > quant-ph/0205069]
> > And when, trying to generalize his ideas, Bohm 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 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 that reality contains psychologically described aspects that
> > are tighly tied to the physically described aspects of brains, but are
> > not fixed by specifying the prior physically described (quantum) state
> > of the universe. The quantum state of the universe fixes only the
> > potentialities for (collapse/reduction) events that---and this is the
> > key to the pragmatic success of quantum theory---are closely connected
> > to increments in human knowledge. The events have psychologically
> > described aspects, which are what we observe/experience, or, more
> > precisely, *are* the empirical data They are not superhatural or
> > unobservable, but are rather a core part of the quantum mechanical
> > description, and the only part of nature unequivocally known to be real.
> > But nature's overall process needs a (sub)process that partitions
> > the continuum of potentialities into some set experiencable parts.
> > At least that is how conventional (Copenhagen/vN) QM works in real
> > scientific practice. In that theory there is a psychologically described
> > aspect that is an intgral part of the whole dynamical structure, and
> > that
> > continues to be essential (in connection with process 1) when the brain
> > is
> > made part of the aspect of nature that is described on quantum physical
> > terms.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
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From hpstapp@lbl.gov Sun Nov 12 03:14:17 2006
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 03:14:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Henry P. Stapp <hpstapp@lbl.gov>
To: jcs-online@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [jcs-online] Mondor, Polanik, Lofting, Edwards, Nunn & the Stapp/Atmsanspacher dialogue

On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Ray Mondor wrote:

> Through a fortunate and fortuitous connection I am able to forward
Dr. Basil Hiley's reply to some of Dr. Stapp's remarks.
> 
>    Ray Mondor
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> 
> 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 raise 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 behaviour 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.

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 acknowledged and stressed that there are opposing viewpoints, including
promimently, the one of David Bohm.

> 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.
> 

The issue of what has caused the laws of nature to be what they are,
with their fantastic suitability for life, including not least of all
the fact that they yield the fantastic properties of DNA, is very
interesting question. Are there, as string theory is supposed to
entail, some 10 to the 500th power possible worlds which could all exist,
and that some of them accidently have all of the properties that exist
in our universe? If so, then that is why life exists in our universe.
Consciousness could be a property of our universe without its being a cause
or prerequisite of it. Because our universe has evolved in such a way as to
produce conscious living organisms whose psychologically describable
properties exist in a symbiotic relationship with physically describable
properties, a symbiotic relationship that we can describe, and that we can
use to make predictions about correlations between our perceptions, does not
entail that consciousness is a prerequisite or
cause of the stability of matter.  Consciousness exists on our universe,
and hence the potentiality for consciousness must be something that inheres
in the structure of our universe, but the potentiality for human-type
consciousness presumably did not become actualixed until human-type
organisms appeared.

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

Well, human consciousness probably depends on the
stability of matter.

> 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.
> 

This admission that "much is left to be done" is worrisome.

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 the 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.

> 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.
> 

With respect to that point what I said on p.78 was:

"Bohm certainly appreciated the need to deal more substantively with the
problem of consciousness. He wrote a paper on the subject (Bohm, 1986,
1990), which ended up associating consciousness with an infinite tower of
pilot waves, each one piloting the wave below. But the great virtue of the
original pilot-wave model, namely the fact that it was simple and
deterministic with cleanly specified solvable equations, became lost in this
infinite tower."

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 Bohmial determinism fails then consciousness could enter
causally in much the way I have proposed, since electrodynamics is the key
physics in the brain, and the creation and annihilation of photons is a huge
part of the action.

Henry