Theme 1 pertains to "importance." By ‘most important’ I mean most important to human beings. Physicists have generally shied away from the problems of human beings, and the role of our minds in nature, because they are so complex: these problems have been set aside for a later time. But that time has now arrived. The needed technologies, funding, and interest are all at hand. Moreover, the advances in technology now allow scores of laboratories to participate, and the number will (...) soon grow to hundreds: the data will come from many diverse sources, not just a few billion dollar facilities. (shrink)

I shall describe the beautiful fit of the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead and William James with the concepts of relativistic quantum field theory developed by Tomonaga and Schwinger.The central concept is a set of happenings each of which is assigned a space-time region.This growing set of non-overlapping regions fill out a growing space-time region that advances into the still uncreated and yet-to-be-axed future.Each happening has both experiential aspects and physical aspects,which are jointly needed to generate the advance into the (...) future.This conception is useful in passing from the pragmatic interpretation of science to a putative understanding of the reality beyond phenomena,and of our role within it. James' ideas about attention and volition are naturally implementable within this framework,and make us into agents that can act eficaciously upon the physical world on the basis of felt values, rational reasons,and conscious understandings. (shrink)

In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the conception of “physical” embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of the physical that hold in classical physical theories. Certain of those properties contradict the character of the physical in quantum mechanics, which provides a better, more comprehensive, and more fundamental account of phenomena. It is argued that the difficulties that have plagued physicalists (...) for half a century, and that continue to do so, dissolve when the classical idea of the physical is replaced by its quantum successor. The argument is concretized in way that makes it accessible to non-physicists by exploiting the recent evidence connecting our conscious experiences to macroscopic measurable synchronous oscillations occurring in wellseparated parts of the brain. A specific new model of the mind-brain connection that is fundamentally quantum mechanical but that ties conscious experiences to these macroscopic synchronous oscillations is used to illustrate the essential disparities between the classical and quantum notions of the physical, and in particular to demonstrate the failure in the quantum world of the principle of the causal closure of the physical, a failure that goes beyond what is entailed by the randomness in the outcomes of observations, and that accommodates the efficacy in the brain of conscious intention. (shrink)

enterprise initiated by Descartes, in that makes it into an effort to say the least one can confidentially assert rather than the most that one can usefully propose, as a way of understanding the scientifically accepted data.

Michael S. Gazzaniga is a renowned cognitive neuroscientist. He was Editor-in-Chief of the 1447 page book The Cognitive Neurosciences, which, for the past decade, has been the fattest book in my library, apart from the ‘unabridged’. His recent book The Ethical Brain has a Part III entitled “Free Will, Personal Responsibility, and the Law”. This Part addresses, from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, some of the moral issues that have been dealt with in the present book. The aim of this (...) Part III is to reconcile the materialist idea that brain activity is determined with the notion of moral responsibility, which normally depends upon the idea that we human agents possess free will. (shrink)

The aim of this talk is to provide a rationally coherent physics-based understanding of the manner in which our conscious thoughts can influence our physical actions. An incidental aim is to expose the profoundly illinformed understanding behind the quip that “The claim of quantum physicists that consciousness is related to quantum mechanics comes from the idea that because quantum mechanics is a mystery and consciousness is a mystery, maybe the two are related.”.

David Bourget has raised some conceptual and technical objections to my development of von Neumann’s treatment of the Copenhagen idea that the purely physical process described by the Schrödinger equation must be supplemented by a psychophysical process called the choice of the experiment by Bohr and Process 1 by von Neumann. I answer here each of Bourget’s objections.

Thank you for bringing Bigaj’s book to my attention. I promised to give you my comments after I got hold of it. As you indicated, Bigaj’s book seems largely devoted to analyzing my various arguments that the non-locality claim [that theories that reproduce certain predictions of quantum, and that embrace the idea that choices of experiments can be treated, effectively, as localized “free choices”, must allow some sort of faster-than-light transfer of information] can be strengthened by using the framework of (...) counterfactual reasoning [as contrasted to hidden-variable frameworks that effectively assume the existence of an underlying “reality” that determines, for each of the (four) alternative possible combinations of measurements between which the experimenters are considered able to freely choose, which outcome appears.] The non-existence of an underlying ‘determining reality’ would nullify the Bell-type (hidden-variable) proofs of the need for some sort of faster-than-light transfer of information. But counterfactual-based proofs can overcome that limitation. (shrink)

Werner Heisenberg was, from a technical point of view, the principal founder of quantum theory. He discovered in 1925 the completely amazing and wholly unprecedented solution to the puzzle: the quantities that classical physical theory was based upon, and which were thought to be numbers, must be treated not as numbers but as actions! Ordinary numbers, such as 2 and 3, have the property that the product of any two of them does not depend on the order of the factors: (...) 2 times 3 is the same as 3 times 2. But Heisenberg discovered that one could get the correct answers out of the old classical laws if one decreed that certain of the numbers that are used in classical physics to describe the physical properties of a material system are not ordinary numbers. Rather, they are actions having the property that the order in which they act matters! (shrink)

This talk is about you as a human person. It is about science’s conception of you as a human person. It is about what makes you different from a machine. It is about your mind, and how your mind influences your bodily actions. It is about.

Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg were the originators of two approaches, known respectively as “wave mechanics” and “matrix mechanics”, to what is now called “quantum mechanics” or “quantum theory”. The two approaches appear to be extremely different, both in their technical forms, and in their philosophical underpinnings. Heisenberg arrived at his theory by effectively renouncing the idea of trying to represent a physical system, such as a hydrogen Bohr's atom model for example, as a structure in space—time, but instead, following (...) the lead of Einstein's 1905 theory of relativity, representing only empirically observable properties, such as the transition amplitudes between the stationary states of the atom. These amplitudes can be arranged in square arrays of numbers. In Heisenberg's scheme these arrays, and other like them, are combined according to certain rules that were later recognized by Max Born to be the rules of matrix multiplication. The whole scheme is abstract and mathematical, and avoids using any space—time picture of what is going on at the atomic level. Schrödinger, on the other hand, represented the electron in an atom by a cloudlike wave surrounding the nucleus. This is a space—time structure that, superficially at least, is more in line with the classical physical theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. -/- Niels Bohr invited Schrödinger to come to Copenhagen to present his ideas, and to discuss this subject with himself, Heisenberg, and others. Schrödinger arrived in Copenhagen on October 1st, 1926, and was immediately intensively engaged by Bohr and the others in a “debate” that lasted for days. Eventually, Schrödinger become ill, and was confined in Bohr's home to a bed, upon which Bohr sat, continuing the discussion. Schrödinger finally exclaimed “If all the quantum jumping is here to stay, then I am sorry that I ever became involved in quantum mechanics”. Bohr replied, “But we are glad that you did!”. (shrink)

This question is important because our beliefs about our relationship to the world underlie our values, and our values determine the sort of world we strive to create.

APPENDIX: The data emerging from the clinical and brain studies described above suggest that, in the case of OCD, there are two pertinent brain mechanisms that are distinguishable both in terms of neuro-dynamics and in terms of the conscious experiences that accompany them. These mechanisms can be characterized, on anatomical and perhaps evolutionary grounds, as a lower-level and a higher-level mechanism. The clinical treatment has, when successful, an activating effect on the higher-level mechanism, and a suppressive effect on the lower-level (...) one. (shrink)

I have looked over, as I promised, Searle's "The Mystery of Consciousness", and his attack therein on Chalmers. They come to a similar main conclusion, which, in accordance with our own position, is that consciousness is not logically or ontologically reducible to the objective aspects of nature.

"Indeed I have very little idea of what this means. I do not understand in what sense the word `mechanical' is used, in characterizing the disturbances that Bohr does not contemplate, as distinct from those he does. I do not know what the italicized passage means--- `an influence on the very conditions...' . Could it mean just that different experiments on the first system give different kinds of information about the second? But this was one of the main points of (...) EPR, who observed that one could learn *either* the position *or* the momentum of the second system..... Is Bohr just rejecting the premise--- `no action at a distance'---rather than refuting the argument?". (shrink)

{\large \bf A QUANTUM THEORY OF THE MIND--BRAIN INTERFACE} \footnote{This work was supported by the Director, Office of Energy Research, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract..

{\large \bf The Emergence of Consciousness} \footnote{This work is supported in part by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of High Energy Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC03-76SF00098}.

I shall use Jack Sarfatti's posting of Mar 7 to explicate the principles of the vN/W approach to consciousness by contrasting it to Bohm's theory, and Sarfatti's. These principles are very simple, but Jack's comments show that they are not universally understood.

Copenhagen is the perfect setting for our discussion of matter and information. We have been charged by the organizers “to explore the current concept of matter from scientific, philosophical, and theological perspectives.” If by “current” one means quantum mechanical, then an essential foundation for this work is the output of the intense intellectual struggles that took place here in Copenhagen during the twenties, principally between Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli. Those struggles replaced the then-prevailing Newtonian idea of matter (...) as “solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles” with a new concept that allowed, and in fact demanded, the entry into the process governing the motion of matter of the consequences of decisions made by human subjects. This change in the conception of nature swept away the meaningless billiard-ball universe, and replaced it with a universe in which we human beings, by means of our intentional effort, can make a difference in how the “matter” in our bodies behaves. (shrink)

I have been encouraged by John Range, as part of the preparation for my talk in Paris on May 20 to some French philosophers, to look into Kant's position. This look has been a very brief one, considering the enormous amount written on the subject, so maybe I can get some useful corrections from this group..

> On the question of reasons as causes, philosophers generally acknowledge > that reasons can be considered causes (or antecedents of 'regularities') > only to the extent that the reasons are physically realized (instantiated, > represented, embodied, implemented) in the brain. The problem is trying to > find a neural correlate for a mental state containing a 'reason', such that > the reason can become a ('real', 'physical' ) cause.

> What I'm interested in is your response to Tegmark. I haven't yet looked at > the paper you sent me in your email, but one response that I thought of is > this: Tegmark's argument, if cogent, suggests that there can't be neural > indeterminacies based on macro-level superpositions that collapse due to > neural processes. But your view doesn't involve macro-level superpositions; > it involves micro-level superpositions (of presynaptic calcium ions). So > even if Tegmark's argument is sound, (...) it's irrelevant to your view. Does > this sound right to you? (shrink)

I just returned from a small conference attended by Basil Hiley, among a pestigious group of 17. An Oxford Philosopher of Science, S. Saunders, asserted strongly a point that I have often made, namely that the theory has never been extended to the relativistic case involving particle creation. Hiley did not disagree, but I believe admitted that this was indeed the case. So that is one reason why the theory as it stands is inadequate.

> theories are somehow inadequate. In particular, the idea that QM can > account for consciousness because it (QM) is somehow already imbued with > the subjective/objective distinction is based on Bohr's mysticism rather > than QM itself. (Anyone been reading the recent debates in NYRB about the > (ir)relevance of deconstructionism to science?).

"it is the revised understanding of the nature of human beings, and of the causal role of human consciousness in the unfolding of reality, that is, I believe, the most exciting thing about the new physics, and probably, in the final analysis, also the most important contribution of science to the well-being of our species." [p. 6, bottom].

Consider the case of the double slit expt where a single photon lands on the film and twenty years later the film gets developed and a human observer looks at it. Question: What is the state of the universe during those twenty years ? (The Schrodinger cat business).

This paper summarizes my contributions to a talk with the above title given together with Jeffrey Schwartz at UCSF Cole Hall, May 5, 2009, to an audience of research post-doctoral fellows. The full presentation is available at URL saa49.ucsf.edu/psa/themind.wmv.

This "axiom" must be used with great care. It is well-known that the formalism of Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (RQFT) is 'Relativistic" in the sense that it allows no "signal" to be transmitted faster than the speed of light. So RQFT does conform to "The FIN Axiom" if by "effectively transmitted" one is referring to the transmission of a "signal". Here a "signal" means a controllable dependence of a faraway observable upon a sender's choices (of how he will act); a (...) dependence that affects the faraway situation in a way that would allow the sender to convey information available to him, the sender, to a faraway observer. (shrink)