the frontiers collection www.com the frontiers collection Series Editors: A. Zeh The books in this collection are devoted to challenging and open problems at the forefront of modern science, including related philosophical debates. In contrast to typical research mono- graphs, however, they strive to present their topics in a manner accessible also to scientifically literate non-specialists wishing to gain insight into the deeper implications and fascinating questions involved. Taken as a whole, the series reflects the need for a fundamental and in- terdisciplinary approach to modern science.
Furthermore, it is intended to encourage active scientists in all areas to ponder over important and perhaps controversial issues beyond their own speciality. Extending from quantum physics and relativity to entropy, consciousness and complex systems – the Frontiers Collection will inspire readers to push back the frontiers of their own knowledge. Other Recent Titles Weak Links Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks By P. Csermely Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order By P.
Pylkkänen Particle Metaphysics A Critical Account of Subatomic Reality By B. Falkenburg The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time By H. Zeh Mindful Universe Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer By H. Stapp Decoherence and the Quantum-To-Classical Transition By M.
Schlosshauer The Nonlinear Universe Chaos, Emergence, Life By A. Scott Symmetry Rules How Science and Nature Are Founded on Symmetry By J. Rosen Quantum Superposition Counterintuitive Consequences of Coherence, Entanglement, and Interference By M. Silverman Series home page – springer.
Stapp MIND, MATTER AND QUANTUM MECHANICS Third Edition 13 www. Stapp University of California Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Berkeley CA 94720 USA e-mail: hpstapp@lbl.gov Series Editors: Avshalom C. Elitzur Bar-Ilan University, Unit of Interdisciplinary Studies, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel email: avshalom.
Schlosshauer University of Melbourne, Department of Physics, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia email: m. Silverman Trinity College, Dept. Physics, Hartford CT 06106, USA email: mark. Tuszynski University of Alberta, Dept.
Physics, Edmonton AB T6G 1Z2, Canada email: jtus@phys.ca Rüdiger Vaas Posener Str. 85, 74321 Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany email: Ruediger. Dieter Zeh Gaiberger Straße 38, 69151 Waldhilsbach, Germany email: zeh@uni-heidelberg.de Cover Figure: Detail from ‘The Optiverse’, a video of the minimax sphere eversion by John M. Sullivan, George Francis, and Stuart Levy, with original score by Camille Goudeseune.
More at http://new.edu/optiverse ISBN 978-3-540-89653-1 e-ISBN 978-3-540-89654-8 DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-89654-8 Frontiers Collection ISSN 1612-3018 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008942368 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable for prosecution under the German Copyright Law.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: KuenkelLopka GmbH, Heidelberg Printed on acid-free paper 987654321 springer.com For Olivia www.com Preface to the Third Edition The basic problem in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is to reconcile the quantum features of the mathematics with the fact that our perceptual experiences are described in the language of classical physics. Observed physical objects appear to us to occupy definite locations, and we use the concepts of everyday life, refined by the ideas of nineteenth-century physics, to describe both our procedures for obtaining information about the systems we are studying, and also the data that we then receive, such as the reading of the position of a pointer on a dial.
Yet our instruments, and our physical bodies and brains, are in some sense conglomerates of atoms. The individual atoms appear to obey the laws of quantum mechanics, and these laws include rules for combining systems of atomic constituents into larger systems. Insofar as experiments have been able to determine, and these experiments examine systems containing tens of billions of electrons, there is no apparent breakdown of the quantum rules. Yet if we assume that these laws hold all the way up to visible objects such as pointers, then difficulties arise.
The state of the pointer would, according to the theory, often have parts associated with the pointer’s being located in visibly different places. If we continue to apply the laws right up to, and into, our brains, then our brains, as represented in quantum mechanics, would have parts corresponding to our seeing the pointer in several visibly different locations. Inclusion of the effects of the environment does not remove any of these parts, although it does make it effectively impossible to empirically confirm the simultaneous presence of these different parts. The orthodox solution to this problem is simply to postulate, as a basic precept of the theory, that our observations are classically describable.
This postulate is incorporated into the theory by asserting that any conscious observation will be accompanied by a “collapse of the wave function” or “reduction of the wave packet” that will simply exclude from the prior physically described state all parts that are incompatible with the conscious experience. This prescription works beautifully. When combined with the rule that the probability that this perception will occur is the ratio of the www.com VIII Preface to the Third Edition quantum mechanical weighting of the reduced state to the quantum me- chanical weighting of the prior state, one gets predictions never known to fail. This ad hoc injection, in association with “consciousness”, of “classi- cal” concepts into a theory that is mathematically incompatible with those concepts, is the origin of the mysteriousness of quantum mechanics.
There is mounting evidence from neuroscience that our conscious thoughts are associated with synchronous oscillations in well-separated sites in the brain. This opens the door to a natural way of understanding, simulta- neously, both the mind–brain and quantum–classical linkages. Oscillatory motions play a fundamental role in quantum mechanics, and they embody an extremely tight quantum–classical connection. This connection allows the quantum–classical and mind–brain connections to be understood together in a relatively simple and direct way.
Chapters 13 and 14 are new in this edition. Both describe simple models that achieve a simultaneous solution of these two problems. The first pa- per, entitled “Physicalism Versus Quantum Mechanics”, is concerned more with the philosophical aspects, whereas the second, entitled “A Model of the Quantum–Classical and Mind–Brain Connections, and the Role of the Quantum Zeno Effect in the Physical Implementation of Conscious Intent” focuses more on technical matters pertaining to the question of the time scales associated with the quantum-mandated influence of our conscious intentional actions upon our physically described brains. These two papers, and the second one in particular, involve more equations than any of the other papers in the book.
But these equations describe properties of simple geometric structures, and the meanings of the equations are described also in geometric terms. To make room for the new articles without appreciably lengthening the book, the old chapter 5 has been removed. Its content significantly over- lapped that of other chapters, so its removal mainly eliminates redundancies. The two new chapters describe in terms meant to be generally under- standable to nonphysicists who are not uncomfortable with mathematics the technical foundations of the approach to the mind–brain connection pursued in this book and further developed in its sequel, the Springer volume Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer.
Berkeley, October 2008 Henry P.com Preface to the Second Edition I have been besieged by requests for copies of this book, particularly since the publication of The Mind and the Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley. That book gave a popular-style account of the impact of these quantum-based considerations in psychiatry and neuroscience. This is just one example of the substantial progress that has been made during the decade since the publication of the first edition of Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics in understanding the relationship between conscious experience and physical processes in the brain. Von Neumann’s Process I has been identified as the key physical process that accounts, within the framework of contemporary physical theory, for the causal efficacy of directed attention and willful effort.
It is now understood how quantum uncertainties in the micro-causal bottom–up physical brain process not only open the door to a consciously controlled top–down process, but also require the presence of this process, at least within the context of pragmatic science. These new developments fit securely onto the general framework pre- sented in the first edition. They are described in a chapter written for this new edition and entitled “Neuroscience, Atomic Physics, and the Human Person”. This chapter integrates the contents of three lectures and a text that I have prepared and delivered during the past year.
Those presentations were aimed at four very different audiences, and I have tried to adopt here a style that will make the material accessible to all of those audiences, and hence to a broad readership. The material covered in that chapter is essentially scientific. The broader ramifications are covered in a second new chapter entitled “Societal Rami- fications of the New Scientific Conception of Human Beings”. Berkeley, July 2003 Henry P.com Preface to the First Edition Nature appears to be composed of two completely different kinds of things: rocklike things and idealike things.
The first is epitomized by an enduring rock, the second by a fleeting thought. A rock can be experienced by many of us together, while a thought seems to belong to one of us alone. Thoughts and rocks are intertwined in the unfolding of nature, as Michelangelo’s David so eloquently attests. Yet is it possible to under- stand rationally how two completely different kinds of things can interact with each other? Logic says no, and history confirms that verdict.
To form a rational comprehension of the interplay between the matterlike and mind- like parts of nature these two components ought to be understood as aspects of some single primal stuff. But what is the nature of a primal stuff that can have mind and matter as two of its aspects? An answer to this age-old question has now been forced upon us. Physi- cists, probing ever deeper into the nature of matter, found that they were forced to bring into their theory the human observers and their thoughts. Moreover, the mathematical structure of the theory combines in a mar- velous way the features of nature that go with the concepts of mind and matter.
Although it is possible, in the face of this linkage, to try to maintain the traditional logical nonrelatedness of these two aspects of nature, that endeavor leads to great puzzles and mysteries. The more reasonable way, I believe, is to relinquish our old metaphysical stance, which though temporar- ily useful was logically untenable, and follow where the new mathematics leads. This volume brings together several works of mine that aim to answer the question: How are conscious processes related to brain processes? My goal differs from that of most other quantum physicists who have written about the mind–brain problem. It is to explain how the content of each conscious human thought, as described in psychological terms, is related to corresponding processes occurring in a human brain, as described in the language of contemporary physical science.
The work is based on a substantial amount of empirical data and a strictly enforced demand for www.com Preface to the First Edition XI logical coherence. I call the proposed solution the Heisenberg/James model because it unifies Werner Heisenberg’s conception of matter with William James’s idea of mind. and then a Miracle Occurs”, was written specially for this volume. It is aimed at all readers, including workers in psychol- ogy, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind.