Consciousness as an active part in modern physics

[hypnagogue]

Hmm. I would only read it in one way - think about the philosophers' zombie. It is not because a certain brain function is present that it must necessarily give rise to some consciousness. But in order for a consciousness to be present, I agree that it must be related to a brain function. Isn't this the entire materialist - dualist debate ?

Yes, there are arguments that physical activity in the brain alone is not sufficient to generate subjective experience (and in fact, I subscribe to these arguments). But we needn't concern ourselves with that here, nor with the dualism/materialism debate in general. I am just interested in asserting that there is some tight causal relation between consciousness and the brain, such that if one is supposed to have 'real' ontological status, it follows that the other must as well. (Of course, if the antiphysicalist argument is right, then brain activity alone per se does not imply the existence of consciousness; but that whole zombie argument is one about metaphysically possible worlds. For this thread we are only interested in what is nomologically possible, i.e. what is possible in our universe, with its own characteristic laws, be they physical or not. It is often claimed that zombies are metaphysically possible but nomologically impossible, and that is a framework we can use here to eliminate the zombie issue from consideration in this discussion without denying its validity.)

So what I want to do here is clarify the discussion by evaluating the argument in terms we can get a good handle on (like physical entities) rather than ones that tend to be slippery and troublesome (like consciousness). In many arguments this move would be fatally missing the point, but I do not believe that that is the case in this instance, since we are not so much concerned here with the nature of experience vis a vis physical things (what are these things like and how are they related) so much as we are concerned with more general ontological questions. That is, the manner in which you frame your essential question (why am I conscious of now and not tomorrow or yesterday) does not pick out particular features of consciousness that critically distinguish it from physical phenomena (an example of such would be, why does it feel like something to touch sand rather than feeling like nothing at all, or why can't subjective experience be adequately characterized in formal terms). So we can get at the core of the question just as well by asking it of the physical phenomena which are deeply causally linked to consciousness (e.g., why is this configuration of particles that constitutes my brain at this region of spacetime not the same as that configuration at that time).

Do you agree that we can make this substitution without losing the thrust of the discussion? It's not clear to me what your response is to that judging from your last post. If you do not agree, could you explain what it is about consciousness such that this question is problematic when applied to consciousness but not problematic when asked in an analogous way about physical phenomena?

In any case, we seem to have drawn diverging conclusion from my miniature thought experiment. I concluded that there is in fact no real selection problem implied by the static 4D spacetime of GR, whereas you concluded that an analogous selection problem exists even in the Newtonian model. I intended the question "why do I experience me and not you?" to be illustrative that there is no real problem here, but you consented that that question too is problematic.

It might be useful to use that last example to examine where our differing conceptions lie. So, why is it that I experience "me" and not "you"? In other words, why is it that my subjective experience corresponds to events occurring in my brain rather than events occurring in yours? Here's the way I see it. First, there must exist some fundamental natural relations that map physical brain activity (and perhaps other types of physical activity too) onto subjective experience in a systematic way. Second, our two brains are physically distinct systems. Therefore, we experience different consciousnesses. I experience mine and not yours just for the same reason that, say, light impinging on my retina but not yours registers and is processed by my brain but not yours. If it is problematic to assess why my consciousness is assigned to "my" brain and not someone else's, then by analogy to the postulate causally linking brain and mind, it should also be problematic to assess why my brain processes information coming from my retinas and not information coming from your retinas.

I hope that makes sense and that I haven't gone in circles or missed an essential point of yours. I am interested in what you have to say about QM as well but first I would like to try to resolve this issue.

 

[vanesch]

In your GR system, the perception states correspond to the different states (on a worldline) in a deterministic system (and as such evolve through well prescribed rules) while in QM your PHYSICAL BRAIN (ah yes, you just told me that |careful1> was my physical brain state) simply makes crazy jumps.

No, it doesn't make *crazy* jumps, it makes jumps according to whether the current state you're in 1) gets entangled or not with something else (that's purely unitary physics) and 2) in that case, jumps according to the Born rule to one of the entangled states.

No, no, no not at all ! In all these non quantum situations, my brain state exists and evolves. In the quantum case your brain state just exists, but it obeys the laws of randomness (by the way do not forget that this is all not necessary in GR - I just do this for sake of academic exercise).

Well, in what way does the considered brain state not "exist" and "evolve" in the case I'm saying, through a well-specified dynamical law (which is not deterministic, but probabilistic) ?

** Nothing stops me from postulating a preferred basis ; it is all part of the mapping between the ontology (the state of the universe) and what you happen to experience subjectively (the "you happen to be" mapping). Now, the more *natural* these postulates are, the better the theory of course, but even if I have to make a blunt list of what are the preferred basis states, that's always possible. **
Sure, why not? Just put in by hand what outcome you expect from a theory and then call it predictive

Well, there's nothing wrong with that a priori, right ? Decoherence theory already does a good job at suggesting how this preferred basis should be choosen, but there's nothing wrong in postulating things so that observation corresponds to what follows from the postulates.

When I started to learn physics, I always had the silly idea that if I would work out dynamical equations of motion corresponding to some strange initial conditions, I might discover new macroscopic phenomena I never imagined.

Admit that choosing a very special initial condition for the universe so that it follows current observations is also done. There's really nothing wrong with that.

** The postulated preferred basis of bodystates is then simply the different states that correspond to different possible subjective experiences. **
I am sure you are aware of them all !

Well, they essentially correspond to what you call classical physics. And, a I said, decoherence theory does quite a good job at giving a natural reason for doing so.

** Clearly for about all "classical" phenomena, there's an overwhelmingly high Born probability to just follow closely the classical path, and any deviation of it is highly improbable **
But your brainstate is not classical (albeit there is quite some grey mass usually).

? My brain state is postulated to be a basis state that corresponds to a classical state (remember the preferred basis which we postulate perceived brain states are in).

Moreover, what you say is not correct at all for classical chaotic phenomena (such as the weather). If you let U run for some while, your brain would switch from rain, to sun, to storm every 0.1 seconds ! (quite an exciting world you have there).

This is absolutely not true. You seem not to have understood that the "next jump" is only STARTING FROM THE PREVIOUSLY selected state, and not "anew again". As such, the unitary evolution operator, applied to the selected state, will evolve that state mainly into a state that will correspond to the solution of the classical system, and the time scale of that evolution will then be of course the same timescale as the classical system. So yes, my brain would switch from rain, to sun, to storm, but on the same timescale as the chaotic classical system, about every 5 days or so. That's indeed what I observe :-)
You seem to think that each time, the "token" (which indicates which state you happen to be in) is taken away, and re-assigned. In that case, you'd be right of course, but that is NOT what is proposed.
You only use the Born rule when the state you are in (the state with a token) gets entangled with something else. As long as the state you are in remains in a product state with all the rest, you remain in that state. And when the Born rule is used, it is used only towards states that evolved out of the state you were in. This gives you very close to a classical evolution of the state (unless in typical quantum experimental states).

** moreover these classical states correspond (apparently - or almost as a DEFINITION of classical state - to the preferred basis states of different subjective experiences). **
Well, you are aware of all your possible subjective experiences I see... Moreover, another problem with your picture is that these different macroscopic brain states CANNOT be orthogonal; otherwise the process your brain runs through is totally discontinuous (see what happens then in the book of Penrose).

Well, of course these states are orthogonal (or practically so). "Orthogonal" only means "classically different". Two particles at slightly different positions, as wavepackets, are also essentially orthogonal states.
There's in fact nothing wrong with jumping discontinously from state to state if these states give a sufficiently "smooth" succession, no ?

** So by an overwhelming probability, you will always go for the state that corresponds to what you'd expect of a deterministic evolution. **
Naah, think about the weather ...
**The bifurcation only comes in when we look at phenomena that have comparable quantum probabilities, and then, indeed, we do not have the impression that things happen deterministically ! **
See weather (you will need reduction of the state here and your physical brain WILL have to take into account its own history before it undergoes the next spontaneous click).

But that's exactly the same as reduction: you START form the state you were into go to the next, so I really think you're wrong there that the state would jump randomly. This "start from the state you're in and go to the next" gives you EXACTLY the same result as if there were state reduction.

 

[vanesch]

First, there must exist some fundamental natural relations that map physical brain activity (and perhaps other types of physical activity too) onto subjective experience in a systematic way.

This is - I think - impossible to establish (the hard problem) but as long as we work with systems which are quite analogous to our brains, we can assume that by analogy. And as you point out, this issue is probably NOT what I'm trying to discuss here.

Second, our two brains are physically distinct systems. Therefore, we experience different consciousnesses. I experience mine and not yours just for the same reason that, say, light impinging on my retina but not yours registers and is processed by my brain but not yours.

I think the problem is more: "what exactly, of physical ontology, gives rise to different consciousnesses". Clearly, I think we all agree that physically distinct systems give rise to different consciousnesses. But the problem that the MWI version touches upon is:
Can the overall quantum state (which is a superposition of classical states) of one and the same physical system also give rise to different consciousnesses ? So that "I" (the conscious I) is only aware of ONE of these states ?
I tried to find the (maybe poor) analogy with GR, where the SAME physical system is also in different states, this time parametrised by "eigentime" - while clearly "I" only experience part of it, the part that we call "now".

If it is problematic to assess why my consciousness is assigned to "my" brain and not someone else's, then by analogy to the postulate causally linking brain and mind, it should also be problematic to assess why my brain processes information coming from my retinas and not information coming from your retinas.
I hope that makes sense and that I haven't gone in circles or missed an essential point of yours. I am interested in what you have to say about QM as well but first I would like to try to resolve this issue.

It is not necessarily problematic. In fact I don't find it problematic at all and I fail to see why people oppose so much in considering the different quantum states my brain is in as potentially assigned to different consciousnesses.
Only, I just wanted to say that there is as such a non-trivial assignment of subjective experience to the ontology of my brain (and, as you pointed out, there is in the first place already the assignment of my subjective experience to my brain - which can, or cannot, be seen as a triviality).
In other words: I do only experience a certain part of the ontology that is associated with "my brain": a certain moment in time, a certain term of its quantum state.

 

[Careful]

But then your formalism is *not* unitary and entirely ``isomorphic´´ to Copenhagen reduction on the different brain states ! What is the fuzz about then ?? I do not get it, when are you aware? It seems to me that every 0.1 seconds your brain is ``aware´´ and therefore collapsing, according to you, the awareness state ??
If there is no collapse then I do not see how you can get out of my example. Please, if you see one, explain me in detail.

 

[vanesch]

Sigh...

I think I'm really not able to explain to you what I mean, and that is because you seem to say "full brain state = conscious state". But the entire discussion, from the start here, was to indicate that it is conceivable that what is consciously experienced, is only related to a PART of your brainstate.

I tried to take the example that in GR something similar is happening (or could be seen to be happening), in that "your brain state" extends over 4 dimensions, but you're only aware of a part of it, which corresponds to "now".

hypnagogue then reduced this "problem" to a problem which is similar, namely why do I consciously observe the brain state of the body of patrick, and not the brain state of the body of Joe, and considered such a thing not a problem, because you can say "well, you just HAPPEN to experience consciously the body of patrick" ; and in the same way, "well you happen just to observe patrick's brain state at the eigentime of that body = now".

But then, it should not be difficult to make the link to: "well you happen just to observe one term in the wave function of the brain state of patrick".

And of course, if you only happen to observe one term in the wave function of the brain state of patrick, then everything happens to your subjective world AS IF the state of patrick's brain and all that went with it, collapsed.

But the problem is that you don't seem to make the difference between "the brain state of your body" and "what you experience consciously". I tried this entire thread to make you see that it is possible to decouple these two concepts and that you may need to do so already in other descriptions of the world, such as GR, but I think I failed miserably.

Clearly, it is still possible to say that conscious awareness finds its origin in the physical ontology of the world. The problem is that you took it to be IDENTICAL with a physical object ; while I'm arguing that it could be something else, namely associated with a physical object, but determined by just part of that state description ; and that different parts of that state description could eventually be corresponding to DIFFERENT conscious experiences, by "different consciousnesses" all associated with the same physical object, and that there is a precise law of how a certain consciousness "follows" the state of the object it is associated with.

I tried to go to the "4-dim manifold" picture, to make you see that physical objects are 4-dimensional objects along a world line (say, of their center of gravity). So of the brainstate (a 4-dim structure) *you* (as a subjective experience) only see a slice of it. What's then wrong with saying that a body is in a quantum state, and *you* only experience ONE TERM of it ?

And that the next moment, if this one term gets entangled and splits (through unitary evolution), *you* will then experience one of the daughter terms evolving from it, and that this jump is determined by the Born rule ?

 

[quantumcarl]

Hi,
after some PM discussion that went into this direction and a short check, I want to persent here a summary of some of the ideas involved concerning a link between the consciously experienced subjective world and physics. First of all, it is probably interesting to find out the controversy between "materialism" (which states that the physical world includes whatever is "consciousness") and "dualism" which is supported by some arguments that the physical world can never entirely explain all aspects of consciousness. A summary of the concepts involved can be found here:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/consciou.htm
What I will write here subscribes in a way to the dualist notion, where consciousness is something extra-physical. However, it finds its roots in the physical world.
My point was the following: modern theories of physics (GR and QM) need a non-trivial relationship between the physical ontology (corresponding to a mathematical object in the theory) and the subjective experience by consciousness. This is in contrast to the Newtonian frame where a much more evident 1-1 relation can be seen. In order for this to make sense of course, some form of a dualistic vision on consciousness is necessary because a purely materialistic view cannot do.
But first, what about the Newtonian frame ? In the Newtonian frame, one can (almost) keep a purely materialist vision, if one associates consciousness to a physical structure (say a brain), because it is possible, because of the *physically ontologically meaningful concept of universal time* to recognise an ontologically existing 3-dim space with a brain state, which will then evolve according to that other, ontologically existing universal quantity, time, which "ticks away".
Of course, in a deterministic Newtonian frame, it is always possible to construct a 4-dimensional "static" manifold, and as such to attach an ontology to a 'spacetime'. This remark is sometimes made, that there is no fundamental difference between the 4-dim static manifold in Newtonian physics, and in relativity. However, the point is that this 4-dim manifold in Newtonian physics is entirely facultative. We don't NEED the concept of a 4-dim manifold as an ontological reality in Newtonian physics.
What happens in GR ? There, the postulated ontology is a static 4-dimensional manifold. We now NEED this structure, it is not facultative anymore. GR has no real meaning without the concept of a 4-dim manifold. So "yesterday" and "tomorrow" are different regions of that manifold (and even only make sense with respect to a specific world line). Yesterday exists no less than tomorrow or today. Nevertheless, we are consciously ONLY aware of "today". So I argued that you need AN EXTRA POSTULATE which maps, in a non-trivial way, the entire "state of the brain" which is a 4-dimensional structure (the worldline of the brain) onto ONLY ONE SLICE corresponding to "now" and that slice is what is subjectively experienced by the consciousness that is conjugated to that brain.
Although that brain's birth still exists somewhere on the manifold, and its death too, the consciousness of the brain only experiences ONE slice of it, namely the "today" slice. And as there is NO ontologically existing universal time parameter anymore, "ticking away", there is no PHYSICAL way to select this timeslice. This has hence to be done by a non-trivial mapping from the physical ontology (4-dim structure) to the subjective experience of a conscious being. However, this is often not explicitly stated, because locally the equations LOOK like those of a Newtonian observer, with his space and time coordinates. Nevertheless, the time coordinate is now just that: a coordinate. It is not a physically existing quantity anymore that has a specific value (and hence determines a specific slice). In Newtonian physics, one could claim that only ONE value of the time parameter "had ontological existence" (and that yesterday and tomorrow did not exist). This is not possible anymore in relativity.
Next comes in quantum theory. A popular (although not (yet?) standard) view on quantum theory is the relative state (or many worlds) interpretation, which claims essentially that ONLY ONE TERM in the cosmic wavefunction is consciously experienced by a conscious being - which explains the apparent probabilistic nature of QM. Usually, this meets a lot of critique because "introducing consciousness in a physical theory is somehow a bad idea". But I wanted to argue that *this was already the case when we took up general relativity with its spacetime manifold*.

Consciousness is a result of the many ways a living organism senses its environment. It is the culmination of these senses that create a consciousness. A plant can be said to be conscious of the sun. This can be verified by monitoring its electromagnetic field fluctuations in the presence of/ and without the sun. Awareness in the plant can be observed when its movement follows the sun. Awareness in the plant can be verified when its EMF responds to different musics and the presence of different personalities in humans.

Neuroscientists have another word for consciousness, its "awareness".

Awareness is the end product of using one's senses. If one could compile all the data on a single person's cellular metabolic processes, neuronal health and behavior along with the data from the five senses and accumulative memory storage in the brain... one could produce a formula for consciousness or..."awareness". It would be like a physics equation.

Here's what someone named "no one nose" wrote about the mind and consciousness.

The physical world we live in has 3 dimensions plus time (n-space). The world of the mind is different place. The mind can conceive of two places and two times simultaneously. The conscious thought that comes out of (these) quantum changes is known as "q-space". The problem here is that our physical being occupies a different space than our minds. Thus we have a problem in (discerning) a true nature of reality.

This statement seems to assume that the mind is a different entity from the brain. Neuroscientists disagree. Even if we look at the mind as the "sum of the parts" of the brain, we must also note that the mind is wholey co-dependent to the brain. The brain props it up, so to speak. It is this con-joined and symbiotic relationship between the mind and the brain that leaves neuroscientists no choice but to call the mind one thing... which is... a brain.

Neuroscientists have also stayed away from using the word "consciousness" and lean more toward the word "awareness". This may be because the "consciousness" has been used to describe to many situations or events that cannot be measured or investigated. Awareness is a fairly cut and dried state that is easily reported and recorded.

The word consciousness also brings up Freud and Jung's reputed works which are in question today... by most neruopsychologists.

Thank you.

 

[Careful]

Dear Vanesch, I can understand that you do not like it that I gave you a consistent, objective scheme in GR which allows you to speak of *now* and eliminate all zombies you like so much. It is fine you were not aware of this possibility (now you are) but let's agree that UNLESS you know how to falsify my scheme, we do not come back to the GR topic anymore. It is pointless to do so...

For sake of the discussion here, let me give a full example of the theory Vanesch proposes (communicated by PM ):
(a) you have a full set of brain states
(b) your consciousness attaches itself only to one brain state
(c) the consciousness KNOWS about the state of the brain, but the brain does NOT know about the consciousness
(d) suppose Joe and Louis are watching an object, then according to Vansch, the consciousness of Joe = CJOE can attach itself to the *brain of Joe registers apple* state, while CLouis can attach itself to the *brain of Louis registers peer* state. However, if Joe asks to Louis what he percieves, he will only be conscious of the answer apple, since the body state of Louis which is entangled to CJoe is : Louis perceives apple. Now, if I would start from a generic non pure state, then the consciousness of Joe and Louis would generically occupy inequivalent brain states. In this case there would be many zombies and very little conscious beings in the world I experience. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that everyone believes that everyone has a ``consciousness´´ (if it were material or not).

However, there is something else going wrong here. If (c) were true, then the question : *do you have a consciousness?* could not even be asked unless our brain was aware of the existence of ``consciousness´´. So (c) must clearly be false, consciousness cannot be just a window, everyone I meet is convinced that he/she has a consciousness and not a zombie; is it not like that, that when a conscious brain would explain to a zombie what consciousness is (and thereby violating c), that he woud merely answer that he does not posess it ! A zombie, would he not be unaware of something like pain ?

You can only solve this by accepting that all conscious beings experience the same material world. Therefore : reduction does take place in your formalism and it is not unitary by any means. I really wonder wether science should try to look for such ``solutions´´ which involve zombies. I am sure the Catholic church is not happy about your point of view either.

 

[Careful]

Neuroscientists have also stayed away from using the word "consciousness" and lean more toward the word "awareness". This may be because the "consciousness" has been used to describe to many situations or events that cannot be measured or investigated. Awareness is a fairly cut and dried state that is easily reported and recorded.
The word consciousness also brings up Freud and Jung's reputed works which are in question today... by most neruopsychologists.
Thank you.

Ah a sensible point of view.

 

[vanesch]

However, there is something else going wrong here. If (c) were true, then the question : *do you have a consciousness?* could not even be asked unless our brain was aware of the existence of ``consciousness´´.

Not at all. I can make my computer type on the screen: "I am conscious", but that doesn't mean it is conscious. If it were so simple, then there would be a clear behaviouristic test of whether a zombie is conscious: ask him if he is. But a non-conscious zombie can write just as well as Descartes about it. After all, it are the laws of physics that determine what a body writes down or not and as such, it doesn't need to be subjectively experienced. If my body were not associated to a conscious experience, it could just as well type all these words.
Also, (c) is only one of the possibilities - as I told you by PM (it is hard to have simultaneous discussions on a forum and by PM, btw, I would like to restrict it to the forum).
The other possibilities is that to the different states, simply different conscious experiences are associated, and your conscious experience is only one of them. I also told you that it doesn't matter to speculate over these issues as they are indistinguishable, both objectively (by doing experiments) and subjectively (from your subjective experience).
When you told me that, seriously, I couldn't believe such a ridiculous idea, I also told you that I'm not claiming it to be "true" but that the idea is conceivable - and as such resolves an issue in QM. Whether this is "really true" or not is then equivalent whether QM is "really true" or not.
I don't find the idea ridiculous ; it is conceivable, and it is suggested by the current QM formalism.

So (c) must clearly be false, consciousness cannot be just a window, everyone I meet is convinced that he/she has a consciousness and not a zombie; is it not like that, that when a conscious brain would explain to a zombie what consciousness is (and thereby violating c), that he woud merely answer that he does not posess it ! A zombie, would he not be unaware of something like pain ?

A zombie is not aware of something like pain, but his body will react in exactly the same way as a body that experiences pain: it will scream, try to avoid it, beg me not to torture him etc...

You can only solve this by accepting that all conscious beings experience the same material world.

No, I really don't have to. And, I don't have to take those other bodies to be zombies, I just told you that that was the "simplest working hypothesis". You could assign "new" consciousnesses to them, too. But as there is no way to find out whether, or not, they are there, there is no way to differentiate between these options, and as thus not a useful point of discussion.

 

[vanesch]

Neuroscientists have another word for consciousness, its "awareness".

Yes, and as such, they redefined the subject. They are studying the physical relation between stimuli and reaction of a brain, that's all. It is very useful, but it has not much to do with consciousness. They study the physics of the brain, in all its behavioural aspects. But subjective experience has no behavioural consequences. Objective (physical) "awareness" does, of course: the physical state of the brain is altered by external stimuli, and that brain then reacts to these stimuli. But we're not one iota further in the subjective experience that goes, or doesn't go, with it. You can of course, and that's what neurologists do, try to rely on testimonies from people on which you do certain brain experiments, of what they tell you they "consciously experienced". But that testimony is only a behavioural result of a brain function: there's no way to know whether this corresponded to a subjective experience or not! You could even go further, and say that if you knew perfectly well the entire physics of the brain, you could PREDICT what words that person would utter during its testimony.

But this is a slightly different debate (called the dualist-materialist debate). You need a certain form of dualism to understand what I'm talking about. I still hold on to the psycho-physical link, but I'm just changing the link: the link is not anymore between a *physical object* and the subjective experience, but between "a term in the quantum state of the physical object" and the subjective experience. This is, what I called from the start, the non-trivial link between consciousness and the physical ontology.
I don't introduce it (well, I'm not the first one of course, these ideas are floating around since quite a while, Everett of course being the originator in the 50ies) for the sake of talking about consciousness, but because it can solve a riddle in QM, which is: by strict application of its rules, body states necessarily end up in "different classical worlds", while we only seem to experience ONE of those worlds - something that is then put in by hand by claiming that conscious (or not) observation reduces the state of the universe to just that single state that happens to be observed. However, if we take quantum theory seriously, there is NO PHYSICAL MECHANISM that can operate this (technically, this comes about through the postulated unitarity of all physical processes, which, as such, can never give rise to a projection).
If we *postulate* that we only consciously are aware of ONE of the classical states of our brain (and not to all of them) then this solves the dilemma between the prescriptions of "unitary quantum theory" on one side, and the so-called "projection postulate" that singles out ONE term in the end, because it brings then in agreement our subjective perception of a classical world with the quantum description that would imply that several of these worlds are simultaneously "there".

 

[Careful]

**Not at all. I can make my computer type on the screen: "I am conscious", but that doesn't mean it is conscious. **

Ok, none of your brain copies can know wether it is scanned by the one *person* associated consciousness. Another example against unitarity is obtained in your consciousness crap when there are more possible brain states than persons, or when all consciousnesses choose the same brain state in your superposition.

By the way, it is of crucial importance in your framework that you CANNOT explain what consciousness is; otherwhise it would be simple to falsify it (you could ask a brain state wether he recognizes this experience). I am sure, and I think many under us agree, that this goes right against the scientific spirit of theorizing through falsification (string and LQG crap are actually almost in the same dreadful state). Actually, consider the following simple experiment (which you refuse to see): you say that a zombie cannot be distinguished from a conscious brain. Therefore: why would consciousness be an issue ?? For you it is, since you refuse to solve the cat in a matter that science has always attacked problems: that is in a straightforward way.

 

[vanesch]

Another example against unitarity is obtained in your consciousness crap when there are more possible brain states than persons, or when all consciousnesses choose the same brain state in your superposition.

I think you've still not understood entirely what I'm talking about.
1) Nothing of all this violates unitarity, which is supposed to hold strictly. The relationship consciousness - brainstate is not a physical degree of freedom, and hence does not participate in any unitary evolution, but the brainstate itself of course does.
2) What do you mean by "more brain states than persons" ? What's a person ?
3) Even though there is absolutely no difficulty with two identical but distinct conscious experiences to be assiociated with one single brain state, it cannot happen in the scheme I propose, because you always have a SPLIT through further entanglement, never a recombination of two terms (because of the essentially irreversible entanglement with the environment). And it certainly cannot happen in the "minimal" hypothesis where there's only one consciousness attached to a brain, and the others are zombie states.

By the way, it is of crucial importance in your framework that you CANNOT explain what consciousness is;

No, it is essential that consciousness has no behavioural effect ; that's different.

otherwhise it would be simple to falsify it (you could ask a brain state wether he recognizes this experience). I am sure, and I think many under us agree, that this goes right against the scientific spirit of theorizing through falsification (string and LQG crap are actually almost in the same dreadful state). Actually, consider the following simple experiment (which you refuse to see): you say that a zombie cannot be distinguished from a conscious brain. Therefore: why would consciousness be an issue ?? For you it is, since you refuse to solve the cat in a matter that science has always attacked problems: that is in a straightforward way.

You really miss the entire point of the argument here. Science serves one purpose, that is to make sense of our conscious experience. To explore the hypothesis of an ontological world - which is, and will always remain, nothing more than a working hypothesis.
As such, all scientific knowledge will always be perceived by a conscious mind, and this means that that conscious mind will be attached to a body state which is in a product state with whatever zombie "scientist" or whatever other state. Now, this means that he will only perceive what THAT STATE of the zombie was in ; which will be an essentially classical state. That state of the zombie will have accumulated data which corresponds to what you would have obtained when the reduction postulate were true. The Schroedinger cat problem is entirely solved in this way, as you can easily see:
Let us start with a certain "universal wave function" at a certain time t1:


|me_WWF_fan>|my_nice_cat>|world1> + |me_scientist>|cat_in_box>|world2>


Let us suppose that I "happen to be" in the me_scientist state ; I indicate that with an asterix:

|me_WWF_fan>|my_nice_cat>|world1> + |me_scientist*>|cat_in_box>|radioactiveatom>|world2>


We evolve this state unitarily, and the radioactive atom goes into two states at t2:

|me_WWF_fan>|my_nice_cat>|world1b> +
|me_scientist*>|cat_in_box>(a |radioactiveatom> + b |decay>)|world2b>


This interacts with the known mechanism, killing the cat if there was decay:

|me_WWF_fan>|my_nice_cat>|world1c> +
|me_scientist*>(a |radioactiveatom>|livecat> + b |decay>|deadcat>)|world2c>


When I "look" this is a unitary interaction that involves me and the cat:

|me_WWF_fan>|my_nice_cat>|world1c> +
(a |radioactiveatom>|livecat>|me_scientist_saw_livecat*> + b |decay>|deadcat>|me_scientist_saw_deadcat*>)|world2c>


But this cannot be: I got entangled with something -> Born rule: my consciousness has to be assigned, probabilistically with one of the two daughter states: me_scientist_saw_livecat with probability |a|^2 or me_scientist_saw_deadcat with probability |b|^2. Let us say that the second possibility occured:


|me_WWF_fan>|my_nice_cat>|world1d> +
(a |radioactiveatom>|livecat>|me_scientist_saw_livecat> + b |decay>|deadcat>|me_scientist_saw_deadcat*>)|world2d>


Now, soon, the environment will entangle with me, but this will not disrupt the state that I saw a dead cat:

|me_WWF_fan>|my_nice_cat>|world1e> +
a |radioactiveatom>|livecat>|me_scientist_saw_livecat> |world3>
+ b |decay>|deadcat>|me_scientist_saw_deadcat*>|world4>


And now I'm aware of the dead cat, the decayed atom, and my bodystate which saw a dead cat. Whether the other states of my body have now their own conscious experience or not doesn't matter. Because of the essential entanglement with |world4>, any form of interference between me seeing a live cat, and me seeing a dead cat, is excluded (all unitary evolution will keep world3 and world4 essentially orthogonal).
So consciousness is an issue because it is only to the conscious mind that science has to make a certain sense ; this means that this conscious mind will always select out ONE of these states, and as such ONLY be aware of what would have happened as if the projection postulate were true. In other words, the only thing that is *perceived* will be a state with (at least) one asterix in it. And we all know that QM with the projection postulate has a lot of experimental successes on its name.
Again, I'm not claiming that this has necessarily to be true, but it is an idea that is not ridiculous and that helps to make sense out of the QM formalism. The only thing that is needed, is that it can be accepted that there is a non-trivial relationship between subjective experience and the physical object with which it is associated ; in other words that there is no IDENTIFICATION with that physical object, but only a relationship. The relationship is then given by the scheme I propose.
BTW, as I said already, I'm maybe making the view very explicit, but these ideas are around since quite some time.

 

[Careful]

**I think you've still not understood entirely what I'm talking about. **

Oh, but I did (and I also know how your club ``thinks´´ it solves the cat). I am just trying to convey to you that what you are doing is bad science unless you can explain to me what consciousness is. I am going to ask you three questions and give a few comments on which I would like to have accurate anwers. Otherwise, the discussion has no sense, and I and probably many others will be left with the idea that you are trying to sell an empty box.

(1) QUESTION : DEFINE consciousness.

** What do you mean by "more brain states than persons" ? What's a person ? **

In the real world, I meet persons : you, myself, my mother and so on. They are all carriers of a physical brain. Now, in your hypothesis: they are either conscious, either zombie. But this is not important since in any world the number zombies + conscious is the same, call it N. The physical brain can have M states of awareness, it is very possible that N << M, meaning that you might have terms in the full wavefunction which are not coupled to *any* of the N consciousness. These terms are excluded from any calculations --> violation of unitarity. This is easy to see if your are the only piece of material in the entire universe with a brain which can legitimately claim consciousness. I am aware you could circumvent this argument by a very exotic claim but then I want you to answer unambiguously Q1.


** Even though there is absolutely no difficulty with two identical but distinct conscious experiences to be assiociated with one single brain state, it cannot happen in the scheme I propose, because you always have a SPLIT through further entanglement, never a recombination of two terms (because of the essentially irreversible entanglement with the environment). And it certainly cannot happen in the "minimal" hypothesis where there's only one consciousness attached to a brain, and the others are zombie states. **

I know you can make your theory as exotic as you want to, but you should start by making some minimal postulates so that anyone with an IQ above 160 can follow your reasoning.

**
You really miss the entire point of the argument here. Science serves one purpose, that is to make sense of our conscious experience. To explore the hypothesis of an ontological world - which is, and will always remain, nothing more than a working hypothesis. **

Yes, and the science I know does this in terms of awareness : zeros and ones ! At least here we know what we are talking about.

** As such, all scientific knowledge will always be perceived by a conscious mind, and this means that that conscious mind will be attached to a body state which is in a product state with whatever zombie "scientist" or whatever other state. **

This smells like the conscious inquisition which chops off the head of any scientist which does not believe in consciousness


** The Schroedinger cat problem is entirely solved in this way, as you can easily see: **

Well I do not see why you are involving the radioactive atom here (seems meaningless to me)...

QUESTION : in your consciousness interpretation : observation IS consciousness (otherwise you do not solve the cat)! Ah yes the cat is only dead for me since my consciouness went on the *my brain perceives dead* branch. So how do zombies observe ?? You would claim that the brain state of the zombie says *cat is dead*, so you entirely disentangle observation from measurement. This brings me to the question: what is *I* and why do we paradoxically say to a zombie *you*, since this you is not really a conscious being.


**BTW, as I said already, I'm maybe making the view very explicit, but these ideas are around since quite some time.**

I know, and the fact that these ideas have no real scientific status yet says it all.

QUESTION : Where was consciouness 10^{-43} seconds after the BB and how did it entangle with physical brains ?? Do dust and EM radiation have consciousness ??

 

[vanesch]

(1) QUESTION : DEFINE consciousness.

As I told you, consciousness only makes sense to the conscious, and the only one I'm aware of that is conscious is myself. Consciousness is what experiences subjective experiences, and I'm the only one I'm really sure of that has these conscious experiences.
Now, by analogy, I can take up the working hypothesis that things around me that look like my body and act about similar, might also be conscious.
Consciousness is what I perceive.

In the real world, I meet persons : you, myself, my mother and so on. They are all carriers of a physical brain.

All of this are of course certain hypotheses that you use to make sense of your subjective experiences. You posit the hypothesis that there is something out there that you call your mother, that you call Joe, that you call your computer and so on. All of this is nothing else but a working hypothesis that is used to get your subjective experiences organised... And I'll grant it to you, it is a very well working hypothesis. It is part of the hypothesis that there is an external world - also a very well working hypothesis. I'm just pointing out here that already a lot of hypotheses are being made.

Now, in your hypothesis: they are either conscious, either zombie. But this is not important since in any world the number zombies + conscious is the same, call it N.

No, we are already going too far here. You take it as a working hypothesis that you interact with a certain number of human body states, which we call N.

The physical brain can have M states of awareness, it is very possible that N << M, meaning that you might have terms in the full wavefunction which are not coupled to *any* of the N consciousness.

Ah, of course. There might be a lot of states that do not have any conscious being in them - IF WE GO FOR THE MINIMAL hypothesis, which we don't have to. (The minimal hypothesis being that only ONE consciousness is associated to a physical body).

These terms are excluded from any calculations --> violation of unitarity.

No, because these terms are not eliminated from the physical state. They are simply not consciously observed.

This is easy to see if your are the only piece of material in the entire universe with a brain which can legitimately claim consciousness. I am aware you could circumvent this argument by a very exotic claim but then I want you to answer unambiguously Q1.

Well, as I told you, my own subjective world of experience is my consciousness, and it is "directed" by whatever part of the ontological world. I don't see where the *fundamental* difficulty comes from: this is already the case, even in a classical view, no ? Your subjective world of experience (if it exists) is directed by a part of the ontological world, which is called "your brain". Why can this not be "one of your brain states" ?

** Even though there is absolutely no difficulty with two identical but distinct conscious experiences to be assiociated with one single brain state, it cannot happen in the scheme I propose, because you always have a SPLIT through further entanglement, never a recombination of two terms (because of the essentially irreversible entanglement with the environment). And it certainly cannot happen in the "minimal" hypothesis where there's only one consciousness attached to a brain, and the others are zombie states. **
I know you can make your theory as exotic as you want to, but you should start by making some minimal postulates so that anyone with an IQ above 160 can follow your reasoning.

As I told you already a few times, I would also prefer not to have to resort to such kind of reasoning. Maybe it is totally wrong. The point is that I try to make sense out of quantum theory as we know it today, and I don't think that the proposed idea is totally bezerk - so it can be considered. If the only reason to dismiss QM is that you don't find that it has a great ontology that corresponds to certain pre-conceived ideas of how the world should be, then *that* is maybe also "bad science".

**
You really miss the entire point of the argument here. Science serves one purpose, that is to make sense of our conscious experience. To explore the hypothesis of an ontological world - which is, and will always remain, nothing more than a working hypothesis. **
Yes, and the science I know does this in terms of awareness : zeros and ones ! At least here we know what we are talking about.

But what I'm trying to say, is that those zeros and ones ARE there. But they are maybe not where you think they are: they are not in the physical *object* but in a partial "state" of that object (the object being your brain).

** As such, all scientific knowledge will always be perceived by a conscious mind, and this means that that conscious mind will be attached to a body state which is in a product state with whatever zombie "scientist" or whatever other state. **
This smells like the conscious inquisition which chops off the head of any scientist which does not believe in consciousness

I could easily return the honours and call upon the materialist inquisition which boldly refuses to take certain philosophical ideas such as consciousness as a part of "real science"

** The Schroedinger cat problem is entirely solved in this way, as you can easily see: **
Well I do not see why you are involving the radioactive atom here (seems meaningless to me)...

In the original Schroedinger cat, it was the radioactive atom that triggered the breaking of the poison.

QUESTION : in your consciousness interpretation : observation IS consciousness (otherwise you do not solve the cat)! Ah yes the cat is only dead for me since my consciouness went on the *my brain perceives dead* branch. So how do zombies observe ?? You would claim that the brain state of the zombie says *cat is dead*, so you entirely disentangle observation from measurement. This brings me to the question: what is *I* and why do we paradoxically say to a zombie *you*, since this you is not really a conscious being.

Again, it is only the minimal hypothesis that makes other bodies into zombies. You could just as well create new conscious beings. But let's stick to it. The "you" and "I" are of course semantically confusing terms, because they mix the "conscious subjective world perceived by me" and my body - in fact, these words take materialism for granted.

**BTW, as I said already, I'm maybe making the view very explicit, but these ideas are around since quite some time.**
I know, and the fact that these ideas have no real scientific status yet says it all.

They don't have to have scientific status: we're discussing an interpretation. Each time someone uses quantum theory, he's somehow bound to use these concepts!

QUESTION : Where was consciouness 10^{-43} seconds after the BB and how did it entangle with physical brains ?? Do dust and EM radiation have consciousness ??

I have no idea, but there doesn't need to be a consciousness around all the time of course. Even if the entire world evolved unitarily since the beginning of times, and I were the only conscious being, then that would be sufficient for me to perceive a classically-looking world, because I would be selecting out such a term. As I said, my own consciousness is the only thing I'm sure of, exists. All the rest is speculation which is entirely unobservable. So I could postulate that EM radiation is conscious, or not, it wouldn't make the slightest bit of a change.
In a classical view, certain parts of the EM field and dust must be conscious, no ? They make up your brain...

 

[Careful]

**As I told you, consciousness only makes sense to the conscious, and the only one I'm aware of that is conscious is myself. Consciousness is what experiences subjective experiences, and I'm the only one I'm really sure of that has these conscious experiences. **

I am going to knitpick here: *I am aware that I am conscious*; I thought awareness was a state of the brain which is not influenced by consciousness. Now, I try to tell you all the time that I feel conscious too, my mother feels conscious and my brother does when I ask them (you should really do the test). The miracle is that all the humans I meet in this world guarantuee me that they are conscious, that they experience subjective experiences. So are these all zombies which are cheating upon me, or do they just have the illusion they are conscious, or are they really conscious ?? So that is why you have to explain consciousness are define ``subjective experience´´ and ``I´´ as an entity.

** No, we are already going too far here. You take it as a working hypothesis that you interact with a certain number of human body states, which we call N. **

Why is this too far ?? That is what a realistic theory has to do no ? This is also why you can say you preserve unitarity, because you are not taking into account interactions with other human body states. I ask you bluntly : don't you honestly think that this is a prerequiste for *any* theory ? Different body states *do* interact (indirectly) in our universe, right ? So I am afraid your minimal hypothesis is subject of much dispute !


** I don't see where the *fundamental* difficulty comes from: this is already the case, even in a classical view, no ? **

No, the classical view is expressed in terms of binary numbers. No problems here... (there is a clear ontology to binary numbers and it is not associated to a partial consciousness state in my view)

Come on, you know that ontology is *not* my main reason to dispose of QM (altough the ontology reflects rather well the difficulties it entails for gravitational physics ).

** I could easily return the honours and call upon the materialist inquisition which boldly refuses to take certain philosophical ideas such as consciousness as a part of "real science" **

Well, as a materialist as I would say then that you need to give me a mathematical definition of consciousness (but that is just not possible since consciousness is subjective and a materialist point of view is objective). That is how science works, many ideas are plausible but only few survive temporarily. So, you might make advance in the game how to decide wether people in your world which claim to be conscious too are lying or not (and explain me why you are not in a real one world picture and thereby maintaining only one term in the Schroedinger wave). And this is de facto impossible in your framework. It seems much more meaningful to convert to a Penrose like scheme of objective reduction (although this might have causality problems.)

**In the original Schroedinger cat, it was the radioactive atom that triggered the breaking of the poison.**

Ah, historical sentiment.

**. Each time someone uses quantum theory, he's somehow bound to use these concepts! **

Unfortunately


**I have no idea, but there doesn't need to be a consciousness around all the time of course. Even if the entire world evolved unitarily since the beginning of times, and I were the only conscious being, then that would be sufficient for me to perceive a classically-looking world, because I would be selecting out such a term. As I said, my own consciousness is the only thing I'm sure of, exists. **

So, I ask you : how did it get entangled to your brain at birth ? Does it die with you ??
Classically, we speak of awareness, not of consciousness.

 

[vanesch]

I am going to knitpick here: *I am aware that I am conscious*; I thought awareness was a state of the brain which is not influenced by consciousness.

The problem is of course that you want me to give a materialistic or behaviouristic definition of something that is not materialistic, and that you then attack my tentative definition on these grounds.
However, you are right that the "I am aware that I'm conscious" was slippery. "My subjective experience" should do it. You really should read a few of the dualist objections to materialism in the link I gave you, they try to pinpoint exactly that problem ; here it was:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/consciou.htm

Now, I try to tell you all the time that I feel conscious too, my mother feels conscious and my brother does when I ask them (you should really do the test). The miracle is that all the humans I meet in this world guarantuee me that they are conscious, that they experience subjective experiences.

As I said, there's no problem with that, let them have their consciousness. You then simply have to accept that with one body, there go many independent subjective experiences, namely one for each state. I found that the zombie analogy would do best because I already had that idea even before studying quantum mechanics - that it was fundamentally impossible to know whether another person is or is not having subjective experiences.

I will ask you: imagine that your brain state is scanned, and written down on a (high-density :-) CD. Is that CD now conscious too ?

So are these all zombies which are cheating upon me, or do they just have the illusion they are conscious, or are they really conscious ?? So that is why you have to explain consciousness are define ``subjective experience´´ and ``I´´ as an entity.

As I said, there's no point in trying to define this for something else than yourself.

This is also why you can say you preserve unitarity, because you are not taking into account interactions with other human body states.

But that's not true: I can of course have interactions with other bodystates. There's no difficulty with that.

** I don't see where the *fundamental* difficulty comes from: this is already the case, even in a classical view, no ? **
No, the classical view is expressed in terms of binary numbers. No problems here... (there is a clear ontology to binary numbers and it is not associated to a partial consciousness state in my view)

Well, as a materialist as I would say then that you need to give me a mathematical definition of consciousness (but that is just not possible since consciousness is subjective and a materialist point of view is objective).

That, on the other hand, is not difficult to do, and I did it. It is an asteriks on a body state, which jumps from state to state according to the Born rule.

Let us take our poor cat again, and let us assume that joe and me are both conscious scientists, for a change:

|joe_scientist*> |me_scientist*> (a |live cat> + b |dead cat>) |world1>

I look at the cat:

|joe_scientist*> (a |live cat>|me_seecatalive> +
b |dead cat>|me_seecatdead>) |world1>

And, because I entangle with the cat, I have to choose a new brain state associated with my consciousness, for instance, with probability |a|^2:

|joe_scientist*> (a |live cat>|me_seecatalive*> +
b |dead cat>|me_seecatdead>) |world1>

Now let joe look at the cat:

(a |live cat>|me_seecatalive*>|joe_catalive> +
b |dead cat>|me_seecatdead>|joedeadcat>) |world1>

Joe also has to choose now, and say that he takes the dead cat with probability |b|^2:

(a |live cat>|me_seecatalive*>|joe_catalive> +
b |dead cat>|me_seecatdead>|joedeadcat*>) |world1>

Quickly this gets entangled also with the environment:

a |live cat>|me_seecatalive*>|joe_catalive>|world2>
+ b |dead cat>|me_seecatdead>|joedeadcat*> |world3>

Now, imagine I ask Joe's body about what he found about the cat on the blackboard: |joe_catalive> will write "I saw a live cat" on the board, and "joedeadcat" will write "the cat was dead"

a |live cat>|me_seecatalive*>|joe_catalive>|"Isawlivecat">|world2>
+ b |dead cat>|me_seecatdead>|joedeadcat*> |"thecatwasdead">|world3>

If I now look at the blackboard, because of the orthogonality of world2 and world3 under about all possible unitary evolutions, there will be no interference terms between the "dead" branch and the "live" branch, so I will read on the board "Isawlivecat".

So, for all practical purposes, to me, the world state looks like:
|live cat>|me_seecatalive*>|joe_catalive>|"Isawlivecat">|world2>

and it is as if an effective reduction took place. The only way for me to find out whether that "other" world exists or not, would be to show some interference with that other world. That almost never happens. It only happens in perfect EPR experiments in fact, and then I DO find (ideally) the interference I expect through the EPR correlations.

Now, nothing stops me from assigning a NEW consciousness to "joe_catalive":

|live cat>|me_seecatalive*>|joe_catalive#>|"Isawlivecat">|world2>

What difference does it make ? This new consciousness will now ALSO evolve according to the Born rule and all that. If you prefer others to be conscious, just say so, and we deliver

That is how science works, many ideas are plausible but only few survive temporarily. So, you might make advance in the game how to decide wether people in your world which claim to be conscious too are lying or not (and explain me why you are not in a real one world picture and thereby maintaining only one term in the Schroedinger wave). And this is de facto impossible in your framework. It seems much more meaningful to convert to a Penrose like scheme of objective reduction (although this might have causality problems.)

I entirely agree with you, that would make the ontology-consciousness map again much easier. We'd still be saddled up with the philosophical problems entailed with the materialist viewpoint, but we could again hold our materialist-scientist nose high and relegate them to philosopher's chat.

The problem with all the *other* speculative ideas is that they are changing the quantum formalism. I'm trying to make sense of the current formalism with unitarity and so do about all people who work on quantum gravity related areas. So touching upon unitarity should still be shown to work. In the mean time I SHOW you a way how we can make sense of the existing formalism of quantum theory.

So, I ask you : how did it get entangled to your brain at birth ? Does it die with you ??
Classically, we speak of awareness, not of consciousness.

Again, my consciousness DOES NOT GET ENTANGLED with my brain, it is ASSIGNED TO a brain state. How did it get there ? You could have a lot of speculation here, but the simplest is again: by using the Born rule !
(but this time "out of the blue", and not starting from a previous state).

|pregnant_mother> |world1> + |not_so_pregnant_mother>|world2>

evolves into:

(a|beautifulbaby> + b|uglybastard>)|mommy> |world1> + |not_so_pregnant_mother>|world2>

* BING* Assignment of consciousness, with probability |a|^2:

(a|beautifulbaby*> + b|uglybastard>)|mommy> |world1> + |not_so_pregnant_mother>|world2>



But nothing stops you from assigning also a consciousness to the uglybastard. It doesn't matter. I "happen to be" the beautifulbaby.

 

[Careful]

** The problem is of course that you want me to give a materialistic or behaviouristic definition of something that is not materialistic, and that you then attack my tentative definition on these grounds. ***

Naa, I am not that an uglybaby and definately not the type that destroys brave attempts because I am too frustrated that I do not have any original ideas of my own. I invite you to try, your ego shall not suffer from that To my feeling this should be the purpose of the discussion; the only chance you have to heat up my tolerance is by making some concrete proposals. I shall read the link through tonight... then my credentials go up again.

**I will ask you: imagine that your brain state is scanned, and written down on a (high-density :-) CD. Is that CD now conscious too ?**

No, but the CD player is aware of the CD's content.

**As I said, there's no point in trying to define this for something else than yourself. **

But then as I mentioned in our PM; hell has gotten loose. That is :everyone can make his favorite consciousness theory and come up with his own physical theories/predictions. Where is a kind of objectivity principle in your consciousness theory?

Sure you can claim to preserve unitarity, but actually that is not necessary at all in your framework (you can just remove everything which has no consciousness assignment). The same interpretation and results would flow out if you drop this - that is why I keep on repeating that this is perfectly isomorphic to ordinary Kophenhagen with collapse of the consciousness state in this respect. I agree that you preserve causality (apart from the length of the firecracker). You did not have to explain the rest (that is easy stuff), I was just knitpicking upon your insistence of U (for me it is Kopenhagen).

** Now, nothing stops me from assigning a NEW consciousness to "joe_catalive":
|live cat>|me_seecatalive*>|joe_catalive#>|"Isawlivecat">|world2>
What difference does it make ? This new consciousness will now ALSO evolve according to the Born rule and all that. If you prefer others to be conscious, just say so, and we deliver **

Ah, I see I am in the consciousness business here... the difference here is that # and * satisfy only one born rule (and there is an effective collapse of the physical state).


Moreover, you should work a bit on your magical BING which makes consciousness born Like this it sounds like consciousness comes right out of the magnetron!

Also the Penrose OR theory is an objective improved version of Copenhagen so it does not change quantum theory that much.

That in the QG society unitarity has not been given up yet is the perfect explanation why the program did almost not evolve on its crucial points. Also, I can assure you that nobody involved in QG would dream of solving the cat by using consciousness ! LQG proposes copenhagen reduction and causal dynamical triangulations merely contents itself with calculating expectation values of some *global* geometric observables like we do in QFT (no reduction, no consciousness).

 

[vanesch]

But then as I mentioned in our PM; hell has gotten loose. That is :everyone can make his favorite consciousness theory and come up with his own physical theories/predictions. Where is a kind of objectivity principle in your consciousness theory?

Nowhere, of course. The only point I wanted to make is that such a view allows you to give some meaning to the concepts in QM.

Sure you can claim to preserve unitarity, but actually that is not necessary at all in your framework (you can just remove everything which has no consciousness assignment).

Well, that's the great part of it ! We already know that if we can use state reduction, that QM works very well. Only, we don't have any physics (yet!) that DOES state reduction for us. I'd be very happy if we could find something, and I've often repeated that if gravity could do that for us, that would be fine. I'm all in favor of something like Penrose's proposal (although I should dig deeper into it to understand what he means). But for the moment, that's not yet up and running, and maybe it won't. So we better find some explanation for what we have right now, which is strictly unitary QM (and which might, or might not, stay with us). Only, strictly unitary QM does not allow for state reduction ; nevertheless we need it to make sense out of QM (and we do that in practice with every QM calculation). So the idea was simply to get the state reduction "out of the physics and in the mind".

The same interpretation and results would flow out if you drop this - that is why I keep on repeating that this is perfectly isomorphic to ordinary Kophenhagen with collapse of the consciousness state in this respect.

Well, thank you, that was the idea. But you cannot reasonably expect my MIND to change the ontological state of the universe, can you ?

I agree that you preserve causality (apart from the length of the firecracker). You did not have to explain the rest (that is easy stuff), I was just knitpicking upon your insistence of U (for me it is Kopenhagen).

Well, it is Copenhagen for the mind, and it is unitarity for the physics out there. And that's exactly what we needed, no ?

Moreover, you should work a bit on your magical BING which makes consciousness born Like this it sounds like consciousness comes right out of the magnetron!

Ok, I agree that that was to get the religious right on my hands
A lot of effort in the MWI community is done to make this Born rule come out more naturally. I have to say that most actually try to "derive" the Born rule, but I'm profoundly convinced that in any case you'll need to add a postulate concerning perception (conscious perception). Interesting as this activity may be, the essence is that in the end the Born rule is there, so I think it is sufficient to just postulate it. If that leads to redundant postulates and a less esthetic construction, that doesn't matter. That's cosmetics.
So there are two ways out: the physics way, or the conscious way. Or, a non-unitary physical process is proposed, or something of the kind I've been presenting here must be accepted if QM is to stay in some form or another. I have of course nothing against the first, but as in any case I'm not a materialist (I've been convinced by dualist arguments since a long time, even before I learned about QM), you can understand that modifying the consciousness-physical ontology link from a link with a physical object to a link with a state, for me, is not such a big step.
Anyways, I think I'm going to stop with the discussion here. My aim was to make you see this possibility of having state reduction without physically introducing collapse. You may not accept it, you may not like it, my aim was not to convince you, but to make you see what I meant.

 

[vanesch]

I just fell of my chair: EXACTLY the reasoning I presented here, put together from different sides, can be found in this paper by Zeh:

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908084

Amazing how this exactly fits what I wanted to say here...

 

[Careful]

I just fell of my chair: EXACTLY the reasoning I presented here, put together from different sides, can be found in this paper by Zeh:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908084
Amazing how this exactly fits what I wanted to say here...

What conclusion should we draw from this ?

 

[quantumcarl]

Yes, and as such, they redefined the subject. They are studying the physical relation between stimuli and reaction of a brain, that's all. It is very useful, but it has not much to do with consciousness. They study the physics of the brain, in all its behavioural aspects. But subjective experience has no behavioural consequences. Objective (physical) "awareness" does, of course: the physical state of the brain is altered by external stimuli, and that brain then reacts to these stimuli. But we're not one iota further in the subjective experience that goes, or doesn't go, with it. You can of course, and that's what neurologists do, try to rely on testimonies from people on which you do certain brain experiments, of what they tell you they "consciously experienced". But that testimony is only a behavioural result of a brain function: there's no way to know whether this corresponded to a subjective experience or not! You could even go further, and say that if you knew perfectly well the entire physics of the brain, you could PREDICT what words that person would utter during its testimony.
But this is a slightly different debate (called the dualist-materialist debate). You need a certain form of dualism to understand what I'm talking about. I still hold on to the psycho-physical link, but I'm just changing the link: the link is not anymore between a *physical object* and the subjective experience, but between "a term in the quantum state of the physical object" and the subjective experience. This is, what I called from the start, the non-trivial link between consciousness and the physical ontology.
I don't introduce it (well, I'm not the first one of course, these ideas are floating around since quite a while, Everett of course being the originator in the 50ies) for the sake of talking about consciousness, but because it can solve a riddle in QM, which is: by strict application of its rules, body states necessarily end up in "different classical worlds", while we only seem to experience ONE of those worlds - something that is then put in by hand by claiming that conscious (or not) observation reduces the state of the universe to just that single state that happens to be observed. However, if we take quantum theory seriously, there is NO PHYSICAL MECHANISM that can operate this (technically, this comes about through the postulated unitarity of all physical processes, which, as such, can never give rise to a projection).
If we *postulate* that we only consciously are aware of ONE of the classical states of our brain (and not to all of them) then this solves the dilemma between the prescriptions of "unitary quantum theory" on one side, and the so-called "projection postulate" that singles out ONE term in the end, because it brings then in agreement our subjective perception of a classical world with the quantum description that would imply that several of these worlds are simultaneously "there".

Our awareness or consciousness results in our observations of our environment.

The scope and scale of our observations are the parameters by which we are able to measure our environment. Our scope and scale of observation is retarded by boundaries that are created by the brain's primary objective which is... survival.

If it seems that our observations limit or enhance the mechanisms of our event horizon, in the quantum sense, it's because we are only able to observe the events which our awarenesses or our consciousnesses are capable of observing.

While we are limited in what we are conscious (aware) of we are also a part of the relative and quantum universe. This could create an unconsious awareness or an unaware consciousness of the simultaneity occurring between the GR and QM. Here one might be tempted to discard with one or the other theory because one of them seems to be the foundation (QM) and the other the window-dressing (GR).


I do not subscribe to dualism, however, because dualism is, metaphorically speaking, like exclusively acknowledging West and East... when there is always North and South and an overly large number of points thereby residing hitherto betwixt each direction therein of a compass's curcumference.

 

[vanesch]

What conclusion should we draw from this ?

That I'm sloppy in my reading-up
(and also, that I'm not the only nutcase thinking along these lines )

 

[selfAdjoint]

I just fell of my chair: EXACTLY the reasoning I presented here, put together from different sides, can be found in this paper by Zeh:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908084
Amazing how this exactly fits what I wanted to say here...

From the paper:

To most of these states, {sc. of neurons} however, the true physical carrier of consciousness somewhere in the brain may still represent an external observer system, with whom they have to interact in order to be perceived.

As to "somewhere in the brain" have you been following the "EM fields, a plausible correlate of consciousness" thread on the new Mind & Brain Science forum? If we replace EM with QED or even Electroweak theory, might we be able to put some meat, in the form of physical relationships, onto these bones?

 

[quantumcarl]

If we replace EM with QED or even Electroweak theory, might we be able to put some meat, in the form of physical relationships, onto these bones?

We could look at consciousness as a defence shield build by the brain. It is like a first line of defence in the brain's attempts to protect its fragile state... next only to the structure of the boney cranium.

Consciousness (awareness) appears to be developed early on in evolution. When you look at some of the first, uni-celled animals or plants. They are accutely aware of the type of lighting conditions in which they find themselves. Their seeminly aware reaction is an immediate withdrawl or advance toward or away from the photo-stimulation depending upon its survival needs.

Conversely we could imagine an inverse cause of consciousness that transends evolution, time and physicalities. We could, perhaps, see consciousness and awareness as a result of an unseen and metaphysical force that is expressed in a resulting physical event.
We could also attribute a seemingly crafty goal at a soccer game to luck rather than expertise.

We have these choices but, in order to efficiently share our ideas with other people we need direct evidence that leaves little room for doubt about the choices we make and the ideas we have.

Conversely, moreover, it may be wise to keep one's ideas to one's self and believe what one believes regardless. There really is no reward in cloning our ideas in brains other than our own.

Shoe companys and soft drinks have bought real estate in your consciousness and they show up everyday in the same place. This is an example of ideas being cloned and planted into your awareness.

People possesses a tendency and capacity to create a homogeneous consciousness generated by their population and corporations. A collective consciousness appears to be one of the prime-products of society in general and it is perhaps a necessary one. It may act as a field of awareness that serves with the self-examination of the society as well as the observation of the society's environment in general.

 

[sameandnot]

if i fold a CD, we say that i have consciously folded a CD. why do we not say that the CD was consciously folding? is it because we sense it to be impartial, inanimate, without will of its own? we said, earlier, that a CD player is aware of the contents of a CD. how can we say that the CD was not aware if the action occurring? it certainly responded to my will to fold it. must a thing have awareness in order for there to be a response by it?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Hi,
I've read this, and you're links, and have been enjoying the 'why not knowledge' thread. I didn't want to interrupt that thread, but as my eyes are hurting too much to re-read again, and I'm not sure if I am following precisely, I wonder if you wouldn't mind clarifying a couple of things for me. Firstly, are you talking more about a many minds idea than many worlds interpretation, in both this and the other thread? It strikes me that you are with how you talk about perception. The second question is probably ridiculous, but, could a different way of looking at either many worlds or minds be- giving time extra co-ordinates?

 

[vanesch]

Firstly, are you talking more about a many minds idea than many worlds interpretation, in both this and the other thread?

I never could really figure out what's the difference ! What you have, in all these different "flavors" is that the quantum state of the world has your bodystate entangled with other stuff, and "you" are clearly only aware of only one of these states. In fact, if you didn't state this, I would presume that you are aware of your *entire* bodystate (distributed over all those terms), and that you would have a kind of mega-quantum experience (experiencing all those different states "at once").
So I don't see how one can talk about a "many worlds" interpretation without having "many minds", or at least one mind, attached to one term, which is yours. The entire discussion is then on how to link the different states to a "probability for it to be YOUR state". When we say "many worlds" or "many minds" it seems almost implicitly that they have to be counted, and that you are "one of them" with equal probability.
And the problem is that these wordings give the view a much more mystical sound than it is actually meant to be (at least, for me).

The original name, "relative state interpretation", seems to be much more free from all these extra considerations.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Thank you, I was probably mistaken, thinking the difference between them was that the many minds interpretation (forgive my simple terminology) split the one mind into, firstly, a (or many) subjective reciever(s) of quantum information, which in recieving- entangling, allowing, secondly, the other part of the mind to objectively percieve classicism. The difference being this subjective recieving/objective percieving split. I realize there is a lot more to the whole hypothesis than concerning this little point, regardless!
I see that the terms are terrribly confusing, I hope I haven't read anything mystical into it, and I do see that my second question was, as expected, ridiculous.
'Relative state interpretation' does seem clearer, I guess, yet I haven't figured out how it is relative!
Thanks again for your help.