- #1
SamLuc
- 38
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The Law of Projection:
"No matter where a particular sensory pathway is stimulated along its course to the cortex, the conscious sensation produced is referred to the location of the receptor."
('Review of Medical Physiology', 6th Edition, W.F. Ganong, p. 63)
OK, the term 'projection' might be out-of-use at this stage for all I know, but you get the point. That's the best description I could find for the phenomenon. To give a specific exmample of the phenomenon: a particular area of a subject's somatosensory cortex is stimulated, and the sensation is 'projected' to his left hand. To quote from (the same page of) the afore-mentioned book again: "the patient reports sensation in his left hand, not in his head."
Here's my proposition:
'Projection' occurs when the wavefunction for the position observable of the quantum entity being observed collapses.
Do you find this notion plausible? Isn't it a fundamental postulate of quantum mechanics that: once an eigenvalue for a particular observable has been obtained, the wavefunction collapses to the eigenstate which corresponds to that eigenvalue during the measurement.
I am unaware of any other explanation for the phenomenon of projection, and it just occurred to me that this might be a canditate. I suspect the proposition isn't new at all, and that it has been investigated before. Can anyone refer me to such research & literature? I have searched, albeit not very hard, I confess. Or, can anyone, on the other hand, refer to alternative explanations for the phenomenon.
Thanks!
P.S. Please respond in a manner as simple as possible. I am completely new to quantum mechanics (currently struggling with merely the 4th Chapter of Sam Treiman's 'The Odd Quantum', which I read when I have the time)
"No matter where a particular sensory pathway is stimulated along its course to the cortex, the conscious sensation produced is referred to the location of the receptor."
('Review of Medical Physiology', 6th Edition, W.F. Ganong, p. 63)
OK, the term 'projection' might be out-of-use at this stage for all I know, but you get the point. That's the best description I could find for the phenomenon. To give a specific exmample of the phenomenon: a particular area of a subject's somatosensory cortex is stimulated, and the sensation is 'projected' to his left hand. To quote from (the same page of) the afore-mentioned book again: "the patient reports sensation in his left hand, not in his head."
Here's my proposition:
'Projection' occurs when the wavefunction for the position observable of the quantum entity being observed collapses.
Do you find this notion plausible? Isn't it a fundamental postulate of quantum mechanics that: once an eigenvalue for a particular observable has been obtained, the wavefunction collapses to the eigenstate which corresponds to that eigenvalue during the measurement.
I am unaware of any other explanation for the phenomenon of projection, and it just occurred to me that this might be a canditate. I suspect the proposition isn't new at all, and that it has been investigated before. Can anyone refer me to such research & literature? I have searched, albeit not very hard, I confess. Or, can anyone, on the other hand, refer to alternative explanations for the phenomenon.
Thanks!
P.S. Please respond in a manner as simple as possible. I am completely new to quantum mechanics (currently struggling with merely the 4th Chapter of Sam Treiman's 'The Odd Quantum', which I read when I have the time)