On ‘Known-To-Be-False’ Materialist Philosophies of Mind

[Philosophy Now]

Graham Smetham argues that since quantum mechanics tells us that matter is dependent on the observer, the mind can’t be reduced to the brain.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/93/On_K ... es_of_Mind

[copernico]

I can't believe i just subscribed to a philosophy magazine that publishes these things along real stuff. C'mon.

[Ginkgo]

Graham Smetham argues that since quantum mechanics tells us that matter is dependent on the observer, the mind can’t be reduced to the brain.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/93/On_K ... es_of_Mind

I will use Graham Smetham's Yellow wall analogy.

Imagine someone sitting in a chair looking at a yellow rectangular shaped wall. "Wow! I see a yellow rectangular wall in front of me". If we could look inside of this persons skull we would see a brain that is reporting that it is having this experience. No real problems here. If we could look deeper into the brain toward the microscopic level we would see some neuronal and chemical reactions taking place in particular areas of the brain that are stimulated when this persons says, "Wow! I am seeing a yellow rectangular wall".

The problem is that no matter how hard we examine the brain at this level we will never see anything that resemble something that is yellow and something that is rectangular. The neurons and chemicals don't have any yellow colour to them and there is nothing we can see in the activated areas that resembles a rectangle. This is the classical problem of dualism. Mental events and physical are so different that can not be the same event.Many different solutions to this problem have been forthcoming over the centuries, some more believable than others.

Graham Smetham attempts to take us further into the microscopic world to see what is happening in the brain at the quantum level. He tells us very early on in his article there is nothing material or mechanical about the brain at this level. He says...."quantum mechanics tells us that matter is dependent on the observer, the mind cannot be reduced to the brain" Smetham makes use of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, largely formulated by Heisenberg. Smethham goes on further to say, "...the essential point is that at the quantum level there is no classical properties. Rather what exists is the potentiality for experience of material properties and matters as being experienced". He further adds:

Thus the realm of ultimate material reality for quantum theory- the quantum ground, as I call it- is somewhat immaterial: it has a ghostly kind of existence which provides the possibility of the experience of material reality (and experience only manifests when consciousness gets involved in some way). Because experiences apparently produce or manifest the material world at the quantum level, one implication seems to be that the entire material world, or at least the appearance of the material world, is in some way dependent upon consciousness.

I guess this could solve one problem about physical events and mental events being different events. That is to say, at the deepest level of 'reality' there is no physical stuff, mainly quantum mental stuff. Another way of saying this is that the brain is reducible to mental stuff. So when I claim to be able to see a yellow brick wall in front of me, I am actually saying that somehow I have created this brick wall and that it has no physical existence. In other words, the wall is actually an idea of a wall that exists in my head.

I could be wrong, but is seems to be Smetham is doing a George Berkeley in presenting us with an idealist explanation for the physical world. If this is the case them I have exactly the same problem with Graham Smetham as I do with Berkeley. And that is the assumption that the idea I am having and the reality are actually the same thing.


What does anyone else think? Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the article.

[Bernard]

Great article. A question raised in my mind is to do with the necessity of having an objective, solid reality. Obviously it is something that has been very important to us as we evolved.... very difficult to hunt prey if we only see them as quantum fields! So I don't think its so much a matter of denial in the scientific community, but one of necessity to interpret our environment as being primarily solid. Its easily forgiveable as being alive is in a sense living a lie - was at Schopenhauer who said that life should not actually exist if we look at all the objective evidence?

I think its more a case that the mind is manufactured by reality than that reality is manufactured by the mind. That is an opinion derived purely from subjective experience.

[Ginkgo]

Great article. A question raised in my mind is to do with the necessity of having an objective, solid reality. Obviously it is something that has been very important to us as we evolved.... very difficult to hunt prey if we only see them as quantum fields! So I don't think its so much a matter of denial in the scientific community, but one of necessity to interpret our environment as being primarily solid. Its easily forgiveable as being alive is in a sense living a lie - was at Schopenhauer who said that life should not actually exist if we look at all the objective evidence?

I think its more a case that the mind is manufactured by reality than that reality is manufactured by the mind. That is an opinion derived purely from subjective experience.

I tend to agree. I find it difficult to accept that the ideal of a yellow wall in my head and the reality of a yellow wall are one and the same. I am of course assuming that this is the logical conclusion we can draw from Smetham's article. To me this is what he seems to be pointing towards.

I say this because the idea of a yellow wall in my head must be caused by something.In other words the idea must be generated by something. Provided of course we are unhappy with the idea that consciousness produced the wall.

I don't think it really matters if a yellow wall in reality is a stack of dodecahedrons glued together by all the colours of the rainbow. The reality is that something is causing me to have this idea of a yellow wall that I can see it in front of me.

The important point is that whatever is thingy is in front of me it is causing me to see something that it yellow and rectangular. Because human brains are very similar there is a very good chance that if I stopped someone in the street and asked them, "What is that thing? There is every change they will tell me it is a yellow wall.

[rdcoste]

I have to say that the article caught my attention with the Higgs introduction but as I read on it began to sound like a modern take on Berkeley's Idealism. I am unable to accept a world that obtains only through 'observation' by conscious beings. What of the world/mass/matter prior to conscious beings? Unless one wishes to invoke Leibniz's monads or a supernatural consciousness (aka God) I do not see that invoking the mysteries of quantum physics is a tenable solution.

Quote mining is one thing, but to say that materialistic philosophies of the mind are 'known to be false' and that philosophers such as Daniel Dennett and others are knowingly out to deceive is completely off base. QP does not disprove or contradict materialism nor is it known that QP does not follow a set of determined laws.

R.D.

[Bernard]

I have to say that the article caught my attention with the Higgs introduction but as I read on it began to sound like a modern take on Berkeley's Idealism. I am unable to accept a world that obtains only through 'observation' by conscious beings. What of the world/mass/matter prior to conscious beings? Unless one wishes to invoke Leibniz's monads or a supernatural consciousness (aka God) I do not see that invoking the mysteries of quantum physics is a tenable solution.

Quote mining is one thing, but to say that materialistic philosophies of the mind are 'known to be false' and that philosophers such as Daniel Dennett and others are knowingly out to deceive is completely off base. QP does not disprove or contradict materialism nor is it known that QP does not follow a set of determined laws.

R.D.

The idea that there was mass before conscious beings is crazier than the medieval idea that the universe revolves around the earth.

[lennartack]

I'm not a physicist, but from what I know about QM it seems Smetham doesn't really know what he is talking about, and makes assertions that are certainly not accepted among physicists.

For a similar but better philosophical consideration of quantum mechanics, I recommend Invariances by Robert Nozick. In the beginning of this book he explores the consequences of quantum mechanics for our notion of time, space and matter.

[lennartack]

Ah, see http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vste ... usness.pdf.

[clearmind]

Hi there – I’m Graham Smetham.

Brief background: I studied physics, maths and philosophy 40 years ago at Essex University and majored in Maths then did a Phd course in philosophy and religion at Sussex University where I also taught a small course on philosophy of science and Buddhism. I did not finish my thesis for personal reasons, some of the research I did was subsequently incorporated in my first book – Quantum Buddhism: Dancing in Emptiness. I then did a variety of things including teaching maths and physics in schools and colleges. I now research pretty much full time in philosophy of science, quantum physics, Buddhist philosophy and other issues concerning the ultimate nature of reality.

I will respond to the negative comments first and then post further comments regarding the more positive comments.

When I set out to research this book I decided it had to be thorough and detailed so that it could not be criticised for the same reasons the Tao of Physics was – it was accused of being impressionistic and imprecise and so on. For this reason my book took about 10 years and I read in great detail just about everything I could find on the subject – popular and not so popular, including research papers, for example when discussing the ‘many worlds’ theory I did not just rely upon popular renditions, I went to original papers by Hugh Everett and Bryce DeWitt, I also used original papers in decoherence theory by Wojciech Zurek, who refers to the quantum ‘stuff’ of reality as ‘dream stuff’ and also states that:

…the ultimate evidence for the choice of one alternative resides in our illusive “consciousness”
[Zurek Wojciech H.(2002). ‘Decoherence and the Transition from Quantum to Classical – Revisited’ in Los Alamos Science Number 27 2002]

I will, probably mistakenly, assume that the people who have expressed opinions such as I “do not know what I am talking about” will recognise the names I mention. I make it a rule for myself not to express opinions until I have thoroughly researched a topic – and there is a lot of stuff on the subject of quantum physics and consciousness by some very clever physicists and philosophers. I very much doubt that ‘lennartack’ (“but from what I know about quantum physics”) has done close to one percent of the research that I have, I imagine that what he knows about this subject is not very much.

Whilst it may be true that some enthusiastic people may SEEM to think that they can alter the structure of the quantum substrate of the material world by beaming rays of intentionality at it (Amit Goswami, Wigner, London and Bauer for example – if you do not know who these people are then you really should do some research before thinking you are entitled to have an informed opinion!), this is not the claim of most respected physicists who have come to accept the entanglement of consciousness at the quantum level. Here are a few examples from significant and respected physicists [sources in brackets]:

Max Plank:

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
[Das Wesen der Materie” (The Nature of Matter), speech at Florence, Italy, 1944 (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)]

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.
[The Observer (January 25th, 1931)]

Erwin Schrödinger:

Mind has erected the objective outside world … out of its own stuff.
[Schrödinger, E. What is Life (1944) p121]

Roger Penrose:

At the large end of things, the place where ‘the buck stops’ is provided by our conscious perceptions.
[Penrose, Roger (1995) Shadows of the Mind p309]

To be fair I must say that when he wrote this Penrose did not accept this view – he said that all the evidence pointed to this but he could not accept it – although he was honest enough to say that he could not disprove it! And [these are all from the The Road to Reality – but I guess the people who think I am deficient will know that as they must be thoroughly familiar with the territory!]:

…almost all the ‘conventional’ interpretations of quantum mechanics ultimately depend upon the presence of a ‘perceiving being’…

And:

The issue of environmental decoherence … provides us with a merely stopgap position … ‘lost in the environment’ does not literally mean that it is actually lost, in an objective sense. But for the loss to be subjective, we are again thrown back on the issue ‘subjectively perceived – by whom?’ which returns us to the consciousness-observer question.

And:

…the behaviour of the seemingly objective world that is actually perceived depends on how one’s consciousness threads its way through the myriads of quantum-superposed alternatives. In the absence of an adequate theory of conscious observers, the many-worlds interpretation must necessarily remain incomplete.

And:

As far as I can make out, the only interpretations that do not necessarily depend upon some notion of ‘conscious observer’ … require some fundamental change in the rules of quantum mechanics…

John Wheeler:

The Question is what is the Question?
Is it all a Magic Show?
Is Reality an Illusion?
What is the framework of the Machine?
Darwin’s Puzzle: Natural Selection?
Where does Space-Time come from?
Is there any answer except that it comes from consciousness?
What is Out There?
T’is Ourselves?
Or, is IT all just Magic Show?
[Sarfatti , Jack ‘Wheeler’s World: It From Bit?’ - Internet Science Education Project, San Francisco, CA.]

And:

Directly opposite to the concept of universe as machine built on law is the vision of a world self-synthesized. On this view, the notes struck out on a piano by the observer participants of all times and all places, bits though they are in and by themselves, constitute the great wide world of space and time and things.
[Wheeler, J A (1999) ‘Information, physics, quantum: the search for links.’ In Feynman and Computation: Exploring the Limits of Computers, ed A. J. G. Hey, p309 (314). Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books]

Anton Zeilinger, who wrote the excellent book Dance of the Photons (well worth reading if you really want to know about the philosophical implications of quantum entanglement) said of Wheeler:

The outstanding feature of Professor Wheeler’s viewpoint is his realisation that the implications of quantum mechanics are so far-reaching that they require a completely novel approach in our view of reality and the way we see our role in the universe. This distinguishes him from many others who in one way or another tried to save pre-quantum viewpoints, particularly the obviously wrong notion of a reality independent of us.

[Anton Zeilinger: ‘Why the quantum? “It” from bit”? A participatory universe? Three far-reaching challenges from John Archibald Wheeler and their relation to experiment.’]

Quantum cosmologist Andrei Linde wrote about Wheeler::

Thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time. This example demonstrates an unusually important role played by the concept of an observer in quantum cosmology. John Wheeler underscored the complexity of the situation, replacing the word observer by the word participant, and introducing such terms as a ‘self-observing universe.’

[ Andrei Linde: ‘Inflation, quantum cosmology and the anthropic principle.’]

Linde also wrote:

Is it possible that consciousness, like space-time, has its own intrinsic degrees of freedom and that neglecting these will lead to a description of the universe that is fundamentally incomplete? What if our perceptions are as real as (or maybe, in a certain sense, are even more real) than material objects?
[Science & Ultimate Reality p451]

The brilliant French physicist and philosopher Bernard d’Espagnat, who wrote the excellent books on quantum physics and philosophy ‘Veiled Reality’ and ‘Physics and Philosophy’ – must reads for people who think they are informed on this subject - states that:

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.
[d'Espagnat, Bernard, ‘Quantum Theory and Reality’ Scientific American, Nov. 197?]

In their book Quantum Enigma, quantum physicists Rosenblum and Kuttner, conclude that

…physics’ encounter with consciousness, demonstrated for the small, applies to everything. And that ‘everything’ can include the entire Universe.
[Rosenblum, Bruce and Kuttner, Fred (2006) Quantum Enigma p201]

I could go on but there should be enough here to suggest to any reasonable person that a great many significant physicists (including Stephen Hawking) have concluded that consciousness is a creative aspect of the quantum realm and has a role in producing reality. This is certainly enough to indicate that lennartack’s comment that I make assertions “that are certainly not accepted amongst physicists” is based on ignorance of the subject.

The final post by lennartack links to an article by Victor Stenger who is a well known protagonist for an intellectually fraudulent materialist misrepresentation of quantum theory. I have read the article and it is intellectual drivel – I shall write another post in the next few days indicating why it is drivel.

As for ‘copernico’s comment ‘I can’t believe ….’ Well again he obviously knows nothing about the subject and has just made a mistaken dogmatic statement based on his lack of knowledge. I think it is a good rule for someone who has philosophical aspirations to do at least a little bit of investigation before parading his deficiency of knowledge.

Then we come to rdcoste’s accusation of quote mining. The term ‘quotemining’ was (I think) coined by Richard Dawkins – he has a Youtube video on this notion. The term is indicates the practice of taking quotes out of context to make them appear to say the opposite of the author’s intention. Now rdcoste either does not know this and he is misusing the term, or he is completely unfamiliar with the subject. All you have to do is read books such as Stapp’s ‘MINDFUL Universe’, or Rosenblum and Kutter’s ‘Quantum Enigma: PHYSICS ENCOUNTERS CONSCIOUSNESS’ to see that none of the quotes I give are taken out of context to indicate the opposite of the author’s intention. As to his assertion that quantum theory does not undermine materialism – well according to Stapp:

…the re-bonding [between mind and matter] achieved by physicists during the first half of the twentieth century must be seen as a momentous development: a lifting of the veil. Ignoring this huge and enormously pertinent development in basic science, and proclaiming the validity of materialism on the basis of an inapplicable-in-this-context nineteenth century science is an irrational act.
[Stapp, Henry: ‘Quantum Interactive Dualism’ p18]

Indeed!

I shall post on the more positive comments in the next few days…

[clearmind]

The Myth of ‘The Myth of Quantum Consciousness’

Graham Smetham

Now let’s go through the woeful intellectually fraudulent materialist madness perpetrated by Victor J. Stenger in his article ‘The Myth of Quantum Consciousness’ and elsewhere.

In ‘The Myth of Quantum Consciousness’ Stenger begins by identifying the notion of the entanglement of consciousness and the quantum substrate with various ‘New Age’ type doctrines, he cites an article by Robert Lanza, ‘The Wise Silence’ which appeared in the Humanist magazine (November/December 1992). In this article, Lanza apparently writes that the quantum mechanical worldview entails that “We are all the ephemeral forms of a consciousness greater than ourselves.” Furthermore:

In Lanza’s interpretation, quantum mechanics tells us that all human minds are united in one mind and “the entities of and “the entities of the universe - electrons, photons, galaxies, and the like - are floating in a field of mind that cannot be limited within a restricted space or period. . .”

Such notions Stenger says:

…sound very much like the ideas of physicist and New Age guru Fritjof Capra…They also resonate with the “cosmic consciousness” promoted by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his transcendental Meditation movement. Like Lanza, these sages claim modern physics as their authority. The maharishi associates cosmic consciousness with the grand unified field of particle physics.

He then states that this “latest version of Hindu idealism is supposedly based on up-to-date scientific knowledge” and:

The assertion is made that quantum mechanics has ruled invalid the materialistic, reductionist view of the universe view introduced by Newton in the seventeenth century, which formed the foundation of the scientific revolution. Now materialism is replaced by a new spiritualism, and reductionism is cast aside by a new holism.

It is vital to be aware that Stenger is conflating two interrelated issues 1) the validity of materialism as a metaphysical doctrine as regards the ultimate constitution of the process of reality or whether the ultimate ‘stuff’ is more mind-like, and 2) whether quantum physics necessarily supports a ‘spiritual’ view of the universe.

If we take the first issue then my article and previous post indicates that crude materialism has certainly been invalidated by quantum physics. Here is another pertinent quote from Stapp; this is when he is discussing Dennett’s view that the ‘material’ brain somehow produces consciousness:

…no such brain exists; no brain, body, or anything else in the real world is composed of those tiny bits of matter that Newton imagined the universe to be made of.
[Stapp, Henry (2007). Mindful Universe. P139]

It is important to bear in mind here that Stapp is indicating that the ULTIMATE ‘stuff’ of reality is not Newtonian type ‘matter’ (which conceptually is the only type of ‘matter’ there is – ‘matter’ has not been redefined since Descartes, although physicists often use the term illicitly as if it has been redefined).

Now the recent Higgs discovery has certainly endorsed this view - because the material world has been shown to be manifested by interactions of immaterial quantum fields. Furthermore, quantum fields certainly must have a cognitive aspect, or a qualitative nature of consciousness, otherwise the operation of this ground level consciousness could not manifest the universe from the pool of quantum potentiality. This view is endorsed by all the assertions from various physicists given in my previous post, as well as Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s account of the development of our universe from quantum potentiality:

… the universe appeared spontaneously, starting off in every possible way. Most of these correspond to other universes …. Some people make a great mystery of this idea, sometimes called the multiverse concept, but these are just different expressions of the Feynman sum over histories.
[The Grand Design p136]

Universes ‘start off in every possible way’ from the possibilities in the ‘eternal’ quantum fields that underlie the process of our experience of reality. According to H & M:

We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. [Grand Design p139]

So it would seem plausible that we should look to quantum field theory for clues as to the ultimate nature of reality, and according to a recent work on quantum theory by physicist Jonathan Allday:

…at the quantum level, the objects we study have no substance to them independent of their properties. [Quantum Reality p493]

In an article in the New Scientist (23rd June 2007) Michael Brooks, commenting on quantum entanglement experiments carried out by teams led by Markus Aspelmeyer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna, tells us that the conclusion reached by the physicists involved is that:

…we now have to face the possibility that there is nothing inherently real about the properties of an object that we measure. In other words measuring those properties is what brings them into existence.

And Professor Vlatko Vedral remarked that:

Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality.
[Vlatko Vedral quoted in New Scientist 23rd June 2007]

The headline for the article proclaims that:

To track down a theory of everything, we might have to accept that the universe only exists when we are looking at it… [New Scientist 23rd June 2007]

Hawking and Mlodinow tell us in one of the central chapters in their book The Grand Design, which is entitled ‘Choosing Our Universe’:

The idea that the universe does not have a unique observer-independent history might seem to conflict with certain facts that we know. There might be one history in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese. But we have observed that the moon is not made of cheese, which is bad news for mice. Hence histories in which the moon is not made of cheese do not contribute to the current state of our universe, though they might contribute to others. This might sound like science fiction but it isn’t.
[The Grand Design p140]

If this is true, and such a view conforms to the most significant approaches to quantum interpretation outlined in the previous post, then the fact that ‘observer-participation’ is responsible for ‘choosing’ which potentialities are manifested certainly suggests that an element of ‘design’ and ‘intelligence’ must be inherent in the process. Furthermore some form of cognizance, or consciousness, must be doing the ‘choosing’. It must be the case that consciousness is embedded within the ultimate quantum field, where else could it emerge from?

Returning to Stenger; let’s go through some of his ridiculous arguments against the above majority view. Stenger says:

The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space and time.

This is irrelevant. The psychological state of proponents of a view of reality is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the claim. I would have thought it is a central tenet of science that evidence should decide issues as far as possible. Stenger thinks that pointing out some psychological quirks of some physicists can undermine the truth of a scientific discovery; for example, he tells us that Oliver Lodge:

…desperately wanted to believe in life after death, writing passionately about communications with his son Raymond, who was killed in Flanders in 1915. Sadly, he accepted the wildest claims of mediums.

This may be true, but it has nothing to do with modern quantum field theory. Neither has the question as to whether the universe “cares” about us. Stenger writes:

Quantum mechanics does not violate the Copernican principle that that universe cares about the human race.

I doubt that the universe does “care about us”, but this absurd notion has nothing to do with whether the universe is ultimately produced from immaterial quantum fields which have a cognizant quality.

Next:

Early in this century, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s relativity destroyed the notion of a holistic universe that had seemed within the realm of possibility in the century just past.

Utter nonsense – relativity theory shows that the characteristics that objects may have depends upon relationship with other entities, this is why it is called the theory of ‘relativity’.

Next:

Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe.

It is not clear whether Stenger is referring to the classical type ‘aether’ imagined by Maxwell who produced the electromagnetic equations or to Einstein’s aether theory which is “a controversial generally covariant generalization of general relativity which describes a spacetime endowed with both a metric and a unit timelike vector field named the æther” [Wikipedia].
Maxwell conceived of an electromagnetic ‘aether’ through which his electromagnetic waves travelled:

The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star; and when a molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the dog-star, the medium receives the impulses of these vibrations; and after carrying them in its immense bosom for three years, delivers them in due course, regular order, and full tale into the spectroscope of Mr. Huggins, at Tulse Hill.
[Dolling, L.M.; Gianelli, A. F. & Statile, G. N. (eds) (2003) Tests of Time p244]

The Michelson-Morley experiment disproved this, but this is all irrelevant as the claim concerning quantum consciousness relates to quantum field theory that pertains to a level ‘beneath’ the ‘classical’. Whilst Michelson-Morley experiment disproved a classical type field; today we now know that electromagnetic pulses are perturbations in an electromagnetic quantum field.
With regard to Einstein aether theory, according to Wikipedia “It is still not known whether Einstein æther theories exist as quantum theories”

Next:

Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity. Atomic theory and quantum mechanics demonstrated that everything, even space and time, exists in discrete bits-quanta. To turn this around and say that twentieth century physics initiated some new holistic view of the universe is a complete misrepresentation of what actually took place.

It is actually Stenger who is engaging in ‘complete misrepresentation’. It is true that Einstein showed that light, which was thought at the time to be continuous, was composed of particles called photons (the photoelectric effect – Einstein got the Nobel Prize for this) much to the consternation of the majority of physicists at the time. However, things have moved on since then, for example quantum physicist H. Dieter Zeh, in his paper ‘There are no Quantum Jumps, nor are there Particles!’, writes that:

…there does not seem to be any reasonable motivation (other than traditionalism) for introducing concepts like particles, quantum jumps, … or classical properties on a fundamental level.
[Zeh, H. D. ‘There are no Quantum Jumps, nor are there Particles’ p5 - http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~as ... -jumps.pdf]

The following is from physicist Lisa Randall’s book ‘Warped Passages’:

Quantum field theory, the tool with which we study particles, is based upon eternal, omnipresent objects that can create and destroy those particles. These objects are the “fields” of quantum field theory. … quantum fields are objects that permeate spacetime … they create or absorb elementary particles … particles can be produced or destroyed anywhere at any time. [p158]
In this current understanding, all particles are understood as being excitations, perturbations or ‘bumps’ in the underlying quantum field. Each type of particle has its own field and when the field is ‘excited’, a particle or several particles can be ‘created’ and when the excitation ceases particles are ‘destroyed’.

According to the majority of physicists (in fact as far as I know all except Stenger) consider that immaterial quantum fields are the ultimate elements of reality. The physicist and philosopher of science David Albert has pointed out:

The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. [New York Times Review]

Science writer Jim Baggott in his book on the Higgs tells us that:

The concept of mass has vanished in a puff of logic. It has been replaced by interactions between otherwise massless particles and the Higgs field. [p88-9]

In his book about the Higgs field and particle, ‘The Particle at the End of the Universe’, physicist Sean Carroll tells us that:

The world is made of fields – substances spread out through all of space that we notice through their vibrations, which appear to us as particles. [p35]

Not only this, Carroll also points out that:

We are part of the universe which has developed a remarkable ability: we can hold an image of the world in our minds. We are matter
contemplating itself.[p280-1]

Carroll, however, betrays a materialist leaning in his mistaken notion that it is “matter contemplating itself”. If the “world is made of fields”, as he himself says, then ultimately it is the immaterial quantum fields which organize themselves in order to manifest and contemplate their own internal qualities; thus quantum fields must have an internal organizing and cognizant aspect.

Stenger, however, simply rejects the current consensus of physics and claims that quantum fields are unreal. Thus in an article ‘Particles Are for Real’ he argues against the current view. Stenger quotes from an article in the December 2012 Scientific American, in which physicist David Tong makes the following statement:

Physicists routinely teach that the building blocks of nature are discrete particles such as the electron or quark. That is a lie. The building blocks of our theories are not particles but fields: continuous, fluidlike objects spread throughout space.

As we have seen this is the consensus view, it is also the most natural view for we know there were no ‘particles’ present at the moment of the big bang, therefore whatever particles are around now are ultimately derived from the quantum field(s) at the moment of the big bang. Stenger says of Tong’s assertion that:

This is highly misleading. No one has ever observed a quantum field. Quantum fields are purely mathematical constructs within quantum field theory.
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-st ... 77361.html]

The problem with such an absurd view, however, that it would require us to think in terms of ‘particles’ popping into existence from absolute nothingness, a viewpoint that would make them even less ‘real’ than having them at least supported by immaterial quantum potential-energy fields!

As I go through this Stenger article the degree of misrepresentation, misinformation and misdirection is truly awesome. His discussion of Bell’s inequalities and the associated experiments is entirely fraudulent:

A careful analysis of the experiments that tested Bell’s theorem shows that the only objects that move faster than light are mathematical creations of our imaginations…

Heavyweight quantum physicist Giancarlo Ghirardi, however, tells us that the evidence tells us that “the photons [in Bell type experiments] themselves must be telepathic.” [Ghirardi, G. (2005), Sneaking a Look at God’s Cards p236]. Experiments of extraordinary delicacy and precision have been carried out to probe the phenomenon of the telepathic nature of quantum entanglement. Ghirardi concludes:

Personally, I take the experiment of Aspect and his collaborators as conclusive: photons really are telepathic…, [Ghirardi, G. (2005), Sneaking a Look at God’s Cards p246]

One implication of Bell’s theorem is the correctness of quantum field theory as the most fundamental physical and metaphysical account of ‘Reality’. As d’Espagnat writes:

…what, from a philosophical standpoint, is by far the most remarkable feature of quantum field theory is that it reduces the (scientifically unmanageable) notion “creation” [of particles] to the (scientifically tractable) notion “state change.” And the point that is relevant to the here considered issue is that it succeeds in doing so by making primary some concepts of a general nature - such as fields associated with types of particles - and secondary the concept of individualized particles. Consequently, if we are on the lookout for some concept, or “mathematical algorithm,” that this theory could be identified as referring to the “basic stuff,” we can find none except, conceivably, the element the state of which changes when a particle gets “created” or “annihilated”. … Now, in the theory, there are not myriads and myriads of such elements. Indeed there is just one! Which means that, conceptually speaking, the theory is as far from atomism as it is conceivably possible for a theory to be.
[d' Espagnat, B (2003) Veiled Reality p317]

There really seems to be no end to Stenger’s intellectual perfidy:

…this seeming profound association between quantum and mind is a consequence of unfortunate language used by Bohr, Heisenberg and others who originated formulated quantum mechanics. In describing the necessary interaction between the observer and observed, and how the state of a system is determined by the act of its measurement, they inadvertently left the impression that human consciousness enters the picture to cause that state to come into being.

This is completely fallacious. Stapp, who actually discussed quantum issues with Heisenberg, says regarding Heisenberg’s views:

Let there be no doubt about this point. The original form of quantum theory is subjective, in the sense that it is forthrightly about relationships among conscious human experiences…
[Stapp, Henry (2007) Mindful Universe p11]

Stapp also wrote regarding the ‘free choices’, choices that are effective at the quantum level, on the part of sentient beings that quantum theory requires that:

I see no way for contemporary science to disprove, or even render highly unlikely, this religious extension of quantum theory, or to provide any strong evidence in support of an alternative picture of the nature of these “free choices.” These choices seem to be rooted in reasons that are rooted in feelings pertaining to value or worth. Thus it can be argued that quantum theory provides a rational opening for an idea of nature and of our role within it that are in general accord with certain religious concepts…
[Stapp – ‘Minds and Values in the Quantum Universe’]

All in all Stenger seems to lack a quantum of intellectual integrity!

[Bernard]

Thanks Graham, some great citations and threads to follow up My only concern with general acceptance of quantum fields is that it de-emphasises materialism to a degree which isn't functional to how humans have come to apprehend and perceive their environment since time immemorial. You can't spear a quantum field! Will acceptance of field theory forever remain at a personal/subjective level? One would have to assume so but hope otherwise.




PS We could spear quantum fields with a quantum field spear, but particle spears are al. We're used to.

[clearmind]

Hi Bernard

Thanks for your feedback. There is a way in which a kind of inter-subjective - objective 'material' world comes into existence and functions as if it were fully 'objective'. This is derived from the 'epiontic' 'quantum Darwinian' perspective. I will elucidate this in the next few days.

[Ginkgo]

Hi Bernard

Thanks for your feedback. There is a way in which a kind of inter-subjective - objective 'material' world comes into existence and functions as if it were fully 'objective'. This is derived from the 'epiontic' 'quantum Darwinian' perspective. I will elucidate this in the next few days.

Graham, I don't wish to steal your thunder here because you said you will be addressing the objective and subjective aspects of the discussion. However, I guess a lot depends on your interpretation of quantum mechanics. The interpretation that interests me at the moment is Penrose's Objective Reduction. My understanding of the theory is that no observer is required to initiate the wave function collapse. In other words, wave function collapse can occur in places that are 'hidden away' from the environment and perceiving minds.


Ginkgo

[clearmind]

Quantum Darwinism and Epiontic Weak Objectivity

Graham Smetham


Penrose’s (and Hameroff’s) suggestion of an orchestrated-objective-reduction (Orch-OR) was to a large degree driven by Penrose’s desperation to avoid the conclusion that consciousness in some way was responsible for the reduction of the quantum state-vector. Thus in ‘Shadows of the Mind’ he says that: “At the large end of things, the place where ‘the buck stops’ is provided by our conscious perceptions.” But then he tells us that he refuses to go this route because he cannot believe it. Instead he invokes quantum-gravity and has been criticized by many. Now there are, as I see it, at least two huge problems going this route. Firstly, it is entirely ad-hoc and constructed to avoid the evidence and, secondly, it in no way deals with the fact the quantum evidence suggests that consciousness is in some way connected to reduction.

Wojciech Zurek made an enormously significant observation when he pointed out that:

…while the ultimate evidence for the choice of one alternative resides in our illusive “consciousness,” there is every indication that the choice occurs much before consciousness gets involved and that, once made, the choice is irrevocable.
[Zurek Wojciech H.(2002). ‘Decoherence and the Transition from Quantum to Classical – Revisited’ in Los Alamos Science Number 27 2002]

Zurek highlights the issue with great clarity here. At the micro-level the entanglement of consciousness and the quantum ‘dream-stuff’ of reality is inescapable. But at the same time the material environment seems pretty much completely independent and has a momentum of its own. We do not think that individual sentient beings can change material reality significantly by firing beams of intentionality at it – THAT is quantum mystical nonsense.

Bernard d’Espagnat makes the same observation, in ‘Veiled Reality’ he points out that the micro level clearly includes consciousness but the apparently objective world ‘pushes back’ and is not amenable to random alteration by conscious intentionality. He termed this ‘weak objectivity’ – objectivity with a dash of subjectivity so to speak.

Zurek, proposer of the ‘quantum Darwinism’ paradigm, tells us that the ultimate nature of quantum reality is ‘epiontic’, which means that perception in some sense ‘creates’ ontology, or perceiving things helps keep them in existence:

…quantum states, by their very nature share an epistemological and ontological role – are simultaneously a description of the state, and the ‘dream stuff is made of.’ One might say that they are epiontic. These two aspects may seem contradictory, but at least in the quantum setting, there is a union of these two functions.
[Wojciech H. Zurek: ‘Quantum Darwinism and envariance.’]

Here he emphasizes the apparently flimsy ‘informational’ nature of the ‘stuff’ that makes up the quantum realm, it is ‘epiontic’ ‘dream stuff’ that is capable of creating an extraordinary vast structure of apparent materiality. Zurek also points out that, although the evidence we have in quantum experiments indicates a clear dependence on consciousness, the apparently material structures of the everyday world certainly seem to be existing under their own momentum and weight.

The term ‘epiontic’ means that it is perception which builds up the structured of materiality. But this does not happen overnight, the structures of materiality are built up bit by bit slowly over vast time periods and must operate on pre-existing quantum potentialities – this fits in precisely with Wheeler, Hawking & Mlodinow, Stapp and also Penrose’s notion of ‘objective reduction’ – only the type of ‘objectivity’ is ‘weak objectivity.’

Zurek is an expert in the field of decoherence theory and has produced his ‘quantum Darwinism’ perspective, which accounts to some extent for the ‘emergence’ of the classically ‘objective’ world from quantum “dream stuff”, as he calls it. In some places Zurek thinks that he has managed to eliminate a disturbing element of subjectivism which was introduced into quantum theory by the early ‘founding fathers’ but in fact does not eliminate it entirely:

In this manner, he disagrees with two of the founders of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, who suggested that until quantum particles are observed they exist as “wave functions” that can contain a superposition of many properties. But when an observer makes a measurement, the wave function “collapses,” yielding a particle that behaves classically. Wojciech and colleagues have formulated a mechanism that eliminates the role of the observer and thus avoids the always uncomfortable question of whether anything exists when nobody is looking at it. They call the theory “quantum Darwinism” because the environment decides which quantum properties are the “fittest” and will ultimately survive to be viewed by observers. The environment is what enables us to measure reality.
[http://www.closertotruth.com/participan ... -Zurek/128]

The notion of ‘decoherence’ relates to the way in which the environment itself separates out possibilities within quantum potentialities. On this view, in which the classical ‘witnessing’ environment is constantly subduing what Zurek himself calls quantum ‘dream stuff’, thereby restraining it from becoming too subjectively dreamy, it is thought that Zurek and his associates have rescued an ‘objective’ world from dissolving into an abject quantum nightmare of subjectivism. But what Zurek’s position does is to push back the role of subjectivity into the margins – however it is not eliminated completely, it is still ultimately required.

In his quantum Darwinism proposal Zurek appears to suggest that a kind of quantum “advertising billboard” springs into existence advertising classical reality when quantum correlations become ‘robust enough’:

The main idea of quantum Darwinism is that we almost never do any direct measurement on anything … the environment acts as a witness, or as a communication channel. … It is like a big advertising billboard, which floats multiple copies of the information about our universe all over the place.
[‘The Evolution of Reality’ – http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/122 (The Foundational Questions Institute) November 10, 2009.]

A significant point here, however, is that subjectivity is still required to keep the advertising billboard going, this quantum billboard becomes an inter-subjective billboard. Thus the material world, constructed from quantum ‘dream stuff’ acquires an inter-subjective ‘objectivity. In other words there is a kind of quantum ‘matrix’ of the classical world which floats so many copies of itself all over the quantum environment that it becomes the source of the apparent ‘objectivity’ of the classical world.

Quantum decoherence is the loss of quantum coherence between the components of a quantum superposition. A consequence of this leads to the appearance of classical alternatives, one of which becomes experienced reality. Human (or sentient in general) measurements are not the only mechanism for producing decoherence or ‘collapse’ of quantum states into classical states. The primary mechanism causing decoherence lies in the interactions that a quantum system has with its environment and this appears to take place independently of consciousness. Typically quantum systems undergo a vast number of environmental interactions which selectively destroy entangled quantum states. This is called environment-induced-super-selection (‘einselection’). This process does not produce a single classical state but, rather, a ‘menu’ of classical possibilities. The result of environmental interactions, or environmental monitoring, is that a small number of quantum states, called pointer states, are able to survive and evolve for any sustained period of time in a deterministic, classical manner. Their prolonged survival is due to the fact that these pointer states survive interactions with the environment, decoherence leave them unchanged. They alone are able to survive in the face of environmental monitoring. Zurek says that:

Using Darwinian analogy, one might say that pointer states are most ‘fit’. They survive monitoring by the environment to leave ‘descendants’ that inherit their properties. Classical domain of pointer states offers a static summary of the result of quantum decoherence. Save for classical dynamics, (almost) nothing happens to these einselected states, even though they are immersed in the environment.
[Zurek, Wojciech. (2003). ‘Decoherence, Einselection, and the Quantum Origins of the Classical’. arXiv:quant-ph/0105127 v3]

Because the pointer states are the only ones able to survive decoherence, and as interactions with the environment pass information concerning the quantum state to the environment, a quantum system’s environment becomes heavily imprinted with a great many redundant copies of information indicating the quantum system’s pointer states.

It is these environmental copies that we actually experience and from which we gain information concerning quantum systems in almost all cases. For instance quantum systems are in continual interaction with the vast number of photons in their immediate environment. When we observe an object visually we are actually accessing information that has been imprinted on photons during previous interactions with the quantum system under observation. It is this redundant imprinting of information in the environment that makes this information available to multiple observers and provides the basis for our classical concept of objectivity or the ability of numerous observers to access and confirm the same information. And it is because of the vast proliferation of the information which is accessed by a multitude of observers that the original states underlying the classical world can remain resilient to observational obliteration.

Zurek, in discussion with science journalist Philip Ball, described the delicate situation of quantum ‘dream stuff’ as follows:

Because, as Zurek says, “the Universe is quantum to the core,” this property (that observation disturbs quantum reality) seems to undermine the notion of an objective reality. In this type of situation, every tourist who gazed at Buckingham Palace would change the arrangement of the building’s windows, say, merely by the act of looking, so that subsequent tourists would see something slightly different. Yet that clearly isn’t what happens. The sensitivity to observation at the quantum level … seems to go away at the everyday, macroscopic level…
[Ball, Philip - Natural selection acts on the quantum world, Nature.com]

And the reason that the everyday macroscopic world remains stable is that the classical world arises through the mechanism of decoherence:

Decoherence selects out of the quantum ‘mush’ states that are stable, that can stand the scrutiny of the environment without getting perturbed…
[Ball, Philip - Natural selection acts on the quantum world, Nature.com]

This mechanism has been dubbed by some as ‘collapse without collapse’ because it, apparently, removes the central role of conscious observers, the quantum environment itself now seems to be ‘epiontically’ observing itself and passing the information along so to speak. Thus John Campbell, in his article Quantum Darwinism as a Darwinian process says of Zurek’s work:
Hopefully this treatment will finally lay to rest the interpretational confusion around the role of a human observer in quantum measurements that has been prevalent in many treatments and taken to anthropomorphic extremes by some such as Wigner. Zurek’s work makes it clear that decoherence takes place whenever there is an information transfer to the environment. No human observer need be in attendance.

But this is simply not true, as the following observation by Zurek indicates:

Measurement – perception – is the place where physics gets personal, where our role and our capabilities as observers and agents of change in the universe (and our limitations as entities subject to the laws of physics) are tested - or, rather, where we get put in our place. I believe that quick solutions, and I include both the Copenhagen interpretation and many worlds here, have a tendency to gloss over the real mystery, which is how do we - that is to say, how does life - fit within the quantum universe. I think we have managed to constrain the possible answers (for example, through research on decoherence), but I believe there is more to come. The virtue of the focus on quantum measurement is that it puts issues connected with information and existence at the very center. This is where they should be.’

The point that Zurek seems to miss however is that the perceptions which register the quantum ‘billboard’ of the classical and apparently material world also have an amplificatory aspect. This is how the material world, or the illusion of the material world, is built up over time from the potentiality of the quantum ‘dream stuff which makes up the ‘stuff’ of quantum fields.

This viewpoint is consistent with all the other ‘interpretations’. It account for Penrose’s objective reduction. Because the quantum billboard advertising the material world takes off with its own momentum it functions as if it is ‘objective, although its ultimate source is inter-subjective. It is, as Australian aborigines say, a vast ‘collective dream’. But, it is a dream that seems to materialize its dream into a collective arena of an apparent external world. This is why my position is not a Berkeley type Idealism.

This is a rushed overview – on my website you can find extensive articles if you wish to explore further.