Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 1, 2014
BEYOND THE STALEMATE: CONSCIOUS MIND-
BODY - QUANTUM MECHANICS - FREE WILL -
POSSIBLE PANPSYCHISM - POSSIBLE
INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM ENIGMA
Stuart Kauffman
ABSTRACT: I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above.
Much of what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I
hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our consideration. What I shall say assumes quantum
measurement is real, and that Bohm’s interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is not true.
The Stalemate: In our contemporary neurobiology and much of the philosophy of mind post
Descartes we are classical physics machines and either mindless, or mind is at best
epiphenomenal and can have no consequences for the physical world. The first main point of
this paper is that we are not forced to this conclusion, but must give up total reliance on
classical physics.
KEYWORDS: mind-body; acausal consequences, poised realm, free will theorem; quantum
enigma; consciousness.
INTRODUCTION
I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above. Much of
what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I
hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our consideration. What I shall say assumes
quantum measurement is real, and that Bohm’s interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
is not true.
The Stalemate: In our contemporary neurobiology and much of the philosophy of
mind post Descartes we are classical physics machines and either mindless, or mind is
www.cosmosandhistory.org 149
COSMOS AND HISTORY 150
at best epiphenomenal and can have no consequences for the physical world. The first
main point of this paper is that we are not forced to this conclusion, but must give up
total reliance on classical physics.
THE CAUSAL CLOSURE OF CLASSICAL PHYSICS IS THE SOURCE OF THE
STALEMATE.
We all know Newton, his three laws of motion, universal gravitation, and invention of
differential and integral calculus. Given seven billiard balls rolling on a billiard table,
we might ask Newton what will happen to the balls. “Write down the initial conditions
of position and momenta of the balls, the boundary conditions of the edges of the
table, and the forces between the balls, and the balls and the edge of the table using
my three laws of motion in differential equation form. Then, to find out what will
happen to the balls in the future (or past, my laws are time reversible), integrate my
differential equations to obtain the trajectories of the balls (for all time in the absence
of friction)”. But, I note, integration is deduction of the consequences of Newton’s
differential equations for the trajectories of the balls, and deduction is “entailment”.
“All men are mortal. Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is a mortal.” is a syllogism
whose conclusion is logically entailed by the truth, if so, of the premises. So too the
trajectories are entailed by integration of Newtons differential equation.
But this entailment sets up the Stalemate. If the
ain is a classical physics system,
then the present state of the classical physics
ain is entirely sufficient to determine
the next state of the
ain. But then, there is NOTHING for mind to do, and NO
WAY for mind to do it! It would be like asking mind to alter the trajectories of the
alls on the billiard table.
Thus, if mind somehow is present in a classical physics setting, it can have NO
consequences at all for the classical physics world. At best, the mind can be merely
epiphenomenal. (We might wonder if mind exists and is merely epiphenomenal, and if
mind with
ain evolved, what selective advantage could it have had?).
The culprit is the causal closure of classical physics with, as Aristotle said, no Prime
mover. The Stalemate arises because we want mind to act causally on
ain, but it
cannot because all the classical physics causes are already in the laws of the billiard ball
classical physics neuronal system and attendant classical physics further variables
including classical physics noise.
STUART KAUFFMAN 151
QUANTUM MECHANICS PROVIDES TWO WAYS TO BREAK THE CAUSAL
CLOSURE OF CLASSICAL PHYSICS AND HAVE ACAUSAL CONSEQUENCES FOR
THE “CLASSICAL” BRAIN.
I begin with a familiar outline of Quantum Mechanics, with the caveat that I am not a
physicist. 1) We all know the two slit experiment and the resulting interference pattern
of spots on the developed film emulsion beyond the two open slits. 2) We know the
Schrodinger linear wave equation, often set equal typically to a classical potential V.
The equation has no energy term, so what is “waving” cannot be matter or energy. No
one knows what is “waving”. I will propose below that what are waving are
“possibilities”, (1), or, with Heisenberg, Potentialities, XXXXXXXXXXWe know the Born rule:
square the amplitude of each wave, say spin up or spin down, in superposition, and
that is the probability that upon measurement that outcome will be found. We know
there are 16 interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, in which measurement is real in
some and not others. As noted above I assume measurement is real. 4) Finally we all
know the astonishing confirmation of Non-locality for entangled quantum variables.
RES POTENTIA AND RES EXTENSA, LINKED, HENCE UNITED, BY
MEASUREMENT.
I may be proposing a 17th interpretation of quantum mechanics, rather similar in
some aspects to Heisenberg’s Potenia,(2), but on different grounds. I begin with
Feynman’s formulation of quantum mechanics as a sum over all possible simultaneous
histories,(3). This is accepted as an equivalent formulation of quantum mechanics by
most physicists. On this formulation, one must say that a SINGLE photon on its way
through the two slits to the film emulsion simultaneously does and does NOT pass
through the left slit. But this statement
eaks Aristotle’s Law of the Excluded Middle,
where “A and Not A” is a contradiction. Thus, on Feynman’s formulation, quantum
coherent behavior does NOT obey the law of the excluded middle. After quantum
measurement, the result does obey the law of the excluded middle. For example, the
electron, upon measurement, is found to be either spin up, or spin down, not both
simultaneously. So measurement, if real, does take Quantum Mechanics from
something that does not obey the law of the excluded middle to something that does
obey the law of the excluded middle.
Philosopher C. S. Pierce noted that Actuals and Probables DO obey the law of the
Excluded Middle, but Possibles do not. Thus, “The photon possibly did and possibly
did not simultaneously go through the left slit” is NOT a contradiction.
I now wish to propose a new dualism, but not a substance dualism: Res potentia -
ontologically real Possibles that do not obey the Law of the Excluded Middle, and Res
extensa - ontologically real Actuals that do obey the Law of the Excluded Middle,
COSMOS AND HISTORY 152
linked by measurement, (1). Because Possibles are not a substance, consistent with the
fact that the Schrodinger equation has no energy term, this dualism is not a substance
dualism. “Possibles” are not far from Heisenberg’s “Potentia”,(2), indeed may be
identical. If so, what is waving in the Schrodinger equation are possibilities.
I note next that if we accept Res potentia and Res extensa united by measurement,
there can be no deductive mechanism for measurement. The “X is possible” of Res
potentia does not deductively entail the “X is actual” of Res extensa. Physicists like
equations. Here the logic is very simple, but co
ect. This is an hypothesis easily
disproved were we to discover a deductive mechanism for measurement, not found
since 1927, but a valid test of the Res potentia hypothesis only assuming measurement
is real.
RES POTENTIA AND NON-LOCALITY
We have a hard time thinking about non-locality. I like the following: Possibilities are
not located in space and time. This provides one way to think about non-locality in
which measurement, located in space and time, of one of two entangled electrons as
spin up, instantaneously implies the second is located in space and time, and is spin
down. If Res potentia is not in space and time, entanglement can “spread”
instantaneously, but “spread” is wrongly thought of as located in space and time. Here
measurements create Actuals that do obey the law of the excluded middle, so, I want
to hope, must be located in space and time, or spacetime, the latter only if quantum
mechanics can ever be formulated with respect to General Relativity.
THE “POISED REALM” HOVERING REVERSIBLY BETWEEN QUANTUM AND
“CLASSICAL” WORLDS.
Gabor Vattay, Samuli Niiranen and I have recently proposed, or perhaps discovered,
a new “Poised Realm”, (4,5), in which the total system can hover reversibly between
quantum coherent and “classical” worlds, with the known debates about what the
classical world may be. The Poised Realm is captured by an X Y coordinate system.
At the origin on the Y axis, the system is quantum coherent. As the system moves up
the Y axis, the system undergoes increasing decoherence as an open quantum system
losing phase information to the environment and approaches “classicality” infinitely
closely for all practical purposes, FAPP, (6). (I note that the decoherence program no
longer seems to think it can account for quantum measurement, again if measurement
is real, ( 7). What is new on the Y axis, is that REcoherence can occur and move the
system back down the Y axis from “Classical” FAPP to quantum coherent. The
possibility of recoherence is assured by a theorem by Peter Shor, (7), now in use for
quantum e
or co
ection in decohering qubits with the input of “information”. More
STUART KAUFFMAN 153
ecently, quantum biology at body temperature is firmly established in the long lived
quantum coherence of light harvesting molecules. Even more recently, experimental
evidence supports recoherence induced by phonons in the light harvesting complex
that induce recohrence in the electron involved, (8). The Y axis seems real in theory
and practice.
The X axis is: Order, Criticality and Chaos, going out from the origin. In classical
physics, this arises as a set of Hamiltonians are tuned from a conservative oscillation
like a pendulum, where neighboring o
its are parallel and the Lyapunov exponent is
thus 0, to a critical point out the X axis where the Lyapunov exponent undergoes a
second order phase transition to become slightly positive at Criticality, then more
positive in the Chaotic parts of the X axis. In the quantum coherent world, criticality
co
esponds to the metal - insulator transition between extended and localized wave
functions. The X axis is also real. Vattay and colleagues, (9),have now measured the
absorption spectra of hundreds of different organic molecules. From each molecule
one constructs a histogram of the number of small energy intervals between absorption
ands, and larger and larger energy intervals. The ordered regime co
esponds to a
well known exponential decay, from may short intervals to a few long intervals. The
Chaotic regime is a unimodal distribution. The critical regime is a unimodal
distribution whose single peak is shifted toward shorter wavelengths than the chaotic
egime, (5). Almost half the molecules examined are ordered, and, astonishingly,
almost half are critical, a single point on the X axis. A few are chaotic. So the X axis is
eal. Why half are critical is a new mystery. Thus, the X axis is real. Since both the X
and Y axis are real, the Poised Realm is real.
New physics arises in the Poised Realm, in part because decoherence is dissipative,
so the Schrodinger equation does not propagate time reversibly and unitarily, but
temporal behavior can be followed using Density Matrix methods. Experimental
evidence for new physics includes the fact that in coherent systems, jumps between
quantum states are Poisson distributed in time, yielding the familiar exponential half
life. In the presence of decoherence, the jumps are no longer Poisson in time,
confirmed experimentally, and sometimes called the AntiZeno Effect,(10). The full
portent of the Poised Realm may be very large. I will propose below that it plays a
major role in the Mind - Body problem.
TWO