Quantum spontaneity and the development of consciousness by James Robert Arnold

Hi James -

It's nice to find an essay that's intelligently written and well-informed, and I'm sorry that my comments are somewhat critical. You do make an important point, that's also central to my essay - that causal determinism is the result of non-causal quantum behavior, and not just a given, in physics. I have no problem with calling QM "spontaneous", though I also see no problem in calling it "random" and "indeterminate", so I apparently missed the point you were trying to make there.

I also agree with your conclusion - that we can reasonably believe in subjectivity, despite dogmatic determinism. But I don't see this as a significant step toward understanding how our self-awareness emerges, since the notion of an all-encompassing determinism just seems to me foolish. Quite apart from quantum spontaneity, as soon as we get to the evolution of life we're dealing mainly with non-causal factors, e.g. mutation and natural selection. Even if molecular interaction were perfectly deterministic - and indeed it needs to be quite precisely predictable for cells to be able to reproduce - what accounts for the evolution of life is not obedience to causal dynamics, but the statistics of variation and environmental fitness.

I don't really understand why efforts to understand subjective awareness so often involve arguments about "determinism" and "free will". As you say, "consciousness is not a system of extrinsic objective relationships; it is intrinsic, it has a subjective interiority." Or to put it simply, it has a point of view in the world. (You might check out Forrest Landry's contest essay on this.) "Interiority" can't be an objective characteristic of anything, and I think most of the confusion about defining "consciousness" comes from trying to distinguish things that objectively "have" it and things that objectively don't.

Anyway, thanks for your entry and good luck in the contest.

Dear James Arnold,

A fascinating paper. Thanks for your review of Chalmers, Dennett, Nagel, Penrose, Pinker, Searle, Sperry and others. I haven't looked at them for years, but agree with all your analysis. Funny how one can achieve a name in this field when it's obvious one doesn't know whereof one speaks. Anyway, your summary is valuable, particularly for those who may not know recent history. Today it is apparently "integrated information" and "microtubules" approaches that are setting us up for new batches of spectacular papers rich in detail...

"There is no emergent transition from a network of firing neurons to conscious experience of pleasure or pain."

Elsewhere I quote Santayana:

"All of our sorrow is real, but the atoms of which we are made are indifferent."

I fully agree with you that "consciousness is not a system of extrinsic objective relationships; it is intrinsic." Then it falls upon us to identify the source or location or nature of this 'intrinsicity'.

You say Penrose is a quantum physicist, but he's really more of a general relativist I believe. Nevertheless, as you note, by locking himself into 'microtubules', he is a reductionist. I have not yet understood what, beyond pretty and intricate pictures, people see in a specific large molecule. Yes, microtubules dynamically construct themselves and deconstruct themselves at their ends, but what element in the cell does not in one way or another do the same?

Although it's only a change of terminology, I very much like your change of focus from 'random' and 'indeterminate' to 'spontaneity'. Despite that Searle says "quantum indeterminism is the only form of indeterminism that is indisputably established as a fact of nature", this is interpretation-dependent, leaning heavily on Copenhagen and 'collapse'. Wave functions evolve deterministically through Schrodinger, and there is conceptual conflict between the physical wave property and the 'wave probability' function that is beyond the scope of a comment to resolve.

'Spontaneity' brings something to the local event that seems missing in 'random' and 'indeterminism'. I encourage you to develop this idea further. You have perhaps captured it when you trace it to an inner dynamic. In fact, spontaneity in consciousness carries with it a sense of "appropriateness".

I also like your 'no-cause' analysis of indeterminacy. You ask 'what can spontaneity offer?'. I think it offers a sense of appropriateness.

I do not identify this feature as rooted in quantum mechanics. For an indication of why, I refer you to my recent paper:

The Nature of Quantum Gravity

Spontaneity may be the 'least biased interpretation of quantum phenomena', but, more so, it is probably the most appropriate characterization of consciousness, and fits my field theory fairly well. Unless one is a believer in 'entanglement' [which is in almost every case 'monogamous'-linking two and only two particles], quantum events are local, even if the locale is as large as a microtubule. No one believes (I hope) that a quantum relation spans the entire brain, whereas the field that I propose does exactly this. So mind and intelligence are locally global versus locally local.

You hint at this when you say "we need to discover a connectedness between levels of individuality in order to establish a continuity from quantum to human."

It is not as clear to me that "this is the comprehensive continuity that the concept of spontaneity can provide..."

For "comprehensive continuity" I believe one needs a field, operating at all scales from electron to brain. Rather than argue technical points about space "roiling with virtual particles" [leading to predictions that differ from reality by 120 orders of magnitude!] I would hope that you might keep the baby of 'spontaneity" and throw out the confused quantum basis, in favor of attempting to apply 'spontaneity to the field' that envelops all the many pieces of the puzzle.

I would change your final statement [before the conclusion] to:

"...brain function doesn't cause consciousness, it in-forms it."

Thank you for a most rewarding read.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear James Arnold

I am trying to plough through all of the better papers here and found yours particularly unique and insightful. Here are some jotted thoughts along the way:

Didn't particularly agree that causality is emergent, or a derivative physical principle. Is the speed of light emergent from quantum mechanics? I guess you wanted to dispatch causality quickly and space considerations prevailed.

Totally agree we should be posing alternatives to randomness and indeterminacy, for the reasons you presented. Is "spontaneity" going too far for the current scientific worldview? - particularly in your terms of "autonomous dynamism". My current favourite is Heisenberg's "potentia", but no-one seems to use it. That said, i suspect you will end up being correct, because it seems to be our only way out of determinism. Bohm's "mind like properties" of simple quantum systems also come to mind. The trouble is, i don't think we will ever have direct proof of what you are saying in biological systems, as the scale is too small and delicate.

Loved your dispatch of dogmatic materialism into the outfield. This stuff is intellectually too easy, and is holding us back. Congrats on the sustained barrage.

"There is a problem that quantum effects would seem to be already nullified at the molecular level, before they can influence conscious behaviour." Are you aware that the emerging field of quantum biology is putting this statement in serious doubt? Various work is being done on photosynthesis, neuronal microtubules etc., demonstrating sustained quantum coherence in biological systems, thus opening the way to your interpretation of QMs.

"As a convergence, brain function doesn't cause consciousness, it enables it" - Yes! Totally agree

So...loved your essay & scored accordingly.

If you can, do visit my "From nothingness to value ethics". My approach may open up the CONTENT of consciousness (largely ignored by consciousness "experts") -i.e. emotion cognition, ethics, motivation, dreams etc. I also envisage consciousness working in the brain via your "spontaneity" but tend to head down a dualistic path beyond that...

Best regards

Gavin

Dear James,

I enjoyed reading your essay, you discuss various positions on the problem of consciousness and propose an answer based on what you call "quantum spontaneity". I will have to think more at this, because I still try to understand the differences/advantages of quantum spontaneity as compared to quantum randomness due to the wavefunction collapse, or the spontaneous collapse interpretation, in the foundations of QM and also in consciousness. Also you may be interested in, although you probably know it, the free will theorem of Conway and Kochen. This is one example of how QM is more than simply randomness, so this maybe supports your idea of spontaneity.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

The Tablet of the Metalaw

I guess my approach is rather different from yours, though we seem to have points of agreement. It seems to me there are a great many remarkable "leaps" along the way from quantum physics to the human mind, all quite different from each other, and none of them "magical" or inexplicable. And I see many levels of randomness, as well as new ways of determining what happens. But your concept of "spontaneity" may be a good way of encapsulating all this, to emphasize what all the various modes of evolution have in common.

Thanks again -- Conrad

Dear James,

I have read your deep analytical essay with great interest. I believe that it is possible to solve the "difficult problem of consciousness" if first to solve the super difficult problem of ontological basification of mathematics (knowledge). Modern crisis of understanding in fundamental science (mathematics, physics, cosmology) is primarily a crisis of ontology. By the way, the idea of "spontaneity of consciousness" was developed by the mathematician, philosopher Vasily Nalimov (1910-1997) He set the task before the fundamental science: "to build a model of the self-aware Universe." Why did not he solve this problem? I think precisely because mathematics itself is going through a crisis of bases. This crisis is more than a hundred years old, but mathematicians "sweep it under the carpet". Sincerely, Vladimir

Vladimir,

Thank you for your most intriguing post. It reads much like an oracle.

I have long considered mathematics, especially ratio, as skeletal to the universe -- structural, but barren. Is that my weakness? I'm open, but dubious.

Regarding Nalimov, there is very little about him in English. His "spontaneity" may be translated badly as "probability" or "uncertainty" in the few English mentions I've been able to find.

At https://www.uia.org/archive/ency-strategies-comm-15-5 Nalimov's "probability" is said to imply that "man is never free", being dominated by ontological probability. That doesn't seem to rise to "spontaneity."

Can you elaborate here on the "crisis of bases" in mathematics, or provide a reference, preferably to something you've written (in English please -- my Russian is barren!).

Hi James

You may find this article of interest:

Boisseau, R. P., Vogel, D., & Dussutour, A. (2016) Habituation in non- neural organisms: evidence from slime moulds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 283 (1829)

I think it is the most conclusive evidence yet of learning and decision making in unicellular organisms.

The most fundamental transitions I describe in my essay are the emergence of self-replicating systems and the emergence of human communication. I suggest that the emergence of deterministic physics from the spontaneity of the quantum realm is closely analagous -- in all three cases, a new dynamic comes into being that can keep itself going recursively, subject to natural selection. But there are many other important discontinuities -- e.g. the emergence of the eukaryotic cell, which Nick Lane thinks was a far more unlikely accident than the origin of life itself. I hope you'll take a look at my effort and let me know what you think.

I make the point that even though the determinism of classical physics is not fundamental, no higher-level structure could ever have evolved if atoms and molecules and larger physical systems did not behave in very precisely uniform and predictable ways. As to randomness, this is important at many levels -- e.g. Ellis writes about the chaotic "molecular storm" going on all the time in living cells. So I see the emergence of new kinds of spontaneity always as involving new constraints that then open up new levels of accidental possibilities.

Thanks for the chance to comment -- Conrad

James.

Link to my essay FQXi - 2015: The Formula of Justice: The OntoTopological Basis of Physica and Mathematica*

Also a good article S. Cherepanov "THE SUBSTANTIATION OF MATHEMATICS: A NEW VIEW ON THE PROBLEM" (I do not know English, my assistant is always GUGLE.)

I believe that Cherepanov sets the right direction for solving the problem of substantion (justification / foundation) of mathematics: "to construct the model of regular process which does not dwell and always lead to something new and new." But I can not agree with approach proposed by S. Cherepanov. Problem requires more fundamental synthetic approach and synthetic method - the ontological construction.

"Substantion (justification / foundation) of mathematics": I use the comprehensive term - the ontological basification. The ontological basification includes the ontological substantion, justification, foundation: the ontological construction framework, carcass and foundation of mathematics (knowledge).

Vladimir