Essay Abstract

Quantum mechanics gives many simultaneously existing versions of reality, but we are aware of only a single, particular one. Quantum mechanics does not specify which one we are aware of, so interpretations of the mathematics have arisen, hoping to explain how the particular version is chosen. It is argued that there is little reason to be optimistic that any of the three primary interpretations, particles, collapse, or many-worlds, is correct. In the current state of physics, the most reasonable interpretation, the only one that requires no changes or amendments to the highly successful mathematics, is that we each harbor a non-physical Mind, outside the laws of physics, which is the source of our awareness. This Mind only perceives; it does not alter the wave function in any way. An experimental test of the Mind interpretation is proposed.

Author Bio

Casey Blood, professor emeritus of physics, was on the Rutgers University physics faculty for 30 years. He is currently an author, speaker, and researcher on the implications of quantum mechanics. He received his PhD from Case Western Reserve and held postdoctoral positions at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Rochester.

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  • Post #2

The very structure of our experience is dependent upon the interactive and integrated extensiveness of our thought/thinking, and upon the comprehensiveness and consistency of our intention and concern as well. Consider dream and waking experience. The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sensory experience is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience. The natural and integrated extensiveness of being and experience go hand-in-hand in and with time.

Author Frank Martin DiMeglio

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  • Post #3

Dr. Casey Blood,

Thank you for posting your entry into the essay contest. I appreciate reading your opinion. However, I was left feeling empty. Please use my message, if you wish, as a means to further support your view.

"The particle which travels on the trajectory has no awareness of its own."

"In addition, since the particle itself has no awareness,..."

How do you prove the above claim?

"The only apparent option left is to suppose that a non-physical Mind, not subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, rides along on one branch. The Mind associated with each individual is aware of the quantum state of the individual's brain. This non-physical Mind, rather than the physical brain, is the basic source of one's awareness. The non-physical Mind does not collapse the wave function or affect physical reality in any other way; it only perceives. ..."

The title of your essay caused me to anxiously read it. However, you conclude that the very particles of matter that participate in evolving our own awareness have no clue of awareness. Instead of considering the possibility of recognizing a first simple step in awareness, you conclude that a mystical non-physical mind or Mind or MIND introduces the property of awareness into the universe. By what 'physical' means, or perhaps by what 'non-physical' means, can that occur?

I presume that your use, quoted above, of the word 'non-physical' actually means not to be interpreted in the theoretical physics approved mechanical manner. If you believe in a mechanical, i.e. dumb, purposeless, base, then where does this MIND with awareness come from. I recognize that it may satisfy the claim that:

"... Thus one advantage of this interpretation is that, in contrast to particle or collapse interpretations, the highly successful mathematics of quantum mechanics need not be altered or amended."

Why is that goal prized over looking toward possibly learning fundamental properties that lead to awareness?

Any corrections of what I have stated are welcome.

Respectfully,

James Putnam

To Frank DiMeglio

I didn't understand the thrust of your comments.

But you seem to be talking about the brain-based thoughts.

I am alluding to "non-brain-based thoughts."

Casey BLood

Response to James Putnam, Sept. 17, 09

Your objection that particles may carry awareness is certainly warranted. I cannot prove that particles have no awareness.

I have thought about this possibility but am unable to make a coherent scheme from aware particles. Perhaps you can explain such a scheme to me.

A few thoughts:

(1) There is no evidence for particles. Here we are on solid physics ground.

(2) If one can devise a satisfactory underlying Bohm-like model of particles, then almost certainly the particles must obey strict mathematical rules (in order to satisfy the probability law). There is then no free will for the particle. So I don't know what the particle "does" with its awareness.

(3) For your "aware particle" hypothesis to work, you must present a valid interpretation of quantum mechanics that is consistent with it. It is most definitely not easy to devise a satisfactory particle-based interpretation of quantum mechanics. In spite of much effort, no one has yet succeeded. Among other difficulties, I should think there would be a problem with the awareness of photons, which can be created and destroyed.

(4) I don't see how the awareness on the particle level works its way up to awareness on the human level. Do the various particles coordinate their awarenesses?

(5) I do not know, as I said, how the non-physical Mind perceives the physical world. Nor do I know the specific means by which the aware particle would perceive the physical world. (Nor do I know where the particle's awareness "comes from." If you say it just is, then I would say the same thing about the awareness of the non-physical Mind.)

(6) I am not prizing mathematical simplicity over knowledge of awareness; I am simply saying that, because it doesn't disturb the math, the non-physical Mind interpretation has an advantage over the (non-aware) particle and collapse interpretations.

(7) On "non-physical." Because of the successes of quantum mechanics, the physical world to me is constructed from the wave functions. So I have simply defined the physical that way (not "mechanical," but "quantum mechanical"). I will include particles in that definition if you can show me they exist.

Anything outside the laws of quantum mechanics is, to me, non-physical. (And that would include the awareness you presume for particles.)

(8) I have no idea where the Mind comes from or where it "exists." But your question seems to imply that nothing besides the physical can exist. I would be very surprised if you could give a persuasive argument for that stance.

Thanks for your comments. This is a point I should be clearer about.

Casey Blood

Hi James,

Second post, because the topic is important.

If we have a particulate electron associated with an electron wave function, what is the particulate electron aware of?

If we have a particulate photon associated with a photon wave function, what is that particulate photon aware of?

If we have a detector that records a count, what are the particles that make up the detector aware of?

If we have a brain wave function in a certain configuration, what are the particles associated with that brain wave function aware of?

Can you explain in more detail why the particled version of the brain wave function corresponds to our awarenes wile the non-particled verion, with a perfectly valid wave function, does not?

Casey

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  • Post #7

Dear Casey Blood,

I worked on the issue of "particle"-awareness and have an essay about it here in the contest. If you would like to take a look, feel free to do so

here.

Stefan

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  • Post #8

I would like to address the "non-physical" existence enjoyed by the MIND conjectured in this paper. What I have been able to gather is that "non-physical" is intended to mean "not made of or interacting with particles of any kind." This is not something with which I automatically have a problem. Yet, MIND is still something to which _behavior_ is attributed: being aware of something, perceiving something, are behaviors. The way we typically explain the behavior of an entity is by functionally decomposing it into smaller, simpler entities and studying the behaviors/interactions among those component entities. Presumably this process of "zooming in" to an entity can be repeated until we reach some "bottom level" where there are no subcomponents to be studied. My question is, if MIND is an entity that is "not made of interacting with particles of any kind," then what is the nature of the subcomponents that make it up? Do you propose that MIND has no subcomponents? If so, where does the richness of MIND's behavior come from? As any AI researcher or neuroscientist can tell you, the behavior we call "seeing," for instance, is fantastically complex. Should we add "perception" to the periodic table of elements?

Dear Owen,

Thanks for your comments.

My goal is to try to show from quantum mechanics that there must be an "awareness" ouside physical existence. An even more ambitious goal would be the one you suggest--to learn about the structure of "existence outside physical existence." My feeling is that, as you correctly imply, it must have a complex structure. But not a structure made from particles or material objects.

Just for fun, one might try constructing non-physical existence out of "atoms" of "thought." One possible candidate 5-element set, with their basic meanings, might be:

Earth: Form, structure (the precursor of space, noun-like).

Water: Sequence (the precursor of time).

Fire: Emotion, energy, action, intelligence (verb-like).

Air: Hierarchy, combination, potential.

Ether: Essence, evaluation (adjective-like).

These would then be compounded together to give extremely complex "molecules" of thought.

Casey Blood

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  • Post #10

Thanks for your quick response. I guess my point is this: the overall goal of thinking about things like this is to explain the more complex in terms of the less complex. You have attempted to explain something more complex (quantum mechanics) by invoking MIND, which is arguably at least as complex as the thing we wish to explain. This strikes me as an example of "begging the question" much like the way Intelligent Design proponents beg the question by invoking God to explain biodiversity.

I don't mean to sound completely unsympathetic to the idea that the existence of all things material/physical owes some debt to the existence of a certain thing that is immaterial/nonphysical. A tangentially-treated implication of my own paper (and something that is explicitly the focus of Dean Rickles's submission) is that the universe essentially bootstrapped itself out of nothing but mathematics. Max Tegmark was interviewed in Wired magazine a while back and discussed the same idea, that "everything is made of math" and that physical reality is somehow a logically necessary implication of the consistency of mathematics.

So, in the end, I am skeptical of your idea of MINDfulness, but to the extent that it is similar to the competing idea of MATHfulness, I can't fight it too vigorously.

Dear Owen,

Yes, I certainly appreciate the "bootstrap" point of view.

But my goal is not to explain the more complex in terms of the less complex.

My goal is to find a way to make sense of quantum mechanics. Although each step can be questioned, the logic is this:

(1) No reason to suspect anything besides the wave function exists.

(2) No reason to suspect collapse.

(3) Existence of the wave function alone, with all its branches, cannot account for the probability law, so it cannot be correct.

So what does this leave?

Casey

PS. Thanks for your clear writing, which seems to be in somewhat short supply.

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  • Post #12

Dear Casey Blood

According to my research awareness in scientific experiment is from consciousness itself. Observer is consciousness. Through every scientist eye is watching same consciousness. Mind is processing perception and most scientists are not aware who is experiencing. They are identified with the mind. Once a scientist starts watching the mind he discovers that space-time is a mind model and that quantum space itself is timeless.

perception -- processing in model of space-time -- experience

Yours amritAttachment #1: 2_FROM_SPACETIME_TO_TIMELESS_QUANTUM_SPACE.doc

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  • Post #14

Mr. Blood,

Thank you for a well written and thought provoking essay.

In reading the discussion of your three proposed basic alternative interpretations (particle, collapse, and many-worlds) I was reminded of what appears to be yet a fourth possible interpretation which was outlined by Lee Smolin in his book 'Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.' Described as being a "relational quantum theory," the ideas are said to have been developed by Smolin, Louis Crane, and Carlo Rovelli, with further work on the concept having been done by Fotini Markopoulou. Smolin summarizes the idea as "... One universe seen by many observers, rather than many universes, seen by one mythical observer outside the universe." (p.48, TRTQG)

Unfortunately, the book was copyrighted in 2001, and I am not aware of the current status of thinking on this topic by Smolin, et al. Would you happen to have any information on a more current status by any chance? As outlined in 'Three Roads to Quantum Gravity,' the concept does appear to offer an interesting and attractive alternative to the three you listed.

Thanks again for an interesting essay.

jcns

Dear JCN Smith,

I do not know that approach. I found just a little at the end of the arXiv article hep-th/0303185v2 by Lee Smolin. There is also a little in the Wikipedia article on interpretations. But I still don't really understand.

Thanks for you interest.

Casey Blood

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  • Post #16

Mr. Blood,

Inasmuch as Smolin, Crane, Rovelli, and Markopoulou are all members of FQXi, it seems not unreasonable to hope that one of them might learn of this discussion and provide an update on the current status of their thinking. You will find a brief description of their ideas in Chapter 3 of 'Three Roads to Quantum Gravity,' but, as previously noted, that material is now a bit dated. Ideas, like the universe itself, do have a way of evolving.

Cheers,

jcns

Thanks

I would appreciate it if you could indicate, even if in a sketchy way, how the probability law comes about in their scheme.

Casey

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  • Post #18

Rather than paraphrasing or summarizing (and thereby probably distorting) Smolin's thinking, please allow me to quote from Chapter 3 of 'Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.'

". . . to formulate a theory of cosmology we must acknowledge that different observers see partly different, partial views of the universe. From this starting point it makes no sense to try to treat the whole universe as [if it] were a quantum system in a laboratory of the kind that ordinary quantum theory applies to. Could there be a different kind of quantum theory, one in which the quantum states refer explicitly to the domain seen by some observer? Such a theory would be different from conventional quantum theory. It would in a sense 'relativize' that theory, in the sense that it would make the quantum theory depend more explicitly on the location of the observer inside the universe. It would describe a large, perhaps infinite set of quantum worlds, each of which corresponds to the part of the world that could be seen by a particular observer, at a particular place and time in the history of the universe."

"In the past few years there have been several proposals for just such a new kind of quantum cosmology. One of them grew out of the consistent-histories approach. It is a kind of reformulation of it, by Chris Isham and his collaborator Jeremy Butterfield, in which they make context dependence the central feature of the mathematical formulation of the theory. They found that they can do this using topos theory, which allows one to describe many interrelated quantum mechanical descriptions, differing according to the choice of context, in one mathematical formalism. . . ."

". . . Before Isham and his collaborators, Louis Crane, Carlo Roelli and I developed different versions of an idea we called relational quantum theory. . . . The basic idea was that all [observers] have a context, which consists of the part of the world they describe. Rather than asking which quantum description is right . . . we argue that one has to accept them all. There are many quantum theories, corresponding to the many different possible observers. They are all interrelated, because when two observers are able to ask the same question they must get the same answer. The mathematics of topos theory, as developed by Chris Isham and collaborators, has told us how to do this for any possible case in which it may arise."

[. . . .]

". . . Many of us believe that this is a definite step in the right direction. Rather than trying ot make sense of metaphysical statements about their being many universes--many realities--within one solution to the theory of quantum cosmology, we are constructing a pluralistic version of quantum cosmology in which there is one universe. That universe has, however, many different mathematical descriptions, each corresponding to what a different observer can see when they look around them. Each is incomplete, because no observer can see the whole universe. Each observer, for example, excludes themselves from the world they describe. But when two observers ask the same question, they must agree. And if I look around tomorrow it cannot happen that the past changed." (pp. 46-48, TRTQG)

Apologies for the extended quotes, but I would rather Smolin speak for himself about these ideas. And, in a spirit of full disclosure, I must admit to having some personal partiality to Smolin's proposed approach, because these ideas dovetail rather well with my own thinking about the universe, a small portion of which thinking is spelled out in one the other essays in this year's FQXi competition as well as in reference 4 to that essay.

I certainly would be interested to learn what new developments may have transpired along these lines of thinking since 'Three Roads' was published in 2001. And of course I am curious about how these ideas might relate to the thinking proposed in your own current essay.

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

jcns

Thanks so much for the extended quote.

Read your essay and enjoyed it.

I see the problem of time a little differently.

Quantum mechanics gives many versions of reality, "many universes."

Our path "through time" consists, in part, of the choice of versions (however that choice is made). If you limit existence to the wave function, there is probably no way to untangle all those choices and get back to a previous time. And no way to anticipate the future choices and travel to the future (except that sometimes, many choices may lead to nearly the same future).

Going back to Smolin, the Achilles heel of the Everett many-worlds interpretation is that it cannot accommodate the probability law. So I was

wondering how, in the Smolin approach, they dealt with this most critical issue. How can a probability law follow if every version of the observer always perceives their particular associated version of reality? There is no probability in a scheme of existence in which only the wave function exists.

Casey

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  • Post #20

Dr. Casey Blood,

Thank you for your extended reply. I guess you have given me my homework assignment. The first act I will perform is to carefully reread your essay. I want to be sure that I use your time productively. I see these forums as the means to allow authors to go beyond the ten page limit. Hopefully anything I say further will be of assistance to your efforts to communicate your ideas.

James