Essay Abstract

The present essay offers the quantum mechanical versions of some of the most recently famous philosophical thought experiments related to the debate of mind vs. body (i.e. Mary the color scientist and the philosophical zombie). Some conclusions are outlined that may question the validity of the well known philosophical thought experiments as a tool for elucidating the question of mind vs. body.

Author Bio

Dr. Pablo Garcia Tello graduated in Physics from the Complutense University and got his PhD in material science from the Basque Country University both in Spain. He spent two years as postdoctoral associate in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at MIT. Later he worked for Philips and NXP Semiconductors several years in areas related to solid state devices. Now he is a senior consultant in PNO in matters related to EU funding and strategic advice. After struggling for over 20 years with the measurement problem of quantum mechanic he believes that he is starting to make some progress.

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  • Post #2

Kindly reference an empirical Schroedinger's cat experiment in which presence or absence of prayer or precongnition influenced the statistical outcome of repeated observation. The are quite a few of them in the literature. All of those if which I am aware were null results or discredited.

Mary has a spectrophotometer. Would a person normally sighted at birth and brought up in a strictly monochromatic envrironment retain/develop brain structure to (accurately) interpret color? Normaly sighted babies with bilateral congenital cataracts that were much later replaced with intraocular lens implants to restore focused light paths often went insane. That hints the wetware of cerebral image processing is not inherent, nor does it adequately reconstruct when juvenile developmental plasticity wanes. Congenital cataracts are now interdicted much earlier in life despite implant difficulties with a growing eye.

The p-zombie is an interactive computer language (plus storage) that lacks "I" as concept, e.g., "Babel 17" by Samuel R. Delany, 1966. Your basic p-zombie is congruent to the One True Church's rant against human cloning re souls. Alas, humans spontaneously clone as identical twins, triplets, etc. Inerrant divine providence apparently overlooked the University of California/Irvine Department of Physics. Professor Gregory Benford is not merely an identical twin, he is a *mirror* twin. His brother Jim is his mirror image. Whch one is the zombie?

http://www.ucrmagazine.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=10

40% down

http://www.righthandlefthand.com/html/NOTES12.htm

WWW 12:13

Extending your thesis, kindly describe the middle of identical mirror triplets.

Dear Uncle AI,

Thanks for your comments but could you be more explicit with them? I don't quite understand your suggestions there.

Thanks in advance.

11 days later

Uncle Al

Why, Oh, why ! have you been making us wait all these years while you sort out the right materials for your experiment when mother nature, acting according to the guidance of mother church, has already provided the ideal test particles at Irvine.

There is a tower in Pisa. i can give you a contact (Leroy Brown) on the South-Side of Chicago who will arrange transportation for a small fee. See you there Saturday. Every one will look - I have sold the TV rights to a neighbour's son, Rupert.

19 days later

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  • Post #6

Dear Dr. Tello

Your essay is among essays which gave me new information.

I described a similar thought experiment as you.

http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Kokosar_limits_and_consciou_3.pdf

"classical physics -> quantum physics -> quantum uncertainty is necessary to give that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon,"

but quantum superposition is more genuine quantum effect than quantum uncertainty.

Also my proposition (beside my essay): Schrödinger's cats consciounsess cause collapse of a wave function.

Regards

Janko Kokošar

Dear Janko,

Thanks for your comment. As you can see I share your opinion about that the problem of the interpretation of consciousness and its role in QM, which is intimately associated to the well know measurement problem is the crucial one for QM to be an explanatory theory beyond being simply an ensemble of calculation rules. I read your essay but I cannot understand why you state:

So "physics" can be simplined only as a movement, so qualia can be ignored.

In my essay I try to adopt a position equally balancing dualistic and materialistic explanations and with the help of some quantum versions of philosophical thought experiments advance in the possible consequences in terms of the role of consciousness in QM.

To me it seems that with your statement a materialistic point of view is already taken for granted. Am I right?

I also cannot quite see how you can conclude from your thought Turing experiment the fact that consciousness is linked to QM...perhaps I didn't understand completely your thought experiment. Would you be able to re-explained it?

I also agree with you that one of the fundamental questions to be elucidated is the one of the "primitive constituents of consciousness"...

are they material? I don't know...but I cannot presuppose that they are either

Thanks in advance for your interest.

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  • Post #8

"To me it seems that with your statement a materialistic point of view is already taken for granted." Let us define, what is materialistic view. Mass is not indepenent of space and time - in the form of dimensionless(!) gravitational coupling constants. So materialistic view is really deterministic one.

But, I wrote that quantum collapse is a consequence of decision and it is more or less indeterministic.

So, my view is not materialistic, but despite of this I claim that consciousness is not out of physics - also because consciousness causes movement.

My sentence "be simplified only as a movement, so qualia can be ignored." is not very precise. I read somewhere that some one used un-mathematicality of qualias as proof for mathematical view of physics. So I write this. I tried to write also that (mathematical) physics must also solve consciounsess not only (unmathematical?) qualia.

But I hope that mathematical properties of qualia will be more clear for me one day.

Re-explanation of my version of Turing experiment:

You said that a zombi and a human being can be distinguished by quantum collapse.

1. I said that a zombi and a human being can be distinguished if we ignore QM and we used only classical physics. Their actions are different because consciousness give different movemenents, as only known classical physics.

2. But when QM is used, these two movements are also different but they can be hidden or explained by the principle of quantum uncertainty. So a difference of point 1 is, that consciousness is explained physically, this means by QM. So, at least, QM cannot be ignored as unimportant for explanation of consciousness.

Regards

Janko

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